sploosh!

Only a few days after settling in my new home, I clumsily allowed my cell phone to bounce out of my pocket and into my tica family's koi pond. I rushed down the stairs and grasped into the water hoping to touch the familiar shape, but instead only felt slimy fish. My papa tico found a net and helped me fish it out, but unfortunately the life already left my phone.

I wasn't as upset as I expected to be, but rather I felt a relief.

My adventure to Costa Rica was intended to be an escape from the expectations I believed existed at home, and losing my main connection to my friends and family felt refreshing. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through facebook and instagram,  my eyes took in the world around me. Without a small electronic screen to escape into, my attention focused on vastly unique gates that surrounded each house. I stopped and smelled the hibiscus and I smiled and said '¡hola!' to every stranger I passed.

Of course, being without a phone created difficulties with communication. It was a challenge to get in touch with my roommates or my mama tica to let them know I would be home late for dinner, but this forced me to think outside of the box and find a different method to achieve my goal.

It's been three weeks since that fateful day, and I once again have a cell phone. When it was in transit, I was ecstatic. Now that it is here, I feel discontent with myself when I absent-mindedly open snapchat and consider watching the lives of my friends. I consider downloading instagram, but I do not want to scroll through a virtual representation of my friends. My heart yearns to live freely, mindfully consuming my time with the people physically around me and opening myself to tangible experiences.