Oct. 12-Arrive in San Jose, meet my homestay family

I arrived on schedule and my ride was there to take me to my homestay family. I was given my choice of two rooms, simple but reasonably spacious, and foggy from the redeye picked the right one to settle into. I took a nap and at some point met Andres, the twenty-something son of the woman who ran the house. He spoke great English, and I was invited to join them to see a movie. We trouped out, Andres with his girlfriend, another brother Mauricio, and sister, Andreas, and mother Yolanda. The mall, Terramall, was quite similar to US malls with a lot of designer shops like Tommy Hilfiger and the same brands you would see in Washington. Likewise the multi-plex theaters were similar. Andres had some sort of coupons for the tickets and said I didn’t need to pay. We saw a violent American movie, ‘The Taken,’ about an ex-CIA agent rescuing his daughter who has been kidnapped by the Bulgarian mob who is selling her into white slavery. It was a violent, action-packed movie, and as I reflect back on it, righting this much later, I can’t help think about all the violence and death the CIA has inflicted on Latin America in carrying out the US mission to defend capitalism, no matter how correct, against communism and socialism. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1947, although it cooperated with the CIA as agents used Costa Rica as a base for operations in support of the Contras in the Nicaraguan civil war. The CIA built the airport that is now the Oduber International Airport in Liberia, which opened the region that includes Nosara to development. The availability of the airport at Liberia (LIR) was one of many pieces paving the way for our relocation to Nosara. So I suppose I owe that to the CIA, but still, they are killers that have subverted Democracy in so many Latin American countries. I guess our goal of creating democracy in Iraq is an effort to make up for that. Right.