Las Vegas, or "You know you've got great seats when you're closer than Wayne Newton"

For those of you who don't know, I recently took a 36 hour road-trip to Las Vegas. Not for the normal college-student reason, of course. We went to go volunteer. At a political debate. Kind of nerdy, but so much fun!

We left Provo at 7:30 (we were supposed to leave at 7 but Jordan forgot his shoes and then Brandall tried to give Katie directions to Alissa's house and we spent 15 minutes driving around a parking lot...no joke). It already felt so late at night, but we were too excited to care.

Me and Brandall (with Alissa and David in the background) just so excited to head down!

The drive didn't end up being too bad. We stopped over in Fillmore to get gas, grab munchies, and switch drivers. Overall though, there was a lot of music, laughter, singing, and headbanging. And, as always happens when the kids eat sugar and run around, we all fell asleep while watching Amazing Grace. There's just something about that "sitting in the car" feeling that's so darn soothing...

Jordan so excited to play chauffeur/papa

Fun with food

The Gang in the back!

Thanks to our handy GPS who changed the route whenever we hit construction or got lost, we arrived in Las Vegas around 12 am PST. We stayed at Katie's brother's house down there and they were so nice! Her sister-in-law let us in and gave us cookies before she ushered us to bed.

But not before we snapped a "we're so tired but we're HERE!!" picture

We got up the next morning around 8 and Katie's sister had made us delicious french toast. I spent most of the time scrambling to finish up my cover letters while we all just enjoyed a more leisurely morning before we headed for lunch at the strip.

Having breakfast down below

Jordan went to go visit his cousin who had had just had a baby, so it left the six of us to wander around Vegas for a little while and snap some awesome pictures.

Herman Cain and Wolf Blitzer! ...Seriously though, what kind of a name is Wolf Blitzer?

After a quick lunch at the Grand Lux (I had a seared ahi tuna salad with avacado and ginger - so good!) we scrambled to get to the conference center and meet up with my contact. We found her, but then spent the next hour sort of standing around waiting for the thing to start. While waiting we avoided the Nevada College Republicans who looked a little douchey and awkward and instead hung out with four little old ladies. They were so wonderful. I think Jordan actually fixed one of their phones.

Outside the Conference hall. Such a good looking group!

We were eventually herded into an absolutely huge cement and metal room where the debate hall was set up. Literally, it was set up inside the big empty room. Essentially it was just a bunch of taunt backdrops set up to make it look like an official debate hall. It was amazing.

We were divided into groups and then put at tables with a giant master list. Our jobs were to look through the list, compare the names on there to the persons ID and then give them a properly colored wrist band before they went through the metal detectors. That was it. That's all we had to do. It wasn't difficult and took maybe an hour and a half and then we got to go see the debate for FREE!

Inside the debate hall. Which wasn't really a hall. But still.

Somehow Jordan and I lucked out and found ourselves sitting in the very front row. Like, literally, the front. Meaning Rick Perry and I had a stare down and I spoke to Anderson Cooper about his shirt and tie combination. I was actually concerned I was going to flash the candidates if I shifted in my skirt wrong.

The debate itself was amazing! You could feel the energy from the crowd and the fire of the candidates. It was also great to see how the candidates acted when the camera's were off them. Michelle Bachmann kept going backstage during the commercial breaks, Mitt Romney went into the crowd every time. They shook each others hands, and joked and laughed about things that had been said during the debate. Some of it might have been forced, but even the show of civility was nice.

Afterwards, all of us met up again and pretty much just floated out of the conference center on cloud 9! We were supposed to volunteer at the V.I.P. reception after the debate, but due to some mix ups with the master list (some VIPs were listed as regular, even though they had paid $800 extra) so the WRLC people were going to be working the reception to smooth things over. We were okay with that, mostly because as it was we would be making it back to Provo at 3 in the morning. Besides, it gave us some time to actually enjoy the strip as more than half of us hadn't been there before.

Our "we're cool and allowed into the debate" wristbands

After a quick semi-decent clothing swap in the car, we were dressed in normal clothes and ready to take Las Vegas by storm. We had decided the 2 things we wanted to do were have gelato and watch the fountains at the Bellagio. So we all loaded into the car and headed over.

Jumping off the fountains in front of the Bellagio

The ladies...

Watching the fountains

Best friends in Paris! Or Vegas. Same Thing.

Everything was so much fun! We got lost in the hotel/casino's (seriously...you'd think the exit sign would mean you can exit from there. You can't.) took some fun pictures, at gelato, lusted after the chocolate fountain, and rode on lots and lots of escalators. But, with all good things, they must come to an end. Especially because we all had class the next day. So, with satisfied souls we loaded into the car and started the drive back to Provo.

But not before we decided to blast music and stick our bodies outside of the sun roof while driving down the strip...

You can't go to Vegas and not do something of questionable legality...

We stopped in Mesquite to grab some food and some gas, and from there it was back to Provo.

So excited to have had this experience together!

Once again, Jordan drove while the rest of us slept. And lest we forget, we actually listened to the debate again so we could listen to the commentary from the political pundits. It was interesting to compare the opinions of those listening or watching to ours who were actually there to experience it.

Somehow Jordan managed to get us from Vegas to Provo (usually a 5 and a half hour drive) in a little less than 4 hours. It was amazing! We all unloaded, said good-bye, and went our separate ways.

Home safe and happy at last!

However, it was an experience I know we will never forget!

Things that I say

Here's a slight taste of things I have said in the last 24 hours:

"Alissa, you look like a Canadian today."

"Man...I really wore the wrong underwear for this job."

And, my personal favorite, "I have 3 sores in my mouth. I wonder if it's because my diet's consisted of caramel corn for the last 2 days."

The best part it, they may or may not have made sense in the context of the conversation.

Toodles!

-Jillian

Feminist reflections on Costa Rica

After glossing over the syllabus for my Modern Latin American History class during our first lecture, I couldn’t help but notice one glaring exemption – Costa Rica was not mentioned anywhere; not in the quiz schedule, not in the lecture material, not in any of the readings or the study guides. When I asked the Professor why this was he shrugged and explained that when studying history we tend to focus our attention on the countries with turbulent pasts; countries with wars, revolutions, class struggles, and events we can analyze. This was understandable, especially in a class that covered such a large area over such a large period of time. Compared to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, Costa Rica had it easy. They had been a stable functioning democracy since the short-lived “revolution” in 1948, and even before then they were a fairly established, independent, self-governing society. I asked about its tourism industry, knowing the professor specialized in the history of tourism and that Costa Rica was renowned for its beautiful black and white sand beaches, good surfing, and laid back Rastafarian atmosphere. He shrugged again. As far as tourism went, Costa Rica was doing it right. They weren’t compromising their majestic cloud or rainforests, polluting their waters, or isolating their land into privately owned resorts, but rather preserving them through ecologically friendly efforts. Their culture, being heavily influenced by the United States and typical Western culture, was already friendly and accessible to American and European tourists alike.

While we were having this conversation, I was overly aware of my wrist where my favorite souvenirs from my time in the land of “Pura Vida” were tied: two simple bracelets – one bought from a street side artisan vendor in the city of San Jose and another given to me by the Nicaraguan refugee children I taught in the slum of Carpio, just east of the capital. While I couldn’t help but agreeing with a lot of what he was saying, I also knew from the six weeks I had just spent in that country that Costa Rica had its own demons it was still fighting.

The largest of these was the Latin idea of machismo. Prevalent in many Latin American countries, Costa Rica was no exception. For the most part, women are expected to stay in the home and raise the children, especially in the more rural areas away from San Jose. In that way, staying at home as a woman became a social symbol. If you had a husband with a good enough job that allowed you to stay home, you would. During our six week stay, we lived with a Tico family of four in the suburb of San Pedro. The mother, Duerin, stayed at home while the father, Oscar, worked two jobs to support the family. He was gone before we left the house at 7 each morning and returned well after we had retired to our bedrooms around 9 that evening. She did all of the cooking, cleaning, and chores around the house – except on the weekend. On the weekends the social order seemed to be turned on its head. Oscar seemed to get home from work early and would not only take those two days to play and take of their two children, Pamela and Samuel, but after every meal he would do the dishes and help clean up after the meals. A few houses down the road, where my friend Stanley was staying with Oscar’s parents, every weekend signaled the Papa Tico that it was his turn to wake up early and make breakfast to give his wife a break from cooking every morning. According to Stanley, his gallo pinto (a traditional breakfast dish made from rice, onion, black beans and other spices) was even better than his wife’s.

However, in the urban center it was not unusual to see women – especially younger women - walking to and from the banks where they were tellers, or from the many hospitals downtown where they were performing their residencies to become nurses. Teaching seemed to be an occupation dominated by women. In the school where I volunteered, there were only four males on the staff of 50– one of which was the principal. Very rarely were these women married, meaning a majority of the women I interacted with had either never been married or had been divorced. Take for instance, Ruth, one of the English teachers we volunteered with. When I was there, she was putting herself through school at the local university and teaching during the day, while raising three children as a single mother because her husband had an affair and left her a few years before. This kind of family dynamic is becoming the norm. With single-mother- headed households on the rise in Costa Rica, it is hard to see where women - who are traditionally kept out of the work force because of familial obligation - will fit into the economic system. Because of this 24% of mother-only families are below the poverty line, especially those in the rural area, outside of San Jose. They tend to take jobs at maids, cleaners and other forms of work with subservient pay and unstable job retention. And, due to its legal practice in the country, some women become prostitutes.

Luckily, I only had one run-in with this practice in the six weeks I lived in the country. A group of friends and I were walking a few blocks north of the central avenue, in a more posh area of the city. There were European style hotels that obviously catered to a higher tourist clientele, and on the corner by a Swill style chateau there were two women clearly dressed to signal their profession. We were a little shocked, especially because a cop car was parked a few blocks away and our American sensibilities were telling us that the cop car should be arresting them, or at least telling them to scatter. It wasn’t until later when I did a little research that I realized where they were located was no accident. While Tico men frequent prostitutes, sex tourism is a large source of the industry. Men from other countries come to Costa Rica for the explicit purpose of having sex with a Tica (while women come from other countries as well, a significant majority of sexual tourists to Costa Rica are men). Unfortunately, it has also created an off-shoot of illegal child prostitution. Thankfully the Costa Rican government has cracked down on this practice in the last few years, but there were signs throughout the community that showed it was still an issue. Driving to my project everyday on the bus there was a billboard with a pair of sad, brown eyes looking out at you. Underneath it reads “I am not a tourist attraction.” If that wasn’t jarring enough, the first thing you see when you exit the ‘international arrivals’ gate at the San Jose airport is a cardboard cutout of a police officer holding a sign that says “having sex with a minor (under 18 years) is illegal.” However, this is made difficult by the legality of prostitution for those over the age of 18 as differentiated between the over 18 and under 18 line can be difficult. The United States had aided in attempting to halt their citizens from practicing child prostitution by making it a federal crime to have sex with a minor in another country, and hopefully the Costa Rican government will continue to reduce this occurrence of this practice.

American and other western influences are seen in other areas of society. Fashion and style trends are very similar to what is seen in the American media. Women are never seen out in public without full-make-up and heels. Whether going to the movie or to the market, women always wear heels. All clothes, including women’s medical scrubs are tailored to show of female curves. American media has also changed the perception of American women in the country. Without fail, unless I was walking with Stanley, and even sometimes when I was with Stanley, I would get shouted or whistled at by Tico men on the street. Female volunteers were repeatedly told never to go anywhere by ourselves or with another girl at night and were given a very strict dress code. While Tica’s consistently wore low-cut shirts, short skirts, and no sleeves, we were told to have our knees, shoulders, and chests covered at all times. Even with those guidelines, there were still some issues of intense sexual harassment.

That being said, there were some less obvious differences, some good and some not. While travelling in the tourist city of La Fortuna, we were waiting for the bus back to San Jose, and a woman sat there breast-feeding her baby in public with no cover. It happened again in downtown San Jose in the Plaza del Oro. The women didn’t receive any odd looks as if it were a completely normal occurrence. This was starkly different from the US where a women breast-feeding in public, even with a cover, is bound to get judgmental looks. However, in a less positive vein, the first time I saw a woman with obvious signs of having been physically abused, I was sad to realize I was the only one who seemed disturbed by the bruises on her arms, cheeks, and eyes. The second time I saw this I noticed the same thing - I was the only one on the bus obviously disturbed by this. Or course, it could mean several different things. It could be that there was a social stigma against openly staring at a woman who was abused. It could be that it happened so often that other people, including other women, did not notice it anymore. It could also mean that, as these women were Nicaraguan immigrants (once derogatorily described to me as ‘the Mexicans of Costa Rica’ by a native Tico) that ‘their’ abuses weren’t worth caring about because they were already draining money from the system. In any case, this indifference was incredibly disturbing and left me feeling unsettled for days afterwards.

At the WomanStats project we have a saying: “once a coder, always a coder.” You’re trained to see the world and its anecdotes as data points that display an overarching attitude of a country. By experiencing Costa Rica through this lens, I realized how important this project is to humanity across the globe. There are many, many good things about Costa Rica – in fact, the good outweigh the bad. The people are happy, have a stable government, and a strong sense of religious community and social and ecological responsibility. I could not begin to count the number of times I saw men and boys stand up on the bus so a woman with a small child or an elderly person could have their seat; likewise not a week would go by without me witnessing a total stranger reaching out to help take care of or comfort a child that was not their own. However, there are some things that need fixing as well. The goal for the country and its citizens now is to keep the good while purging itself of the bad.