Resumo de Lard Is Good For You

``Lard is good for you`` is an essay written by Alden Jones. She is a young (22 years old) American woman who decided to teach English in La Victoria, Costa Rica. In 1995 she volunteered for WorldTeach and fell in love with the country and its people, that is why she keeps on returning there as often as it is possible. When we start reading the essay we quickly notice that Alden is an extremaly open and easy-going person. Her tone is filled with positive emotions and warm feelings which make the reader feel them himself or herself. It is rather impossible to remain ignorant of such absolute positiveness and warmth, the qualities which are preserved in her tone and general mood. The essay begins with the author`s explanation why she actually decided to teach Englisn in Cost Rica and not in other ``exotic`` or remote place. She frankly admits that what drew her to that particular place was ``coffee...along with rain forest, the beaches, and a chance to see a three-toed sloth.`` (109) However, later on she reveals ``my job placement found me spending most of my year in the highlands, hours away from the beaches and the rain forest I had once associated with Costa Rica. I did see a sloth once, clinging to a tree on the side of the highway.`` (109) As it is clearly visible from these lines, her over-optimistic expactations did not meet the reality. Nonetheless, I would be far from concluding that she is disappointed and dissatisfied with her stay. Quite the riverse, Alden wishes to appreciate everything that she comes across in Costa Rica, from stodgy food to its diverse inhabitants. Apart from the fact that she is an aware and open-minded traveler who wants to adjust to the unfamiliar surroundings of the new country, she does admit that she had some moments of doubt. ``I heard voices in my head. There were two of them...the Tourist and the Traveler.`` (109,110) She vividly describes the Traveler and the Tourist, so the reader is able to clearly understand and imagine the social problems she encounteres there. The Toutist is the one who bids her to follow her old habits and generally do what she is accustomed to in the States. She wonders, however, about the correctness of such behaviour and comes to a conclusion that it will not make her a good traveler but only a troublesome tourist. In contrast, the Traveler is the one who tells her to adjust to the residents and their way of life, as it seems to be the only way to gain new experience, knowledge and live her life in that ``bizarre`` country to the full.She accepts the Traveler`s advice, of course, and becomes a traveler herself (rejecting the Tourist). What I found particularly interesting in this essay was the fact that she had to live in a house where there was no coffee at all. I could easily imagine her reaction when she first realized the ``sad`` fact. ``I yearned for coffee,`` (111) she sadly admits. That must have been a strange experience to have lived in a place where ``coffee was everywhere...in a town where coffee bushes lined the road, where half of the men over the age of thirteen picked coffee for a living.`` (109) Luckily, as the essay proceeds,Alden meets a resident woman who serves her her favourite drink and the two quickly become friends. The other thing which proved to be highly surprising for me was the presence of lard in every single meal the author had to eat. That was rather a digusting part of the essay and I admire Alden for listening to the Traveler at that issue. I noticed that at one point she even starts to tell herself that ``lard is good for you`` (107) as to overcome her genuine unwillinness to eat it. Howeve, in the end we learn that too much lard in the diet causes heart diseases and now the host family eat a``lard-reduced meal`` to the author`s content.

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