Four in Costa Rica

On guard

2010-06-04T09:04:00.000-06:00

I wrote this blog entry a while back and for some reason it didn't get posted. It's a little late in the game, but I'm happy to share it today ...

Gated communities, gun-toting guards, concertina wire, bars on the windows … uncommon for the average US neighborhood, yet very normal for Costa Rica, from the most upscale, exclusive community to humble homes surrounded by chain-link fences.

When it comes to security, Ticos mean business. Theft and street crime are on the rise, especially in San Jose. You’ve gotta watch your stuff here—don’t leave things in the car, don’t walk around with flashy jewelry or a camera around your neck, keep an eye on your purse, always be aware of your surroundings. All especially true for those of us who are obviously norteamericanos. We are targets solely because it’s a common perception that all Americans are rich.

Upon first coming to Costa Rica it’s impossible not to notice the security—it is rampant. Armed guards stand watch in parking lots at restaurants and grocery stores, coiled wire rests atop fences, iron gates keep unwanted visitors from entering condo developments. I’ve found that after living here for a while, I stopped noticing the unsightly wires as much and the ever-present guards don’t faze me; it’s acclimation at its best.

We live in a gated community within a gated community—which I suppose makes us doubly safe. A private security firm controls entry and exit to both gates, while a handful of guards with guns (including a guard at the first gate with his big shotgun) patrol our neighborhood day and night. They’ve whizzed by on an ATV, ridden by on a plethora of bicycles (including some brightly colored beachcombers that nobody was likely to steal), driven by in a tiny electric car (so cute!), scootered past on motos, zipped around in a golf cart, and walked by more times than I can count.

When we first moved into our home, I frequently saw a guard stationed across the street behind our house, standing in the shade of the towering palms and eyeing my backyard and kitchen windows. It bothered me. I felt like I was being watched—and likely, as a new resident and gringa—I was. (I certainly garnered plenty of looks from the construction workers, though they are now used to seeing me walk by their work sites and on rare occasions even offer a curt nod.)

Now, I am happy to see the guards behind our home. When I stir from sleep in the middle of the night and hear a faint crackle of a walkie-talkie from the street out front, I don’t mind. The guards are on duty, and that's a good thing.

Feelin' groovy

2010-06-04T09:02:00.000-06:00

When I saw a boxed labeled "Cannabis" at the local grocery store, you know I had to take a closer look. I'd never heard of Cannabis incense, but now that I know it's out there, surely that must explain the scent that used to waft through the vents from my neighbors' apartment on Gilman Street during my junior year at UW. It must have been the incense I smelled! Right?!

Zoo Ave

2010-03-16T07:24:00.001-06:00

Twenty years ago, Zoo Ave (ZOH AH-vay), or “Bird Zoo” opened in La Garita to feed, shelter, and provide health care for mistreated and orphaned birds and animals here in Costa Rica. The zoo’s goal is to rehabilitate animals and release them back into the wild, but some creatures still find a permanent home at Zoo Ave.

While the zoo is named for its birds (all 120 species of them), it boasts more than 250 types of animals. This non-profit organization also teaches visitors about conservation and the importance of caring for our world—a very worthwhile cause.

Our most recent trip to Zoo Ave was with my mom and dad. It was a beautiful (but hot!) sunny day—really nice for seeing the incredible macaws, toucans, monkeys, cats, and even ostriches.

It’s fun to see the animals that roam freely, too. We got quite close to a toucan that wasn’t caged (what a thrill!) and wonder if he was just visiting friends. On a previous visit were so near a sloth coming down a tree we could have picked him up. Peacocks, iguanas, agoutis … all make their way around this gorgeous park filled with trees, exotic flowers, tangled vines and giant bamboo. (Speaking of … It’s hard to explain how really amazing this bamboo is! It reaches way up—about 50 feet or so—and as the bamboo is blown by the wind it makes a freaky creaking sound like a tree that’s going to crash to the ground. It’s eerie and cool to stand and listen. Erin looks tiny in the photo standing next to the bamboo.)

A couple of years ago we saw this alligator at Zoo Ave, right up against the fence. I could have stuck my hand through and touched it, but instead I took a super close-up shot of its eye, right through the chain link. Now once in a while, someone in this family sees something interesting and calls out “crocodile eye!” with this excited whisper. It’s weird, but funny, and always reminds me of the alligator (not croc, actually!) we saw so close.

Of all the things I'll miss when we leave here, the amazing animals, trees, flowers, mountains and beaches are what I think I will long for most.

Sharing our hearts

2009-12-25T09:38:00.009-06:00

For several days now I’ve had a blog entry rolling around in my head, but I’ve procrastinated in writing because I’m convinced I can’t do justice to the subject matter: an afternoon spent delivering food baskets and toys to needy families up in the mountains of Escazú.

This experience left an indelible imprint on my life and the lives of my daughters. It’s a challenge to explain this day with only words and a few amateurish photos, but I’ll make the attempt. Because this day—this small effort—deserves to be shared.

I’m part of a community service organization at the girls’ school called Care and Share. Our goal is to raise money throughout the year to help the El Carmen school—whether it’s with much needed improvements to the school building itself or to give aid to the students and their families.

A week ago I pulled Erin and Lauren out of class to join me, a handful of other Care and Share moms and kids, the principal Mr. Large, and six student council members to deliver food and used toys to the neediest families from El Carmen. I rightly suspected this would be an amazing, joyful, and heartrending day all at once.

We loaded twenty hefty boxes of food and several bags of toys onto our bus and began the drive up the mountain to the school. From there, we followed the school’s director who led us to the homes of those we wanted to help. The air was cool, the views of the valley terrific, and we enjoyed the El Carmen neighborhood as we wound around the maze of roads. Typical for a trip in this area, we saw many cows, horses, roosters, chickens and stray dogs—oh, and even a kitten on the steps of the local super.

At each stop, a group got off the bus with the food. The director explained to us how many children were at each house and their ages—and then we chose toys for them. Erin, the oldest kid on the bus, sat up front and took charge in selecting what toys were given at each stop. I was so happy as I watched her smile and get excited about serving others with her sweet heart.

The women receiving the baskets were grateful to be sure, but the kids’ responses are what I remember best. We saw how just a few used toys brought forth smiles and looks of awe from these children who live in abject poverty and have very little of their own.

I was only able to take a few photos from inside the bus, and it’s hard to tell from them how poor the living conditions were. We see homes like this daily in Costa Rica—the tin roofs, pockmarked walls, peeling paint, single bulbs hanging from the ceilings, and dirt floors are nothing new for us. Additionally, we have all had many opportunities to help those less fortunate—with food drives, fund raisers, gift giving parades, church offerings—but to meet these families makes the reality that much clearer.

At some homes we’d see one child, then two, then kids would come flooding out once they realized what was happening.

After leaving a place with a large group of kids, the boys in the back of the bus realized that others—a woman and her daughter, at one point—were following us, hoping we’d stop. When we pulled to the roadside for this girl we didn’t know, I caught Mr. Large’s eye and quickly turned away as tears spilled out of my own eyes. There were many times on the trip when I’d catch a mom wiping her cheeks or see a look of wonder on my girls’ faces.

On one of the final stops, a group of children walked up the stairs from what must be a very dark, damp, and chilly place to live. There were about six boys and a girl. As we were preparing to leave, one of our students noticed on the other side of our bus was a small girl, maybe age two or three, clinging to her blue metal door. We couldn’t leave, the girls up front insisted, without giving her something. Erin and her friend Aidra hopped off the bus and began tossing toys—a tutu, a boa, a sparkly plastic tiara—over the door. The girl’s sister appeared, then the grandma. It was a joy to watch their faces as the toys soared over the door and the girls realized they were theirs, for keeps. I tried to sneak a photo of the little one from inside the bus. What a precious girl she was.

After handing out the final baskets and toys, we returned to El Carmen school. Here, the director boarded our bus to thank us and barely finished her first sentence before breaking down in tears. Even the children whose Spanish is not the best could understand this language of the heart. Again, many of us wept silently as she told us how these children often don’t have enough to eat each day, how they live in some very difficult conditions and have family lives that are not safe, healthy, and happy.

This day … it is one I won’t forget. One my girls will not forget. And it served as a tremendous reminder of what is most important at Christmas. We were Santa’s helpers and Christ’s hands all in one. We all agreed that we need to do this again soon.

My dad reminded me of a verse in Matthew—25:31-40—that I shared with Erin and Lauren. It tells us how important it is that we think not only of ourselves but that we serve others—and in doing so, we are servants of our Lord, too. You may say that my daughters and I, and our little group, did something wonderful and caring that day. But I’ll tell you that we received the greatest blessing of all in the giving.

Matthew—25:31-40

31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Costa Rica Christmas

2009-12-23T17:04:00.000-06:00

Last December I blogged a bit about December in Costa Rica. I mentioned the aguinaldos and portales—both important parts of the Christmas tradition here. After a few questions from friends about other Tico holiday traditions, I thought a quick blog describing more of the season was in order.

Christmas decorating begins early for the Ticos. The local warehouse store puts its lights, ornaments and trees up for sale in August. (No kidding!) Christmas candy starts showing up about this time as well. By mid-November a lot of families have their trees, wreaths made of cypress leaves and coffee berries, and soon there are sparkling lights twinkling across the valley at night. This year the new section of the mall has a terrific tree three stories high, and just yesterday I saw Santa outside the local supermarket dancing the salsa with a pretty brunette elf.

One of the best aspects of Christmas is the ushering in of the dry season. Days are sunny but mild in the valley and at night the cool breezes blow into our bedrooms. We often walk at night under clear, star-studded skies. It’s wonderful!

Throughout December, the country celebrates with lots of parties (we had our big shindig again this year), carnivals, parades and—perhaps best known—the tope nacional. Celebrated in Costa Rica for hundreds of years, the tope is a parade of horses down the main streets of San Jose. People come from all over for the festivities which are also broadcast on national television. The riders are decked out in their best Tico regalia and the gorgeous horses prance proudly. In the San Jose tope, one may also see marching bands, traditional oxcarts, floats and clowns.

(I should note that topes are not just for Christmas. We saw a small tope with my parents in Quepos one spring.)

During the days leading up to Christmas, Ticos gather for posadas—neighbors meeting at each other’s homes to re-enact the travels of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. During the posadas there is song, prayer, and food—especially tamales and rompope (eggnog—heavy on the rum)! Fat, juicy grapes and shiny apples load the shelves at our local grocery store. They are popular imported foods for the holidays and are a special treat at Christmas.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We’ll go to a 6pm service at our church while most Ticos will attend the Catholic misa de gallo—midnight mass—and open their gifts. Either way, it’s bound to be a sunny, breezy, and beautiful Christmas here in the valley.

¡Feliz Navidad!

A little Teletubby shall lead us ...

2009-12-14T09:03:00.001-06:00

... to the airport, anyway. Saw this Po doll (I think it's Po. Why do I know this stuff?) hanging from a painted-over stop/alto sign on our way to drop Dan off for a flight. The Teletubbies have made it across the pond to Costa Rica and a few years ago there was a gang in CR called the Teletubbies. (Doesn't sound very menacing, does it?) I don't know if they're still around.

Thank goodness I haven't seen the gang or the TV show here. Some of these kids' programs (Barney comes to mind) are agonizing enough in English. Hearing them in Spanish? Not fun. Except Blues Clues (Pistas de Blue), which I must admit I have watched a couple of times here in español. Steve is especially well-dubbed. Good times!

Thanksgiving Travels to Arenal

2009-12-02T20:47:00.013-06:00

We’ve established a few traditions during our time in Costa Rica, and one of them is to travel for US Thanksgiving. This year we let the girls choose our destination and they both—independently—decided on staying at Los Lagos resort at the base of Arenal Volcano. (This is the same place we ziplined with my mom and dad last year.)

We drove through a misty cloud forest on our way north that was unbelievably lush, with rolling hills as we topped the mountains and rushing waterfalls. Some areas—spotted with dairy farms and Holsteins—even reminded me of Wisconsin. And of course what would a road trip in CR be without a few cows in the road here and there?

The first day we had some gorgeous views of the towering, active Arenal Volcano. After that, it was cloudy for much of the trip but we didn’t mind the overcast, frequently rainy skies; Dan and I spent much of our vacation in the hot springs while the girls visited all three big pools and flew down the waterslides. A few times we ventured to the small, private hot springs pools surrounded by all sorts of tropical plants and flowers. It was so beautiful, so relaxing. Ahhhhh, I wish I could go back already!

One morning after breakfast we visited the crocodile farm, butterfly house (lots of blue Morphos—my favorites!), and frog enclosure. The gardens are spectacular, and it’s hard to fathom how many types of vegetation are on the Los Lagos property. And while we didn’t zipline on this trip, we did hike around and crossed a long, hanging bridge a few times—which terrified me, but I tried not to look down (waaaaay down) and I made it across each time once I determined that nobody could follow me on the bridge (too much swaying) until I had reached the other side.

A favorite pleasure from this trip was sitting on our second-floor balcony early each morning and watching the birds; we saw so many, including a bunting, kiskadees, and many hummingbirds. When we moved here I had an informal “Costa Rica bucket list”—a bunch of things I wanted to see and do before we had to return to the States. Spotting a big toucan in the wild (because I’ve seen quite a few in captivity) was the only thing I had remaining on my list, and I was worried I’d never get to cross it off. Dan, Erin, and Lauren all had seen at least one—but not me. Until Saturday morning at 5:45, when I heard a crazy-loud bird making a racket outside. Sure enough, a chestnut-mandibled toucan was perched in a tree near our room, calling out to another toucan who answered him each time. (This is the largest toucan in CR. He was big!)

Dan and I watched the toucan and though we took photos, they didn’t turn out well because of the mist and the lighting. But we saw him and then saw another toucan join him and they both flew off. It was amazing!

I spent a lot of time thinking about our lives in Costa Rica during our time at Arenal. Thinking about how spectacular the natural world is here, how much we’ve seen and done, how living here has brought our family closer than ever, and how much I’ll miss this country when we leave. I even grew teary-eyed on the drive home (Wow, was it a gorgeous day!) and feel like I’m splitting in two: half of me longs to be home in the US and half of me wants to stay in Costa Rica, which after a couple of years is also our home. I’m not ready to face leaving yet and am determined for us to get as much out of our remaining time here as we can. I have a lot to be thankful for! (Enjoy the photos and you'll see what I mean!)

Art in the museum

2009-10-09T14:54:00.004-06:00

If you've met Lauren, you know that she is an artist. She draws daily—in homemade comic books, on random scraps of paper, on math homework, napkins, you name it. She's won a few art-related contests here, and her drawing "Tigerland" was recently a finalist in a contest for La Celebración del Día Mundial de los Animales (celebration of world animal day) here in the San José area.

Last Sunday, the pictures created by the finalists were all hung in the Museo de los Niños (children's museum) in San José, and we went there for a ceremony to honor the kids. Everyone received a certificate and a year's worth of Pets y Mas magazines. Lauren, despite her reluctance to use her Spanish, is enjoying reading parts of her magazines and looking at the pictures.

Traveling to the museum requires a trip into downtown San Jose and a drive through a seedy district. There is a lot of poverty in the area as well, so it's a seemingly unusual location for a children's museum.

The museum has a fascinating history as well—it is a former barracks and penitentiary. The prison housed some of the country's worst criminals from 1910 to 1979 and was said to be horrible and chaotic. Some of the prison's former cells have been preserved, and along the walls in the entry is an art exhibit about the prison's history, including many before-and-after photos of the prison and now castle-like museum. There are ghost stories about the place as well, with one in particular about a five-year-old girl who went to visit her father in prison and was killed by him during her visit. Yet despite the spooky past of the place, the museum really is a terrific place for the kids with lots of cool exhibits.

After the ceremony we walked around for a bit and decided to get home before it got too dark and rained too hard. (Yeah, we didn't escape the rain, but it's October—very normal here.) It was a fun twist to an otherwise ordinary, rainy season Sunday.

Munching your morning coffee

2009-09-24T15:22:00.006-06:00

If you're a coffee drinker in Costa Rica, you're in luck! From what I've been told (though I'd never know from personal experience), CR has some amazing coffee. We've seen it growing right on the mountainsides, and if Dan's coffee consumption is any indication, the joe is delicious.

Now, if you're an avid coffee drinker and a cereal lover ... well, I guess you've hit the jackpot if you're shopping at the local grocery store, all thanks to McCallum's Coffee Flakes. I have no idea if these corn flakes covered in java pack a wallop of caffeine, but at least they're low in sugar, and they're made right here in CR. Afficionados can choose from capuccino, mochaccino, and vanilla—all for about four bucks a box.

¡Pura café!

Morning hike at UPEACE

2009-09-17T13:34:00.008-06:00

The Universidad para la Paz (University for Peace), about 20 kilometers southwest of San Jose, boasts a gorgeous natural reserve composed by a secondary forest and the last remnant of primary forest in Costa Rica's central valley. The area is protected and is home to mammals such as monkeys and deer, reptiles, and more than 300 species of birds. The forest also hosts approximately 100 varieties of trees and a whole lot of beautiful butterflies, including my favorite, the blue morpho.

We recently went with our Canadian friends the Derksens for a hike around the reserve. It was a dry morning, perfect for getting outside, and we had a wonderful time. Near the end of our hike was an obstacle course area. The girls had fun scaling the climbing wall, especially.

It was a bit hazy when I took this photo, but this looks down into the valley where we live. If you click on the photo to make it bigger, you can see a large green and brown patch in the middle of the picture with trees curving around it. Right above that is a cluster trees (where we live) and some large, cream-colored buildings, one of which is home to Dan's office.

We were all very hungry after our hike and stopped at Zompopa's—my favorite soda (traditional Costa Rican eatery)—for some chifrijo (oh, so good!), fried cheese dice, nachos, and yummy fruit drinks. The place was decked out in red, white and blue for Costa Rica's Independence Day (September 15), and you may be able to see a streamer and a bell in the bottom of the photo.

An afternoon swim followed our meal, and by the end of the day we were all good and tired. A great day to be in Costa Rica!

Wild wheels

2009-09-12T20:13:00.006-06:00

A groovy guy in this humdinger of a car pulled into the parking spot next to mine at the market. Erin and I thought it was so cool, she took these photos. Bet the owner never loses track of his wheels in a crowded parqueo!

"Lady" Liberty

2009-09-03T10:47:00.002-06:00

My friend Brenda and I saw these guys from way down the street and wondered, "Is that really someone dressed as the Statue of Liberty??"

Yep, it was! When they saw Brenda had pulled my camera out for a photo, they were happy to oblige with a wave. I'm not sure if they were hoping for a big sale to a passing American or what the deal was with the costume and art, but it was funny and unusual to see a man dressed as a symbol of the United States on a busy street here in Santa Ana.

Licensed to drive

2009-09-01T14:10:00.004-06:00

Before we knew we were staying an additional year in Santa Ana, I remember feeling relief that we’d never have to renew our driver’s licenses here in Costa Rica. And now? I guess the joke’s on me. About a week ago our licenses expired and we had to bite the bullet and have them renewed.

Maybe you’re thinking this shouldn’t be such a big deal. After all, in the US you head to the DMV, show a couple of forms of ID, pass a vision screening, lie about your weight (oh wait, is that just me?) pay your $25 and smile for the camera. It’s a hassle, sure, but really not that bad. Right?

Just pondering a morning spent with the Costa Rican bureaucracy filled me with dread, although renewing a license isn’t as bad as renewing residency. Regardless, it’s an evil necessity, and so Dan took off work on Wednesday morning and we were off to Uruca. Seriously, I’m not even going to discuss the experience that can be driving in Uruca—particularly when there is construction on the highway exits—other than to say it’s bad and it’s scary and we both hate it. Whew.

Our first stop was the “dictamen”—a “medical office” (note how loosely I use that term) a few blocks from the official licensing site. This is the biggest racket around. We stood in a long line to then pay about $30 each for the medical exam, which is basically answering questions about health, reading a row on the eye chart (in Spanish, so don’t mess it up!), getting blood pressure taken and … wait for it … getting a blood test to verify blood type. This is a new aspect of the licensing process. I’m guessing it was implemented to help the bazillions of people in CR traffic accidents each year receive the right type of blood at the hospital. Again, whew.

Gotta admit, I wasn’t too thrilled about this blood test business. I’m not afraid of needles, but I am afraid of dirty needles, unsanitary conditions, and getting something like this done at a dreary, government establishment. Dan and I know our blood types but didn’t have any official documents to prove it, so off to the little room we went.

I was relieved to see the laboratorio was clean (but still dreary—ha!), there were needles in sterile packages, plenty of alcohol wipes and a nurse with fresh gloves. Now, when I was in 7th grade science we tested ourselves to learn our blood types (I don’t even know if we had gloves—can you imagine?!) with just a finger prick. So I’m wondering why the government needs an entire vial of my blood. Are there other plans for this? And can you imagine the uproar regarding violation of civil liberties (hello, Big Brother!) if the US government required a vial of blood to be a legal, driver’s license-carrying American? Yeah, me neither!

After the blood draws we went to another room for the medical exams, then had to leave the room and wait for our blood test results. Once someone came out and found us (we were just kind of standing with a bunch of other people but are easily recognizable for our US-ness) we had to go back to the doctor so he could fill in the blood type on our medical form. Now we were ready to get in yet another line and pay the $22 a piece for the licenses. A hundred dollars for two new DLs. Good times, good times.

Papers in hand, we headed to COSEVI (Consejo de Seguridad Vial, the Council of Roadway Safety) a few blocks down the road. We got the last parking spot available—a red flag that there was gonna be a long line for the licensing, and we were not disappointed. I had paper ticket #09 and Dan was #10. The electronic sign showed person #77 had just been called. Time to take a seat for what I think is a rather amusing aspect of this entire process.

In this large waiting area are four long rows of about 20 black chairs. As each person enters the queue, he or she sits in the chair closest to the end, all the way in the back. Then, as each person from the front row is called into a cubicle to receive a license, everyone stands up, moves one chair over, and sits down again. And so on. And so forth. So Dan and I got to do this more than 30 times. Stand up, move one, sit down. It’s not a speedy process (especially when the licensing agents take a coffee break in the middle of the morning), but you know, it was relatively peaceful and cool in that room, and Dan and I took the opportunity to chat, laugh, note the big picture of Jesus hanging in the waiting area (not gonna see that in the US either) and just be together. Nothing like a little quality time between husband and wife, all while doing the COSEVI Driver’s License Shuffle.

(See the guy starting to stand? Gotta fill in that empty seat next to him! Thankfully I got this photo to demonstrate, plus you can see the Jesus picture above the plants.)

Eventually our numbers were up. We headed to separate cubicles, gave our pertinent info, and got our spankin’ new licenses. The process from start to finish took about three and a half hours, but we made it. These new licenses are good for another five years, meaning we’ll be back in the US long before they expire, but at least we’re legal now.

And you know what? They didn’t even ask us for our weights.

¡Pura licensia!

Ring, ring, why don't you give me call?

2009-08-22T04:36:00.010-06:00

Two years and one day after moving to Costa Rica, and (drumroll, please!) we have a landline! Erin can now call her friends without me nagging about the cost of the cell phone bill. She's the main reason I wanted this line, and now it's finally installed. It's almost hard to believe.

I'd been working on contacting the right people to get my line installed for so long, and I finally made some headway shortly before I left for summer vacation.

In June, the construction company came out to make the final connection for our phone and discovered something odd and problematic—though our neighbors have phone service, no cable existed for our house. We arranged for the cable to be run (which entailed digging up small patches of neighbors' yards) while I was in the States, and on August 11 the electrician would return to enter the house and make the hook-up.

Unfortunately, the construction fellows decided not to begin digging until August, when I had already returned. So I watched as a guy with a shovel carved a hole into my grass, then groaned when he told me my neighbors to the left did not want the little piece of their yard dug up, despite them realizing that we sit with no landline.

The good news? The land to be disturbed is "common property" in the front of the house and so the electrician was able to do what he needed, regardless of the neighbors' wishes. He and a girl—I thought she was his sweetheart only to learn she is his daughter—visited my house on and off for a week, working here and there. One day, close to noon, I returned home from the store to find her napping in my driveway as he sat across from her reading the newspaper. Surprise!

Finally, on August 18 the phone rang. The electrician was calling me from my own kitchen with his cell phone, standing with a sheepish grin on his face.

¡Pura vida!

Back home again, in Costa Rica

2009-08-19T11:28:00.003-06:00

Summer has come to an end, and we've jumped right back into our lives here in Central America, sleeping in our own beds, swimming in the neighborhood pool, and reconnecting with friends we haven't seen in a while.

School started on August 17—the second anniversary of our move to Costa Rica. I had hoped we could go to Pane e Vino for pizza as is our little tradition, but Lauren got her orthodontic expander that afternoon and was having a hard time eating much of anything. Regardless, I enjoyed taking the day to reflect on the previous two years and think about what's ahead for our third, unexpected year here in the Central Valley.

Summer memories

2009-08-12T17:50:00.036-06:00

We had such an amazing summer in Wisconsin, it's hard to believe the time has flown by so quickly. In addition to what's been mentioned in my previous blogs, here are just a few of our favorite memories ...

The Dells
Everyone loved the Dells! Highlights included Noah's Ark and the Rick Wilcox magic show. We were astounded at the amazing performance from this professional magician and his beautiful wife—both Wisconsin natives, too. The girls got a poster of the pair and had them autograph it after the show.

It's a wild, wild life
Lauren's favorite animal—by far—is the duck. We went to Wildwood Park in Marshfield with Dan's parents and everybody got a chance to feed the ducks and geese. The girls couldn't believe how Dan's dad was able to scratch the goose's back. Lauren was in heaven!

In addition to the ducks, we saw plenty of deer, rabbits, wild turkeys, birds—including brilliant orioles and finches—beavers, otters, and of course farm animals. We still refer to Holsteins as "Ovaltines," in remembrance of Lauren's misnomer from toddlerhood.

Oh sure, you betcha!
Though Dan is a Wisconsin boy, he doesn't have much of that terrific accent we Wisconsin folk are known for. I, on the other hand, tend to pick it up again the longer I'm home. Dan and the girls got a kick out of hearing me slip back into "Uff da!" (a wonderful little Norwegian expression), "don'tcha know," "oh yeah," and "you betcha!" And don't forget that long "o" sound, too. (Think a much toned down accent from the movie Fargo and you'll have it.)

Norwegian everywhere
I grew up in an area with heavy Norwegian influence and love how prominent it still is there. It was fun going to the Barnes and Noble and seeing the row of Lena and Ole joke books on the shelves. It was also fun enjoying lefse and polsa (mmmmm, lefse!) at the art fair. While we were there, we even heard a woman talking about her recent visit to Norway. And Dan couldn't believe how many Olsons, Petersons, Larsons, Johnsons (and the list goes on) there were in my middle school yearbook. Uff da!

MOA, baby!
Yep, we hit the Mall of America again this year. Awesome bargains, great rides, yummy food—big fun! We shopped our hearts out this summer and came back to Costa Rica with our suitcases full and our credit cards still smoldering.

Great Grandad
La Crosse is known for its beautiful bluffs and rivers, and Grandad bluff is the most prominent in the area. Seventeen years ago on a freezing, snowy January night, Dan proposed to me on Grandad under the American flag. This summer we decided to go to the top of bluff, stand under that flag, and enjoy the view of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

Beautiful babies (and other terrific family members)
We enjoyed so much time with our families this summer ... both sets of parents, siblings and nephews (no nieces!), aunts, uncles and cousins ... and to our delight we met two new little members of the family this summer, fraternal twins Jack and Michael. Erin, who turned 12 this summer (and begged me not to blog her birthday!), is now a Red Cross-certified babysitter and had a chance to help her aunt and uncle with changing diapers, feeding babies, and entertaining her little cousins. She did a great job! As for me, I already miss cuddling my sweet nephews and feel so blessed to have spent some time with them.

Preserving the past
One of my favorite things about spending summer in Wisconsin is that my girls are learning about their own family history. They see where Dan and I grew up, went to school and church, got married, and even where their grandparents grew up.

Each year we visit the iron foundry that my family has owned and operated since 1876. The kids love to see Grandpa and Uncle John, but they are also being exposed to something important to their heritage. Once in a while we find a foundry-made piece of history in the community, such as this 1898 water fountain (known as a bubbler in Wisconsin) outside the Onalaska library.

Hard to say goodbye
We were sad to leave our families and our beautiful country; this was our least favorite part of the summer! It means so much to me for my daughters to have this time with their family and to learn about their home away from home—which Wisconsin is for us no matter where we go. Thanks to everyone up north who shared this incredible summer with us. We'll always cherish the memories. We love and miss you!

Lazy day at the lake

2009-07-29T16:11:00.009-06:00

Nearly every summer since Lauren was just a few months old, we spend a day at Lake Arbutus with my mom and dad. Twice my grandma has been visiting from Texas and has gone with us. Somewhere at home I have a photo with the four generations: Grandma, Mom, me, Erin, and bitty Lauren in her white bonnet.

This is a favorite family tradition, reaching back to when my parents were teenagers and used to spend the day at Arbutus together. I camped there as a kid and now I love going with my own daughters. The air smells like pine and the amber water is always refreshing. We take floats on the lake, and this year Erin is finally old enough to paddle herself out to the swim buoys, though the girls and I prefer getting rides from Dan in the bigger float (which got a hole in it this year but, thankfully, still holds us).

After time on the beach, we get ice cream cones at the camp store and walk through the woodsy grounds. Often we stop at Black River Falls on the way home to buy fresh corn on the cob for dinner, too. We've got great memories from our trips to Lake Arbutus.

Eat cheese or die

2009-07-21T11:02:00.014-06:00

A trip to Wisconsin always involves hitting up favorite restaurants and a few trips to the grocery store. There are so many delicious foods we find here that we just don't find in many other places: lefse, beer brats with authentic rye brat buns (speckled with sesame seeds, of course) and tangy kraut, Old Dutch dill pickle chips, Coney Island dogs ... mmmmm!

But everybody knows (right?!) that Wisconsin has the best cheese around, and seeing long aisles hosting a wide variety of cheeses at the local grocery store (including plenty of selection from local dairies) is a bit of a culture shock coming from Costa Rica.

We Wisconsinites love our cheeses and are generally mad for tasty little snacks called cheese curds. There are dairies all over the state, making it possible for us to buy curds when they are best—super fresh! The mark of an ideally fresh curd is the squeak one hears when biting into it. If the curd doesn't squeak, it's past its prime.

We love cold cheese curds, but for a real treat we have 'em batter-fried. The cheese gets all hot and melty inside, and wow, how good! Some places (such as Culver's) bread the cheese curds, and while these are good, they're too much like mozzarella sticks and aren't nearly as tasty as those fried in a light, crispy batter.

Batter-fried cheese curds are a standard at Wisconsin fairs. We recently went to the Interstate Fair in West Salem and saw all sorts of fair goodies. We also toured the many animal barns, and at the end of one of the dairy barns, Dan spotted this message plastered onto a trunk with stickers: eat cheese or die.

We love America's Dairyland!

The good ol' summertime

2009-07-06T19:13:00.035-06:00

The girls and I have left rainy Costa Rica for a terrific summer in Wisconsin. We've been here for two weeks already (hard to believe!) and are making the most of our time with Mom and Dad in my beautiful home state.

The sun goes down at dinnertime all year in Ticolandia, so we are relishing these gorgeous days and long summer nights. The girls especially have loved swimming at the aquatic center in Onalaska, hitting golf balls on the course at night with Grandpa, and playing softball with everybody.

We've also been out for ice cream (yeah, more than once, I'll admit), saw a local production of High School Musical, and been enjoying the local parks. One afternoon we walked on a trail through the marshes and saw an otter making his way toward the reeds. The weather has been cooperative, with little rain and cool evenings. It's a terrific change from the rainy season back in Costa Rica.

During a picnic lunch this afternoon at the park, I saw movement in the trees out of the corner of my eye. For just a moment I assumed it was monkeys, until I realized that the only monkeys in the park were sitting next to me eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Turned out it was two squirrels chasing each other, but it just shows that we've been in Central America long enough now to be used to seeing the monkeys, sloths, parrots, and other wildlife native to CR.

Of course we went and picked strawberries at Jollivette's again; it just wouldn't be summer here without homemade strawberry shortcake! Dan is coming up next week and has made us promise to save plenty of strawberries for him and to make shortcake then, too. This won't be a problem since Mom, Dad, the girls and I picked 40.44 pounds of berries. The picking is the easy part; it's the cleaning them that takes forever!

Erin was running out of clothes that fit by the time school let out, so we've been doing a lot of shopping. I brought a long list with me when we got here and it's about half done, not including all the school supplies we need to get.

I'm finding shopping—whether for clothes, groceries, or whatever—to be a little bittersweet. It's almost as if I'm going through culture shock shopping in the US on this trip; it's incredible how many bargains there are, how little things cost, and how easy it is to buy everything. I'm thrilled to be shopping but yet frustrated at knowing that soon I'll be back to where it's hard to find what I need for a reasonable cost. All this, and while I love to find great bargains, I'm not even a big shopper!

Switching gears ... I am really happy getting behind the wheel these last two weeks. The roads are smooth, drivers are courteous, and going places is easy. It's a pleasure to drive here and I would say actually relaxing compared to the stressful driving in Costa Rica.

In other news, we've been having a great time eating all the foods we miss so much: Taco John's, Coney Island, brats (with real brat buns and good kraut, of course), cheese curds, lefse, thick slices of ham, homemade mashed potatoes ... the girls get to the grocery store and it's an adventure for them. Erin in particular was stunned at the numerous long freezer aisles (compared to the one side of one aisle we have at the supermarket in CR). Let's hope we don't have to roll ourselves back to Costa Rica!

We have a lot of things planned for the rest of our summer, but truthfully we are just happy to be here in Wisconsin with our family and look forward to Dan joining us soon. As for tonight, I noticed there was a full moon earlier and now can hear the coyotes howling in the hills behind the house. It's good to be home!

Happy Independence Day!

2009-07-04T23:59:00.000-06:00

"Star-spangled happiness
and banner waves of pride."
~Cherishe Archer

Vive la différence!

2009-06-11T20:04:00.004-06:00

One of the joys of living in Costa Rica's central valley is being part of an international community. Whether it's in the workplace, the classroom, church, or at social events, we interact daily with people from all over the world.

Recently our family went to a party at the house of some good friends. The nationalities of the guests included Spanish, American, British, French, Mexican, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Polish, and Guatemalan—a very diverse bunch!

It's not uncommon for us to compare notes with friends on cultural habits, traditions, languages, foods ... it's a fascinating way to learn about other countries and peoples. I have always loved to travel, and living here has given our family an even stronger desire and determination to see more of the world. Sharing our experiences with people from other continents enriches our lives in many ways and allows us to appreciate different perspectives and cultures—and to also learn more about what we feel defines us as Americans. We love this aspect of Costa Rica living!

A beautiful beach wedding (aka: our whirlwind weekend in Guanacaste)

2009-05-29T13:38:00.013-06:00

Last Saturday, our family breezed off on a long drive to Playa Real, a beach in Guanacaste (on the west coast of Costa Rica), to attend the wedding of our friends Norbell and Amalia.

Along the way we saw plenty of animals in and on the side of the road: cows, horses, dogs, pigs… it’s always like Wild Kingdom around here! Thankfully the traffic wasn’t too awful and we were able to stop for lunch at El Rinconcito de Doña Elda—a nice, open-air restaurant we’ve eaten at before with yummy food and (importantly—ha!) clean bathrooms.

We stayed at Bahia de los Pirates (Pirate’s Bay), about 10 kilometers down a gravel road, well off the beaten path. The bay got its name from the legend that Captain Morgan had a hideout in one of the islands right across from the beach. While I knew Morgan spent time in Central America, I thought he was strictly a Caribbean sailor … so who knows?

Our villa was near the top of the hill and we loved the views of the bay and the trees and birds. At one point a bright yellow bird (a tanager, I think) flew by and was absolutely brilliant.

It was so hot when we arrived, we quickly changed into swimsuits and spent a couple of hours at the pool with some friends until we had to shower and change for the wedding. (Notably, we left the pool before the groom, who was still in his swim trunks and bare-chested about an hour before the wedding was to start. Things are pretty laid back in this part of the country. ¡Pura vida, Norbell!)

Just around sunset, the beautiful bride and her handsome groom got married on the beach in a lovely ceremony. They couldn’t have picked a more appropriate setting, since Norbell is a surf addict and the couple has a house nearby.

The wedding was very nice (though still hot—whew!) and we had a lot of fun at the reception in the hotel restaurant. The food was good and the music was too. Lauren could barely keep her eyes open once the clock struck 9pm, so we took her back to the villa that we were sharing with our friends Carlos and Julie. Erin wasn’t ready to go and Julie—a very sweet Irish amiga—asked to keep our girl there for more dancing with the promise to have her back to us by 10:00. Erin was tickled to stay and headed up to the dance floor while Dan and I went to collapse in the A/C and get our little one to bed.

The beach was calling on Sunday morning and we headed out around 6:45 before the sun got high and the air grew too hot to enjoy a walk. We went south over some rough terrain and soft sand as we peered into tide pools, watched crabs scurry across the rocks, admired sea urchins hanging out in their watery holes, and watched for birds and lizards (saw both!). Eventually the girls started to wear out and we had breakfast and left for the four-hour return trip to the valley. We hated to leave so soon, but we knew it was best to beat the rain that was destined to fall on the Central Valley in the afternoon. (Thankfully we weren’t in it too long.)

Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning the beautiful shell sculpture we received as a remembrance of the wedding. Norbell’s mom made this amazing little portal (nativity scene) from shells found at the beach in Guanacaste. I’m contemplating carrying this to Wisconsin on the plane this summer and leaving it at my parents’ house because I’m so afraid it could break next year in the move. It’s too special and beautiful to risk having it damaged, and it reminds me of our friends and their wedding day—I love it!

¡Pura boda!

Don't call us ... we'll call you ...

2009-05-26T15:17:00.009-06:00

And the saga continues! On May 18 I finally sprung for a new cordless phone (you don't wanna know how much I paid for it) and brought it home, all excited to finally have a landline after all this time. I read the phone's directions carefully, plugged that baby in, and threatened my family with something horrible if they picked up the receiver before 16 hours had passed. (Sixteen hours being the recommended time the phone needed to fully charge and work properly.)

The following morning I grabbed my cell phone and called our landline number, eagerly awaiting the ring. Which never came. And at this point, I just knew the idea of merely plugging in a new phone was too good to be true, and something had to go wrong with this venture. Sure enough, I picked up my brand-spankin'-new phone and found no dial tone. Zip, zilch, nada!

In sheer frustration I yanked out Dan's work phone (it took a lot of patience and effort just to untangle the cords behind the desk to figure out which phone I needed here) and plugged that in. As I suspected ... still nothing. The problem wasn't my new phone, it was something else altogether. And I steeled myself against the knowledge that this was going to require numerous phone calls and emails—in Spanish, of course, just to make it extra fun—to get the situation fixed.

I emailed my friend Eric, kind of a pseudo-landlord (since the real one is out of the country), and he called the phone company (ICE) and reported the problem. He then told me that ICE would be out to the house within a few days to check the line. I hardly thought this would happen, and here I am a week later and they never did show. Surprise!

Yesterday I called ICE and reported the problem again. They told me the issue is not with their installation, but rather a problem within the house: meaning, they couldn't help me. (The funny thing is, this morning my pseudo-landlord/friend called ICE again and they said they would look into it and send someone out. Good grief!)

Moving on ... I contacted the administrator for our housing area and she said I needed to have the construction guys come out and establish a connection between the phone line and the house for our landline to function. I had hoped she would get in touch with these guys, but instead she passed along an email address for me to use.

So yesterday I emailed the construction company, but I haven't heard back. So I just emailed them again and copied the administrator on this one. I will not be even remotely surprised if I have to continue bugging them for days to come, but if I keep cc'ing the administrator, maybe she'll get fed up and make a call, too.

Sooooooo ... two years from the initial request for a landline and here I sit, still using the 'ol cell phone for my national calls. Anyone want to place bets on whether I have a functioning line before I leave for Wisconsin in four weeks? I'll keep you posted!

¿Aló? I've got phone frustrations...

2009-05-16T13:01:00.003-06:00

Extra! Extra! We finally got a landline!

Unfortunately we don’t have a house phone for the line. While we have many phones in this casa—three cells and three Vonage phones on one system that are our lifeline to the United States—the sad, pathetic cordless we had in storage for our landline has met its demise. I suppose we’ll soon go to Hipermas and see if we can find a decent phone for a reasonable price. I'm ready to have a clear reception for national calls!

¿Puede hablar más despacio?
On the topic of phones … speaking with native Spanish speakers on the phone is probably the biggest communication challenge we face that has nothing to do with cultural understanding and everything to do with the often poor cell phone reception and fast-speaking people on the other end. On many occasions I’ve asked a caller to speak more slowly, please, only to have the person continue at a hasty mumble. I’ve been hung up on more than once which was surely a relief to both the caller and to me.

¿Quién es?
Now toss in common Tico phone mannerisms and cultural habits, and things really get confusing. For some reason Ticos tend to dial a lot of wrong numbers—and often continue to call the wrong numbers—and then still may want to talk. Here’s a typical conversation, in English for your reading pleasure:

Me: Hello?

Caller: Who is this?

Me: I’m sorry, who are you calling?

Caller: Who is this?

Me: You called me. Who are you looking for?

Caller: Is Carlos there?

Me: I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.

Caller: I’m looking for Carlos Zamora. Who am I talking to?

Me: I’m sorry, you have the wrong number. There is no Carlos here.

Caller: Do you know Carlos Zamora? What number is this?

Me: What number are you trying to reach?

Caller: I’m sorry. (Click.)

And then, often just a few minutes later, the phone rings again. Guess who! If I get desperate, often I’ll just start speaking quickly in English and that usually stops the madness.

¡Llamé, por fa!
Hands down the most frustrating phone situation I’ve found here in CR is the reluctance of people—even professional businesspeople—to return phone calls. This is especially maddening when I am waiting for a physician to call me back. If I’m calling the doctor, the question is usually urgent and requiring a timely response. What I’ve learned—with the doctors and anyone else I want to speak with here—is that one cannot be shy and must be persistent, calling and calling until lucky enough to finally get the desired person on the line. This is not considered rude but rather a cultural necessity.

Para recibir sus mensajes, marque uno …
Last week my cell phone went wacky and when I called to get my messages, the recorded woman’s voice kept telling me to dial 193 for customer service. The problem is, when I’d call 193 the voice would tell me that I couldn’t receive my messages and I needed to … wait for it … dial 193. ARGH! There were multiple theories concerning the problem with my phone, but after a day and a half it suddenly fixed itself. Patience is most definitely a virtue in Ticolandia.

Lave sus manos …
This isn’t a frustration but rather an observation. Every once in a while I get anonymous text messages about seemingly random things, and yesterday’s took the prize. My phone beeped at me and delivered a public health message: a reminder to wash my hands thoroughly and use a tissue to cough or to cough into my elbow. We’ve been inundated with information, cautions, and quarantines at work and school related to the H1N1 flu—and now even the phone company is in on instructing us of proper hygiene. Thanks for the tip, muchachos!

¡Pura vida!

Nine is fine!

2009-05-07T14:18:00.011-06:00

Lauren has finally caught up to her favorite number; our little girl celebrated her 9th birthday last week! Instead of having a big party, she's having a couple of friends sleep over (on different nights, since we can't seem to coordinate with everyone's crazy schedules) and we're also planning on celebrating in Wisconsin this summer with my family.

Lauren got some fun gifts (plenty of Garfield stuff, yep), but her friend Isabel earned the biggest smile when she gave Lauren the desire of her little heart—a really terrific skateboard! Yesterday Lauren put on her volleyball uniform and went to have some fun on the newly installed, gentle speed bumps down the street.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Lauren!

Hair today, gone tomorrow

2009-04-23T17:13:00.007-06:00

Last December, Erin donated her ponytail to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. Today, Lauren did the same and had nine inches of pretty hair cut that will be used to create wigs for women who lose their hair to cancer.

I picked the girls up from school so Lauren could wash and dry her hair, and then we went to the salon where Kathy measured and carefully cut the ponytail. We love Lauren's new, sporty 'do. It suits her just fine! I'm very proud of my sweet daughters and their giving spirits.

Pefi’s pottery

2009-04-17T10:49:00.015-06:00

We hadn’t lived in Costa Rica long before I started hearing about Pefi in conversations with new friends and parents at the girls’ school.

“We’re going to Pefi on Thursday.”

“Did you get new Pefi?”

“I love the monkey Pefi in my kitchen!”

Not just a destination or a thing, Pefi is a person—a cheery, sprightly artist named Cecilia Facio de Figueres who goes by her sweet nickname, Pefi.

There aren’t many very well-known artists in Costa Rica, but Pefi is one. She paints on canvas but is best recognized for her work on pottery. Her unique designs are always bright and whimsical, commonly including flowers, fruits and funny little monkeys who peer over pineapples and around edges of watermelon slices and bananas. Buying a piece of Pefi’s art is like a rite of passage for expats living in Costa Rica. I have friends who have a lot of her work, and I’ve teased them they need to have their pottery collections insured!

Visiting Pefi’s studio, Diseño, P.F, and home in the hills is a lot of fun. About a half-hour from our house, Pefi’s place lies on the other side of San Jose, off the beaten path. Her home isn’t hard to find once one knows how to get there, but this is a trip that is handed down from expat to expat, because once you’re off the highway it’s quite a drive up the long and twisting, one-lane, unmarked road through the woods to her house and workshop.

And what a fantastic place she has. Set on a beautiful, tranquil mountainside, Pefi and her husband live with their twelve dogs in the home she and three others built 33 years ago.

I’ve been to Pefi’s place several times, but Dan hadn’t and I really wanted him to meet Pefi and see all of her work (other than the couple pieces of pottery we already owned). My friend Joelle called Pefi and asked if she would do us the big favor of letting our two families visit on a weekend (when the studio is normally closed), and in typical Tica style, she was kind enough to accommodate us.

It was such a pretty day the morning we visited. We enjoyed talking with Pefi, shopping all by ourselves in her studio, and even getting a personal tour of her home. She told us how she and her mom, who is in her eighties, have painted together for much of their lives. Additionally, I never would have guessed that this sweet, unassuming lady is the sister-in-law of a former President and daughter-in-law of a former three-time President of Costa Rica.

As Pefi’s business has grown (she has even designed a mug for Starbucks in the US!) she has hired artists to help her with the pottery. So how can you know for sure you got a Pefi original? Check the bottom of the pottery—all the artists have a symbol on the bottom to indicate their work, and Pefi’s trademark is a cute yellow butterfly.

We have just a few pieces of Pefi’s work and my goal is to have enough serving pieces for entertaining. Before we move back to Ohio I hope to have a specially-designed platter made just for us. One of the great things about knowing the artist is she’ll create whatever we commission her to do. I love having this one-of-a-kind artwork from Costa Rica, but purchasing it from a local artist who is also such a terrific person makes it even more meaningful.

Bravo for Barva! A day-trip to the volcano

2009-04-08T13:52:00.016-06:00

It’s been hot in the valley, and our family’s been longing for cooler climes, so we were enthusiastic when Dan’s friend Danny and his girlfriend Julieta invited us and our friends the Reidys to be “adverturers” (as Danny dubbed us all) with them on a trip to Barva Volcano. The route to Barva is very poorly marked, and since Costa Rica is a country with very few street signs and nary a helpful map, we knew that traveling with a couple of friendly Ticos was a great way for us to see the summit and have a lot of fun, too! I spent the day before our trip packing our stuff and preparing food for a barbecue to follow the hike, and by the next morning we were ready to go.

Though only about 14 miles north of San Jose, Barva is one of the lesser-visited volcanoes in Costa Rica. It’s part of the Central Volcanic Cordillera, along with the towering Irazú and the popular, neighboring Poás Volcano—all three of which look over San José and the Central Valley. Barva is a complex volcano with numerous summits, and we can easily see the three main summits from our house. These summits—like three bumps on the mountaintop—give Barva the nickname Las Tres Marías (The Three Marías).

The start of our trip took us through twists and turns of small mountain towns; it’s like a maze traveling to this volcano which sits in one of Costa Rica’s national parks. Eventually the pavement ended in Sacramento and the road conditions worsened—really bad, even by Costa Rican standards. No longer just dotted with typical potholes, the steep trek was now rocky and filled with deep ruts; it would be crazy to attempt the route from here without a 4WD. The roads were extremely narrow, making it a major feat for two cars to pass each other. We had a couple of unnerving passes that required us to pull in our mirrors and hold our breath as we just made it by the car heading in the other direction without a scratch.

Although the roads were awful, the views were terrific. We passed by dairy farms and lush, green coffee plantations which were a nice change from the brown of the valley (since we’re in the end of dry season). And wow, the panoramic views of the valley—including our own town—were great.

Eventually we arrived at the entrance to Braulio Carrillo Park, which pretty much consisted of us parking on the side of this dirt road with a few other cars. We left our coolers in the car and trusted a cute little kid to keep his eye on our stuff for a small fee. Theft is not uncommon in Costa Rica, and paying someone to watch your vehicle is very typical in rural areas as well as in the cities—we call the guys “watchers” and give them a few hundred colones for their help.

Our group of nine had a snack and walked the short distance to the little green station where we paid our entrance fee and received a map. Ready to move, we headed off on the Cacho de Venado (stag’s antler) trail. Because of its elevation, Barva—like Poás and Irazú —is often chilly and wet. We were so lucky because the skies were clear and the weather beautiful for our hike!

Barva hasn’t erupted in centuries and has a very different look and feel from other volcanoes in the area. Highland forest covers the summit and lichens, moss, and vines blanket the trail in a variety of greens. The area is rumored to be home to many animals and birds such as the Resplendent Quetzal, which is one of the coolest birds in CR. We heard many bird calls during the hike but the forest is so dense I couldn’t spot a single bird.

We steadily continued along the path. The Cacho de Venado trail joined up with the main trail, and from here the journey became progressively harder as the trails changed and the air became thinner. There was a lot of uphill hiking at this point and it became an effort to climb. In the final 200 meters—when everybody was really hoping we’d almost arrived at the crater—we found steep sets of steps. Whew! We were so motivated at that point to get to our destination, and I was so proud of the girls for keeping on—we travelled at least three miles and up many inclines on the hike. At the highest point we’d reached about 9500 feet.

Finally we made it to Laguna Barva, the inactive crater filled with rainwater. This is the third volcano crater we’ve seen in Costa Rica. (Yes, we’ve been to Arenal—the mother of the volcanoes here—but couldn’t hike at the crater because it’s active.) The lagoon isn’t as pretty as the one at Poás, but it was still neat to see and a good place to rest for a few minutes before beginning the (much-easier!) return to the park entrance.

By the time we got to our cars it was mid-afternoon and everybody was really hungry. We headed down the mountain to the beautiful mountain village of San José de la Montaña, about 9 kilometers south of Sacramento. Danny and his brothers fell into an amazing real-estate deal not long ago and bought a fantastic cabin there, right on the mountainside amidst a towering pine forest. We all grabbed seats on the wide porch to relax; the view was great but even better was enjoying the peaceful setting and cool, fresh air—especially knowing it was noisy and hot in the valley.

To see what all we ate, you’d think it had been days since our last meals: loaded burgers, chicken quesadillas and kebobs right off the grill; pasta salad; watermelon; chips; chocolate dessert and brownies. Yum!

Danny’s brother Alejandro stopped up and we all talked and rested while the girls ran around playing hide-and-seek and spitting watermelon seeds off the porch. We had such a terrific time that it was bittersweet to get home early that evening from yet another memorable adventure for us here in Costa Rica.

¡Pura aventura!

Divinely inspired shopping?

2009-04-04T19:12:00.003-06:00

Just about every time I leave the house I see something interesting or that a typical American would find unusual, funny, or even flabbergasting. Most commonly these events involve lunatic drivers, pedestrians, bikers, or guys urinating on the side of the road (you wouldn't believe how often we see this). Today, there were some interesting characters out and about, but one rather ordinary-seeming fellow sticks out in my mind.

As Erin and I were preparing to walk out of the grocery store, this man on the other side of the sliding glass doors stopped, crossed himself with his eyes closed, and then somewhat reluctantly entered the store. And I wondered—what was that about, anyway? Was he nervous? First-time shopper? Looking for a little guidance to find the Sardimar gourmet tuna filets in olive oil (because I could have told him they were nowhere to be found—I tried!)? Going in for a job interview? I don't know, but he seemed to be seeking some comfort from God for this particular trip into the supermarket. Hope it all went well, muchacho!

Here’s to being healthy

2009-03-29T17:57:00.006-06:00

My apologies for not blogging much these days. Not only have things been busy with school (thank goodness the science fairs are done!) but we’ve been battling one illness or infirmity after another. Lauren and Dan both had colds, then me, now Erin too. I am still recovering after three long weeks of battling a bacterial lung infection which has sent me to the hospital twice for breathing treatments and has caused me to lose my senses of smell and taste for more than two weeks, which is depressing, I gotta admit. (I told Dan that I want to go out to dinner as soon as I feel better and can taste my meal.) Of course the dirt and dust swirling around in the air aren't helping things.

Last month I went through a bunch of physical therapy for a messed up shoulder. The PT here is terrific, but WHEW! I am so ready to feel healthy and normal again!

Anyway, I thought this would be a great opportunity to share a little about healthcare here in CR, which is markedly different from that in the US.

The Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) is CR’s nationalized healthcare system. Known as the Caja, the system provides inexpensive health services to the Costa Ricans. While the Caja offers low-cost alternatives, wait times are often long for routine exams to vital surgeries. I’ve heard the red tape can be a nightmare as well, but in the end the healthcare is said to be cheap but high-quality.

We don’t participate in the Caja (though we could if we chose to) but instead have international insurance through CIGNA. We visit doctors at CIMA, the beautiful, nine-year-old private hospital about 15 minutes down the highway in Escazú. Here we can still get high-quality medical care for much less than we would in the United States. Many of the doctors here trained in the US, Canada or Europe, and most speak some English. (Yesterday I took Erin to CIMA for a sore throat and was speaking solely in Spanish with the doctor. She asked me if it hurt Erin to swallow and I couldn’t remember the word for swallow in English, but the doctor knew and blurted it out. Ha!)

We use the hospital’s ER as an urgent care center, but we also have our own personal physicians. Going to the doctor here is much more pleasant than at home. There are waiting rooms for many doctor offices, but once you are in the door to the office, you’re really in. For example, my doctor has his desk right as I walk in the door. The room has half a wall and on the other side is the scale, the examining table, a bathroom, etc. and there is plenty of space. No nurse is there to take vitals—my doctor does it himself. I love this because it gives me time to talk with him, and I have not felt rushed during an appointment for myself or for the girls (who have their own pediatrician). The patient gets undivided attention because the doctor doesn’t have to hop from room to room and the patient is not stuck waiting and bored. I’m really going to miss this when we move back to the US.

Medical tourism is very popular in Costa Rica—people from North America and Europe flock here for everything from dental work to cosmetic surgeries and cancer treatments because of the low cost of care, personal attention, and beautiful surroundings.

Prescriptions in CR are called recetas—the same word for recipe in Spanish, which I always find amusing. Recetas are not needed to purchase many medications in Costa Rica (for example those for blood pressure, cholesterol, birth control, to name a few), though several months ago pharmacies did begin requiring prescriptions for antibiotics. One of my favorite things about the pharmacies here is that they deliver right to my door for no extra cost. One of my least favorite things is that you have to ask the pharmacist for just about any medication—even those that you could buy over-the-counter in the US.

I’ve been a frequent customer at the pharmacy lately with all these crazy colds and infections. While I’m really grateful to have CIMA nearby, here’s hoping everyone in our house is well soon and we can quit wearing our path to CIMA’s doors.

Dust in the wind

2009-03-10T13:08:00.006-06:00

When the winds pick up in December and January, it’s cause for celebration: rainy season is on its way out and the sunny, beautiful dry season has arrived. (I blogged about this last year, mentioning how noisy and dusty life is during windy weather.)

Eventually the gusts subside and the valley is left with the gorgeous weather people dream about. Normally. This year, however, it's been much cloudier than last season and the wind isn’t letting up. It's been blowing like mad for weeks, making it hard to sleep some nights and frustrating on those bright, clear days when we want to play and swim outdoors but get blasted by blowing dirt and dust. I’d love to spend dinner out on our patio, enjoying the optimal temperatures and a beautiful sunset, but it would be futile. Too darn windy!

Not long ago a new billboard went up along the highway not far from my house—a big one on a fat, steel post. Enter the crazy winds, and after only a week the billboard had crashed. I got a few photos of it (evidence, you know) the morning after it happened.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this wind is that we can’t keep our windows wide open, which is something we normally love about living here. There is so much pollution in the air—dust, dirt, pollen, ash (lots of controlled and uncontrolled fires during dry season) and who knows what else blowing around—and it comes right into the house. I can dust the furniture, open the windows, and a couple of hours later run my hand over the table only to find brown dirt and grit on my palm. I’m serious about this—no taking literary license here. We can look out our back window and see stuff whirling in the air—and then I think about us breathing all that in. It’s disheartening.

The other day the DJ at a local radio station played Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I think he was having a poke at this crazy Costa Rican weather.

Bet you won't hear this at your grocery store today ...

2009-03-09T07:21:00.005-06:00

MegaSuper is not my favorite supermarket in Costa Rica for many reasons, and I normally only stop there for the basics—milk, bread, and eggs. While I don't care much for the store, I do appreciate that the MegaSuper people play some entertaining music for shoppers, including plenty of stuff in English which I enjoy.

Yesterday was an exception to that rule. Erin and I were looking at hot dogs when we heard the first notes of a very popular song. An instrumental, nicely done, very pleasant but extremely out of place. Silent Night. Yeah, the Christmas song. In March! What's up with that, anyway?

Quiero cambiar el idioma de mi Internet

2009-02-19T16:23:00.002-06:00

So I live in Costa Rica, and the official language here is Spanish. I get that and I speak Spanish daily—not really a problem for the most part. That said, I have to admit that it really bugs me that a lot of Web sites I visit regularly—including this one—keep coming up in Spanish, even after I have repeatedly set the preferences for English.

Google, for instance. Dang, it is always coming up in Spanish! I’m forever landing on google.co.cr. Sure I can read it and understand it, but I want my Web in English. It’s like when I visit Delta.com to book flights to the US: if I don’t take the time to enter my SkyMiles account number, the prices for the flights come up in colones. ACK! Give me dollars, Delta, please. The less often I have to do math, the better.

It’s a minor problem in the grand scheme of life, but an annoyance that I thought was worth a mention (OK, gripe) about since I’ve run into this problem twice in the last hour.

May I have this dance?

2009-02-08T08:48:00.017-06:00

Each February the girls' school has a father-daughter dance—complete with party music and Valentine's Day-themed decorations, a professional photographer, and plenty of food and cake.

I had a great time helping with the event last year (plus, the only way for a mom to attend the dance is to be on the committee!) and was excited for the dance again this year. Erin even helped me burn a couple of CDs for the DJ so he'd have some of the popular music from the US that the kids like.

We bought the girls' dresses last summer in Minnesota and thankfully they still fit. After school—once the decorating was done—the girls and I did hair and nails and got all dressed up. (It took Dan about one-fourth the time to get ready as it did the three of us.) Dan even gained a daughter for the evening—Lauren's friend Isabel, whose dad was out of town for the night. I'm glad she could be there with us; we love her family and will miss them tremendously when we leave Costa Rica.

I tried to get a few snapshots to share in between serving sandwiches and clearing tables. We even managed to get a picture of the four of us. Enjoy!

This is Erin, Grace (the friend we saw on vacation in Orlando) and Erin—yes, we moved all the way to Costa Rica only to meet another Erin of the same age as our Erin. Who would have guessed?

Here are Lauren and Isabel, artists extraordinaire! There were four boards on the side of the dance floor where the girls could write the names of their favorite restaurants, movie stars, and vacation destinations. Once we let the net of balloons drop, Lauren and Isabel made a beeline to the boards with the Sharpie markers to decorate the balloons. They are always drawing, these two.

¡Pura baile!

Fabulous Florida

2009-02-01T13:58:00.022-06:00

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land." —G.K. Chesterton

Our big Christmas gift to our family this year was a trip to The Motherland…10 terrific days in Florida. Time spent in the United States. Yippee!

Here, in no particular order, are a few highlights of our vacation:

**Dan, running enthusiast that he is, took on the half-marathon at Disney World on a Saturday and followed it by running the full marathon on Sunday. That’s a whole lotta miles—39.3 to be exact! He brought home plenty of race bling, including the Goofy medal because those who run the half (Donald medal) and full (Mickey medal) are also known to take on the Goofy Challenge. I’m still not sure how he finished the races and still walked three Disney parks the next few days, but he did and I’m so proud of him!

**Shopping. Oh, wonderful US retail, how I love thee! Our credit card got a major workout just in our first 48 hours in the States. We didn’t even get from Miami to Orlando without dropping a bundle on new clothes for the girls, so desperately needed. We had plenty of fun at the outlet malls and Downtown Disney—but don’t be fooled! Shopping included much anticipated trips to Wal-Mart and Target. Even buying groceries to stock the condo was a high. We splurged on foods that we really miss living in CR.

**Speaking of food … it’s amazing how comforting favorites from home can be. We had delicious Tex-Mex, plenty of snacks, and a trip to Orlando would not be complete without dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack—a Beaudry family favorite.

**Yes, we love to swim and we go to the pool here often, but despite cooler temps in Orlando we were able to swim in beautiful heated pools. Fantastic!

**Driving! How luxurious are US interstates, I ask you! They are smooth, wide, well-marked and with drivers that, for the most part, obey the rules of the road. Not once did I see a bus stopped on the highway, cows heading down the street toward me, or a pothole so big I thought it might swallow me whole.

**Oh, did I mention Disney? We love visiting the parks. We went to Animal Kingdom for the first time and thought Expedition Everest was a most awesome coaster. The Nemo musical was fantastic, too, and we loved the safari.

Funny thing is we had just entered Animal Kingdom when I heard Erin squeal and turned around to see her standing with her friend Grace from school here in Escazu. It really is a small world, after all.

The next couple of days were spent at Epcot and Magic Kingdom. Lines were very short—so much so that we were able to go on rides repeatedly with little to no wait. We rode on Space Mountain seven times. (The girls would have gone even more, but parents have limits!) We spent our last night in Orlando watching the beautiful fireworks show over Cinderella’s castle.

We flew out of Miami a couple of days later and my emotions were mixed. I hated leaving the US—the ease of everything, the familiarity of being in my own culture, and the appreciation for comforts I really miss while living in Central America.

But when it comes down to it, it’s good to be home—and home, for now, is here in Costa Rica. It is beautiful and warm, we have treasured friends here, and our time here is not complete. It was a terrific trip to America and our family made many good memories. We’ll be back!

Yes! We have no bananas

2009-01-22T14:15:00.008-06:00

We have no bananas today ... or this week, even. Or limes, for that matter. What's up with that?

I've been to the store a couple of times to buy these two Costa Rican staples and was shocked to find them both out of stock. The banana shelf has apples on it and in the limes' place is some unknown-to-me yellowish fruit that doesn't look like it would be a good substitute for a lime.

Hey, CR without bananas and limes? It's like Florida without oranges, Washington without apples, Wisconsin without dairy. (Holy cow! Imagine that!)

I know there are zillions of bananas just miles away on the east coast, so why aren't they in my Auto Mercado? (For the record, I have a mild allergy to bananas and don't even eat them, but Dan and Lauren think they're terrific. Take a look at the picture and see how cheap they are here: 220 colones for a kilo of bananas. That's about 40 cents for 2.2 pounds of bananas. Or I can buy just one banana for 21 colones which is about 4 cents!)

A gift from my girl

2008-12-31T19:45:00.016-06:00

Erin has been growing her long hair for months with the intention of donating it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, an organization that has collaborated with the American Cancer Society to distribute real-hair wigs to women who have lost their hair due to cancer.

We've been measuring her hair every once in a while, knowing she'd need a ponytail of at least eight inches to donate. She finally reached her goal (and then some) but was holding out until we had a trip to the US coming up, since we need to mail the ponytail to Pantene in Wisconsin (and don't trust it to get there through any Costa Rican postal service).

Finally, the time has come—we are traveling to Florida soon, and Erin has been beyond eager to donate her hair and have a fresh, shorter style. We visited Kathy, the sweet Colombian who does my hair at her salon, Broadway Beauty, here in Santa Ana for Erin's cut.

The staff watched as Kathy cut the ponytail and congratulated Erin on her adorable new hairdo—a little longer in the front, shorter in the back. Erin says her hair is much lighter and "swishy" now. I think it's a wonderful way for her to finish 2008—a pretty new haircut for a terrific cause (and from a terrific kid, if I do say so myself!).

Irazú: part two

2008-12-31T16:44:00.008-06:00

Last Saturday the sky was so clear we could see for miles—no better opportunity for a day trip, so we grabbed cold-weather gear (Costa Rica style, of course) and trekked across the valley to Irazú Volcano.

Erin and I visited Irazú in October ’07, but Dan and Lauren had yet to visit. You can read more about the volcano and the route we took to get there on my previous blog, Irazú, I see you!

We drove to the very summit of Irazú and it was incredibly windy. I’ll admit it, we were cold! (What are we going to do next winter?) Dan commented that I really “gringoed out” for the day by wearing my Wisconsin sweatshirt, but it is my heaviest pullover with a hood and I don’t regret the choice. Funny though how a clothing decision made me feel like more of a tourist than a resident, and a woman (originally from Milwaukee, I learned) even approached me and asked if we’re on vacation here from up north.

We took some photos at the summit before hiking around the lower part of the park near the craters. Erin and I were interested to note a lake on the flat, sandy area where before it had been only spongy ground and appeared much more lunar.

The four of us were so windblown by the time we returned to the parking lot we were happy to sit in the café with our cups of steaming hot chocolate and a bag of Volcán chips supposedly made from potatoes grown on the side of the mountain (not unlikely since we passed many working potato and onion farms on the long drive up to the park).

Of course by the time we’d descended the mountain the sun was warming us through the car’s windshield, and when we arrived home we opened all the house windows to enjoy the moderate temperature of Santa Ana.

Christmastide in Costa Rica

2008-12-31T06:52:00.010-06:00

The people in our adopted country prepare for Christmas for months, quite literally, and finally the real season has arrived. We’ve learned that December in the valley is often beautiful, hectic, and hazardous.

Rainy season has been hanging in there by a thread, but the downpours have disappeared and we’ve had plenty of sunny, warm, and—most importantly to me at this point—dry weather. The flowering trees are bursting with color, and the bougainvillea is bright with flashy purples, reds, and pinks.

Ticos across the country each receive an aguinaldo—a government-mandated bonus worth one-month salary given each December to all employees. When the aguinaldos are paid, traffic both on the roads and in the shops is at a frenzy because everyone has money to spend. Unfortunately crime is also on the rise because thieves know there is more cash for the taking. I’ve read and heard stories of several people being held at gunpoint for their money; we are very careful with our purchases and walking to our cars during December.

On a cheerier note, things are festive in the valley. I enjoyed a few trips with the girls to the mall to hear the Christmas music (mainly in English) and see the beautifully decorated trees and stores. Many places throughout the country have portales—nativity scenes—including a large portal at nearby Multiplaza. The Baby Jesus is left out of the manger until midnight on Christmas Eve. Instead of Santa, most Tico children are told the Baby Jesus brings their gifts as they sleep.

We kept many of our own American traditions here. The girls and I made dozens of cookies while we listened to our favorite Christmas music, and they had holiday concerts at school. Erin loves playing the flute and had her first band concert, while Lauren’s class put a holiday show including bells, recorders (yep, third grade!), singing, dancing, and even joke telling. There were many parties too, and it was fun to be at CDS to see how excited the kids were on the last day of classes.

A few weeks ago our neighbor was hosting a large open house for coworkers on a Sunday afternoon, and Dan had a sit-down dinner party for 12 coworkers the following evening. My terrific friends Joelle (who was also hosting the open house) and Angie and I gathered at Joelle’s house around the corner and spent an entire day baking cookies, cutting vegetables, putting together marinades and dips, and musing about which holiday decorations we could share to make our homes look festive. With a fantastic combined effort, both parties went smoothly. Whew!

A week before the holiday we went to a drama at our church about Papa Panov, based on a short story by Tolstoy. I really enjoyed myself.

Finally Christmas Eve day arrived and everyone was off school and work—vacation! I spent most of the day in the kitchen and had a great helper (Dan!) in making the homemade cinnamon rolls to eat the following morning after gift-opening. Because I couldn’t get the ingredients for the recipe I normally use, we tried a Cinnabon copycat recipe this year and wow! The rolls were huge and amazing—they really did taste like Cinnabon and it was hard to eat even one because they were so large. We got 11 rolls from the recipe and they lasted for days. It was fun rolling the dough with Dan and cutting them together.

We went to Christmas Eve service at our church, International Baptist Church. I was overcome with emotion—it was a traditional service with a children’s story, plenty of singing of the old Christmas songs, a lovely message from our pastor, and a beautiful candlelit rendition of Silent Night at the end. It was joyous and peaceful and hopeful all at once, and I reflected on how incredible it was to sit in a congregation of Christians from all around the world to celebrate the birth of our Savior—who I am so comforted to know is with me wherever I go on this earth.

We drove home and opened the windows to the house, turned on the Christmas lights adorning our two balconies, and got into our pajamas. Fireworks had already been exploding around the valley nearly non-stop for hours and hours—the Costa Ricans love fireworks!—and continued on through the night. The Costa Rican adults open their gifts on Christmas Eve and often stay up all night with friends and family, eating tamales wrapped in banana leaves—the one food all Costa Ricans we’ve talked to could agree is truly a Christmas tradition.

That said, this non-Tico family had no plans to stay up until dawn, though sleeping was sometimes challenging with the cracks and booms breaking through times of silence. Dan and I watched Christmas Vacation and took care of a few other things before bed, and soon it was a bright, sunny Christmas Day. We opened presents (our big gift to the family being a trip in January to Florida—can hardly wait to touchdown in the US for a while!) and just relaxed and played the rest of the day. It was a quiet Christmas here that we’ll all remember for its uniqueness.

¡Feliz Navidad!

Quiquiriquí (cock-a-doodle-doo)

2008-12-19T05:37:00.012-06:00

I grew up not far from a couple of dairy farms in our beautiful Wisconsin coulee; seeing cows and horses was ordinary, but I don't recall seeing many chickens.

Here it's another story—there's poultry everywhere. The beef in Costa Rica isn't that hot, but Ticos really know how to do up chickens. Even the country's most traditional food, rice and beans, is known as gallo pinto (spotted rooster). I guess you could say that chickens rule the roost.

I see chickens here daily as I go to the grocery store, the school, church, the mall ... Even the kids' former favorite jumping spot (which is no more, sadly) was host to a giant inflatable rooster.

On our trip from Guanacaste back to the valley we easily saw over a hundred chickens along the way. People keep them at their homes in the yards and they run all over like ... well, like chickens with their heads cut off! (BAWK!)

I lived in a gated community that appears to be chicken-free, but somewhere nearby lives at least one rooster—and forget that stuff about crowing at sunrise, because this misguided dude often begins his cock-a-doodle-dooing at about 4am. Somebody needs to readjust that bird's clock.

Everything you want to know—and maybe even don’t want to know!—about water faucets and screaming toilets

2008-12-07T08:39:00.014-06:00

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll likely recall that we had a pump installed after many water outages and way too many showers taken in trickles of water. We now have a readily available water supply and good pressure in the showers—not the norm in most Tico housing.

You may also remember that Ticos tend to prefer warm to cold showers in the morning, and those who want hot water often resort to the eerie suicide showers.

But there’s so much I haven’t yet told you! For those who dare, read on for an enlightening look at bathroom plumbing here in Costa Rica…

Sometimes you can turn on a faucet and be unsure of what temperature water is going to come out. I’ve seen showers and faucets with hot on the left, cold on the right—and then vice versa (only where hot water is available, of course).

This should be a non-issue in my own house, I know. But—with apologies to Cookie Monster—sometimes C is for Confusing. We have a big Jacuzzi tub that we don’t use often because it takes forever to fill. The first time I went to use the tub, I didn’t pay much attention to the faucet handles labeled with C and F in fancy, flowy script that I was looking at upside-down. I saw the C—thought "cold"—and automatically turned the other handle and let the water run.

A few minutes later I returned to find a couple of inches of icy water. I turned the water off and sat there for a minute, staring at the knobs, until I realized…duh, me… that in Spanish, C stands for Caliente. Meaning hot. And I had turned the F knob. F, of course, indicating Frio. Meaning cold.

It was a silly mistake, but in all fairness, the other faucets in the house are all labeled in English. The funniest part is that about a month after this happened to me, Dan went to run water in the Jacuzzi. He approached me a few minutes later: “Are you doing laundry? Are you running the dishwasher? Did you just take a shower or what?”

“No, no, and no. What’s the problem?”

“I want to use the tub but I can’t get any hot water.”

BWAH! Off I went to give him a hard time about C and F on the faucet knobs. I could tell he felt sorta stupid about it—as I had—until I admitted that I’d made the same mistake too.

This business with hot and cold water is fascinating stuff, I know, but not nearly as intriguing as fun with toilets here in Ticolandia.

The quality of public restrooms varies, but there are no handy-dandy rest stops for travelers in CR, so gas station bathrooms are an evil necessity. Once in a while we get lucky and find a clean bathroom with an actual seat, toilet paper, and a sink with soap. That said, the girls and I have become adept at “hovering,” and we’ve learned to carry TP and Wet Ones with us when we’re on the road.

Water pressure in Costa Rica tends to be poor, and pipes are narrower than in the US—making it risky to flush toilet paper in most public restrooms and some homes. It’s normal to find signs requesting that one not throw used TP in the toilet. Instead, Ticos throw it in special wastebaskets that are generally emptied frequently, even in dirty gas station bathrooms. Though I know to do it, this still is not a pleasant habit for me, but it’s a heck of a lot better than an overflowing toilet. (Thankfully we can flush paper in our house!)

On the home front, we’ve learned that our toilets have personalities. In the master bath, I often have to push the button in (instead of holding the knob down) to get the toilet to flush properly. Thankfully the knobs are at knee level for me, so I just stand there with my knee holding the button for about six seconds.

The good news is that our master bath toilet is at least quiet, thanks to Dan rigging it with a piece of thread and a metal key. This keeps it from running 24/7. Sometimes I wonder if Dan is watching MacGyver (Mah GEEEEver, as they say here in CR) on the sly. I told you these Ticos love themselves some MacGyver!

Several toilets in our home are screamers. A couple of them emit a very brief, high-pitched wail after use, while those in Lauren’s bathroom and the powder room sound like sirens going off. The first time Lauren used the bathroom on the day we moved here, she nearly cried when the toilet began screaming at her. (Toilets in other places sometimes do this too. We were just hanging out with friends at a beach home they’d rented, and I felt right at home when I used the bathroom—had to hold the knob while listening to the toilet siren.)

We’ve tried fixing the scream and have had two plumbers fix it, too—but the sirens always return. It’s something about air in the lines. We’re used to it now, but I gotta admit that when I stayed with my parents this summer, using the bathroom was noticeably simple. A pleasure! Throw in the paper, one quick push of the handle to flush. Quiet toilet, no running, no sirens. And when I went to wash my hands, there was plenty of soap and I knew exactly which faucet knob to turn for the hot water.

¡Puros baños!

Thanksgiving in Guanacaste

2008-12-04T08:40:00.010-06:00

We had a fantastic holiday here in Costa Rica—it was another turkey-free Thanksgiving! We pulled the kids out of school a day early so we could drive to the Pacific coast on Wednesday and spend our entire holiday having fun. And wow, did we have a blast! (You can watch a slideshow with photos of our trip here: Thanksgiving pictures.)

We made the five-hour drive to Playa Grande in Guanacaste, an area known throughout the country for its surfing and fantastic beaches. Thursday morning after a big breakfast and some leisurely hanging around in hammocks at our beachfront hotel (along with a lizard and a funny squirrel for company) we went horseback riding. The weather was awesome—a real treat coming from the rainy, cloudy valley. Much of our two hours riding was spent on the beaches of Brasilito and Playa Conchal, though we also ventured off onto some trails near the beach shaded by a plethora of tall trees. (And yep, once again we saw monkeys on Thanksgiving—this time howlers that, as usual, made quite a ruckus.)

Our horses were White Socks, Raccoon, Zorro (Lauren’s horse), and Arroz con Frijoles (Rice with Beans—that was Erin’s horse). Soon after we mounted, our guide, Luis, let me know that Arroz con Frijoles likes to go fast, and a bunch of times on our ride he got going and the other horses all followed. We got to galloping at one point on Brasilito but didn’t go for long since the girls’ hats both blew off.

We all had a great time and I must admit, Erin in particular was a real natural on the horse. It was good fortune that she loved to fly down the sand on his back, because Arroz con Frijoles was definitely the most spirited horse of the bunch. White Socks and Raccoon were not nearly so eager to run, though Dan and I suspect that may be because they were carrying us instead of an 11-year-old kid.

After our horseback trip we cooled off in the Toyota’s AC and headed south into Tamarindo, the largest town in this part of the country. There we picked up some snacks and water for later and had lunch at Pizza Hut. I don’t know why it is, but we think Pizza Hut here is better than it is at home, and we were so hungry we didn’t leave a slice behind. We even had ice cream at Pops following lunch—one of the best ice cream spots in Costa Rica that happened to be in the most gorgeous shopping center I’ve ever seen, complete with a sprawling, free-form pond (host to turtles and fish), waterfalls, and beautiful trees and flowers.

That afternoon we went for a swim in the turtle-shaped pool at our hotel and then had an early dinner because we all went to bed at 6:30—yes, you read that right. Let me note that it’s not hard to go to bed early here because it’s already dark—not dusk, but nighttime dark—by this hour and because we normally wake up so much earlier here than in the States. Plus we were tired from the horseback riding and swimming! But this night it was especially important to get some rest because we had set the alarm to wake us at 11pm. We had something very special planned: we were going to Las Baulas National Marine Park with hopes of seeing a giant leatherback turtle nesting.

Lauren wasn’t too thrilled when we roused her out of bed at 11:00, but eventually we all got ready, put on the bug spray, and took our flashlights down the road about 50 yards from our hotel to the park’s ranger station. Las Tortugas Hotel is the center for the Tamarindo National Wildlife Sanctuary and Las Baulas National Marine Park. There isn’t much light on this short walk to the station because the turtles won’t nest unless it’s dark. The owner of the hotel where we stayed has been active for years in eco-tourism and sustainable development; this includes shielding the turtles from all ambient light both here and from neighboring beaches.

Las Baulas is a protected area vital to the endangered leatherback turtle; actually, it is the world’s largest nesting site for these turtles and one of the few remaining sites of significant nesting. Female leatherbacks come ashore at night to lay their eggs in the sand. They then cover the eggs and return to the ocean. The beach is restricted at night from October to mid-February, and people can only visit as part of a guided tour—so off we went, hopes high!

We were part of a small group of people and stood, single file, in the dark on the beach as we waited for a park ranger to spot a nesting turtle. While we waited, Dan and I noticed how amazing the sky appeared—there was extremely little moonlight, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many stars before. It was truly awesome.

We didn’t wait long until we trekked through the sand with only natural light and the guide’s red-filtered flashlight to help us. Soon we could see a giant swath of a path on the beach and right up from it was the turtle, digging deep in the sand. She was absolutely massive—the giant leatherbacks are the world’s largest marine turtles. She was at least five feet long and she certainly weighed more than our entire family! I wish I could have taken photos to share, but the turtles only nest in the dark and so we watched her by the guide’s red light which was aimed at her backside only.

It was incredible to see how this giant creature stretched her flippers (about the size of tennis rackets!) to make this deep hole. When she was nearly done digging, our group stepped away to allow another group to see the dig. We sat down in the sand and just enjoyed the cool ocean air as we waited for our turn to see the turtle again. And when we went back—wow! She was laying her eggs, sometimes three at a time. There were scientists there measuring her and counting her eggs. Erin heard one say at the end that she had deposited 56 eggs into her nest.

We didn’t get to stay and see the turtle go back to the sea—the rangers want to minimize humans’ contact with the turtles, and this was her moment. She had done her job and was leaving her eggs to fend for themselves.

Our family was in awe of this experience. We realized that with the giant leatherback in danger of being extinct, we were surely witnessing a precious and miraculous event. Both our family and the turtle had come a very long way to share in her nesting on this quiet beach.

A couple of months from now, some of those eggs we saw will be little hatchlings, and a few will survive the short yet perilous trip down the beach to the Pacific Ocean. Maybe my girls will return to Playa Grande one day with their families to see an offspring of the leatherback burying eggs of her own.

We are thankful for this turtle, for the horses we rode, for the beautiful beach, and for each other. Though life in Costa Rica is never smooth sailing, it has been a life-changing experience that we will always treasure. What a Thanksgiving!

Rockin' and rollin'

2008-11-19T14:35:00.004-06:00

I woke up shortly after midnight today to quite a shaking, as did a lot of my friends; there was a 6.2 earthquake near the Costa Rica-Panama border, about 135 miles southest of San Jose, that was felt nationwide. Whew, that's a big one, and according to the news it lasted a minute or so—a long time when things are rolling. A few people I've talked with said stuff fell off their walls and shelves, but thankfully we didn't have any problems.

At first I wasn't sure if it was quaking because I was so tired. The rain was pouring and the wind blowing so hard that doors were banging around in their frames, water was blowing in under shut windows in the sills, and air was howling through the cracks. (It is still howling—we must be nearing December!)

Just another day in paradise!

Boats, Arrows, and Monkey Tails (Our Adventure with the BriBri)

2008-11-03T18:25:00.035-06:00

To continue the story of our trip to the Caribbean … we left off having lunch with our Spanish friends the Muelas family. Álvaro explained he had a work-related meeting with someone from the government. The man told him about a trip we should take—and he would arrange it for us—to an indigenous BriBri village, located on a reserve in the heart of the remote and lush tropical forest in the Talamanca mountains. The more we learned about the adventure, the more we wanted to go and realized what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it was. So we booked another night at the hotel and joked with our friends about coming back in one piece from the trip.

That night we bought hats for Erin and me and called Álvaro’s contact with our shoe sizes so they could get the tall boots we’d need to wear on our journey.

This was the real deal—authentic in every way. Not a lick of English was spoken by the BriBri, no brochures or T-shirts were available at their village. It was just us in their environment and an incredible adventure! Whenever you’re ready, you can watch a slideshow of our day.

The BriBri
The BriBri Indians (pronounced "bree bree") are indigenous people in the Caribbean coastal areas and mountainous rainforest of northern Panama and southern Costa Rica. Through traditional, non-invasive methods of agriculture, hunting, fishing, and use of products from the rainforest, the Bribri maintain a respectful relationship with the natural environment that sustains them. They wear western clothing and speak Spanish in addition to their native BriBri—and we learned how important it is for them to preserve their rich cultural heritage for future generations.

Start of the journey
We got up early (I spotted a poison dart frog hopping around—cool!) and drove to the town of BriBri to pick up long socks for the girls and water to carry in our packs. BriBri is on the Sixaola River—the border between Costa Rica and Panama—and we were able to look across the river at Panama for much of the trip.

After driving for about an hour on non-paved roads (rough terrain!) and through three small rivers over the roads (thank goodness we had the Rav4!), we arrived in Bambú, the closest commercial town to the reserve. We parked at the pulpería (a small general store) next to the police post where we donned knee socks and boots. The girls started chasing chickens around the buildings as we met Heliodoro, the boatman from the Yorkín community who would take us to the BriBri village.

We piled onto handmade wooden benches in a motorized dugout. I noticed duct tape on the boat bottom where a little water was gurgling up and tried to keep my boot over it to minimize the occasional water bailing our boatman had to do.

We traveled through the remote, tropical jungle surrounded by the sounds of the Yorkín River, birds and animals. We saw beautiful blue morphos floating through the air and many birds including several kingfishers and stunning tanagers whose brilliant red feathers stood out against the verdant landscape.

We were going upstream and the river was shallow and rushing in places. While the experienced boat driver knew exactly where to take us, at times he and the boatman in the front had to use long poles to push against the river bottom to keep us from running aground. At one point they had to get out and push our dugout through the shallows.

One of the most exciting parts of the boat trip is that we went into Panama. Lush Costa Rican jungle towered up steep cliffs to our right, while tree branches hung over the water to Panama on our left, so close we could reach out and touch them. Our passports aren’t stamped, but we’ve all been in Panama now.

About an hour later we reached the village set on the hillside, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Once our boat stopped moving we felt the sun on us; the day was quickly heating up, and I was so glad we all had hats.

We trekked up the hill to see the very modest, one-room schools and begin the 20-minute hike through rainforest and mud to the village’s central building—the Stibrawpa Lodge. During our walk we learned about the area’s trees, plants, and crops. At one point the guide broke off a stalk of palmito for us to taste. Hygiene aside, we passed it around and everyone tried a bite. We also saw cacao fruit and a tall plant with a curly top called “monkey’s tail.”

Snack time
We removed our muddy boots at the lodge and left them at the bottom of the stairs, wearing our socks in the building which was like a large, wood platform. Everyone sat at one of the two long tables for a much-needed drink of watery juice (just squeezed from the fruit in the village), lychee fruit, and homemade bread made of homegrown bananas with a small amount of flour just to keep it together.

I was excited when our guide split a cacao open for us to see. The inside was filled with seeds covered in white flesh. Everyone took a seed and sucked on it. It had an interesting flavor that was nothing like chocolate.

We walked around the corner from the sitting/eating area and saw the village kitchen where a chicken (likely one of the many that roam the area) was cooking over a wood fire—the way all foods are cooked at the lodge, since there is no electric or gas stove.

Over the river
We walked to a nearby river to find a rickety hanging bridge about 20 feet above the rock-filled water. I was reluctant to climb the stairs and cross, but this was my Survivor Costa Rica moment and I was determined not to miss a thing—so I did it. I let everyone go before me (Álvaro teased me by swinging the bridge and barely lived to tell about it) but my faithful husband stayed behind me and offered encouragement. I gripped the guide wires the entire time and later learned that Dan was taking pictures and never touched the sides. What a guy.

On the other side of the bridge our guide showed us some towering, poisonous trees. He told us a few other things (all in Spanish, of course) but I was distracted watching the girls run around and telling them not to touch the trees. Then finally I asked if we were going swimming here (we had all worn swimsuits under our clothes and it was hot!) and was told no, we’d cross back to the other side. The bridge again? Already? I really just wanted to get in the water—but not by falling into it!

Cooling off
This river was clear, full of huge stones, and cold—but wow did it feel good! A refreshing swim was exactly what we needed. After about 20 minutes we climbed out of the river (quite literally) and brushed the dirt from our feet as best we could before putting our socks and boots back on.

Slings and arrows
On the river bank we met some BriBri boys who wanted to teach us how they shoot their handmade bows and arrows. These handsome kids had such beautiful smiles and manners, it was a pleasure to watch them shoot the target (hanging fruit) and then let us take turns.

Dan’s dad was a national champ archer and taught Dan to shoot when he was little, so I wasn’t surprised when Dan’s rudimentary arrows grazed the target several times. The girls took aim too, and I was proud of them for trying—Erin said it was very hard.

Tasting monkey tails
By this point our stomachs were growling, so we returned to the lodge for a typical, delicious Bribri meal. We had the chicken we saw cooking earlier, fresh palmito, rice and beans, plantain and banana, and fried monkey tail (remember the plant we’d seen earlier on the trail?). Large banana leaves lined the serving bowls and covered our plates which were actually smooth, thick slabs of wood. Nobody was shy about taking seconds and even thirds, we were so hungry and the meal tasted great.

A lesson about the Bribri
Daisy, a BriBri Indian, taught us more about her village. Years ago, the Yorkín women united to form the indigenous association Stibrawpa, intended to diversify their means of production, particularly agriculture, and develop new sources of income while preserving their culture. It’s interesting that while the men are involved in decision-making for the Bribri, the women lead the village council and have directive control.

Now several Bribri families in the association grow a variety of crops as sustainable agriculture and also sell organic bananas and cacao, and the women create indigenous handicrafts for additional income.

Daisy explained to us that they have no medical care, but a doctor comes by every couple of weeks. Additionally, while the government has offered to bring electricity to them, they don’t want it; the concern is that it will drastically change their way of life for the worse and lure their children away from the culture they’re working so hard to preserve (an effort that includes Bribri language courses for the kids). They do have a couple of cold-water showers and two toilets near the lodge, but make no mistake that these people live very simply and rustically.

The Bribri live in small houses with roofs made of traditional palm thatch from primary rainforest. They sleep in hammocks or on the floor, with everyone in the same room. Some houses are isolated and the children have to walk a long way—even an hour or two—to school.

What most struck me was that these are happy, peaceful people. They work very hard for their survival but seem cheerful and content with their lives. They care for their environment, their families, and showed a genuine kindness to us. Despite the seemingly insurmountable differences in language, upbringing, and culture, I felt a connection to these women and great admiration for them. It was yet another lesson I’ve learned in Costa Rica about perspective in life.

Making chocolate
On to the most anticipated part of the day … making chocolate from the cacao, which is sacred to the BriBri. We learned how cacao seeds are dried and then toasted. The warm seeds tasted like bitter chocolate. A young man brought out a smooth, heavy stone and showed us how to crush the seeds with it. It’s a lot harder than it looks! And wow, the seeds smelled really good when we crushed them.

Once everything was in tiny pieces, he rapidly shook the bowl to separate the meat from the shells. Then he put the cacao into a hand grinder and everyone took a turn with the handle. What came out and into the bowl looked like thick, melting chocolate. A few of us couldn’t wait and dipped our fingers in for a taste. It was bitter but absolutely chocolate.

We took the chocolate inside the lodge where some of it was mixed with hot water and sugar to drink—a traditional BriBri-style hot chocolate—while the rest was combined with a can of sweetened condensed milk. Oh my gosh, please, this was absolutely some of the most amazing chocolate ever. Thankfully we are all good friends because most of us (especially Isa, Erin, and I) were dipping our fingers into the sweet chocolate, licking them off (all while animatedly discussing the deliciousness of it all) and then diving back in. True dark chocolate is considered to be about 50 percent cacao; we were eating 100 percent cacao (less when mixed with the milk). This was the freshest chocolate ever and wow, sooooooo good!!

The return trip
Late afternoon, we headed back to our boat and to Bambú. The river’s current was with us as we traveled downstream in the dugout, so the trip was considerably quicker than our first journey yet equally as beautiful.

It felt great to take off our rubber boots and long socks when we got to our cars. We said our goodbyes and headed back to Punta Uva with plans … everyone needed a shower (wow, were we dirty—especially Lauren!) and a rest, and then we’d meet up for our 7pm reservations at La Pecora Nera. Yep, again—because after our day—we made it!—we decided to enjoy the luxury of a fantastic, candlelit Italian dinner at a beautiful restaurant with our wonderful friends. We are truly blessed to have met the Muelases and spent this unique experience with them. It was a day none of us will ever forget and one that left a lasting impact on our lives.

Caribbean calling

2008-10-26T15:01:00.017-06:00

By the time we hit mid-October in the rainy season, we are all desperate for sunny skies and warm, dry breezes. The girls had off a few days from school at CDS, so we fled the waterlogged valley for the beautiful Caribbean.

It’s hard to decide what to blog about this trip—there were so many small moments we’ll always remember, yet journaling them all would fill pages. With that in mind, here are some highlights of our time on the coast and a photo album (best viewed as a slideshow) of the first few days of our trip ...

We set out on a sopping wet Thursday morning. About 20 kilometers north of San Jose, we drove through the mountainous Braulio Carillo National Park, an area beyond lush—it’s a gorgeous tropical rainforest with rushing waterfalls, flowers, and towering trees.

Once we came down from the mountains, we bid a big ADIOS to the rain! The rest of the trip was relatively flat, taking us over numerous rivers and past bunches of banana plantations, where the fruit hung in blue bags from tree after tree. The scenery wasn’t like anything we’d seen yet in Costa Rica, but then again, the Caribbean is different from the rest of the country in many ways.

Though just a few hours from the central valley, the Caribbean seems worlds away. The coast is still relatively undeveloped and, because it was so remote for so long, has its own unique culture. There are reserves of indigenous peoples here, and many of the area’s inhabitants are descendants of Jamaican immigrants who came to work on the railroads and banana plantations. These immigrants shaped the culture, and the area has a Jamaican flavor in its music (plenty of reggae), food (much spicier and less-Tico), language (some speak an English-based patois which I find harder to understand than Spanish), drug culture (yes, we smelled marijuana while walking down a beachfront street in Puerto Viejo), and even style of dress (plenty of dreadlock-sporting Rastafarians here).

Eventually we passed the port city of Limón. This is where the container ships come in and where our household goods first landed in Costa Rica. Limón is the largest town on the country’s east coast—a rough-looking place that ships millions of pounds of bananas to the world each year. It’s not much of a tourist destination, and we drove along the city’s edge to the south, along the coast.

We passed by Cahuita and drove into Puerto Viejo, then another eight kilometers to Punta Uva. It’s an understatement to say the drive is bumpy and jarring from Puerto Viejo to the south. The roads here are “paved” in tiny sections—most of the road is dusty and full of rocks and massive potholes. This is hands-down the worst stretch of driving we’ve ever done in Costa Rica. Our trusty RAV4 took quite a beating on this trip.

Finally, we reached our hotel (a compound of single-story buildings with four rooms apiece) and headed right to the beach where we spent much of our time during the next few days. This is said to be one of the best beaches on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and was refreshing and clear. There was plenty of coral and fish for snorkeling, and—perhaps most fun for everyone—we got to play with a lot of CDS families we know who were also escaping the valley for drier climes and beautiful beaches.

Our first night we had dinner with our friends the Irlenborns at Maxi’s in Manzanillo. Maxi’s is a popular hang-out about five kilometers south of Punta Uva, and the drive is on a two-lane road lined with dense jungle. The restaurant sits at the dead-end of a tiny town and the last settled area in Costa Rica before entering a wildlife reserve that encompasses a few kilometers between Manzanillo and Panama. We had good food and lots of fun with our friends in addition to spotting a bunch of geckos on the ceiling and a few cats prowling around, too. (We noticed there were a lot of cats in this part of the country, actually, which I loved since I still miss my buddy Charlie.)

Sleeping was comfortable since we stayed in one of the few places on the beach with air conditioning. (No mosquito nets for us!) I still woke up each night though to the sounds of howler monkeys traveling through the jungle. I’ve mentioned these vocal animals before, but it bears mentioning that the calls of a troop can carry for miles and are loud enough to wake me out of a sound sleep.

We had breakfast at the hotel’s open-air restaurant each day. One morning while eating her eggs, Erin spotted a sloth across the path near our room. Sloths rarely come down from their treetop homes, so this was a great surprise. We walked over to watch the three-toed creature s-l-o-w-l-y pull itself with its hands over the land and up the giant tree right outside our room. It was a fortunate opportunity to see this.

A few times on this vacation we drove into Puerto Viejo, which is truly Caribbean—steamy, sandy, and laid-back. It’s really hot in this surfers' hang-out, and people take life more slowly here. Between Punta Uva and Puerto Viejo we saw a lot of people walking and riding bicycles, nobody in much of a hurry to get anywhere.

On Friday at the beach, we met up with our friends the Muelas family from Spain. We snorkeled and swam with them, and that evening the eight of us had reservations at a fabulous restaurant in Cochles called La Pecora Nera—a mouthwatering taste of Italy on the edge of the Costa Rican jungle. Many travel guides and travelers agree that this beautiful, open-air restaurant has the best Italian food in the country. The owner is this exuberant, young Italian guy who was not only our chef but also part-time waiter who advised us—with a flourish—on what to order that night. It was a long, leisurely, and fantastic dining experience with a family whose company we truly enjoy.

The following morning we walked along the hotel path that leads to the main road. Surrounded by jungle, we saw blue morphos (love them!), turtles, crabs, and birds. The foliage here is so thick and wild, Dan commented that a person wouldn’t need to walk far into it before he or she might never come out.

Of course we parked ourselves at the beach after the walk for hours of swimming and relaxing in beach chairs under the palm trees (ah, heavenly!). We went to lunch with our Spanish friends that afternoon and, while there, decided to extend our vacation to do something unique, adventurous, and amazing. That story is to come in the next blog entry and will tell of one of our most memorable days here in Costa Rica!

She's acclimated

2008-10-12T09:25:00.005-06:00

It was 75 degrees in our house when I walked through the family room and saw Lauren wearing her knit cap and snuggled under a Mickey Mouse sleeping bag.

"It's kinda cold, Mom."

Bet she's really gonna like that first chilly day we get in Ohio next year!

¿Se habla inglés?

2008-10-11T18:42:00.001-06:00

You know what's weird? Last night I was browsing through TV channels while waiting for Dan's taxi to arrive from the airport and I stopped on an interesting-looking British movie. As I started watching it, I realized I was reading the subtitles. And not just because I can't help reading them—which is often the case—but because I had to.

Yeah, the movie was in English, but in all fairness to me this wasn't the Queen's English. The accents of a couple of characters were so thick I had a hard time understanding what was being said. So I used subtitles. Spanish subtitles. To understand a movie in English.

Once I realized what I was doing I felt kinda freaked out and turned the TV off in favor of a book.

A few times I've watched French movies by reading the Spanish subtitles, but usually after a while my brain gets tired or I get bored. Of course this is almost always at night and is a significant violation of the English-only television-viewing zone rules of the house, so I should know better!

Random thoughts on late-night TV

2008-10-07T11:13:00.004-06:00

Sometimes near the end of the day, Dan and I relax in front of the TV—maybe watch a little news or catch the second half of CSI. More often than not we have a TV language rule by this hour: nothing in Spanish. No soccer (definitely no soccer!), no dubbed sitcoms, no Latin American talk shows—nada. It’s an English-only television-viewing zone, and thankfully—with gratitude to the magic button on our remote that removes dubbing from certain shows—we have a handful of decent American channels from which to choose.

So what if we’ve already seen every episode of Seinfeld a zillion times? Who cares that the rerun of Law & Order is from the days of Lenny Briscoe and Ben Stone? We can get some of these old shows plus Fox News and CNBC—which is what we most commonly watch—and in a pinch, we’ll even watch local news for Denver, the city that provides our network feed.

Dan’s traveling a lot this month, so I’ve been reading at night or hanging out here on the computer hoping to catch him on IM. The no-English TV stuff has been less of an issue. (Though I gotta admit, I did catch an episode of Growing Pains—circa 1987—the other night. Too bad it wasn’t the episode with Brad Pitt, but I still enjoyed the Seavers’ antics. And Wow! Check out that big ‘80s hair!)

Of course mostly what’s on TV now is election coverage stuff, and we’re starting to burn out on that a bit. (We’ve already voted—and yeah, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on, but it’s not like I’m gonna call the United States and ask to change my ballot, right?) Tonight I’ll watch the debate and all the pundits taking jabs at the candidates and each other afterwards. It’s almost like I’m rubbernecking after an accident on I-75. I want to look away for a while but just can’t.

Overall, we watch less TV here than in the US. We don’t have DVR, we don’t have high def (which we desperately miss during football season) and we have a much smaller selection of choices when it comes to programming. I miss the DVR (because really, who wants to watch commercials?) and certainly we are looking forward to the return of HD when we move back to the States, but other than that, the limited selection is OK. Though I admit we draw the line for watching American shows at MacGyver. (Talk about hair styles of the ‘80s!)

I really do wish we could get the US version of SportsCenter on ESPN, but I won't complain (at least not too loudly or too often!).

The whirlybird coincidence

2008-10-03T14:38:00.005-06:00

My friend Joelle and I were returning from a shopping trip when we saw a neighbor out walking her dog. We stopped to chat, but our brief conversation was interrupted when a thunderous, low-flying helicopter flew right over Joelle’s car and—to our complete surprise—landed in an empty lot right here in the neighborhood.

We all looked at each other in disbelief, and then of course I had to get out and take a couple of pictures—because really, this was a very unusual thing. A man got out of the helicopter and hurried down the side of the field; then the pilot took off. It all happened very quickly.

Later we told friends about the helo, and everyone agreed that it landing in this area was a weird occurrence. We all wondered what the helicopter was doing in our neighborhood and who it belonged to.

Fast forward to a couple of days later … Dan, the girls, and I went to a surprise birthday party for our friend Angie. The fiesta was up in the hills of Escazú at the home of friends Angie knows from church.

Shortly after the party began, we introduced ourselves to the hosts, David and Laurie. We found out that they are developing houses in our neighborhood, just down the street from here. I told David about the crazy helicopter sighting and asked if he had an idea what was going on.

He had an idea, all right. A really clear idea. Because—as it turns out—David is the helicopter pilot. He was dropping off an employee to work on the construction site in the housing development.

Before we even moved to Costa Rica, we learned in our cultural training and from other Ticos that one has to be very careful not to insult other Costa Ricans or businesses or restaurants, because Costa Rica is a little country, and at times it seems everybody knows (or is related to!) everybody else. Someone is always a friend of a friend, a cousin, a best amigo … I mean really, here we are not even Ticos and it is just such a funny coincidence that we met the helicopter pilot and figured out the connection to his landing in our neighborhood so quickly. In Costa Rica, it really is a small world, after all.

He was pretty amused that I took pictures of his helicopter, too!

¡ Pura coincidencia!

We cast our ballots

2008-09-27T13:34:00.018-06:00

On the heels of the presidential debate in Mississippi, I imagine many Americans are eager to vote and anticipating trips to the polls in November. Not us! Dan and I—along with a mess of other US citizens—voted for the US president today in downtown San José. What a fascinating and unusual experience!

We left home this morning to navigate our way through the crazy SJ traffic and a city without street signs. Our friends the Reidys were close behind us, and we had no problem getting to the parking lot just down from the hotel. (Many thanks to our friend Dustin, who gave us some excellent directions to the Holiday Inn where we voted!)

A group of Americans called Democrats Abroad generously hosted the vote, open to members of all parties.

When we got to the hotel's third floor, where the voting was held, I realized how unusual it was to be in such a large group of Americans here in Costa Rica—most of us clutching passports, US driver licenses, and social security cards. We waited in a short line with our friends until we were able to vote.

There were no polling booths, levers to pull, or hanging chads today. Instead we voted by federal write-in absentee ballot. Inside a conference room were several large, round tables, each seating about eight voters and a couple of facilitators. People entered in shifts as the facilitators helped us vote.

Dan and I began by addressing federally-issued envelopes to the Butler Country Board of Elections in Hamilton, Ohio. Then we had to enter a bunch of personal info and make a voter's declaration/affirmation, stating we are US citizens who may legally vote in the general election.

Finally, we voted, actually writing in the names of our candidates. Someone asked Dan how to spell Palin, while I heard an elderly woman ask for a reminder of Biden's last name. There wasn't really any secrecy to it at all—I could easily look next to me on both sides and see who my neighbors were voting for, but that was OK. It was just such a different experience and I felt very excited about doing something so thoroughly American as voting for our president.

Once everything was filled out I folded my ballot, placed it in a special "security envelope," and sealed it. The sealed security envelope and the voter's declaration/affirmation were then put into another envelope (the one addressed to Hamilton, Ohio) and sealed.

Lastly, Dan and I walked over by the windows to place our envelopes into a box and we were done. Off to the US go our ballots!

The ride home was slow but interesting as Dan drove and I navigated (sort of!) our way down narrow streets cramped with taxis, buses, and crowds of Saturday morning shoppers. I thought I'd include this picture Erin took to show you how close behind us the buses like to be (nearly touching our car, here). Finally we got through the congestion and were on our way to Multiplaza Escazú for some lunch, pleased that we voted and that the girls, once again, were able to see democracy in action and how much we value our right as Americans to vote.

(Of course we didn't let Lauren drive—she is 10 years away from driving legally in Costa Rica, actually, with the driving age being 18—but she thought she was funny getting behind the wheel of our car in the parking lot. Our friend Brendan commented that at age eight, Lauren would probably be a better driver than a lot of people legally driving here in this country. If only she could reach the pedals and see out the windshield at the same time!)

Today bugged me

2008-09-16T21:12:00.008-06:00

This morning I squashed a spider in the family room.

Around lunchtime I had to kill a scorpion in my screened-in patio. I hate scorpions, and this is the sixth one we've had in the house.

At dinner a moth started flying around over the table. I went to shut the door that was propped open for air (the kitchen gets steamy on pizza Tuesday when the oven is at 450 degrees) and found ...

a frog sitting in my shoe (being used to prop the door open). It leapt out and onto the vacuum cleaner. You who know the story of me getting the frog out of the Christmas tree when we lived in Florida will be happy to know that Dan took care of the frog this time (I insisted!).

Just now, when I was turning off the lights to go to bed, there was a beetle by the refrigerator.

I'm hoping I've seen the last of little creatures in my house for a while. Some days are just buggier than others around here!

Día de la independencia

2008-09-15T09:47:00.004-06:00

Today Costa Rica celebrates its independence, and on Friday, Erin and Lauren had an opportunity to wear their traditional Costa Rican clothes to school—full, swirling skirts and beautiful, lightweight blouses. As they did last year, the kids paraded around the school grounds carrying their paper lanterns, sang the national anthem, and participated in a cultural experience important to this country in which we live.

If you're interested in the history of this day and the celebrations it entails, you can read more about Costa Rica's Independence Day in my blog entry from last year: It's Independence Day

Flutter by, butterfly

2008-09-12T08:19:00.019-06:00

At The Butterfly Farm in La Guacima, hundreds of butterflies live in a lush, enclosed tropical garden. This working farm raises nearly 60 species of gorgeous butterflies and is the leading export of live butterfly pupae in the world. Pretty amazing!

The third graders in Lauren's class have been studying the life cycles of living creatures and took a field trip to La Finca de Mariposas to see all stages of a butterfly's life in a natural setting. Of course I volunteered to chaperone again; class field trips here are fantastic.

Learning about the butterflies on this comprehensive tour was really interesting, but the best part of the trip was watching the flying flowers (especially the blue morphos—my favorites!) gracefully dance around us and sometimes even land on us when we were very still.

Words can't describe the beauty of the setting and the butterflies, so I got snap-happy and took a lot of photos. It was hard to choose which to share.

Below, a huge and gorgeous blue morpho landed on my friend Isa's backpack. I have seen many types of butterflies here in Costa Rica, but the morpho is absolutely stunning. A nondescript brown when its wings are folded, it is breathtaking when it opens its wings and takes off in flight.

This butterfly isn't yellow, but almost a neon green. I think it's a Swallowtail.

I love this last photo (above) not only because the tropical foliage is so amazing, but because if you look closely you can see a flash of blue in the middle of the picture—the blue morpho, of course. It's hard to tell, but there were actually butterflies all around in this setting. ¡Pura mariposas!

Mayhem and the museum

2008-09-10T14:33:00.028-06:00

My friend Angie and I headed into San Jose on Monday to one of the city's many museums. The rain started pouring just as we were leaving Escazú, and before we'd gone far we came to a dead stop, right there on the highway. Granted the highway here, known as the pista, can get really congested, but this was in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday, so we knew something was wrong. Sure enough, guys on motos (motorbikes are very common here, always weaving in and out of traffic) headed toward us, motioning that everyone had to turn around—as in, we were all going to face oncoming traffic and go the wrong way on the pista. We knew if these guys on motos couldn't get through, nobody was getting through.

Of course there wasn't a traffic cop in sight, so in a completely haphazard way, all the drivers just started bullying their way around the two lanes to head toward the nearest exit.

Angie deftly manuevered her car around. I was impressed with her staying cool under pressure, and soon we joined three other "lanes" of traffic trying to get onto a one-way exit that would take us into San Jose. If the weather had been clearer I would have had some excellent photos, but this was the best I could do in the rain.

We later learned that severe wind gusts knocked a bunch of trees across the road, causing the chaos. Turning around, driving the wrong way on one of the busiest, biggest highways in the country ... it was weird, but honestly, Angie and I both agreed that sometimes this stuff doesn't faze us so much anymore. The unusual is usual, the surreal is real, and traveling in this country is always an adventure!

Not to be deterred, we made it to the museum (some might consider this a feat in itself considering the lack of road maps and street signs) without further incident. We visited the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (Museum of Contemporary Art and Design) to see the World Press Photo exhibit. The museum is housed along with a theater in the Centro Nacional de la Cultura (CENAC—National Center of Culture) building which, interestingly enough, used to be the national liquor factory.

I wish I had better pictures to show you of San Jose, but I only took a few since we just wanted to get out of the rain. The museum is across from the beautiful Parque España (Park of Spain). This spot of land is densely packed with oodles of amazing trees transplanted from all across Costa Rica. (The massive one in the photo is right across from the entrance to CENAC.) We also saw a bust of Queen Isabella of Castile and an unusual tiled guardhouse on the corner.

We entered the museum through the back entrance which doesn't look quite as grand as the front (but was closer to our parking spot).

Across the street from the park is the Casa Amarilla (Yellow House), which used to be in Cartago (the previous capital of Costa Rica) until it was destroyed in an earthquake. It was then rebuilt in SJ in 1912 and is home of Costa Rica's foreign ministry. It's a national monument, and we wanted to go inside to see the interior but it was closed. You can see on the edge of the photo, left-hand side, a huge Ceiba tree which was planted in 1963 by John F. Kennedy and the presidents of all the Central American countries.

Lastly, we couldn't help but notice banners and flags flying from buildings all across the city. September 15 is Independence Day here in Costa Rica, and the Ticos love to show their national pride.

Good day, sunshine

2008-09-08T21:03:00.008-06:00

Things in the central valley are very wet, humid, and cloudy now; rainy season is in full swing. After days and days of overcast skies and buckets of rain, we woke Sunday to an absolutely gorgeous morning. Dan and I went for a walk around the neighborhood, and the vibrant colors and warm sun were energizing. I even took a few pictures because everything looked so beautiful. Enjoy!

Una orquídea

2008-09-06T07:48:00.001-06:00

The orchid is the national flower of Costa Rica. Dan bought a beautiful purple orchid for me to celebrate our anniversary.

On the mooooove

2008-08-31T14:56:00.011-06:00

Today after church we went to eat at a restaurant called Spoon—a great spot for lunch because it offers a bit of everything, including some good sandwiches and fruity drinks.

The restaurant is in Centro Comercial Momentum, an upscale shopping center that sits just off Via Lindora, by far one of the most congested streets in Santa Ana. Traffic on this road is always heavy and seemingly getting worse by the day.

As we were finishing our lunch, Erin—who faced the window looking out onto the parking area and Via Lindora—exclaimed animatedly, “A loose cow!”

I spun around and didn’t see anything, and as I returned to face Erin she again urged us to look. I did, and there it was. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I saw the skinny, Brahma cow making its way alone down this busy commercial road.

Now it’s not unusual for us to see dogs, chickens, horses, cows, and oxen around here, sometimes even on the streets. I see them quite often on the mountain road to the girls’ school, and a few months ago my friend and I saw a cow grazing at the bank on a very busy corner in Escazú. But to see this cow hurrying down Lindora was definitely not the norm and caught everyone’s attention. “Se escapó” (he escaped), noted our waitress, grinning, as all of us in the restaurant laughed at the poor cow.

And yet, not a minute later, came a couple more cows, soon followed by more cows—some of them literally running down the side of this road, cars and trucks passing them on the left. There was no farmer in sight.

Dan ran out to take a picture and then, after our bill was paid, we ventured around the corner to find the cows wandering into a lot across the street. They gathered there briefly, as if they were discussing where to go next, and then the leader headed off down a gravel road and the others followed. There were 14 cows in all.

I’m so glad I had my little camera in my bag so we could capture this moment. These are the unusual yet somehow typically Costa Rican-type things that make daily living here so memorable.

Fud for thought

2008-08-25T17:06:00.012-06:00

My all-time favorite Far Side cartoon is the one in which a dog is trying to lure a cat into a clothes dryer by enticing him with paw-lettered signs and arrows leading to "cat fud." The desperate dog is silently pleading for the cat to fall prey to his wily plan.

I've loved this particular cartoon for years. Whenever I see a commercial for cat food I am really thinking "cat fud" instead. It's just funny.

Now you can imagine that I have to suppress a laugh whenever I walk past the cold cuts at the supermarket and see this brand of turkey breast:

In Spanish, "fud" is pronounced—yes, you've guessed it—"food." It seems like a large-scale typo right there for everyone to see. It's as though someone thought "food" would be a good name for lunchmeat and then spelled it wrong, and nobody called him or her on it.

In addition to the laugh I get when I read the Fud labels, I have this mental image of the Far Side dog sitting behind the CEO desk of his own Fud company, concocting new ways to unleash evil on unsuspecting cats everywhere.

Incidentally, Fud also makes flaming pink snack sausages that look completely unappetizing to me. Maybe the Far Side dog likes them. Ack!

A change in calling Costa Rica

2008-08-24T07:49:00.004-06:00

When we first moved here we had a seven-digit phone number. We learned that all phone numbers beginning with three, eight, or nine were cell phone numbers; anything else was a landline.

A few months ago, ICE (the government-owned phone company that has yet to install a landline in our house) announced that there was an insufficient number of phone lines to accommodate the country’s population of about 4.5 million people, and that instead of adding additional area codes (there is only one serving the nation), all phone numbers would go to eight digits. Rumor has it that this change will increase Costa Rica’s phone number capacity to 20 million phone lines, so the change oughta last a while.

To call a cell phone, one must now dial an eight first; all landline numbers are preceded by a two.

I had to edit all the numbers stored in my cell phone, which really wasn't that big of a deal, especially compared what those with commercial numbers likely had to change. I’ve seen instances where companies have squeezed in that eighth number on business cards, stationery, billboards, and signs. It’s kinda funny seeing it painted, penciled, and pasted in front of the other seven numbers.

The conversion seemed rather smooth. Now if I could just get my landline, I’d be happy to share my new eight-digit number with everyone!

Only 132 shopping days until Christmas

2008-08-19T09:10:00.008-06:00

Last September I mentioned how we saw Christmas candy on store shelves—and how this surprised us, seeing as it was only, well, September.

I would be remiss if I neglected to mention that our family went to Pricesmart last Saturday, August 16, and couldn't believe our eyes when we saw prominent displays of holiday decorations. Christmas trees in mid-August (and who knows how long they've been up)! I smiled and rolled my eyes as I passed the trees and continued down an aisle, but Erin followed me laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes, and Dan was amused too. Rumor has it that as they walked by these tall trees adorned with sparkling lights and gaudy ornaments, a young boy happily passed them singing Jingle Bells.

Pass the egg nog!

Our first year

2008-08-17T16:34:00.001-06:00

Today marks a milestone for our family: it was a year ago that we left Ohio for more tropical spaces. It's almost hard to believe an entire year has passed since that day.

To celebrate, we went to Pane e Vino—a favorite Italian place and the first restaurant we ate at as a family here in Costa Rica. As we devoured our pizza, we reminisced about our first day here: how excited, nervous, happy, exhausted, and hungry we were in those first hours. (And perhaps even just a bit overwhelmed with it all!)

Dan and I have also been talking about how much pressure we feel to keep traveling now that our time here is getting shorter. We've already done and seen so much—much more than appears in my blog—but there is plenty left that we want to do and see. We have learned a lot about ourselves and the world during these first twelve months. I look forward to seeing what the coming year has in store for our family.

I want my NBC

2008-08-11T09:45:00.007-06:00

One of my favorite slang terms in Spanish is "estamos fritos," which means—literally—we're fried. The translated saying means we're out of luck. We're hosed.

So here we are in Costa Rica, greatly anticipating two weeks of glorious Olympics watching. Swimming! Gymnastics! Track and field! But when we turned on the TV to begin days of sports viewing we got a polite little note from our Costa Rican cable company that our NBC feed out of Denver was being blacked out. For two weeks. No games. ¡Estamos fritos!

I know you're wondering about Costa Rican TV. I mean, we can watch in Spanish, right?

You'll have to take my word for it when I tell you that Olympic coverage in this country is spotty and at times nearly non-existent. It is enough to make a girl cry.

Dan immediately began scrambling around with the computer, desperate to find some way for us to get video. Through a convoluted series of riggings made more difficult by our being in Costa Rica, he has finagled a connection from his laptop to our projector TV, and at night we are watching bits and pieces of the games on the wall in our office. I've been lying on the floor atop a sleeping bag and pillows, and Dan sits on the office chair to watch. Sometimes the girls come in with beanbags or pillows and join us.

We can't watch any video until NBC posts it (and of course that is delayed until the footage has aired on the network), and even then it's not the best quality and certainly not even close to HD. It's really sad.

Many of you know we’re huge swimming fans, and it's hard for us to wait until tonight to watch the men's 4x100 relay, which looks to be one of the greatest moments in US Olympic history. NBC is pulling its broadcasts off youtube, so this morning Dan and I—in sheer desperation after hearing about the mind-blowing anchor swim by Lezak—watched a video on youtube of the relay from a television station in Brazil. We can understand just enough Portuguese to get the idea of what the announcers are saying—and they were actually very animated—and in between Portuguese we kept hearing "Michael Phelps!" I got my first goose bumps of the games watching Lezak’s thrilling comeback. Now I'm aching to see it in English and am hoping for post-relay interviews and (dare I wish it?!) a medal ceremony.

I miss Bob Costas and his end-of-the-day synopses. I miss the tear-jerking and sometimes cheesy stories about athletes who have experienced the hard knocks of life. I miss the segments about China and how it prepared for the games, the Olympic theme, the medal ceremonies, hearing my national anthem, the interviews with athletes. I might even miss the commercials. I want my Olympics!

We waited four years for this? Estamos fritos, indeed.

Goodbye, Wisconsin

2008-08-09T09:36:00.023-06:00

Five weeks in Wisconsin. Wow, what an amazing vacation!

There are so many memories already flooding my mind as I realize how much I didn't blog about: my 20-year high school class reunion (fantastic!), our picnic at the park to see the American Queen riverboat with stacks so tall they lower them to travel under the Mississippi's bridges, the girls' sleepover at their aunt and uncle's house, family cribbage tournaments, numerous trips to the library (books in English!), an adults-only dinner at a great little Italian restaurant with my brother and sister-in-law, more shopping than I dare to admit, golf cart rides, early night drives through the beautiful bluffs in the convertible, watching deer run and leap back in the coulee, swimming at the local pool, eating homemade ice cream at Ranison's ... what a time!

Yet nothing could be more special than spending this extended vacation with my mom and dad, and for the girls to fully experience a Wisconsin summer. It's hard to convey the joy it brings me that my daughters know and love the state that is always home for Dan and me, and that it is truly another home for them, too. Saying goodbye on Wednesday at the Milwaukee airport was really difficult for us all. I am so grateful knowing we had this unique opportunity, yet sad that it has ended and will likely never come again. What a great bunch of memories we all made!

Thanks again to Mom, Dad, John and Shannon for letting us share your lives and homes for the past five weeks. It was an experience we truly cherish.

An underground adventure

2008-08-07T08:57:00.000-06:00

There isn't much that could get my family to don jeans and sweatshirts on the first day of August in the Midwest, yet we did on a trip to Harmony, Minnesota, where we explored Niagara Cave. Whether the temps are sweltering or freezing, this cave is a constant 48 degrees all year—a nice change in the summer!

My parents, the girls, and I traveled to this sprawling, natural limestone cave—rated one of the top ten in the country—and took an interesting one-hour tour. The girls led the group with the guide (Lauren was nearly holding his hand) as we navigated hundreds of stairs into the cave's depths and saw a stalactite room, calcite flowstone, an echo chamber (very cool!), and ancient fossils. There was an active stream in the cave and a 130-foot rock-vaulted dome with a 60-foot waterfall that we saw from a bridge high above the floor of the cave. (Admittedly I did not last long on this bridge; my fear of heights is alive and well.)

After our tour of the cave we drove across the Minnesota/Iowa border for a quick peek at cornfields (and to add a state to the girls' list) and then headed back into Harmony. Traveling in this part of southeast Minnesota is a bit like stepping back in time; we saw pretty little towns and farms amidst green, rolling hills. The charming downtowns sport bed-and-breakfasts, unique gift shops, and cafes that tout hearty dishes and homemade pies (we had a delicious lunch—pie included—in Harmony). Additionally, the county is home to the state's largest Amish population. We saw several Old Order Amish families traveling by horse-drawn buggies and a few Amish people in town as well.

We drove through the Root River Valley on the way home and saw plenty of people tubing through the water that cuts through the bluffs. Oh, and I can't forget to mention that we stopped at the Aroma Pie Shop in tiny Whalan, Minnesota (population 64) to pick up a homemade caramel apple pie we took back to Wisconsin. Yum!

Move over, John Deere

2008-07-28T20:24:00.007-06:00

Erin drove solo for the first time this weekend; she took Grandpa's riding mower for a few slow spins around the driveway by herself and did a great job. Only five more years 'til you get your license, Kid!

Lauren couldn't reach the pedals alone, so she had help—but make no mistake, she was extremely focused on the task at hand.

I'm pleased to report that everybody (and everything!) survived the test drives. Dan and I will have to pull these pictures out some summer day a few years from now when the grass is long ... "Sure you can mow the lawn, Erin. You used to think it was fun, remember?!"

A waterful day at Noah's Ark

2008-07-24T13:31:00.014-06:00

With only sun in the forecast and temperatures at a comfortable 80 degrees, our family decided to take it outdoors to Noah's Ark—America's largest water park.

My dad, brother, Erin, Lauren, and I road tripped to the Wisconsin Dells (about 80 miles from here) yesterday morning and staked our claim on two lounge chairs that merely served to hold our towels and shade our bags. We didn't waste any time getting our feet wet on our first attraction—Black Anaconda, the biggest watercoaster I've ever seen. It was amazing!

We spent the next eight hours at this awesome park that boasts 49 waterslides, a 4D "dive-in" theater (featuring SpongeBob—who else?—and plenty of special effects), huge wave pools, big tube rides, and the list goes on. I wish I could have taken tons of pictures because we had such a terrific time, but who wants to carry a camera around a water park? That said, I did take one shot of the girls in front of one of the wave pools when we first arrived. See how dry they are?

My favorite ride was Time Warp, billed as the country's largest bowl ride. John, the girls, and I climbed into a four-person, clover-shaped tube and descended into a steep, black tunnel that took a great drop. Centrifugal force then took over as we swirled around the strobe light-filled bowl and finally slid into the pool below. Erin screamed through the whole thing ("Mom!!") and it was a great rush.

Another favorite was The Plunge: side by side vertical-drop slides that you fly down head first. John and I got a little air on these at one point, though the girls (who weigh so much less!) didn't go quite as far or as fast as we did.

When we really wanted to get wet, an activity area had an eight-foot bucket that spills 800 gallons of water at once and has a 25-foot splash zone. The huge spray soaked us and was great, yet paled in comparison to the drenching we received standing on the bridge over the Flash Flood—a giant boat holding 20 people that takes a 50-foot drop into a pool, creating a massive wall of water 40 feet high. Talk about wet!

We left in time for a late supper at Culver's and by the time we got home the kids were completely exhausted. They konked out almost as soon as their heads hit their pillows, and Dad and I weren't far behind. All that sun and water really made for a memorable day and a highlight of our summer.

A country carnival

2008-07-19T20:51:00.017-06:00

It's not often my girls get to stand on the steps of a giant tractor, but here they are doing just that at the Interstate Fair in West Salem, Wisconsin. It has occured to me during our vacation that Lauren would make an excellent farm kid; she loves animals, playing outside, and isn't averse to getting dirty!

The fair is just a few miles from my parents' house, and we headed over after supper when the temperatures had cooled. We began by traipsing through several barns filled with cows, pigs, horses, chickens, rabbits, and (yes, Lauren was in heaven!) ducks. Many of the animals were judged as 4-H exhibits and had ribbons attached to their stalls and pens. We saw a few spring calves born last March and a bevy of oinkers with names such as Porkchop, Hammy, and even Austin Powers. I love their curly tails, and they all looked so fat and happy.

Dad and I watched the girls whirl about on carnival rides and then we walked around and looked at everything all lit up while the kids indulged in sticky wads of pink and blue cotton candy. None of us had batter-fried cheese curds (though we've certainly had them since arriving in America's Dairyland), but they definitely did smell enticing when I walked by the cheese curd vendor. Mmmmmmm! A sure sign of an authentic Wisconsin country fair!

Big mall = big fun

2008-07-16T12:16:00.019-06:00

What do eight hours at America's largest mall get our family (other than really tired!)? How about marathon shopping, plenty of eating, and a whole lot of twisting, turning and laughing at Nickelodeon Universe, the mall's indoor amusement park?

Yesterday morning, Erin, Lauren, my parents, and I traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota—home to the sprawling Mall of America. The girls knew this is the biggest mall in the nation, but they had no idea how big it really is! For the uninitiated, the Mall of America has more than 520 stores, 20 sit-down restaurants, 30 fast food restaurants, 14 movie screens, and 40 escalators. You could fit seven Yankee Stadiums inside the mall or 32 Boeing 747s. Whew! We didn't even come close to walking through the entire mall, instead opting to target select stores for items on our wish lists.

As much as we enjoyed browsing store aisles and finding bargains, the highlight of the day was undoubtedly Nickelodeon Universe, the largest indoor family theme park in the United States (seven acres with more than 30 rides and attractions—and not just wimpy stuff, but some wild rides for the daring, too). We didn't tell the girls about the park before we arrived, so they were completely shocked to see roller coaster tracks and a ferris wheel soaring to the high glass ceiling. They each got an unlimited ride wristband and we alternated between shopping and riding the entire day. Both agree that the best ride was the Orange Streak, a long coaster that traveled through the entire park.

It's about 2.5 hours of driving between the Mall of America and my parents' house in Wisconsin, and we got home just after 11:30 last night. Everybody slept in a bit this morning, and today—when temps are supposed to hit a sweltering 93 degrees—we girls are opting to stay home in the AC, do a little cooking and reading, and just chill out. A day at this mall requires recovery time, too!

Double unos for the birthday girl

2008-07-06T07:41:00.012-06:00

Happy 11th birthday to Erin!

What girl wouldn't love two celebrations for her birthday? Since Dan couldn't be with us on July 5, we had Erin's "Costa Rica birthday" last week and her real party yesterday.

Erin has asked to have her ears pierced since she first stepped foot in Costa Rica. It's a cultural norm for Tica babies to have earrings since infancy, and Erin was the only girl in her class with naked ears (perhaps in the entire fourth grade!). We decided to surprise her on her CR birthday with earrings.

The only place we found to pierce ears is an upscale jewelry store at the large mall, Multiplaza. When we arrived at the mall, I pretended as though I wanted to look at something in the store for myself (don't I wish—they had Cartier, Tiffany... but I digress. Oh, and it's worth mentioning that high-end shops like this are not open to just walk in—one has to go through a door that is guarded like Ft. Knox.)

I had arranged the surprise with the sales staff the day before, so they had the starter earrings ready, and I waited a minute to give Erin the impression I was actually shopping. I returned to the mall and begged Dan to come see the earrings I liked. I asked Erin which color she thought I should buy and then if maybe she'd try them in her ears. She looked at me quizzically, not understanding, and when I suggested we have her ears pierced, her face turned bright red and her jaw dropped. It was a perfect surprise!

The piercing was uneventful, other than Lauren commenting, "They're going to shoot a hole in her ear with that gun?" and soon Erin was the owner of pretty new earrings. She wore them to dinner at La Fabbrica that night where she enjoyed her own caprese salad and a margherita pizza. It was a great birthday in Ticalandia!

Enter July 5, Erin's actual birthday. The house was decorated with streamers, balloons, and a big Happy Birthday sign. We went for a ride with Grandpa in the convertible, shopped at Barnes & Noble (all those books—in English!), and met up with Grandma for lunch at Panera.

Later, we had a party here at my parents' house. The girls rode up and down the golf course in a cart with Uncle John and Aunt Shannon, did sparklers in the yard and snaps in the driveway, and we all enjoyed grilled brats and cheeseburgers, with cake and ice cream for dessert.

The highlight of Erin's birthday bash was the huge mess of fireworks my brother shot off behind the house. No ordinary fireworks, these were purchased from a guy my dad knows who does fireworks shows. They are some big shots and, unlike one would do in Costa Rica, my dad had to get a permit from the sheriff to shoot them off. This is a family tradition—the third time we've watched our own wild fireworks display—and the best way to end a birthday with a bang!

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Kid!

This is my country

2008-07-04T23:59:00.007-06:00

"My soul is rooted deeply in the soil on which I stand, for these are mine, my own United States!" — Don Raye

I might normally use this blog to detail our family's celebration of the 4th of July. To tell you about Riverfest, held in a spacious park along the muddy Mississippi. To mention noshing on a long-awaited supper of Taco John's soft shells and batter-fried cheese curds. To regale of the girls' flying through the air on bungee cords. And best of all, to note how much I loved spending the holiday with my daughters, parents, brother and sister-in-law (and how I missed my own husband, too!).

But plans changed after the evening's grand finale. As spectacular fireworks burst before my eyes, I found myself—a bit unexpectedly—brushing tears from my cheeks as my heart swelled with an uncontrollable pride for being here in the United States. And that's what I feel led to journal now.

Having lived away from my native land for many months, I can see with more clarity both America's faults and merits. Yet while patriotic music accompanied the thunderous explosions overhead, our nation's shortcomings were far from my mind—because I know without a doubt that America is a most amazing, beautiful, and blessed nation. How fortunate I am to spend July 4th in my lovely America. There is so much I adore about traveling abroad, so much to treasure about our adopted home of Costa Rica—but the United States? I cherish her, I love her, and I am so proud to be an American.

Happy Independence Day!

A berry good day

2008-07-03T22:00:00.000-06:00

My dad has a reputation in our family for his sweet tooth, and no dessert makes him happier than my mom's homemade shortcake smothered in juicy strawberies fresh from a local farm here in Wisconsin. We all love it, truth be told, so this morning Mom, the girls and I went to pick some berries in anticipation of having shortcake after dinner.

The girls had never picked strawberries, so this was a new and fun experience for them. We went to Jolivette Family Farms, best known in the area for berries, sweet corn, and its pumpkin patch. The weather was gorgeous—sunny and 70 degrees with low humidity—which was perfect for being in the field.

I'm not sure how long we picked, but Mom and I appreciated the girls' help; I think it's a lot easier to pick for kids who are naturally closer to the ground! They really enjoyed finding the biggest berries and those that had grown into "triple berries." A nice lady a few rows over even found a "quintuple strawberry" whose five berry sections looked like flower petals, and she gave it to Erin and Lauren.

Once we'd each filled our flats about halfway we decided to head in. I think the girls would have picked longer, but they didn't have to clean all the berries! We rode back to the roadside stand on a big wagon behind a tractor. Then the girls helped Mom and I get our berries on the belt to be weighed; I don't know how many pounds we picked, but I do know that it took us a long time to clean them, and my nails are still a bit stained with berry juice.

We made shortcake after supper tonight and oh, was it good! There are lots of berries left (bunches of them in the freezer) and we'll have shortcake again tomorrow, too. Dad's not the only one happy about dessert!

So long, farewell …

2008-06-30T08:08:00.005-06:00

These past few weeks, our family has been living a series of goodbyes. The farewells began on the last day of school—a trying time because many kids won’t be returning next year, and so some of the goodbyes were forever. I picked the girls up from their final classes and saw a friend (now living in Mexico) walk by with tears in her eyes as she helped her kids leave their school of the last three years. I know I’ll be the same when we leave CDS.

The next day, friends of ours flew to Spain for the entire summer, soon followed by many other families that we have come to care about. This is a difficult aspect of living abroad: there is a cycle of comings and goings, reminiscent for Dan and me of his years spent in the Navy.

We attended a great farewell bash for three families whose company we enjoy tremendously. There were plenty of stories, lots of food, tears over videos made for each family, and loads of laughter and joy (particularly when the mariachi band came to play). Now they’re off to other adventures—new homes, travels, and more memories to make.

Meanwhile, it’s normal for many expat families to leave the country for the rainy season, and our friends who are traveling out of Costa Rica for the summer are now gone. We are among the last to remain, until tomorrow morning when the girls and I hop a plane to Wisconsin.

While the separating can be heartbreaking, I know I am blessed for having met these amazing people and sharing our Costa Rican experience with them; and I’m fortunate to know that in August, a lot of our friends will return to this beautiful country, and we’ll have fun telling each other tales about our time away.

Until then, we’re loading the suitcases and excited to go on one of our favorite vacations: a summer in Wisconsin. We’ll check back in from our home away from home.

Now … back to packing!

Where no badger has gone before …

2008-06-28T15:36:00.011-06:00

Costa Rica holds a lot of surprises for our family, but today's was truly unexpected. I went to look out the window after hearing a massive boom of thunder and saw a big, white truck with the Badger Popcorn logo on the side. I started yelling for Dan to run to the window, and soon we were all hooting and hollering as the Bucky truck drove by. It was bizarre seeing the World's Best Badger so out of context!

Bucky in Costa Rica! Yeeehaa! (If only he'd brought us some cheese!)

Blasts from the past

2008-06-26T12:21:00.016-06:00

You know what’s utterly groovy and totally awesome for this music-loving American who grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Only two of my favorite radio stations ever—Radio Dos and Best FM—found on the airwaves of beautiful Costa Rica!

Sprinkled with bits of news—sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English—these two gems are all about the songs of Generation X. What most interests me is that the people who choose the play lists for these stations definitely have favorites, and sometimes they are obscure or just unusual choices to air repeatedly. Months ago I started listing tunes that I hear a lot—many of which I hadn’t heard for years previously.

This list is by no means inclusive, but here are the songs that have stuck in my mind long enough and often enough to make it from brain to blog. And note that I hear a real variety of Heart, Duran Duran, and Survivor—the tunes listed are just those I hear most often.

Alan Parsons Project: Time
Andy Gibb: Shadow Dancing
Bee Gees: Night Fever
The Carpenters: Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (how weird is this song, anyway?)
Duran Duran: Ordinary World
George Michael: Monkey
Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street
Glen Campbell: Rhinestone Cowboy (always wish I could call Dad on the cell when I hear this in the car)
Golden Earring: Twilight Zone
Heart: Alone
Lionel Richie: All Night Long
Martika: Toy Soldiers
Musical Youth: Pass the Dutchie (on the left-hand side)
Paper Lace: The Night Chicago Died and Billy Don’t Be a Hero (I had to mention both)
Pet Shop Boys: West End Girls (Erin loves this song!)
Sniff’n the Tears: Driver’s Seat (I love this song!)
Survivor: Burning Heart

... and deserving their own mention:

Terry Jacks: Seasons in the Sun: I’ve heard this a dozen times here in CR; before this, I'd probably not heard it since 1978. Erin says "Mom, it's so sad!” and I must admit, I still find it’s as tear-jerking as it was when I listened to it on my friend Lori’s record player back in third grade.

Culture Club: I’m sure I’ve heard every Culture Club song ever made popular in the US and then some while here in Costa Rica. I'm still trying to figure out the deal with Ticos and Boy George. I’ve heard The Crying Game too, more times than I can recall (including just a couple of hours ago on the way home from the grocery store). Oh, and I once saw a CC video/movie on TV here. It’s weird.

The good news is that in addition to these curious choices for repeated play, I still get plenty of pop rock: U2, Foreigner, Van Halen, the Stones, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard (love them!), Scorpions, Poison ... it's not all Carpenters, thank goodness!

Wanna listen to these totally terrific tunes for yourself? You can get live, streaming audio for 99.5 Radio Dos and 103.5 Best FM online by clicking the links. Which really makes me happy, because I like knowing I can enjoy these cool stations even when I’m back in the Queen City.

P is for chicken

2008-06-20T07:37:00.006-06:00

Yesterday was a good day and a busy day: laundry, gym, going to the pool which doubled as a study session (my neighbor is learning Spanish and had a big test yesterday so I quizzed her), lunch at our friends' house, etc.

Lauren and I got home at 2:00, and around 3:00—sometime between washing beach towels and checking email—I realized I hadn't put the chicken for dinner in the oven to roast. I ran to the kitchen, pulled the chicken from the fridge, and turned on the oven.

Not sure exactly how much time I needed to roast a 2 kilo chicken (hey, at least I didn't have to look up the conversion to pounds—just over 4, by the way—so hurray for me!), I whipped out my old Betty Crocker cookbook and quickly flipped to the index. To the P section. You know, where words start with the letter P.

I was in a hurry. I was scanning at top speed. P, p, p ... c'mon, where are the entries for chicken?! I wasn't looking up poultry here, I was looking for chicken. Chicken!

Because chicken starts with a P, you know. As in pollo. As in Spanish for chicken.

Some days, the languages just get all mixed up in my brain and I’ve gotta laugh.

¡Pura pollo!

The Rain Forest Café

2008-06-18T08:28:00.008-06:00

Parents of CDS second graders need look no further than their child’s classroom for a unique, memorable, and really fun dining experience. The Rain Forest Café, a yearly tradition for seven- and eight-year-olds, is a favorite activity of CDS families and certainly not your typical school lunch. Lucky us that we have a second grader!

The kids prepared for the café for several weeks. Lauren’s classroom was decorated like a lush, tropical rain forest, complete with a waterfall, twisting vines and branches hanging from the ceiling, plenty of colorful animals and insects, and beautiful leaves and flowers. We even saw a few iridescent hummingbirds outside the window which often enjoy the bougainvillea on the fence bordering the school.

As part of the preparations, each student studied a particular rain forest animal and wrote a detailed report about it, including illustrations and interesting facts. Lauren chose the squirrel monkey—my very favorite creature here in Costa Rica and, I think, a suitable choice for Lauren.

After the kids had been working on this project for nearly a month, Dan and I received a lovely invitation printed on homemade paper to come to the school for a special brunch served at the café. And special it was!

When we arrived, the kids were dressed as little waiters and waitresses, decked out in green aprons embroidered with “rain forest café” (what great keepsakes). Our personal waitress (guess who!) gave us $10 in rain forest money, led us to a table in the corner, and offered us a beautiful, hand-drawn menu.

The menu of 19 items included a variety of beverages, breads and muffins, fruit, main dishes, and sweets, all at reasonable prices, of course. An example of the offerings:

Rain forest mud (coffee)
Margay spot muffins
Morpho bread (banana bread)
Flying mangoes
Red eye tree frog sushi
Ocelots’ dinner (rice with palmito)
Scarlet macaw sandwiches
Piranha brownies
Jaguar spots (cookies)

Dan and I placed our order with our sweet server and she scribbled everything down on her tablet. Before she left to total our order, we had a chance to ask her questions about squirrel monkeys—because the tag on her shirt said she is an expert! Did you know that the squirrel monkeys' tails are the longest of all the monkeys’ tails? Or that squirrel monkeys give birth during the rainy season? Our server did (and now we do too)!

Our food was truly a meal's worth (especially the howler monkey pizza). Of course we asked to see the manager (Lauren’s friend Isabel—the capuchin monkey expert—who just happened to be turning eight that day) to give her our compliments. We learned she was made manager because she had the highest score on the math test and was best at helping her classmates make change with the rain forest money.

We made sure to ask plenty of questions of the girls about the rain forest, including whether the girls had their monkey tails hidden in their pants because we’re certain that secretly they are monkeys themselves. That sufficiently embarrassed them, making Dan and me feel pretty good about our parenting skills.

At the end of our meal, we tipped (with real colones this time!) our server and the café manager, and they gleefully wandered off, giggling about their tip and our teasing.

Finally we left this special café, so tickled with it all. The best part is that all Lauren has learned about the rain forest is applicable to her life here—and she has experienced it for herself. This tiny Central American country is one of the most bio-diverse regions on the planet, a home for some 10,000 species of plants and trees. We have seen and heard the squirrel, capuchin, spider, and howler monkeys in their natural habitats. The three-toed and two-toed sloths are not strangers to us. Agoutis, coatis, bats, scarlet macaws, morpho butterflies, crocodiles, the rare silky anteater, and a plethora of lizards, birds, and bugs—we’ve seen these rain forest creatures (and more!) living in the wild. It’s an opportunity hard to match and a learning experience that extends far beyond the classroom. We are living an amazing adventure!

Tag … I’m it!

2008-06-12T06:16:00.017-06:00

I blog to journal our experiences in Costa Rica and so family and friends can see what we’re up to. (Admittedly it’s easier than sending individual emails to everyone who’s interested in our adventures; I hope nobody minds!) While I haven’t ventured far into the blogosphere—no aspirations of winning bloggy awards!—today my journal was recognized by a friend with a “tag.” I’m it!

So part of the game is to answer five questions and then link to someone else’s blog. In a detour from my typical tico-related entries, I’m playing tag today. Here goes:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was anticipating the first birthday of my first baby and spending time with Dan, Erin, and our friends in Washington—enjoying the sun which was finally making regular appearances after a long winter and spring of rain. I suppose we were also getting ready for our move from the beautiful Evergreen State back to the Midwest.

2. What 5 things are on my to-do list?

Bake 30 muffins for the girls’ last day of school.

Finish creating scrapbook entries for three friends leaving CR soon. (Sob!)

Start my packing list for our summer vacation.

Laundry (I think this is on just about every list I’ve seen thus far).

Organize my desk.

3. What snacks do I enjoy?
Just about anything with cheese, chocolate chip cookies, veggies and dip, lime 'n chili almonds (Dan brings these back from the US for me and I'm addicted!), popcorn … I'm not too picky!

4. What things would I do if I were a millionaire?
Assuming this is a tax-free million to play with ... Invest, pay off our mortgage (if we had one—we don’t at the moment), drop a bundle into the girls’ college funds, donate, buy a few frivolous things, and travel, travel, travel!! And then travel! Think I can do all that for a million?

5. Where have I lived? (OK, here goes!)

San Jose, California

La Crosse, Wisconsin

Onalaska, Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin

Guadalajara, Mexico (studied there one summer—does that count?)

Athens, Georgia

Jacksonville, Florida

Mayport, Florida

Everett, Washington

Loveland, Ohio

Liberty Township, Ohio

Santa Ana, Costa Rica

Now I have to tag someone, so I’m going to choose my new-to-blogging friend Lori. This will give her an easy entry to write! Have fun!

She’ll get you—and your little dog, too!

2008-06-10T05:51:00.010-06:00

Who’s lean and mean and green all over? That’s Erin, our resident actress and Country Day’s answer to the Wicked Witch of the West in the elementary school play, The Wizard of Oz.

Erin joined drama club at the start of the year and fell in love with acting. Led by Mr. Large—the best principal ever—the club learned a lot about the theater and being on stage. For months they’ve been rehearsing the Wiz of Oz for their late May performance.

We recently went to the show, just over an hour long, and it was good entertainment. Erin was a very animated witch, and everyone in the auditorium got a kick out of her evil laugh. (Admittedly, she has practiced this at home for years—I always thought it was a bit “mad scientist-like” but it worked great for this role too.)

Our favorite scene is when Dorothy and her friends throw water on the witch and she “melts” into a puddle. I think our drama queen really rose to the occasion: “What a world, what a world!” Enjoy the video of her demise. I think you’ll agree Erin must be one Oz’s tallest witches ever! (By the way, if you listen carefully, you can hear Lauren ask at the very end of the clip—a bit gleefully—“Did she die?!”)

After the play and much well-deserved applause, the kids streamed off the stage for the cast party (aka wild food fest). At one point I saw floppy Scarecrow’s plate held several cookies, a massive brownie, and one lonely cucumber; gotta wonder the fate of that little cuke slice.

¡Pura teatro!

That flu-like feeling

2008-06-05T08:17:00.003-06:00

Today I'm offering a shout out to P&G for NyQuil. Thank you, Vicks people, for this wonderful concoction.

For years our family has had a running joke that when Dan travels internationally, somebody gets sick. He left for Cincinnati on Monday, and by Monday night I was feeling completely miserable with the flu. Ugh! It's unfortunate for it to be this week because my schedule has been cram-packed with end-of-the-school-year stuff. Yesterday I felt lousy enough that I missed Lauren's assembly and dropped Erin off at the fourth grade state fair last night only to leave minutes later. Really a bummer because the state fair is great—with a play, music, food, and interesting booths—and I wound up in bed with a fever, chills … you know the drill.

Truth be told, our family has been very healthy here in comparison to in the United States. Erin, who normally misses at least a few days of school a year due to colds and sore throats, has (knock on wood!) a perfect attendance record this school year with only five days remaining. The only cold she had last winter developed on the plane to the US in December.

Lauren has had one ear infection and missed an additional day of school when we thought she might have the chicken pox and I had to take her to the doctor. (She didn't—it was some unspecified allergic reaction that looked like pox but disappeared with allergy meds. My friend calls these unidentifiable rashes “jungle rot.”) Oh, and my Spanish-speaking friends are trying to understand what the “chicken” has to do with the “pox.” Lots of fun explaining that one.

Dan and I have done really well.* This is the first flu to hit any of us here, I think.

My theory as to why we have been so much healthier in Costa Rica is that we are not breathing re-circulated air each day. The air isn't hot and dry as it is in Ohio during winter. We don't have everything shut tightly with the AC running in the summer. Everything here is open to the outside—our house, the schools, shops, the gym, restaurants—there is always fresh air flowing throughout buildings.

The best news is that Dan escaped the tornadoes in Cincinnati (I hope all of you there are safe and healthy!) and called me from Atlanta about an hour ago. He’s on his way home and will be here by mid-afternoon. Ah … it’s never easy being sick as a mom, but it’s a lot easier when my honey is here to help take care of me and bring me tea.

Now back to bed!

*Dan just read the blog and reminded me that he had a terrible case of the flu in early February. I told him I would amend the blog but that I plead illness and fatigue as reasons why I didn't recall this during the original posting of this entry.

Additionally, Dan would like me to let everyone know that the reason we get sick when he leaves is because he is the glue that holds this family together. His words, not mine. Maybe someday Dan will post a blog of his own! (Is everyone holding their breath???)

First communion and the fantastic fiesta

2008-06-01T16:17:00.007-06:00

Yesterday was one of the most wonderful, memorable, and fun days we’ve spent here in the valley in our time of living in Costa Rica.

What an honor and blessing that we were invited to a first communion for Lauren’s best friend, Isabel—and the party that followed was incredible!

At 10:30 the communion service began at the Parroquia Inmaculada Concepción de Pozos, Santa Ana—the large orange and yellow church just a mile or so from our house. The weather was gorgeous (no rain, thankfully!) and a gentle breeze blew through the wide sanctuary with high ceilings and huge, gorgeous sprays of fresh, fragrant flowers. (I will miss the flowers from Costa Rica when we leave here!)

The church was filled with proud family members and friends, dressed in their finest for such a special day. There were five kids from Lauren’s class celebrating first communion. The boys dressed in navy suits with white communion bows on their sleeves, but the girls, outfitted in beautiful white gowns with lace and ribbons, looked like tiny brides and clearly outshone everyone in the church.

Erin and Lauren didn’t understand much of the service, though Dan and I quietly explained to them what was happening. Erin said she could pick out bits and pieces of Spanish from things familiar to her in English, such as the Lord’s Prayer and when the priest blessed the bread and wine.

It was really special for our family to participate in this meaningful cultural experience that was so important to our friends.

After church, around noon, we went to a celebration at Isabel’s house. This was hands-down one of the best parties we’ve ever been to. Our friends really know how to throw an incredible fiesta!
As soon as we walked in, Isabel (the parent—she and her daughter share a first name) let us know we’d have plenty of opportunity to practice our Spanish: there was one couple from Chile and everyone else was from Spain. Although the conversation often became so animated and lively that Dan and I had a hard time following, it didn’t matter. We had each other and enjoyed observing and being a part of the day.

At the start of the party, Isabel and Álvaro asked us—in all seriousness—“ You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?” Apparently it is expected that nobody eats before these parties. Dan and I just looked at each other, realizing this was going to be a real food-affair. I would be remiss in not describing the feast, because the food was incredible and just kept coming and coming.

There was tasty, grilled chorizo (sausages a bit smaller than brats) and choripán (a sausage in a small, sliced loaf of bread), mussels, Spanish olives, and nuts. After the chorizo was served we enjoyed wedges of grilled and seasoned provolone on small pieces of bread.

For the main course: grilled chicken, steak, chimichurri (a favorite condiment of mine), pickled onions, salad, and baked potatoes.

Later came paper-thin crepes with strawberries, peaches, and caramel—and three sweet sauces to drizzle on top.

We didn’t imagine there could be more food, but later in the day we were served chocolate-covered strawberries, a tortilla de patatas—a very traditional Spanish dish made of potatoes, onion, egg, and olive oil—and then the best gazpacho I could ever imagine. My friend promised me she’d teach me how to make these. She is an awesome cook!

In addition to the conversation and eating (and eating!), the kids played hide-and-seek, went swimming, ate ice cream and popcorn, and took funny pictures with Isabel’s new camera. Dan and I loved the music which ranged from '70s disco to '80s pop to salsa and merengue.

We danced and sang (including a rendition of a Grease music mix that thoroughly embarrassed Erin—isn’t that a hallmark of good parenting?), and at one point Dan and I watched as four Spaniards twirled, clapped, and stamped to flamenco music—and we clapped too, in appreciation.

Shortly after 7pm we said our goodbyes, reluctant to leave but needing to get our exhausted kids to bed. Admittedly we didn’t stay up much later than the girls, having had such an amazing day. We will reminisce about yesterday many times in our lives, I am sure. We are so grateful to have met this wonderful Spanish family whose company we enjoy so much.

Here comes the rain again

2008-05-29T14:26:00.003-06:00

A couple of weeks ago the rains began, and we knew the green season had arrived. Now? It's been raining for days, literally. We've had at least 72 hours of rain—steady rain, not just drizzle—without a breather thanks to a bunch of weather factors (including Tropical Storm Alma) that came together to keep us soaked here in Santa Ana. I haven't seen the mountains for days, and while I know our beautiful valley is surrounded by them, they're hidden by heavy, gray, water-laden clouds.

Dan's coworker is trapped in her home in Escazú and sent this photo, showing the water rushing down the gutter and standing on the road.

On the good side, everything is green and growing, and the temperature is in the mid-60s today, which is so comfortable. Last night we all fell asleep early, listening to the rain outside our open windows and resting in the cool air.

Gone to Kentucky and Indiana

2008-05-26T07:38:00.003-06:00

Nah, we didn’t make a trip to the Midwest this past weekend, but we did the next best thing for two gringos living in Central America … we went to dinner and a movie, of course.

On Friday night, Dan and I stopped at the huge food court at the mall outside the movie theater for a quick meal. Usually we go for tacos, but for some reason both of us broke out into grins when I mentioned the KFC on the far side of the court. Ohhh, it was so good—the food tasted just like KFC at home! It was the first time we'd had KFC since arriving here, and we may have to stop back again.

Funny thing is, the Costa Ricans call KFC "Kentucky." Last summer our relocation counselor told us that she loves Kentucky, and it took us a minute to realize she meant the original-recipe, biscuit-making, potatoes-and-gravy Kentucky and not the bluegrass, basketball-loving state.

Here’s another for instance: A boy in Erin's class mentioned to the teacher that he went to Kentucky over the weekend, and the kids' teacher, an American, was skeptical.

"Well yeah, it's just food," the kid said, and then someone chimed in that Kentucky is a chicken restaurant. It looks just like the KFCs at home too, complete with the image of Colonel Sanders and the slogan, "para chuparse los dedos"—which is about as close to finger-lickin' good as things get here in Ticolandia.

After our dinner we walked to the theater; the new Indiana Jones movie premiered here on Friday night! We don’t go to the movies too often, but it’s always fun when we do—especially because regular tickets cost only four bucks, about half the price of a movie in the US last time I looked.

The movie was showing in several theaters, both dubbed and with subtitles. Sometimes we get a kick out of the subtitles (we can’t help but read them as we’re watching) and the translations. For example, in the Harry Potter movies, Voldemort is Señor Tenebroso (Lord Tenebrous, Dismal, Gloomy, etc.). I don’t know why they don’t just call him Voldemort. I mean, it’s his name—it’s not like Voldemort means anything in English, right?

Anyway, we enjoyed Indy, as silly as it was. Sometimes complete suspension of disbelief is a great escape after a long week—and two kids from the US enjoyed a virtual trip home for a few hours.

Slightly rattled

2008-05-23T07:38:00.002-06:00

We’ve felt a few earthquakes since we’ve been here, but yesterday’s was the strongest of them. At about 4:45 pm I was sitting at my desk (IMing with Dan, actually) when things shook violently but briefly—only a couple of seconds—and by the time I realized why my chair was shaking and rolling backwards, it was over. Dan and I simultaneously IMed each other: “Earthquake!”

The shock was centered near Santiago de Puriscal and, according to the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica, was a 4.8 magnitude. It didn’t knock anything off the shelves, though it did cause a separation between two floor boards in our family room. Not enough to be very dangerous, but certainly enough to add interest to an otherwise ordinary afternoon.

Beware the wily lime

2008-05-21T13:41:00.005-06:00

Something interesting happens when a person lives nine degrees above the equator, forgets to wash her hands after juicing raw limes, and then ventures into the bright sunshine. She ends up with a horrific burn on her skin, leaving it raw, pink, and very tender.

I’m relieved to say this didn’t happen to me, but unfortunately it did happen to a friend of mine. The chemicals from the limes were activated by the strong sun, leaving her with a nasty looking case of phytophotodermatitis—a lime burn—that is still painful weeks later. Ouch!

I have a love affair with limes, and thankfully they are plentiful and cheap here, so I use them a lot. Now I’m extra careful about washing up after handling citrus fruit. I’m more interested in eating ceviche than becoming it!

Ribs and cake (aka: basketball injuries, part two)

2008-05-18T07:31:00.010-06:00

Yesterday, Dan joined a bunch of guys from the office to play basketball for a company program encouraging everyone to get active and be healthy. The games were held in Escazu at a local gym. It was fun to visit with friends and see the brightly painted floor, the refs in their blazing orange shirts, and the scorekeepers flipping papers with numbers on them for the score.

That was the good part. The bad part—other than Dan’s team getting walloped—was that basketball is just not a big sport around here, and most of the guys on the court didn’t seem to have much experience. This led to some amazingly wild passes soaring through the air and, unfortunately, a lot of elbows and bodies flying too. And not much refereeing!

I told Dan before we left for the gym that my goal was to avoid a trip to the ER at the hospital. We managed that, but halfway through the game I saw Dan sitting under the basket pleading with the ref for a call. I knew he was hurt when he got up and didn’t have his usual spunk—and sure enough, he injured a rib again (on the other side this time).

Erin felt sorry for her dad, so when we got home she baked him a cake from scratch in hopes that he’d feel better.

Thankfully this morning the rib is just sore and it’s not nearly so bad as last time, but I told Dan that his days of b-ball in the land of flying elbows are over.

Pump it up

2008-05-15T15:04:00.003-06:00

We now have a constant supply of water here at our Costa Rican casa. Yippee! The last water outage spurred me into action: I spoke a few times with the landlords’ representative and explained the situation, and eventually they agreed to pay the nearly $1K to have a pump installed. What a relief!

We have a tank under our driveway (we’d always wondered what the metal lid was covering), and a plumber came out to drain it, sanitize it, and fill it. It has a lift arm and float, just like a toilet—which I excitedly pointed out to the plumber (as if he didn't know, oh, and I'm sure he was highly impressed that I knew the Spanish word for toilet).

Once the tank was filled, the guy installed the small pump next to the hot water heater. This made a huge mess in my storage room and laundry room—there was water everywhere. I wasn’t too upset though, mainly because I was giddy with the thought of taking a high-pressure shower and not having it wane to a trickle, and there are also drains in the floors making it easier to clean. (Thank goodness, since the sink the washing machine hose empties into overflows frequently because the hose pops out of the drain—but that’s another story in itself).

On Tuesday, the construction foreman stopped by the house to let me know the water would be turned off for a couple of hours. I gave him a big smile and told him it is No Problema here because of our shiny new pump. Sure enough, I soon heard the pump spring into action and I happily went about my day without a water worry.

¡Pura agua!

Swimming for Sports Day

2008-05-07T14:32:00.008-06:00

It was so good to see my girls swim competitively again—even if only for one race.

The kids recently had Sports Day at school, complete with an opening ceremony and pledge, indoor events, track and field, and relays at the pool. All the elementary school kids participated in at least one event, and (not surprisingly) my two were chosen to swim. (A few kids were missing from Lauren’s class, so she also did a free throw shoot and something else which I didn’t get to see and can’t remember what it was.)

Sometimes cultural differences are glaringly obvious to me at school functions, and this was no exception. Guess which parents were sitting on the side of the pool, socializing quietly as they watched the kids? Well, certainly not the Americans. No, we were the moms and dads at the end of the pool (for the best view, of course) enthusiastically cheering the kids on. We weren’t obnoxious, but I will admit, we US moms and dads are generally a spirited, competitive bunch.

After all the games and races the kids got medals—bronze, silver and gold. They’re not even cheesy and have the school logo on one side with the event and date on the other; they are great mementos for the girls.

Look who’s eight!

2008-05-04T11:46:00.006-06:00

It's just Lauren’s luck that May 1 is a national holiday—Día de los Trabajadores (Labor Day)—here in Costa Rica. Meaning my brand-spankin’-new eight-year-old had a day off from school on her birthday. What a fun twist of fate!

Lauren, Erin, and L's classmate Isabel—her best amiga and partner-in-crime—spent the day together to celebrate, starting with lunch at Wendy’s. (This was the birthday girl’s choice, of course, because what better meal is there than chicken nuggets and fries for a kid turning eight?)

Next stop was Go Bananas, an indoor playground just a couple of kilometers from our house. This drop-the kids-off facility has plenty of space for the girls to run and climb, so I left them to play while I parked myself in a cozy, padded armchair with a drink and a novel outside one of my favorite restaurants, just around the corner from the playground.

Lauren’s teacher stopped by for lunch shortly before I was leaving to pick up the girls. She asked us to come back and say hi, so I told the girls I had a surprise for them as we made our way to the restaurant. Of course Lauren got a big hug from Ms. Fernández, and she and Isabel acted all goofy when they saw their teacher outside of the classroom (yes, teachers are normal people too!), while Erin was just relieved that her teachers were nowhere in sight on vacation day.

Everyone enjoyed homemade birthday cupcakes at our house (we sang two lovely renditions of the birthday song in English and Spanish), and then the girls went swimming so Lauren could try out her new goggles and float.

We were worn out by the end of the day, and everyone got to bed early since the kids still had school on Friday (and I did too, since I was chaperoning a field trip). We missed having Dan here—he’s in Cincinnati for work—but Lauren says her eighth birthday was still just ducky (her word, of course).

As I’m sure I say every year, it’s hard to believe my baby is getting so big! ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Niña!

Fish out of water

2008-05-02T20:36:00.003-06:00

Fair warning: I'm cranky, and so are my kids. Even Lauren, and that's saying something.

I've got all sorts of nice, cheery things to blog about—and I'll have to do it another time—but tonight the only thing on my mind is that we have no water in our house. Again. Yesterday we didn't have water until nearly 3:00 in the afternoon. (Around lunchtime I gave in and took a shower at a friend's house.) Today I got up at 5:00 to take a shower, do a load of laundry, and clean up the kitchen before my busy day was underway. No water—at 5:00 in the morning!

I had to feed the kids, make lunches, and get out of here by 7:30 because I went on a field trip with Erin's class. Thankfully I had set enough water aside to wash my face and take a sponge bath, but now, it's 8:30 on Friday night and we have zero agua. Nada. The whole neighborhood is out of water, and I've got a guy coming tomorrow to see if he can install a pump so we can avoid this happening again. (I’m pretty sure the homeowner is going to consent to having this done, thankfully.)

Meanwhile, I'm jonesing for a shower and crossing my fingers that the pipes will start gurgling soon and we can cook, clean, shower, flush, wash, and all those good things by the morning.

Isn't it ironic, since I just mentioned a couple of posts ago how this happens frequently enough and I usually roll with the punches? Not this time. It appears I've reached my breaking point, and while I know there are worse things in the world, I feel justified in venting my pent-up frustrations. Dan's not here to fuss with/listen to me, so the blog is tonight's therapy session. Thank goodness we still have electricity!

Oh, and as a parting shot, it is raining outside. Not enough of a downpour that I can run to my yard with a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap, but enough to tease us all with fat drops of water on the windows. Bah!

Road rash

2008-04-27T08:15:00.008-06:00

Temps this week have been the hottest we can recall in the valley—ideal days for swimming. Unfortunately for Erin, she came home from school on Thursday with big, blood-stained pads of gauze taped to both knees. The kids’ school is built on the side of a hill, and Erin was heading down a concrete sidewalk when she wiped out. Both knees have two nasty scrapes (and this picture is three days later; thankfully the knees are starting to look better).

Of course there’s no way we’re letting her in the pool, even with the bandages on (I’m so glad I bought the box of super-large Band-Aids last summer). The ban on swimming was really the pits yesterday when Erin’s friends were visiting our neighborhood pool. Dan and Lauren went to swim while Erin and I made cookie bars for this week’s lunches.

Nothing like a warm chocolate chip treat (yes, we splurged on pricey chocolate chips—hey, desperate times call for desperate measures) out of the oven to soothe what ails a 10-year-old.

Facing frustrations

2008-04-24T08:23:00.001-06:00

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” —George Bernard Shaw

“But what if a reasonable person is trying to adapt to something unreasonable?” —Me

A friend told me that in the United States one dies of stress, while here in Costa Rica one dies of frustration. We laugh about it, but there is a grain of truth to this notion. While life is markedly more hurried at home, here it’s important—if one wants to maintain some semblance of sanity—to adjust to the slower culture and adopt a more tolerant, patient attitude.

Accustomed to the efficiency of the US, I get frustrated at having a dishwasher sit on the kitchen floor for two weeks while construction workers show up at random to fix the hole in the wall—you know, the hole where the dishwasher connects to the plumbing that was installed five centimeters too high according to the plumber?

Adapting is going for nearly an entire weekend without water, which is what just happened to us—and not for the first time. Costa Rica runs on hydroelectric power, and apparently the water is sometimes shut off during the dry season to help avoid brownouts (which we have also experienced). In the US, I’d be on the phone with the water company trying to find out what’s going on and how quickly water service will resume. Here, the idea of calling with that question is nearly laughable. The water will go on when it comes on, and we just go with the flow (or lack thereof).

Remember our waiting list for a landline telephone? We’re still on the list. We honestly do not think we will ever have a landline while we are living here. I don’t like it, but I don’t dwell on it, even though cell phone service is spotty. See how well I’m adjusting?

The ultimate in aggravation is surely the lack of maps and street signs in this country. And knowing that you could stop and ask for directions and, because a Costa Rican does not want to hurt anyone’s feelings or be unhelpful, the directions you receive may be wrong.

Just when I think I’ve truly embraced the Pura Vida lifestyle, something happens—not even necessarily maddeningly frustrating, it could be something minor—and the dam of built-up frustration bursts, while my all-American self comes shining through. I share what’s bugging me with Dan or an American friend in Costa Rica and we shake our heads, commiserate, and eventually laugh at the absurdity of it all. Culture shock isn’t always the extreme sense of anxiety you might imagine; in fact, it happens routinely here to us as we go about our daily lives.

Pruning the palms

2008-04-21T15:05:00.008-06:00

When running through our neighborhood, it’s tempting to seek shade in the palm trees' shadows and out of the hot sun; yet we know better. On windy days, we occasionally hear a crash outside our house as a heavy, dying palm branch plummets to the ground—and we’re always glad nobody was below the tree when the frond fell.

Thankfully, the gardeners come by once in a while to prune the browning fronds from the trees. The palms are tall, so the workers have rigged an ultra-long pole with a blade securely attached to it with tape. With the blade, they remove the menacing fronds just waiting for a gust of wind to blow them down.

By the way, we are at the end of the dry season and just heading into rainy season; you can see how the grass in the field is just starting to get a little green. Soon everything will be lush and beautiful (and wet!).

Colas, sodas, and what’s on the menu

2008-04-17T09:21:00.015-06:00

Here’s a little tidbit about eating and drinking in Costa Rica, with a Spanish lesson thrown in for fun.

If you’re looking for a bubbly beverage here in ticolandia, don’t ask for a cola. In Costa Rica, a tail—whether on an animal or a ponytail in the hair—is called a cola (sounds just like the cola you drink).

Perhaps you could order a soda? Not here. A small restaurant that serves traditional, inexpensive Costa Rican food is called a soda (yep, sounds just like the soda you drink). These little sodas are all over the place, even in remote areas of the country where one wonders how the soda gets its supplies and who is eating there. Anything but fancy, sodas often are sometimes just simple support structures with tin roofs or tarps overhead, as you can see was the case at Soda El Mango where we had lunch on a Manuel Antonio beach.

Sodas serve comida típica—typical/traditional tico food—which relies on local agriculture and cultural tradition. These very modest eateries sometimes don’t even offer menus to diners since it’s known they serve native dishes.

Typical tico dishes such as gallo pinto (a mixture of rice and beans) and casados are the norm. Casado means married, and casado plates are marriages of food to make a meal: rice, beans, a salad of some kind (perhaps heart of palm or cabbage and carrots), fried plantains, and some kind of meat or poultry. My favorite soda food is chifrijo—a combination of chicarrones (fried pork), frijoles (beans), rice, pico de gallo and some other yummy stuff that tastes fantastic.

Eating at soda is a great way to immerse oneself into the tico culture while getting a filling meal at a fair price.

So what do you ask for if you’re thirsty? A carbonated beverage is most often called by its actual name: Coca (for Coca Cola), Coca Light, Fanta … you get the idea. There are oodles of fruit juices here. Coconut milk—sipped from a coconut through a straw—is sometimes sold along well-traveled roads. And of course coffee is king in Costa Rica.

Our favorite drinks are the refrescos—sweet, satisfying concoctions made of liquefied, fresh fruit blended with either water or milk. These traditional drinks are available in loads of flavors such as watermelon, mango, strawberry, blackberry, tamarind, passion fruit, guanabana, and cas. Our favorites are watermelon and strawberry.

If you’re brave enough to try something that really packs a punch, sip a bit of guaro, the national liquor of Costa Rica made from distilled sugar cane.To minimize production of bootlegged guaro, the tico government nationalized the manufacturing of the stuff with the Fabrica Nacional de Licores-Fanal, offering Cacique, the only legal brand of guaro, since the mid 1800s. Just don’t become a guaro vaquero (guaro cowboy)—someone who’s had too much too drink and acts like an obnoxious fool!

There are plenty of other drinks available here in Costa Rica, but perhaps the best news is that you can safely drink tap water here, which is not the case in many Latin American countries. It's freeing not having to worry about what's in the water and makes eating and drinking much simpler.

Cheers!

A sense of belonging

2008-04-09T17:21:00.006-06:00

Recently I was standing in the checkout line at a supermarket near my house. The employee who was scanning my groceries recognized me and greeted me by name, which made me smile.

As I waited for her to tally my purchases, I began singing quietly to the song playing in the store. Before long I wasn’t the lone vocalist, and I turned to grin at the guy next to me—a tico with flamboyant clothes and a faux-hawk who owns the salon a few doors down and occasionally cuts the girls’ hair. He has a very cute little dog named Paris who runs around the strip mall and is so fashionable he gets his tail dyed—usually pink or light orange. The kids love to see Paris and we usually stop for a moment to tell him hello or give him a scratch behind the ears.

In line behind the hairstylist was my beautiful, friendly pharmacist who is always helpful and lets me speak Spanish with her even though her English is excellent and I sometimes fumble with unfamiliar medical terms.

So there I was, sharing a friendly connection to all three people around me. I am part of my neighborhood; I am recognized. This is my home away from home, and while I have made some special and invaluable American friends here, it feels really good to have established relationships with ticos in my community.

Manuel Antonio in March

2008-04-06T08:46:00.011-06:00

Our first spring break destination outside the valley was Manuel Antonio—both the park and the town. We visited the park last Thanksgiving, and it was so amazing we had to take my parents there, too.

Our lodging was a private villa on a cliff with a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, framed by a canopy of trees that’s home to tropical birds, sloths, monkeys, and lizards. We enjoyed relaxing on the deck and listening to the surf as we soaked in our surroundings.

During our stay at the villa, my parents got a taste of authentic life in Costa Rica. Their suicide shower wasn’t working until the last day of our visit (after a handyman came to replace it) and the power in Manuel Antonio went out several times—once while we were dining out (thankfully by candlelight). These snags, which would be unexpected and unacceptable in the US, are common here and a reminder that we live in a developing country.

Boogie at the beach
To get to the beach—just a half mile from the villa—we drove down a path of indescribably rough terrain (four-wheel drive required!) and parked on the sand at the bottom. I’ve never felt ocean water at such a perfect temperature, and swimming was a welcome activity each afternoon since Manuel Antonio is hot and humid at this time of year. Dad rented a boogie board, and nearly all of us had a go at wave riding.

Horsin’ around
Our first night we ate dinner at a large, open-air place in Quepos called El Gran Escape (The Great Escape), which, in its former life, was both a brothel and a cervecería (place to buy beer). An authentic tope—or horse parade—was happening in the main street just outside the restaurant. In this festive atmosphere, Costa Ricans proudly display their high-stepping horses while others cheer them on and music plays.

Manuel Antonio National Park
Sunday was spent at the national park. We arrived early to avoid crowds, see the animals before their afternoon siestas, and enjoy hiking before the equatorial sun blazed too hot. The last time we visited was at the end of the rainy season when we crossed the water in a boat to reach the park; this time, nearing the end of the dry season, we walked through hot sand to reach the park’s entrance.

We loved showing Mom and Dad what we’d learned on our last visit, and it was great to see some new things too—like the tell-tale turtle tracks on the beach that Dad spotted. We also tackled a new, more difficult trail for hiking: Punta Catedral (Cathedral Point), an outcropping of land that was once an island but now connects to the mainland by a natural land bridge. This hike of about an hour took us up a steep incline through dense jungle. It was a challenging (and sweaty!) climb, but it was so beautiful and unique, it was worth it—especially when we saw the view of the ocean, far above the surf pounding rocks below.

More monkeys
We saw plenty of wildlife on our trip, both while in the park and elsewhere. A highlight was the huge troop of squirrel—or titi—monkeys as they migrated past our villa early one morning. These fun little monkeys are incredibly cute as they swing through the canopy, gripping branches with their tails and then launching their small bodies to nearby trees. They’re also a vulnerable species, so we felt very lucky to see so many—including a few mamas with their babies firmly attached to their backs. Many monkeys ran across the roof of the deck, and one peered over the edge to get a closer look at us. (A capuchin monkey had done the same thing the day before, with his eye on Erin’s ginger cookie!)

While we heard howler monkeys several times throughout our travels, these noisy creatures did not wake us in the middle of the night with their roaring, as they did on our last trip to the area.

Isla Damas
On Monday morning, we toured the protected inland waterways of the Damas Island estuary. We traveled with our knowledgeable guide Eduardo to the sleepy town of Isla Damas, just north of bustling Quepos. There we boarded a canopied boat for a morning trip through a unique ecosystem nestled in a lush mangrove forest.

We made our way through a maze of narrow channels of brackish water surrounded by amazing African palms, loads of plants and trees, and impressive red and black mangroves. We saw a variety of marine birds, crabs, lizards, and even the rare-to-spot silky anteater napping in a tree. But the best—no surprise here—were the playful monkeys who came right up to our boat and jumped on the roof, let us touch their hands, and provided fantastic entertainment for their human guests.

Valley bound
After three nights, we left tropical Manuel Antonio for Santa Ana. The ride home was scenic and uneventful (always a blessing!), and we were glad to return to the cool, breezy valley we love.

Click here to see a photo album of our trip (best viewed as a slideshow). ¡Pura vida!

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

2008-03-27T14:30:00.013-06:00

Many thanks for the emails asking where we’ve been, if I have writer’s block, and whether I've just been too busy sunbathing to post even the measliest of blogs. I appreciate the concern and am happy to share that my absence from writing has been for the best of reasons—we were enjoying a fantastic, adventurous, amazing (and yes, a wee bit exhausting!) two-week vacation with my parents. Plenty of fodder for blogging, so stay tuned for a few tales of our journeys.

That said, I already know exactly where to jump in with a story, because the following is the adventure most likely to surprise those who know me (and my fear of heights!) well. This journey actually occurred later in our travels, but who says everything has to be in chronological order, anyway?

Last week the six of us drove to the imposing Volcán Arenal (Arenal Volcano)—a massive, conical volcano (the most active of the nation's volcanoes) that rises up from the San Carlos plains in the northwestern part of Costa Rica. You can’t drive to the top of Arenal and look at the crater because it’s constantly spewing gases, ash, and molten rock. At night, if you’re lucky, you can see the fiery rock spilling down the side of the volcano. Unfortunately we were on the other side of the volcano and didn’t experience this (maybe next time!), but seeing nearly all the volcano a few times (when it was not at least partially obscured by clouds) was incredible in itself.

While at the foothills of Arenal we stayed at Los Lagos, a resort with large grounds reminiscent of a botanical park—the trees and flowers of this area are varied and spectacular. The resort also featured a great view of Arenal, a hot springs pool (ahhhh, that was so nice!), a couple of regular pools with some fast waterslides, a crocodile farm, butterfly garden, horseback riding … and a zip line.

If the term zip line is new to you, here’s a quick overview: On a zip line—also known as a canopy tour—a series of cables is mounted from tree to tree, on an incline, and there is a platform at the end of each cable. A rider wears a harness around the waist and legs, which is secured to a pulley suspended on the cable. The rider then takes off from the platform (usually just by stepping off) and glides—propelled by gravity—from one platform to another, flying over trees and through the canopy itself.

Though three of the six of us (my dad, Erin, and I) are afraid of heights (perhaps putting it mildly for at least Dad and me), we decided this extreme sport would be an unforgettable adventure we could all share. Carpe diem—a chance to make our lives extraordinary! So we signed up for the zip on Thursday and headed out for the plunge on Friday morning.

At the start of the zip line, we were each outfitted with a harness, a helmet, and a leather hand-guard/glove. I was pretty sure the helmet was in case a branch fell on my head, because it wouldn't have helped much had I gone plummeting to the ground far below, but I didn't dwell on that or I would have made myself nuts.

We rode part way up the side of the mountain in a van and exited at a little station with a short cable. The lead instructor taught us how to ride the line and how to brake (nobody wants to smash into a tree, a la George of the Jungle), and after a short learning session it was time to go! The good news is that the first zip line started at ground level and took us down the mountain slope, so there was no need to climb an intimidating tower, which was my greatest fear and which I still think may have stopped me from ever doing the zip.

The zip line we went on had 15 cables and 16 platforms, with distances varying from 50 to 500 meters, for a full distance of three kilometers (1.86 miles)—oh, and reaching speeds of up to 80 kph/50 mph. The zip was strung above and throughout the tropical rainforest, dense and wild and absolutely gorgeous; Lauren even saw monkeys on her zip. We were part of a large group, and Lauren was the first to go. Pigtails flying in the wind, she rode with the guide and had a blast the entire trip. Shortly after, Erin took off. She was the youngest in our group to go by herself. Wow, I was so proud of her! Then Dan jumped, then me, then my parents.

Soaring through the air above the treetops on this high-wire ride was an adrenaline-pumping rush that’s hard to describe. At times I was able to take in what I was passing as I whizzed through the sky, while at others I was rocketing past towering trees at speeds too quick for me to see much of the tropical rainforest below, mouth agape as the reality of what I was doing sunk in. Oddly enough—and this is the honest truth—I never experienced the paralyzing fear I was concerned about. Maybe the adrenaline is what saw me through, maybe it was the agonizing thought of returning to the United States to the ridicule of “You lived in Costa Rica and never did a zip line?!?!”—but I did it. We all did it—the girls, Dan and me, and my incredible parents of whom I was so proud.

Thankfully for us (and I suppose you, if you’re up for it) the zip line company stationed a photographer throughout the zip so we have pictoral evidence of our high-flying thrill ride. Enjoy the photos (best seen as a slideshow); they will always remind me of the day I met a daunting challenge head-on and shared a wild adventure with those I love most—and lived to blog about it.

Gracias por la música

2008-03-05T12:42:00.005-06:00

I went shopping today at Hipermás, a large department/grocery store (owned by and similar to Wal-Mart yet not as inexpensive, unfortunately). Shortly after I got there, I stopped to listen to the music playing overhead, trying to make out the words of the all-too familiar song. It was ABBA’s Chiquitita—but in Spanish.

I knew ABBA had done several recordings in Spanish, and today was my chance to listen to them, since they played the entire time I browsed the aisles. I heard Thank You for the Music; Dancing Queen; Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!; Fernando; I Have a Dream; Knowing Me, Knowing You … I wish the girls had been with me, they really would have enjoyed it.

¡Pura música!

The shortage ends (and why expats love stuff from home)

2008-03-03T14:05:00.024-06:00

Do you recall the dreadful mac and cheese shortage that recently swept Costa Rica? I’m pleased to share with you an update on the status of blue boxes here in the valley …

Our friends David and India called us after church yesterday with the news: there was one precious pallet of Kraft M&C in at PriceSmart. Yippee! They kindly bought 30 boxes for us (we just couldn't ask for more!), and we intend on a trip to the store soon in hopes of finding another couple dozen.

Shortly after we returned from a relaxing Sunday afternoon at the pool, David arrived with the blue boxes. Dan promptly rescued two of them from their shrink wrap and made dinner—and it was delicious.

In other food news, I recently purchased brown sugar for the first time since we've been here. I had been making do with azúcar con caramelo (sugar with caramel, basically) which was not bad, but my cookies and baked goods just didn't taste quite the same or have that perfect consistency. I didn't know if I'd ever find brown sugar here until a friend told me it is possible, but difficult, since it's rarely in stock. Yet there it was last week, unassumingly sitting on the shelves as if it had been there all along. I bought numerous boxes, but two are already gone. How long will brown sugar keep, anyway? Because I'm planning on getting a whole bunch more while the getting is good.

Think we're crazy? That we’ve completely lost our grip on reality since moving south of the border? This enlightening piece by expat Pamela Druckerman explains how valued American goods can be to those so far from home. Funny thing is, I hadn’t read this article since it was first published—right before Thanksgiving—and now I see that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and brown sugar are both mentioned in the text. How validating!

It’s true that expats thrill at the thought of jamming suitcases full of products straight off the shelves of Target and Wal-Mart and lugging the stuff back to their adopted countries. Those people visiting expats are lovingly (yet eagerly!) considered as pack mules. My parents will be here soon and have a list of goodies to haul—from two Nintendo DS games for an American friend of ours to sugar-free Tums, peanut M&Ms, Gain apple mango tango dryer sheets, and packets of Taco John’s hot sauce if they can get them (oh please, we're begging!). We are more than excited to see Mom and Dad, but I’m sure soon after they’ve settled in we’ll be asking, “Where’s the stuff?! Did you bring the Reese's Pieces???”

Lost in translation

2008-02-27T12:12:00.007-06:00

Sause on pork shop? Sound tasty? This is Erin's favorite goofed up translation, found on the menu of a traditional Tico restaurant near Poás.

It’s common to find mistakes in the English translations that occasionally appear on menus here. The one I've seen most frequently is "jam" meaning "ham," since the j sounds like an h in Spanish. Toasted jam and cheese sandwich, anyone?

Last Saturday, I bought Crismelos, a Costa Rican brand of marshmallows, to use in Rice Krispies treats for the kids. While many packaged food products from Central America do not include preparation directions, Crismelos has gone beyond the call of duty and offered a recipe for "Crismelos Chocolates" on the back of the bag—in both Spanish and English. The translation is amusing:

"Melts the chocolate bars in furnace of microwaves, immediately removes the cup from the furnace, right away introduced the Crismelos in the chocolate one by one. Placed in pyrex and put the refrigerator."

Furnace of microwaves? I'm not sure my average microwave is up to the task!

Moving on, here's another favorite Spanish-to-English translation. Found on a map of Sarchí, a town recognized for its beautiful wood-working and traditional oxcarts, this gem appears next to its Spanish counterpart in bold, capital letters:

This is a Costarican art monument, artesanal jewel and artistical. It is a national symbol and it was declared as intangible patrimony of the humankind by UNESCO on November 2005. The craddle of the Costarican handcraft Sarchi realized this emblematical oxcart. It was created at the historical Eloy Alfaro and Sons Workshop, built and painted in 3 months whit the supporting of 3 painters and 3 crafters. The oxcart is 20 meters lenght and 3800 inches of bitter cedar and laurel.

The snippet about the “intangible patrimony of the humankind” is priceless. While part of me desperately wants to edit the English on Costa Rica’s menus, maps, and brochures, the rest of me appreciates the levity of such delightfully funny renderings.

¡Puras palabras!

5K Day

2008-02-25T15:09:00.008-06:00

The 25th anniversary CDS fun run was this weekend at the girls’ school, and Dan ran the hills of Escazú on a sunny yet cool morning. Our friend Gabriel also ran the race, and I chatted with his wife Isa and their little ones while the guys ran. Erin and Lauren had fun wandering the school grounds with amigas and cheering for their dad.