Sweet to the ears and sour to the mind

I awoke this morning feeling quite rested at 8:30, early enough for the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional in the Centro Nacional de la Música. Since I was going alone, Flory urged me as I walked out the door to be cautious in the downtown area. “You don’t have any more money than you need, right? And you are not taking your passport?” she warned in Spanish.

My ticket for a balcony seat with an excellent view of the stage and the performers was only 3.000 colones ($6). Many families had come to the symphony to celebrate Father’s Day, which is the same day in Costa Rica and the United States, though Mother’s Day is different. The guest conductor was Irwin Hoffman, a Julliard graduate who conducted for Chicago and Florida and is now the conductor for Bogatá, Columbia (this in addition to guest conducting throughout the world). Surprisingly, he conducted without using any sheet music for the entire program, which consisted of a Berlioz overture, a Hindemith symphony, and a Tchaikovsky symphony. His memory for the details of all the pieces, such as the cues, dynamic levels, and tempo changes, was impressive, as was the performance of the orchestra in general.

After the concert, I happened to come across J.J., our on-the-ground coordinator, and his wife, Gina. Since cameras, being frequently targeted by thieves as the mark of a tourist, are not recommended in the downtown area, J.J. and Gina had built their own from duct tape, a roll of film, a winding mechanism, and an aperture for film exposures, which could be opened and closed by sliding a piece of paper. Besides the fact that building a camera may have been a fun project, I do not consider their level of precaution to be overkill considering that their backpack was stolen from inside the school during classes on Friday.

I passed by many beggars while looking for a restaurant in which to eat lunch, and some of them were starving. Although one can safely assume in most cases here that their condition has come about through addiction to cocaine, I nevertheless could not finish my meal with the knowledge that they were suffering nearby. In fact, while I was eating, a ghastly, unkempt woman came suddenly into the restaurant and stacked together four Styrofoam plates with half-eaten meals that had been left behind by a family celebrating Father’s Day. A waitress promptly came up behind the famished woman, put her hands on the woman’s shoulders, and pushed her to the door before shoving her out.