Es muerte

I´ve been in La Fortuna near the Arenal Volcano (4th most dangerous volcano in the world, Mt St Helens is 1st ...) since Sunday. I´m staying with a host family. The host mother speaks a little English, actually seems better than my Spanish. And I feel so dumb trying to speak to them or rather to try and understand what they are saying to me. We had our first Spanish class yesterday afternoon after a medical Spanish class in the morning. Many people have been here for a few weeks and feel that their Spanish has improved considerably. I´m hoping.

Our group just went on a hike this morning to the forest around the volcano. It was initially very foggy but burned off some while we were up there. But we still couldn´t see the volcano. From town on a clear day you can see the volcano but there are often clouds obscuring the top, which is how it has been since Sunday. It was a fairly easy hike but since the altitude about 4,000 ft you get a little short of breath easily. It was very much a naturalist sort of walk with a great guide. We saw a sloth hanging asleep in the tree. Apparently they eat the leaves and fruit of this poisonous tree, well at least the leaves are poisonous. Max, our guide, was suggesting that the reason they move so slowly is that they are influenced by all of the poisons they ingest. No say. Well the sloth that we saw from a distance just looked like a gray thing in the tree. Apparently as they spend their whole lives in the trees they become more green because of moss getting into their fur. As I looked through some binoculars, the gray blob moved an arm to scratch or something. We also saw toucans, vultures, turkey vultures. The wandering Jew houseplant grows wild here. I got a picture of a large patch of it.

When I got to my host family on Sunday, the host mother asked if I minded staying in the house since her father was sick. She asked if I wanted to meet him. It wasn´t much of a meeting since he was not at all interactive and didn´t appear long for this world. It seems that much of the extended family has been here to see him. One of my host mother´s sisters came out this morning saying that he didn´t seem to be breathing. After going in to see him, my host mother came back out, grabbing me by the wrist to go in and check to see if he had a pulse (I didn´t bring my stethescope with me). No pulse, no breath, felt kind of cold, and I couldn´t hear anything with my ear on his chest. He also certainly looked dead. I´ve never told anyone that their family member is dead, let alone in Spanish and when I´m not in a medical role. I was leaving 5 minutes later for the volcano hike. I felt bad going but didn´t know what I could possibly do to help by staying. My mind has been wondering whether anyone else would have found any signs of life in him because in order pronounce someone dead you have to listen for a heart beat for an entire minute. I don´t know whether staying in that house now is good or not. We´ll see.