And your address is...?

Yesterday while giving my mailing address here in Costa Rica by e-mail to someone the question arose "What is your zip code?" I hear these kinds of questions often and the answer is never a simple one. You see, here in Costa Rica, and other Latin America countries as well, it is common to not have physical addresses like those in the United States. Most streets do not have names outside of the old downtown section of the city, so we have to be a little creative in describing our whereabouts for any and all askers.

While the address you see on the right hand side of our blog is indeed a mailing address, it is a post office box for our language school. It serves a couple of hundred folks here as the location to receive mail and packages and we have a mailroom on campus for that purpose. Now if someone wanted to actually come to my house the address "description" is a bit different. We give addresses based on landmarks in a particular sector of the city. We start from known landmarks such as a park, police station, school, well-known building, etc., and then proceed to give directions and distances along with a description of the edifice we call home.

The physical address of Casa Nelson is as follows:
San Francisco de dos Rios - De la casetilla del guarda del Parque de Bosque, 300 metros al oeste y 75 metros al sur, casa blanca y verde con portones negros, mano derecha, en frente de la pulperia.

Now for you non-Spanish speaking gringos out there this loosely translates to:
In San Francisco de dos Rios (a "suburb" of San José) - From the small guard house at Parque Bosque, go 300 meters (3 blocks - however long that may be) east and 75 meters (3/4 of a block) south. Our house is the white and green one with black burglar bars (which incidently make up a sizable portion of the architecture). We are on the right hand side across from a small convenience store (ran out of the neighbor's garage).

This complete description is on our cable, phone, internet, and power bills. It is required to request a taxi, order a pizza, or get a membership card at the local PriceSmart (which is a Tico Sam's or CostCo). Get the picture? By the way, the car in the picture here is a prop. It does not exist in reality.

One of the things "veteran" language students do for incoming new students is to take them to a nearby copy center with "physical" address in hand to have multiple laminated copies made for the refrigerator and wallets. Don't leave home without them. I might add that our address is one of the more simpler ones due to our proximity to such a well-known landmark as Parque Bosque. Some of these poor guys here need a full index card to lead the taxi-driver home. It gives back-seat driving a whole new meaning.

And don't even think about trying to MapQuest me!