The Green Bag

I had the pleasure of introducing someone to Geocaching today. I've enjoyed getting to know Marshall, a 25-year-old dude from Costa Rico who is the Crew Supervisor of the men performing the work during the re-roofing of the condo complex. Marshall's been in the U.S. for four years, on a work/student permit. Right now he's studying French because he is considering going to Canada to work for a while before he goes home to Costa Rico. I could tell from our early conversations that there are times when he truly misses his family, whom he hasn't seen for a long time. He's stopped by my unit several times to use my computer or fax machine. It's been interesting, listening to him talk about his homeland and growing up there. What a neat way to broaden my knowledge of Central America.

He stopped by just a little while ago to use the fax machine again. He mentioned that the crew has about another week in the complex, and that when the job is done, they'll clean up all traces of their presence and leave the place looking like it did before they started. Jokeingly I said, "Hey, leave it better looking than it was!"

He immediately claimed that he would, because that's what it taught to Boy Scouts in Costa Rica. I started laughing, because this is the second time the subject of Boy Scouts has arisen in five days - refer to last Sunday night's Chat. Marshall is quite fluent in English, but doesn't know how to respond to nuances and reactions sometimes. So I explained to him that I had recently chatted about Boy Scouts and that this was the second time in only five days that the subject had arisen. We exchanged other experiences of that type.

Then, Geocaching popped into my mind - because of the same principle of leaving a place looking better/cleaner than it did when one entered. I recalled Marshall saying in an earlier conversation that he has a GPS, and asked him if I remembered that correctly.

When he answered, "Yes," I told him about Geocaching.

He got so excited he ending up hugging me! He said, "All of us who have GPS's always look for another way to use them" and "What a neat way to get to know other people."

I'll be eager to talk to him next week to see if he'd had a chance to find a Web site - or maybe even looked for a cache already. I feel as though I've given him a gift, and that's a real satisfactory feeling. If there's more to the story, I'll addend this blog.