Godless Gringa

        The day my host mom took me to her childhood home I rode in the back of the truck as my host dad drove through el campo in one of the most beautiful parts of the Monteverde rainforest. She was taking me to an annual Catholic celebration of a miracle that occurred in her mother’s house many years ago. She had been preparing for this significant event since the first day I had arrived and she was beyond excited that she would be bringing along the gringa from California to the festivities. Later during the event she would grab the microphone and introduce me to a crowd of a hundred people as “the girl from California who needs your help finding god.” She then asked for everyone to say a prayer for me and I stood there politely smiling and nodding my head as people began to introduce themselves. I had become the godless gringa after that and I decided to sit behind the musicians' corner and listen to them sing ballad after ballad in order to avoid as many curious people as I could. Most of them were surprised to see that the gringa my host mom had been talking about was really just a short Mexican girl who looked no different than themselves but spoke funny Spanish. I explained that my parents were from Mexico and that California has a large Latino population and so on and so on. Their seemingly endless curiosity did not trouble me as much at first but as soon as we left the house that night I was reminded that it was time to ride in the back of the truck again and at that point it had began to pour. With no way of completely sheltering myself from it I was forced to embrace the downpour for the entire thirty minute ride through the forest. It was then that I was first hit with the sudden realization that I was thousands of miles away from the comforts of home and that my identity here had been reduced to a godless gringa. But just as I became slightly melancholy I noticed that through the heavy rain the pathway was illuminated by thousands of fireflies. I was awestruck. I had never seen a single firefly in my entire life prior to that moment. And all of a sudden I found myself laughing out loud as I thought about how stupid it was to feel discomfort in isolation when I was in the midst of something so magnificent and ordinary.