Double Reflection Mirror and Easy Chairs

This being my last night in Costa Rica calls for reflection on the past weeks. I realize I already reflected in a prior post, but there must be some kind of double-reflection mirror, and it is into one of those that I'm looking.

Work at the nursing home changed my entire perspective on life. Raul, the man who bit and spat at me, was homeless for years living with a pack of dogs who waited patiently outside the nursing home doors hoping he would rejoin their group but never did. What a heartbreaking story. 

I learned to give more thanks than during opening prayers on Thanksgiving for living in the United States and not San Jose. The street vendors there do so out if necessity and desperately attempt to sell knockoff clothing for cheap to scrape by. It reminds me that every day for me is a day in paradise. Even  if I try harder than the Little Engine that Could (shouldn't it be WHO could, since the little engine is personified?) I will never miss being blasted in the face with exhaust from busses (my poor pores are still clogged with black soot), almost hit by cars due to a lack of right of way for pedestrians, sharing rooms with geckos and cockroaches, and walking in terror of being mugged at all hours, day and night. 

I made truly lifelong friendships and got a minor glimpse into how many compassionate people there are in this world of ours. My roommates hailed from different parts of the United States, Canada and Australia and each earned a coveted easy chair in the sitting room of my memory. Okay, I suppose it is a little bit pretentious to assume that an easy chair in my memory is coveted. There are a limited amount of chairs in my imaginative sitting room (do people still have sitting rooms anymore? I imagine if so, they are now for people to sit and mess around on their various social media devices. The art of the conversation is undeniably dead. Sorry, that was a cynical little side note) and sometimes my memory chairs get backordered. It can be worse than Home Depot, I swear. No one wants to deal with the chair ordering people in my memory. Wow I need to quit elaborating on this analogy and move on.

Naturally, you meet all kinds while traveling, and not all acquaintances I made became inhabitants of the easy chairs in my memory. Few, but still some individuals I met get to sit in the uncomfortable, filthy seats with backs that pitch forward and too little leg room on the long distance bus of my desperate attempts to forget.

I won't dwell on the negative. I've been fortunate enough to meet sloths, monkeys, agoutis, tropical birds, green sea turtles, and other exotic creatures (I feel okay leaving centipede off the list), zipline through a tropical rainforest, visit volcanoes and beaches on both coasts of Costa Rica, help the less fortunate, and realize how much I have to be thankful for. Wow, that was cheesy. I hope none of my readers have lactose intolerance to words....