Longing For the Unfamiliar

Longing for the Unfamiliar
We’ve come to expect, whenever we’re in a big city, that it is not quiet.
So we anticipated this morning, our first morning in San Jose, Costa Rica, that there would be a fair amount of city noises (cars, construction, people yelling outside, dogs barking, car alarms, etc.)

Actually, here at the Hotel Aranjuez, those noises seem to be comparatively minimal so far.
While those noises have come to be normal to us in big cities, what we didn’t anticipate was waking up to the sound of American morning shows.
Yes, we woke up listening to Katie Couric sharing news about fires somewhere in California on our neighbor’s cranked up TV.
Part of the reason we travel is to immerse ourselves into entirely different cultures and people.
It’s a little disappointing to find (on the very first morning) that we’re listening to the American export of TV morning shows, which (we’ve learned this morning) easily reach Costa Rica with a live broadcast.
On our way here last night, we also saw Denny’s, Mc Donald’s, Subway, the Hampton Inn, Wyndham Hotel, etc.
At some point in our travel, we will very likely long for the familiar.
However, it was interesting to be woken up on our first morning by the famous American television voices we’ve known for most of our lives.

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2 Responses to “Longing For the Unfamiliar”

Adam says:

October 6, 2009 at 9:50 am

Just get out of San Jose…its cheaper anyway (as long as you avoid other tourist hot spots). Then you won’t have to worry about the chain restaurants or the noise.

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Jonathan (in Costa Rica) says:

October 6, 2009 at 10:44 am

Hey Adam! That’s a great point.
And definitely one we would consider… just the whole reason for being in San Jose this week is to get things set up for our travels business-wise and otherwise -
We assumed we’d have higher speeds for Internet to do that sort of thing here in San Jose, which may or may not be true, but the Internet is a bit unpredictable since we’re across the street from the router. Ah well.

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