Chicken Soup for My Soul: Visions of Mayhem Dance in My Head

Part I -- This blog keeps getting truncated, so I'm breaking it in two

Chicken Soup for My Soul: Part II

Part II -- continued from above.

Tonto is in My Freezer

Tonto is a tamale.  My neighbor Rocio invited us over last Friday for a family tamale-making fest, and now tonto is in my freezer.  You’re supposed to wait till Christmas to eat them, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.

The singular is ‘tamal’, actually, if you care to be linguistically correct.  And let me be the first to tell you that Costa Rican tamales are nothing like their Mexican cousins -- not a pig's head in sight (the Costa Rican's save that for the posole).  In fact, about all they have in common is masa.  Rocio’s family (I lost track of how many children, grandchildren, in-laws, friends and employees were floating around that evening.  Did I mention that I don’t speak Spanish?) informed us with great enthusiasm that every Central and South American country has its own variation of tamales, and every family within each country has its own recipes.

I want Rocio’s recipe.  Wow!

Rocio came over to my house in the afternoon to offer the invitation.  I thought it was for some sort of dinner party.  She took me over to her house and showed me the THREE employees hard at work already:  one young man was cutting plantain leaves into the appropriate size and shape; one woman was frantically washing enormous pots in the sink, and a second woman was stirring broth.

And I learned:  here’s what goes into a Costa Rican tamale:

Masa and mashed potatoes:  mixed with lots and lots of lard (“This is not a health food,” Rocio assured me.

Pork/Chicken broth:  cooked with more lard, garlic, thyme, and six hundred bay leaves in a pot my children could bathe in.  Mix this with the masa and mashed potatoes

More masa:  with achote (a coloring/flavoring agent), lots of lard, garlic, and salt

Pork and chicken:  that’s where the broth comes from

Rice cooked with chicken broth; capers added after cooking

Olives, prunes and strips of pickled peppers (for color).  Huh?

Still thinking we were going to a dinner party, my husband and I dressed appropriately, I made an apple pie (what goes with tamales???), and we brought a bottle of wine with us.  Well, the wine was a good choice.

When we arrived, Rocio handed us aprons and put us to work!  This was serious business!  She explained that the traditional time to make these is Christmas, but who has time at Christmas?  So we had lots of wine and guaro (a local drink made from sugar cane) and made tamales now.

First, a son (I never could keep all the names straight) arranged a sheet of plastic and two plantain leaves on a plate.  A daughter-in-law added a huge gob of masa and potatoes; a family friend added meat, and one olive.  Rocio spooned on some rice with capers. My husband Gary was responsible for the prunes.  My job was to put in the achote-colored masa and the peppers.  But then, we got a bit behind and I tried my hand at folding a few plantain leaves around the tamales (which were then tied up by the young man I’d seen earlier).

Maria Juana (who was the employee responsible for wrapping up the tamales) politely laughed at every single one of my efforts (and I hadn’t even had any wine yet!) and refolded every single one.  I finally learned my lesson and went back to draping a decorative pepper or two across each mound of masa/meat/rice/olive/prune.

And then we made the tontos.  At the end, when we were running out of ingredients, the call went out for the tonto:  the big, dumb tamale.  And everyone got to make his own just the way he liked it.  Juan Miguel liked lots of chicken.  Rocio liked lots of achote.  Me, I used lots and lots of achote masa (which I also ate in handfuls when no one else was looking) and six huge olives.  We passed them to the experts who folded the plantain leaves and tied them up, and then added a special colored string (everyone picked his own color), so we’d know whose tonto was whose.

My tonto has a pink string, and it’s sitting in my freezer right now.  I think about it all the time.  Because, after all the work was done, we actually got to eat a fresh tamal.

OH MY GOODNESS!!!  IT WAS SO GOOD!!!

I love Mexican tamales; they are a small passion of mine. But Costa Rican tamales, I must say, make their Mexican cousins look, well, quite pale and sickly, actually.

I am counting the days until Christmas, and it’s not for the presents, let me tell you!!

The Costa Rican Backstory

San Jose, COSTA RICA, October 10, 2008 – So how did we come to be in this sometimes-sunny paradise where the cock crows repeatedly in the morn and attentive guards and housekeepers check on me.  Several times a day.  Whether I need it or not? 

In two days we will have been here 2 months.  We arrived in paradise on Tuesday, August 12 in the middle of an absolute downpour that lasted all afternoon and most of the night. For someone who had just spent nearly a month in drought-stricken South Texas (even the 2 hurricanes that passed through while we were there didn't do much to lift the drought), it looked like a profligate waste of water. And to think it does that every day here during the rainy season (which lasts about 8 months of the year).

Our home here is amazing -- spacious, bright, beautiful. I feel so colonial: There's even "maid's quarters" (a tiny bedroom and a bathroom with no hot water and a window that won't open) off the laundry room, which is right off the kitchen. We have a maid (there's no way I can mop the 6 acres of floors in this house every day, which is what it seems to need), but she won't live there. It makes a lovely storage room.

I really do feel like I'm in paradise so far. I think our condominium (in the U.S. we would say "gated community") is surrounded on all sides by barrios and businesses, but all I can see from my 2nd floor window are trees and what looks (to my untrained eyes) a lot like jungle. In the mornings, before the clouds roll in, I can see the mountains to the north of San Jose (Escazu is a suburb of the capital). The air is clean and almost crisp; the mountains are carpeted in thick, dark green, the fluffy white clouds which will turn into rain in the afternoon are just starting to peek over the hills, and there's a Wal-Mart just 2 miles away. There's also Office Depot, Ace Hardware, Pizza Hut, Tony Roma's and TGIF. I've even seen signs that Domino's Pizza has a presence here (in the form of a pizza box discarded alongside the road). I wonder if they deliver and how do you say "extra large pepperoni" in Spanish?

But here's the rub: how do I tell them where to come? There are no street signs in this country. None. People keep asking me where I live and I say "I have no idea," because I don't. Printed address labels were presented to us when we arrived. They say something like: "Condomino Santa Maria, 300 meters east of HiperMas (that's Wal-Mart) on the hill next to the auto shop." That's my address.  I'll have to take a map with me if I ever go in a taxi and get the driver to mark my location when I get in the car.

The best part of paradise so far: cheddar cheese. Fourteen years I've lived overseas without cheddar cheese. It may be the most popular kind of cheese on the planet (I take that statistic from a Monty Python skit), but no place I've ever been has it. They have 3 or 4 brands here, and the kids and I went through about 2 pounds of it on our first day in country.

The worst part of paradise so far: the sun comes up at 5:30. Every morning. And it sets around 6. Every evening. The sun comes UP around 5:30, but the roosters and dogs get going by 4 a.m., and it's usually good and light by 4:30. Every morning. This morning, on top of that, there was a family of birds that sounded like it was doing construction on our house at 5 (I'm sure they had several hammers and maybe a little saw), and they were joined by a second family of birds having a major domestic disagreement at 5:15. I think that to stay sane, we're going to have to revise our understanding of "early morning" to something like 3 a.m.: if you get to sleep past that, you've slept in. I'm also going to get some very noisy fans to put in the bedrooms, because sometimes the roosters get confused and ratchet up to full throttle at 1 or 2 a.m. and don't stop until noon.

And speaking of wildlife, Jonathan has already had a close encounter with some kind of tropical wasp (black and white, makes your arm swell up to the size of a sweet potato and leaves a bite hole the size of Nebraska); I spotted a chicken on the playground outside our house this morning (and what do you know, there it is again. Actually, I think this is a different chicken, so mark that down as TWO chickens.  And a rooster); we passed a dead possum on the road this morning; and at church recently, the lady behind us was holding a chihuahua, which was wearing a blue coat. (The dog was better dressed than I was.) So, if this is life in the city, I wonder what it's like out in the sticks??

Would you Like that With or Without Ants?

Oddly enough, this is one of the most common questions asked in our house these days.

Mostly the ants are little, tiny, ghostly looking things about the size of flake of black pepper that get into everything.  Only problem is, they seem to spawn at the rate of about three million per second; the entire population of China throughout history has nothing on these ants.  Someone left the remains of a PB&J in the guest bathroom the other day, and when "ants" were reported, I went to investigate.  I followed a solid trail of these ghost ants across the bathroom cabinet, up the wall, through the window (which leads, oddly enough, into our laundry room) across the wall, over the door, across another window sill (between our laundry room and "maid's quarters," known in our house as "the storage room") up and over the top of a ten foot wide cabinet, and up the TWO STOREY wall that is the west wall of my laundry room.  And from the top of that wall, they presumably formed a solid and equally tortuous trail two stories down to the ground.  This was a  Solid Chain of Ants, two or three ants wide, stretching this vast, (for ants) cosmological distance.  That's a lot of ants.

I sprayed them, of course.  All that I could reach.  With some wonderful, non-toxic, mint-based spray that my husband found and that makes ants curl up and die, twitching, in their tracks.  DIE YOU FILTHY LITTLE VERMIN, DIE!!!!  MUWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

But I digress.

Then there was the day that Timothy asked for honey on toast.  There seemed to be an odd, frothy mixture embedded in the honey.  Oh, no, that's ants.  Millions of them.  Were there more ants or honey?  An intensely philosophical question that I didn't care to answer.

"Would you like your honey with or without ants?"  I asked him, and when he was informed that it was with ants or not at all, he cheerfully agreed to "with ants."  And then proceeded to eat every bite of his toast.  This is the child who vomits when you wave a carrot in front of his face and can't stand horrible things like Chocolate Ice Cream because they're just too far off his "normal food meter."  I don't get it.

And, since we've been taking a Lot of Very Nasty Medicine lately, I have fallen back on the immortal wisdom of Mary Poppins that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and have been offering same as a bribe to get the nastiest stuff down their throats.  And again the question comes:  "Would you like your sugar with or without ants?"  Always they ask for "without," but none of us looks too closely, because we know the truth.  The ghost ants have gotten into my large sugar canister and carved out tunnels in the sugar there; they've gotten into my bread box before and turned the remains of a loaf of bread into an ant hill.  I didn't have any other bread, so I whacked them out the best I could on the counter top, sliced it, and turned it into a PB&J for Timothy's lunch at school.  I told him they were all gone and hoped the ice pack I put in his lunch box would slow them down enough that we could maintain the polite fiction surrounding what we both know is a bald-faced lie.  Jonathan occasionally makes matter-of-fact comments to the effect that "they're just extra protein."  Oddly, this seems to reassure all three children.

And then, we have a roving group of LA-style gang ants; black, nearly a half-inch long (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a LITTLE bit, but they're much bigger than any ants should ever be), and I strongly suspect they're the kind that bit Timothy's finger the other day and made him bleed.  They've staked out the territory between the guest bathroom and the bathroom in the abuela's room (which we use as a TV room/play room) and roam in small packs of 3-5 ants.  They're never in groups big enough that I can spray (or stomp or hammer) enough to make a difference or tell where they're coming from.  Sometimes we stomp, sometimes we just give them a wide berth and they return the favor.

There are many more tales I could tell you over a cup of coffee, if you'd care to join me?  And would you like your sugar with or without ants?

WHAT Bit You?

Timothy came in the house yesterday afternoon holding a finger that was covered with blood.  

Naturally, I was curious.  "What happened to you?"

"An ant bit me!"

"An ANT did that to you??"  I exclaimed as I watched the blood puddle on my floor.

"Yeah!  One of those big ones."  Yeah, big like the size of a man-eating tiger!!  "I killed it."

Couldn't say I blamed him.  I cleaned off the blood and slathered the quarter-inch long gash!!! with antibiotic cream and sent him off to play.  He volunteered to stay away from the ants.

And I'm not going outside again without a Really Big Hammer!

"My 30 Objects Bag"

Benjamin was supposed to send in to school this week 30 of something, ANYthing, the teacher assured me.  Anything they could count to practice counting up to 30, with the understanding that objects would be traded and would not be returned to the child of origin.

Of course I forgot until the morning this was due.  So, leaving the car running in the driveway, I rushed back inside, grabbed a handful of what I hoped was 'about' 30 dried cranberries, stuffed them in a baggie, and away we went.

I did pause briefly to wonder if I was supposed to have counted these out carefully with Benjamin's help, but I was just glad to have SOMEthing to send to school with him.

The big count-off/trade-off was today, and Benjamin brought home a large bag full of:  decorative scrapbooking papers; building blocks; pieces of decorative border to stick on his wall; butterfly buttons; lovingly hand-decorated foam teddy bear shapes; fuzzy puff balls.  And a very sad, dried cranberry squashed in the bottom of the bag.

Sigh.  I think I must be missing the point of preschool.  Good thing Benjamin doesn't seem to notice.

Portrait of a Costa Rican Prostitue

Her name is Yamileth and she is no longer a prostitute.

But she was.  For 41 years she worked the streets, starting when she was 13 and needed to support a drug habit.  She's 54 now; has had eight children, and spent 35 years living on the streets, turning to crime and prostitution so she could buy drugs.

But since coming to the Rahab foundation several years ago, she's gotten off drugs, has become a Christian and is going to church, and for the last four years she hasn't had to sell herself once.

I've talked about the Rahab foundation before, but I wanted to give you a picture -- even just a brief one -- of the sorts of work they're doing; the sorts of lives they're changing.

There are also Lady and Evelyn and Jasmin and a half dozen other happy women and their children whom I've met at Rahab:  whose lives have been changed and whose stories I don't know yet.  They are one of my biggest incentives for learning Spanish, actually.  I want to know these women, know what they've come from, to see the world, even briefly, through their eyes.  If they can find so much joy in life, there is certainly hope for the rest of us.

Good Spanish; Strange Workman

I have been suffering from Piglet Flu today, and so I spent this morning in bed in a coma, occasionally answering the phone.  If I woke up in time.

But even when I woke up in time, I wasn't always coherent.  Which makes the following even more astounding.

The phone rang.  I picked it up.  It was a man speaking entirely in very rapid Spanish.  I understood him completely!  He said he needed to come by my house to do some work on the dryer (that had been requested a couple of weeks ago), when was a good time to come?  I rallied myself sufficiently to realize that today after one would be perfect.  And told him so in Spanish.  Woo hoo!

I felt like such a Spanish stud.  Or would have, if I hadn't immediately passed out again into a coma.  It was very interesting driving to the preschool to pick up my youngest while in a coma, I can tell you!

So, this guy shows up at three (that's after one, right?) to install a lint catcher for my dryer:  a small box that contains water and mounts to the wall.  The dryer hose attaches into it and the lint is trapped in the water.

Did he install this above the dryer?  No he did not.  He installed it exactly even with the top of the dryer, making it impossible to push the dryer as closely up against the wall as it's designed to be pushed.

I politely questioned this (in Spanish again!!) since the position of the dryer is critical:  there are about two inches of leeway in its position, and after that, the door to the laundry room won't shut and then all the ash and rain and dust that blow in there from outside blow in to my kitchen.  Like I said, it's critical.

He assured me, that certainly the dryer was in a good position! and certainly the door would shut!  He looked offended.

He crawled out from behind the dryer, and shoved it back as far as he could.

The door would not shut.  He looked surprised.

My housekeeper and I sat in chairs in the living room, out of sight around the corner, and laughed silently until tears rolled down our faces as he then proceeded to attack an unoffending plastic pipe that stuck a mere half inch out from the wall and was doing nothing to impede the dryer's retreat.  He chipped it completely away.

That was the pipe for connecting the hose to vent the dryer to the outside.  I have no idea what the next tenants are going to do.  But I'll be gone, so it's not my problem.

The door still wouldn't shut.

I made him a cup of coffee:  two sugars, milk.  Maybe this would help.

He studied the problem, and then, by main force, shoved the dryer back until the hose was almost flattened and the innocent little plastic box (which should have been mounted a mere six inches higher and there would have been no problem) bulged on both ends.

But the laundry room door shut and the box didn't crack.  So he gulped down his coffee and drove off before any further problems could develop.

And my housekeeper and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

But the dryer works, the door shuts, and I sounded more like a retarded third grader than a retarded preschooler in Spanish today, so I'm calling it a good day.  Piglet flu notwithstanding.

Trafficking in Persons Award

I am sure that you, like I, have been anxiously awaiting the release of the Trafficking in Persons award by the State Department!  Wait no longer!!  The awards and the report were released today.  The 2009 report is available on the State Department website, but when last I checked, they seemed to be having technical problems.  Or perhaps I'm having technical problems.

Anyway, Trafficking in Persons is actually a really big deal, whether you were waiting with bated breath or not.  I'm sorry to say I was not.  "Trafficking" is actually a modern-day diplomatic euphemism for "slavery," often -- although not always -- with forced sex work as the goal.

I'm excited this year because Mariliana Morales Berrios (pictured above, receiving her award from Secretary Clinton in Washington, DC today), is the founder and director of the Rahab Foundation here in San Jose, where I occasionally volunteer.  She was chosen out of hundreds of candidates to be one of only nine people worldwide to receive the Trafficking in Persons Award this year; her work at Rahab helping women leave the sex trade has fed directly into stopping trafficking, a large source of the labor pool for the global sex trade.  In fact, just this week two Costa Rican women were rescued from sexual slavery in northern Mexico.  Despite Mariliana's hard work, there's still a long way to go.  I hope this award gives even greater visibility and stature to her work here.

Olga is My Friend

All those bad things I said about Olga last week?  I take them back.

She is my friend.

OK, so we still need to iron out some issues relating to her use of icepicks, but she is still my friend.

She thinks some of the knots she's been working on in my shoulders might have been there for years:  she asked me how old my oldest child was.  He's nine.  

But after two sessions with her I can now move my neck without hearing the bones grate together.  I can sit in a chair and hold my head up without wanting to cry (most of the time).  The fingers in my left hand are still a bit numb, but at least I can operate a knife without being in fear of my life.  And best of all:  I actually SLEEP! at night!!  Woo hoo!!  Of course, prescription painkillers may be helping with that too.  Whatever.  I'll take it any way I can get it.

She's coming back Monday.  I can hardly wait, icepicks and all.

If a Tree Falls Out of the Forest....

... Does anyone hear the transformer explode when the power lines snap??

In case you're wondering:  yes.  

I was upstairs on Tuesday afternoon packing my son's suitcase for his school camp trip (two overnights!!!) and heard a noise rather like Godzilla-meets-Flight-of-the-Bumblebee right outside the window.  Which is interesting because the transformer is half a block away and nowhere that I should be able to hear it, even if it exploded.  Which it did.  And, of course, all our power was cut.

A large tree had collapsed -- for no discernible reason -- onto the power lines across the street from the gate to our condominio.  I mean:  DIRECTLY across the street to our condominio.  If it had been about four feet taller, it would have crashed into our gate and we'd probably still be trapped inside.

We streamed outside to see what was going on just in time to see two guys in a little white truck pull up, wade through the (live) electrical wires to pull part of the trunk out of the way, and casually drive off.

It was 4:30.  Having seen this sort of thing before, and noting that in the past it had taken most of the day to get things back up and running, I went inside without comment and fired up the tabletop camp stove I'd purchased for emergencies.  When I bought it, I was thinking of emergencies like camping out under the swing set after an earthquake, but I figured an exploded transformer was close enough.

Only problem:  we were scheduled to have meatloaf.  It was all mixed up, in the pan with the ketchup sauce already on top.  I had only been waiting for my husband to get home to pop it in the oven.

A camp stove is not an oven.  What to do?  Aha!  Meatloaf patties!  I smashed the meat into patties, ketchup sauce and all.  I also opened a can of spinach and heated it up and opened a can of palm hearts and called it "salad."  I told the kids it was delicious and most of us even believed it.  We ate out on the patio by the light of three tiny citronella candles set on an overturned bucket and while I cleaned up by candlelight, my husband bathed the boys by emergency lantern light.

Then we had one more look at The Tree:  emergency crews had showed up; the entire neighborhood showed up; cars from Panama, I think, showed up.  It was like a huge block party, everyone standing around and watching the work men remove the tree, and occasionally move their tiny front-end loader looking thing out of the way so a bus could get by.  And then everyone else standing around would have to jump in their cars and move them so the bus could get by; and then we all went back to watching the men work.  There were a lot of cheerful shouts and waving of hands and lots of extra officious help.  I was surprised there wasn't anyone selling popcorn.

My kids took a detour to the pitch black playground on the way back home and thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world to swing in the dark (in the mud), and then we went into our candlelit house and closed the door and hustled everyone to bed.

It was a WONDERFUL evening.  It gets pitch dark here by about six o'clock.  By seven, everyone in our house was in bed, and just almost asleep.

And the power came back on at seven-thirty.

Like I said, a WONDERFUL evening.  It was so wonderful that every night since we've been aiming for a seven o'clock bedtime.

The only drawback is that our internet has been sporadic -- a generous description -- ever since Tuesday night.  My husband swears it couldn't possibly be from the power problems, but I'm not convinced.  But it's not such a bad thing because it means I'VE been getting to bed early too.  Ahh, sleep!  

I may send Gary out to flip the main breaker every night at six.   Look, boys!  It's dark.  Bedtime!!

Seen Recently in San Jose

I saw something rather surreal while driving on the autopista (interstate) recently:  Young Costa Rican with dreadlocks, filthy jeans, ragged backpack walking on the edge of the autopista -- the kind of guy who makes you nervous.  And not only that, he was carrying a wicked looking knife with a six-inch blade; I saw him stick it into a well-used leather sheath as we inched by in traffic.

I locked the doors.

A few yards ahead of knife guy were two policemen, standing at the edge of the road, checking for speeders in the bumper to bumper traffic and generally keeping the world safe for democracy.  They watched with interest as knife guy wiped the blade on his pants and stuck it into the sheath.  He walked past them carrying the knife, they each lit a cigarette, and we drove past.

I thought it was all very strange until I remembered that many men here walk around with a two-foot long machete strapped to their waist.

And after that, I guess a six-inch knife really isn't that big a deal; I'll just chalk the surreality up to 'seeing through American eyes'!

Olga

For weeks I've had weak, numb fingers that have trouble wielding either a knife or a hairbrush (and even have trouble opening a clothespin), and last week developed pounding neck- and head-aches that start every day before I wake up and last until I finally fall asleep at night.

I was starting to get concerned.

The Embassy nurse sent me for X-rays last week to confirm that there is definitely a problem in my neck; including, among other things, the fact that my neck vertebrae are pulled slightly out of alignment.  However, without consulting an orthopedic surgeon and having an MRI, it's difficult to tell if I have problems in my neck that are causing muscle tension or if muscle tension is causing the problems.

No wonder I've been a bit testy lately!

Enter Olga, whom I'm sure you're imagining as a 6 foot tall blonde Swede.  

NOT!  

Try a five-foot-nothing Costa Rican with muscles that put your average pro wrestler to shame.  I haven't decided if she's a massage therapist who fights wild tigers for fun or a massage therapist who plays linebacker for a professional football team on the week-ends.  Or maybe she's just your average sado-masochist.  And she seemed so nice when I first met her, too.

She came to my house with her folding massage table and told me to lie down and just relax.  Ha.  

She started on my feet, and after she'd made me yelp and try to leap off the table several times, she looked at me pityingly and said in Spanish, "You poor thing!  That hurts?"  (Well, yes!  Aren't you attacking me with an icepick???)  "This is definitely an emergency massage for you, dear."

And then she proceeded to beat me with sticks and icepicks and a hammer or two.  And I yelped and writhed and tried to keep from rolling off onto the hard tile floor.

Relax?  I felt like I'd run a mile fighting jungle reptiles the whole way.  I'd rather be with the "I'm a Celebrity... Get me Out of Here!" people eating bugs in grass huts.  

Then she smiled innocently and asked when I was free on Thursday because she definitely needed to come back and I was so tense I probably wouldn't feel any better unless she did come back.

She stood there smiling, looking expectantly at me, so I hobbled over to my date book and confirmed that eight on Thursday morning would be fine.  And she left.

But she's coming back.  Oh dear.

I was numb for hours after she left.  And then the old pain came back, and then after that I felt bruised.

And she's coming back.

Anybody know where those celebrities are here in Costa Rica?  Maybe Patti Blagojevich would like a massage....

Game Called on Account of Tree Frog

The pool game is always pretty much over when a red-eyed tree frog hops onto the pool table.

We were away at The volcano this week-end:  Arenal, the most active volcano in the world, and potential for life-threatening eruptions aside, my new favorite place in the world.  We stayed at the Arenal Lodge, some forgotten relic of a past heyday, full of threadbare gentility and rugged comfort and set in the middle of several hundred acres of what used to be a macadamia nut plantation.

And the main thing to do there:  walk.  Walk up the mile-long road that leads to the hotel and marvel at the thousands of bricks lining the road, all hand-laid.  And marvel at the dense, green, rich, alive tropical jungle on each side of the road; and the sheer drops to rock-strewn streams, and leaves big enough to be a boy's umbrella; and welcome the splash of rain and the coolness of the mist.

Or walk to the butterfly house and the mile-long brick-lined path; and marvel at the stone-lined, abandoned swimming pool set in the middle of the stream; listen to the thousands of sounds that pass for silence in the jungle -- not one of them man-made; be startled by the sudden orange flash of a heliconia; be relieved that it's only a tangle of vine in the path and not a snake; slip on the smooth, slick, moss covered bricks.

And in the freshness of the morning, walk down the hill from the lodge, through an almost-endless grassy pasture, and watch your kids delight in the strange plants whose leaves close when touched.  Explore the banana trees planted at the edge of the jungle surrounding you; have they escaped from the forest?  Or are they there as sentinels to hold back the rich growth of a tropical jungle?  Listen to the grunt of a peccary as you pass its hiding place in the forest; walk under macadamia trees, hoary with lichen, and sit and stare in awe as the wind scatters the clouds and the feet of the volcano across the valley are slowly revealed; its head wreathed in eternal smoke and steam.

Or watch as your children hold out flowers for the pair of resident wild blue macaws to politely take and peck at; watch them laugh as the birds fly overhead, feathers almost skimming through their hair; and watch yourself, with a catch in your throat, as they fly higher and higher, almost to the clouds it seems, calling out their raucous joy, only to settle in the lime tree just out of reach.

I didn't want to come home.

Cowboy Day or Dia de los Caballeritos

Yesterday was family "Cowboy Day" at the preschool.  I've been dreading it for weeks.

They had a family "Pirate Day" in the fall, so I already knew what to expect.  That's why I was dreading it.

In the fall, whole families -- mom, dad, kids, and even grandparents dressed up in the most elaborate costumes you can imagine.  All matching, of course.  One guy had a live parrot on his shoulder.

I, myself, was thinking:  Pre-school, pirates, simple.  I wore a pair of frayed "cast-away" jeans, and I convinced Benjamin to wear a pirate's hat.  People took one look at me and handed me dishes to wash:  I simply was not Dressed Appropriately.

Have I mentioned 90-degree heat and 90% humidity?

And the Costa Ricans' need for personal space is much less than mine.  Their accepted person:space ratio is approximately 8 people per square foot.  I'm claustrophobic.  I need 8 square feet per person on a long-term basis.

In the fall, I gutted it out till the bitter end because I had no car, was watching two extra kids, and was waiting for a ride.  NOW, I have a car.  I was planning to make an appearance for the beginning-of-party-assembly and then skedaddle.

And I even dressed up this time.  I'm from Texas, you'd think a Cowboy Day party would be simple.  Ha.  We scrounged some respectable outfits together for the two of us, and, after much consideration and remembering the polite sneers and dirty dishes I had been handed in the fall, I wore my boots.

NOT cowboy boots; calf-high dress boots with what I'll swear are six inch heels.  It would generally be more pleasant to walk barefooted over broken glass than to walk in these boots.  I should have burned them years ago, but, dang, they look nice.  And they were expensive.

We hobbled painfully to the party.  Where, first off, we were supposed to gather in the kids' respective classrooms and learn a "Cowboy Dance" which we were then to perform in front of EVERYONE on the stage later on -- we were assigned the Cotton-Eyed-Joe, the one dance I can perform with some semblance of coordination.  No one else had any clue what they were doing.  I was even prepared to take charge and whip them into shape, but Benjamin was too shy with so many people around and burst into tears when I asked if he wanted to dance.  Apparently, he doesn't like crowds any better than I do.

Well, being the Wonderful Mother I am, I promptly took him out of such a terrifying environment, of course (code speak for:  we rebelled!!) and while everyone else sweltered in the classroom in undignified confusion, we went for a pony ride.  Three pony rides in a row, as a matter of fact.  And later, when we were supposed to perform as a class, well, we missed that too because we were Still Riding the Pony.

Benjamin made several hundred circuits on that pony; most of the kids were completely uninterested in the ponies, so there was no crowd there.  I sat in the shade with a friend.  There were about 20 other people in the backyard where the ponies were.  Whereas in the front, where the band and the performances were, there were 300 people crowded together in the heat and sun.  I could hear the distant sounds of revelry, and I rejoiced in my solitude.  And shade.

The boots turned out to be a good call, my limp today notwithstanding:  no one asked me to wash dishes!!

There will be another Pirate Party in the fall, but this time, I'm ready for it!!!

Where am I???

Friday night, my husband and I went to friends' for dinner:  she's Honduran, he's half Tico, half Mexican.  We're American.  The other guests were English and Irish.  We ate Mexican food with Peruvian hot sauce, drank Chilean and Spanish wine (I think Gary had a German beer), and the Irishman cooked up his mother's plum pudding (left over from Christmas) on the stove for dessert.

Does that scenario seem as bizarre to you as it did to me??

I had never seen, tasted, or in any other way experienced a Christmas pudding, so when interesting sounds, smells, and yelps started proceeding from the kitchen as the pudding was being finished up, I thought I'd see what was happening.

Our friend D. was standing at the stove, with a plate of what looked like dark sliced cookie dough in one hand and a frying pan in the other.  The noises and yelps were a result of the pan, which was on fire, flames shooting up into the hood over the stove.

I gawked.  "That looks very interesting," I commented, trying to remain calm since he obviously wasn't panicking.  "Do you know what you're doing?"

He grinned at me and dodged another flame, "-Ish!" he said.

He'd had to douse the pudding (which is not anything like what Bill Cosby used to eat!) with rum since there was no brandy.  I didn't know that rum would ignite at a certain temperature.  It does.  Every time.

The pudding would have been delicious -- soaked in brandy, fried in butter (and rum), doused with brandy-flavored butter, full of nuts and fruits -- had we been about 5 months closer to Christmas.  And maybe if we'd been able to leave off the rum.

D. says his mom sends one every year.  Next year, I'm showing up in early January with a bottle of brandy and a stick of butter.  How could he turn me away??!

Monsoons: The Best Toys Around

My children are outside playing in the rain.

This is not your normal, average, every-day, run-of-the-mill, April showers (even though it's May) sort of rain.  This is a monsoon:  pouring, thundering, rushing waters, rain drops the size of Iowa, and distant rumbles of thunder bouncing off the surrounding mountains.  This is a 10-inches-an-hour sort of rain.  This is a Tropical Rain.

My children are out in it with my delighted blessings and encouragement. My one concession to the idea of a future mess is to remove the entrance-hall carpet.  Tile is easy to mop.

We have a long history at our house of playing in the rain, starting in Jakarta during monsoon season.  The mosquitoes in Jakarta are not to be believed, and, although there's a minimal chance of getting malaria in the city, dengue fever (also called "break bone fever" for obvious reasons) is a popular alternative.  We took the mosquitoes seriously, sleeping under mosquito netting and slathering up with both sunscreen and mosquito repellent whenever we'd poke our noses out into the year-round 98 degree heat and 98 percent humidity.

If the mosquito repellent helped, I didn't notice.  It just wasn't much fun to be outside in the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes, and I was 6 months pregnant at the time.  We stayed indoors a lot, huddled around the air conditioning unit.

But, during a good monsoon rain, mosquitoes go to ground!  So, during the rain and for about 15 minutes after, we'd send our oldest (then two years old) out to play in the mud and the vertical torrent, and occasionally the thunder, lightning, and gale-force winds while my husband and I watched from the relative comfort of the patio.  He loved it.  We loved it.  Everybody loved it.  

Our servants, sensibly sitting out the storm safely indoors, thought we were certifiable.  They may have been right.

So, here we are in another tropical country, well into monsoon season, and again I'm sending my children out into the rain.  All the other neighborhood children disappeared, squealing, indoors when the rain started.  My middle son hurriedly pulled on some clothes and dashed outside, followed by his older brother.  When the youngest learned that not only was he being permitted, but being begged to go outside, he didn't even bother to change out of his PJs.  And I didn't suggest it!

Because now the house is quiet, free of slamming doors and the endless refrain of Mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom that seems to pervade my every waking moment on the week-ends.  My husband had asked me earlier if I planned to spend the whole day curled up in the bedroom with the newspaper, and I gently explained to him that, at the moment, the children were happy, quiet, and playing nicely together.  They were content.  Were I to appear on the scene, there would be an instant and endlessly-repeated chorus of "Mom!", unmet and immediate needs, unfulfilled desires, and begging, and pleading, ending ultimately in screaming and crying.  This is the effect my gentle presence has on my children.

But outside in the rain, they are entertained, happy, wet, slightly cold, tiring themselves out, and deliciously dirty:  a perfect recipe for delightful little boys.  And when they tire of the rain (it's starting to happen now), they will stream inside and upstairs to the enormous jacuzzi tub -- which was an unasked for and unmistakable blessing that came with this house! -- and spend another hour playing with their army guys (too big to go down the drain) and the bubbles.  After that, they will be warm, slightly tired, and delighted at the idea of family movie night with popcorn and an early bedtime.

Now, if that's not a win-win situation, I don't know what is!

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!!!

Spanish Class??

I just want to know what they're teaching my kids in Spanish class at school.

Last night I asked the middle one:  "Como se llama?" (What's your name?)  And he responded:  "Bien!" (Good!)  He brought home a Spanish assignment (due Monday) that I have No Idea how we're going to complete: research and write (in Spanish) a short report on "The Bus" as a means of transportation.  Heck, I couldn't even do that!  And it's 20% of his grade!  Well, like I told him, it's OK if he flunks Spanish.  And Social Studies (which is required to be taught in Spanish.)  And did I mention that he didn't even know he had an assignment?  The only reason I know he has an assignment is because I happened to find it written out on a piece of paper in his backpack.  He said his teacher handed him the paper, said something in Spanish, and walked away.  He had no idea what it was.

Maybe we'll just do that report in English.  I think we can manage that.

The oldest one recently had to write a very simple report for Social Studies:  the teacher told him the topic, told him the website to go to, and told him what sub-topics to cover.  Tonight I asked him how he'd done that report; had he understood anything he'd read?  "No, I just copied down the first sentence under each topic.  I have no idea what I wrote."

The littlest one seems to have a much firmer grasp on Spanish overall and can even ask intelligent questions like "Es de miyo?"  ("Is this mine?").  And understand the answer.  But even he tells me I have to say "Granada" (instead of "De nada") when he says "Gracias."

I just have a Whole New Perspective on kids who show up in American schools not speaking a word of English.  And can I just mention that I can not possibly say enough nice things about ESL teachers and programs?  'Cause, honey, I've seen it from the other side, and it just ain't pretty!

So, if you're an ESL teacher and you're reading this, pat yourself on the back for me and, please, have a WONDERFUL day!!  You're my hero.

Rain

It's raining.

That's an understatement in the same league as "It feels a bit nippy in Antarctica this time of year," or "Hurricane Katrina was a storm."

It's raining so hard  that water is shooting horizontally out of the drain pipes, filling the streets up to the curbs, and rolling rocks the size of my head down the road.

After nearly 6 months of beautiful, cloudless skies; perfect summer temperatures; and flawless weather, frankly, I'm ready for a good storm.  Oops, looks like we're getting that too; I don't think I'll be surprised if lighting hits our house.  Is the thunder supposed to come BEFORE the lighting??

I think the dry season has ended.

Moldy living room, here we come!

Sea Snakes, Raw Hamburgers, and Sand in My Unmentionables

Except for the sea snake, we had a lovely and nearly uneventful time at the beach last week-end.  We haven't bothered to check yet to find out if that sea snake was a venomous type:  bright yellow belly, black back; alternating black and yellow bands on the tail.  I didn't get close enough to examine the shape of the head and eyes, and really, don't even know if the rules for venomous snakes in Texas apply in the tropics.  Any herpetologists out there who can answer these burning questions?

Gary found the snake up near the high tide line.  At first, he thought it was dead.  It wasn't.  A wave washed over it and it showed distinct signs of life and a desire to return to open ocean, which happened to be where the children were.  Not having a proper weapon on hand, he flipped it up on to some rocks out of reach of tide and children.  It was then that he found the desiccated body of a second snake.

We decided it was time for lunch.

I had already told Gary how wonderful a hamburger would taste after a morning in the hot sun and rolling surf.  He said only, "There are a lot of ways to mess up a hamburger."

"Oh, really," I thought derisively.  "What can you do to mess up a hamburger?"  And then I remembered some foreign hamburger disasters I'd partaken of, and I decided:  "There's plenty you can do to mess up a hamburger."  I decided I'd have something besides a hamburger for lunch.

And how convenient!  There was a restaurant right there on the beach!  Well, there was an open-sided building with tables, clean cloths, chairs, even a place to wash your hands.  It looked just like a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the beach should look in a third world country, the walls open to the delightful breeze, the tangy smell of salt water and drying snake in the air, and brown children tumbling in the sand nearby.

The young man at the counter seemed very confused, however, when I asked about food and pointed out to him the large, painted wooden sign right outside the door labeled "Menu."  "Oh, no, senora," with a pitying smile, "That's not our menu."

Ah.  This was a clue.  I missed it.

"Well, what do you have, then?"

Confused mumbling, and then, "One moment.  I'll check."

He pulled a curtain aside and ducked into what, I could clearly see, was the family's bedroom-cum-living room.  I suppose he went to ask the lady of the house what was in the freezer.

This was another clue.  I missed it too.

Finally, we ordered.  I bravely ordered a pork cutlet, instead of the hamburger I really wanted, because I know what it's possible to do to a hamburger.

Another clue (which I missed):  "Sorry, senora, we are out of pork cutlets."

"OK, I'll just have a hamburger."  Thinking, "What can they do to it?"  Also, the thought of fish (which figured prominently on the menu) from this restaurant was somehow not appealing.  Maybe it was the pink bedspread I saw on the bed that turned me off somehow.

The hamburger came.  The patty had been deep fried.  I think.  If not, I don't really want to contemplate the alternatives.  It was also raw in the middle.  Raw as in:  still cold.  I have my limits, and this was definitely one of them.

The french fries were very good.  And, despite the risk of who could even imagine what sort of amoebic infestation, I ate the salad, which was also good.  The rice was excellent.  I left the hamburger, quivering and pink, on the plate.  No one got sick, not even me, so in that respect, lunch fulfilled all my requirements for a meal eaten overseas.  And as long as I didn't think about that hamburger, I felt fine.  Sort of.

That afternoon we opted for the relative civilization and salt-free atmosphere of a freshwater pool.  The boys played in the water and, after a brief and invigorating swim, I did something I haven't done in years at a pool:  I sat in the shade and read while the boys splashed around in the water.  It was very heaven.  That afternoon made my whole trip.

The next morning, we decided to move down the beach a bit away from sea snake land.  And found the most gorgeous, deserted, white sand stretch of beach.  And lots of shells (which, unfortunately, all got left behind.  Mom is not crying over this).

We rolled in the surf like idiots.  We splashed in the water and built sand castles.  We picked up shells and rocks and soaked up sun (but not too much); turned a tree into a space ship and a plastic box into an ocean-going vessel.  We floated on logs and built a medieval style fortification with three lines of defense against the ocean waves.  We played until we were too hungry to play anymore.  Then we went home and ate sandwiches.  And played in the pool again.  At night, we looked out at the blackness to the distant, unobtrusive lights of a far-away resort, and gazed wonderingly up into the dark sky.  I had forgotten how many stars there are.  And listened to the wind and the distant crash of surf.

Perfect.

The Mad Huntress: My Alter Ego

We left Zagreb in the summer of 2007 to go home to the States on vacation, and our lives have never quite recovered.  We returned to find our house positively swarming with little brownish-grey moths.  These are the kind that, like weevils, are attracted to grain products and instant mashed potatoes.  Instant mashed potatoes we can do without, but large portions of our life are defined by stockpiling grain products, namely, spelt flour and pasta.  In the recent warnings re swine flu to make sure you have a two week supply of food laid in (well, that's the Embassy recommendation to us, anyway), all I had to do was buy an extra package of yeast.  I'm set.  So are the moths.

We swatted at them in Zagreb for months, and between the fly swatter and leaving the windows wide open, we managed to get rid of most of them.

But not all of them.  Apparently, a significant number moved with us.

And, it seems that the ones we brought with us have interbred with a similar type here in Costa Rica to produce some sort of moth superstrain.  Every time I go into the pantry, I have to check to make sure the lights are actually on; there are so many of the little.... darlings.... that the light is sometimes obscured.

I've been taking them out five or six at a time, hoping to keep their numbers down to a manageable level, but we were gone for four days, and in that short time, with no predators attacking them, they multiplied to numbers roughly equivalent to the population of Cairo, Egypt.

You know how I feel about bugs.

So I went on a spree today.  With my flyswatter, I got 30 or 40 of them in the pantry before lunch, flicked five or six off the kitchen curtains, and brought out the bathroom stool to reach the half dozen on the ceiling in the kitchen.  After lunch, I went back into the pantry and cut another broad swath through their numbers.  I felt like the Spartans facing the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae.  

Which the Spartans lost, by the way.

I don't think there's much hope for us, either.

Adios, Amigas!

Well, for a few days anyway:  we're leaving tomorrow morning for a much-needed family vacation in Guanacaste (that little bulgy part in the north-westish part of Costa Rica.)

I'm betting there's no Internet, which gets a big hurrah from me this week!

I'll think of you all as I'm rolling in the surf with a 6-year-old & being buried in sand by a 3-year-old!

Pacific, here we come!

Post-Scrapbook Surrealism

It turned into a real contest -- not to see who could make the cutesiest scrapbook pages or cut out the coolest shapes.  By the end of our scrapbooking session, every parent there was racing to just finish the job before their three-year-old destroyed it.

Did you know that three-year-olds have zero interest in making a coherent scrapbook?  Mine cried, in fact, when he found out we had to actually put pictures into it, and it was all I could do to keep him from glueing the pages together.  

We compromised, and I let him smear glitter glue all over his grandmother's face (sorry, Mom) while I furiously scribbled things like "And we went to France." And while he was determinedly glueing large scraps of blue paper across two pages and four pictures, I was surreptitiously trimming the edges so we could see the pictures.  He also put a volcano sticker smack in the middle of his in-the-hospital picture, and his Grandma Gail now has lava shooting out of her hair.  A glance at my neighbors showed me they were in the exact same boat.  

I wouldn't have cared a bit what he did except that the teacher had specifically told me these were going to be a class teaching tool (before, after; family members, etc.) and that she needed something she could see and read.  So we fought silently.  And I won.  Sort of.  I think.

The strangest thing about this whole ordeal turned out to be the subject matter of Benjamin's book.  In my frenetic glances at the other mothers fending off glitter glue tubes and prying stickers off of photographs, I saw the sorts of pictures they had in their books:  My first birthday; my first soccer ball; my first time crawling in the grass.  

Benjamin's book was a litany of the countries he's visited:  Texas ("It's a whole other country!"), Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia....  Afterwards I counted and realized that I had pictures of him in EIGHT different countries.  And he's been to more than that, I just didn't have room in the book (it was only ten pages).

This is weird.  Even I can see that.

When my oldest was two we were waiting to get on a plane to fly somewhere, and a captain in uniform (who was traveling as a passenger) tried to strike up a conversation with him:  "Hi, Sonny!  Are you nervous?  Is this your first time on an airplane?"  Jonathan looked at him like the man had lost his mind, but didn't say anything.  "Actually," I spoke up without really thinking, "He's flown enough that he's an elite member of this airline's frequent flyer club."  (By that time he'd made a half dozen trans-Atlantic crossings and a couple of trans-Pacific crossings.)  He was TWO!  After that, the captain looked at ME like I'd lost MY mind.

Maybe I have.  But, it's been a very fun way to lose our minds, even if I don't mind saying I'm glad it's almost over!! (2011, here we come!)

Scrapbooking Panic

I do not scrapbook.

I do not like to scrapbook.

It is not fun for me.  It makes me panic:  all those cute little papers and stickers and cutouts and shapes and the CHOICES!!  Aaaagh!  The choices!!  (Clutching head and scuttling through the bell tower of Notre Dame cathedral with a rolling, hunch-backed limp....)

 I once walked into a flower shop in Israel in which there were no arrangements pre-made; all the flowers were in vases, separated by type and color.  It was extraordinarily beautiful, like a rainbow.  And then I started thinking about having to construct my own bouquet, and I panicked.  Completely and utterly.  I started to hyperventilate, actually, and I left without buying anything.  In fact, it might be appropriate to say I sprinted out of there.  I think I took a box of chocolates to the dinner we were going to that night.

I don't do art.  I am not capable of doing art.  I also don't do color (which is why the walls in my kitchen are chocolate purple), and I especially don't scrapbook.

So what am I doing tomorrow?  Scrapbooking.

I have been given an assignment by my son's preschool teacher.  I have to make an accordion-fold scrapbook (10 pages) of cardstock cut to 18cm x 18cm squares.  I must come prepared with cute stickers, cutouts, blah blah blah and pictures (with accompanying text, of course).

I've been in a mild panic about this all week.  I finally got up the courage to buy the cardstock on Friday and I put the scrapbook together this afternoon.

Now all I have to do is print out pictures and show up and cheerfully scrapbook with my preschooler and with all the other moms tomorrow at 11.

Some of you out there are thinking, "Oh, what fun!  What a great project to do with your sweet little kid!"

Know what I'm thinking?  "AAAGGGHH!!"  I felt more excited about taking my chemistry final in college.  And, in fact,  I think I did better on chemistry than I'll do on this tomorrow.

Alright, I know it's not for a grade or anything.  And the important thing is to have fun....

The preschooler's going to have fun -- I bought glow in the dark star stickers AND dinosaur stickers.  What's not to love when you're a 3 year old boy?  I think I'll just hand him all the supplies and a glue stick and watch him "have fun."  Then maybe I'll have fun too!

Humble Pie

So, after all the panicking I did last week over the Spanish report that was supposedly due on Friday.... after my Very Polite E-mail, the teacher wrote back to let me know that e-mail had been sent to me by mistake.  There WAS no Spanish report.

Thank goodness!  Not sure if I'm happier about the "no report" or the "Very Polite."  Whew.

It's Due WHEN?

I got an e-mail from the Spanish teacher at the boys' school today.  In Spanish.  Not entirely sure what it says, but I think it's something along these lines:  "The following assignment (not sure what "the assignment" is; it'll take me 45 minutes with a dictionary to decrypt that) is due on Friday from your 4th grade  son/daughter.  Use these websites to research the information you need, restating the information in your own words.  The finished report must be placed in a plastic folder with cover sheet.  It is worth 15% of your child's grade."  It may even have to be an oral report; I'm not sure.

Erp.  Excuse me?  It's Wednesday afternoon!

I have a feeling this is an assignment that was made a couple of weeks ago, given how much it's worth and the length etc.  When I asked Jonathan if he had an assignment due in Spanish, he said:  "I have no idea.  I never know what the teacher is saying.  She just walks in the room and starts teaching in Spanish.  All the other kids speak Spanish, so they know what she's saying.  Do I have an assignment due?"

I just can not even express how frustrated I am and how sympathetic I am feeling towards kids in US schools who only speak Spanish.  Let's hear it for ESL, because I'm really needing some SSL here!

I had thought, since this is an English-language school, that the school was providing Spanish classes that would teach my non-Spanish-speaking kids to speak Spanish.  It seems I was wrong.  Why has it taken nearly 8 months of school to figure this out??

Had we come here to live permanently and needed to really learn Spanish, I'd have put the boys in an all-Spanish school, dropped them back a grade or two, and made sure they had Spanish tutors.  But, well, they're going to an English-language school that happens to have Spanish classes.

Urgh.  That's me still being frustrated and not sure if I want to bang my head against the wall or cry first.  I was a German major in college, and I had an equivalent sort of project to do -- as the final project in my junior year!  It took me most of the semester to work it up.  We've got 36 hours??

Actually, I think what I'll do is the unthinkable:  write the teacher a very nice note saying that we will in no way be able to complete this assignment.  Since we don't even know what it is.  I will also tell her that we would be glad to complete an equivalent assignment in English.  And then I will STRONGLY urge the teacher and the headmistress to either provide Spanish as a Second Language Classes or hire a teacher who can fill this role. 

Urgh!  I had really high hopes that the boys would be learning Spanish while we're here.  Urgh!  Urgh!  Urgh!  No amount of questioning, sly comments, poking, prying, or any other technique of the average mother is able to elicit any information on the school day from my two boys:  I don't even know the names of their friends.  Or if they HAVE any friends.  And I've never heard boo from the school on this topic, just noted that the boys had passing grades in Spanish (HOW?), so I thought everything was fine.

Urgh.

Any of you out there who know an ESL teacher, give her (him) a hug.  I never realized till now what wonderful people they are.

Say it With... Headlights

We were driving home from picking my husband up at the Embassy yesterday when my 8-year-old asked from the back, "Why did that car flash its lights at you?"

"He was letting me know I could turn."

"What about the other car that flashed at you?"

"Oh, he was telling me he was turning."

In awe:  "But those are two completely different things!  What else can you say with your headlights?"

One of the major forms of communication on Costa Rican highways is Headlight Morse Code, and to amuse ourselves on the ride home, we came up with a list of things you can say with a flash of your headlights here:

-Hello!

-You can turn, I'll wait.

-You wait, I'm turning.

-Are you going to let me turn?

-I can't believe you just turned in front of me when I clearly informed you I was not going to let you turn!

-That was the dumbest move I've ever seen.  (Usually accompanied by a horn).

-Yes, you may cut in.

-No, you can't cut in..

-Hey!  You nearly killed me!  (Usually accompanied by a horn)

-You dummyhead, you nearly ran me off the road!  I told you you couldn't cut in!

-Police ahead.

-Traffic ahead.

-Large broken water main flooding the streets with three inches of water ahead.

-Open manhole cover in the middle of the road ahead.

-Watch out, I'm swerving to miss this pothole in the middle of the road!

-Get out of the middle of the road!

-Watch it, buddy, I'm here in the middle of the road!

-Hey, I think you're cute.

-Thanks!

Semana Santa. Sick.

Here we are smack in the middle of Semana Santa.  I've been hearing vague and tantalizing references to "Semana Santa" since we arrived:

"Last year during Semana Santa we went to the Galapagos."

"Are you traveling during Semana Santa?"

"You can get some great travel deals (NOT) during Semana Santa!"

I had one year of high school Spanish when we arrived.  I've spent 8 months thinking that Semana is Mr. Claus' younger sister.  Can you believe it's taken me this long (and language classes twice a week) to figure out that "Semana Santa" is "Holy Week"??  i.e., the week leading up to Easter.

ALL the schools are out.  All week.  Many business shut down. All week; so much so that grocery stores which WILL be open post special notices to let people know they'll be open.  

Semana Santa falls right near the end of the dry season.  This didn't really mean anything to me until I'd lived through most of a wet season, when it rains 3 or 4 inches every day.  Except in October when it rains 8-10 inches.  Every day.  So having a week-long vacation in the dry season -- when temps get in the upper 80s and there's not a drop of rain in this entire time zone -- is a big deal.

So, this being the most important season in the church calendar in a VERY Catholic country, every one naturally goes to the beach.  Everyone.  Goes. To. The beach.  Everyone.  In our condominio -- which has 12-15 houses in it, we are the ONLY people NOT at the beach.

I like it.  

Because it means I can even let the 3-year-old out of the house without worrying he'll be breaking into the neighbors' homes or swiping their cars, among other things.  It also means we can just relax.  Today, for example, was filled with Very Important Things for us:  we visited a friend (who's 3 weeks from her due date & not traveling ANYWHERE!), rolled in the grass outside, and picked up "magic beans" from pods which are being shed in the thousands by some tree I can't quite identify.  All of those beans are now in bowls in my house.  All of them.  The boys are seriously expecting a visit from Jack's giant.  I hope they're wrong.

Our days have also been filled with a very un-Holy amount of television, ibuprofen, and Tylenol.  The youngest came down with a little tropical fever on Sunday.  Nothing big, just about 104 degrees (after Tylenol).  The rest of us never actually had a REAL fever, we just felt like a large elephant had dropped on us from a 10-storey building, and my 8-year-old, who typically spends 18 hours a day on his bicycle, has instead been spending 18 hours a day watching "Go, Diego, GO!"  Which he hates.  I knew something was wrong.

So, we've all been poking around at mole-speed the last couple of days; yesterday it took me two hours of rest just to recover from unloading the dishwasher.  No one had any fever today, but a friend -- who's been through what looks a lot like this fever last month -- says to be wary because the fever lurks and returns just when you thought you had it licked.

So, we'll probably roll slowly in the grass again tomorrow; pick up the 3 beans we missed today; and then lie in the sun and stare aimlessly at the clouds again (since the library is closed).  And not be stared at by neighbors who think we're "crazy Americans," not have to worry -- or even listen to -- the sound of cars, and not have to rush off anywhere to "have fun."

Sounds just about perfect, actually.

Spare Change

I'll just say it:  coins are the bane of my existence.  Well, OK, a rather minor bane as banes go, but they really are annoying.

I was rummaging through my husband's change bowl the other day hoping to scrape enough change together to buy some fruit (cantaloupes seem to be in season here.  And strawberries!), and I found plenty:  Euros, American cents, a few Croatian Kuna, and even an Israeli shekel or two that's been migrating around the house for a while (like:  8 years).  No Costa Rican Colones -- therefore, no fruit.

What am I supposed to do with this stuff?  Every time we move I go on a witch hunt looking for coins.  I've been known to spend hours counting and rolling coins and taking them to the bank before we move.   Not that I ever even get enough to buy a nice dinner out with, but who needs to move 15 lbs of soon-to-be foreign coins with them to the other side of the earth?  And each move I think I've cleaned out all the wallets, bowls, pockets, and all the other places coins migrate to, and each time I'm wrong.

We actually have a "money bowl" -- a very nice, large crystal bowl we got for our wedding that is absolutely loaded with coins.  It's a real treasure, since most of the coins are from our first sojourn in Europe before they switched to the Euro.  I once envisioned it as a great teaching tool -- history, economics, math, geography all rolled into one -- for our kids.  Ha.  They like to spread it around, walk through it, and run off.  But I keep putting our spare change in it anyway, hoping that someday they'll say, "Hey, cool!  Let's count how much of each kind we have, figure out how much it would be worth in dollars today, and see where it's from on the map.  And who's that person on that coin anyway and why is he important?"  That's what I'm hoping for.

At the moment, though, I'm loaded down with kids who don't care and approximately $30 in Euros and Croatian Kuna and Lipa which just aren't any good to me, and that no money changer in his right mind will touch.

So, buddy, could you spare a dime?

I take Colones, too.

Communication Problems

Yesterday, as I was leaving the preschool after dropping off my littlest, a woman in an SUV pulled up RIGHT behind me, giving me only three inches to back out.  The fellow in front had parked pretty tight as well, and was nowhere in sight, so I was well and truly stuck.

What I needed this lady to do was to back up a couple of feet, but I'm a polite American, much too polite to point this out to her directly.  We Americans don't like to do that much.  Germans, for example, have no compunction on this score, but I haven't lived in Germany quite long enough for that.  So, instead of politely asking her if she could back up, I politely said,

"Excuse me, do I have enough room to back up?"

"Oh yes!" Came her cheerful reply, and she examined the space between our vehicles and started beckoning to me to back up.

She kept beckoning, and I kept backing -- slowly and cautiously because I knew I didn't have that much room to spare -- until I felt a pretty solid thump.

"Did I hit you?"  I asked incredulously.

"Oh yes, but just a little bit!"

Ah.  Just a little bit.  Well, she didn't seem very upset, so I wasn't going to get upset either.

"Hey!"  She said brightly, "Would you like me to back my car up some?"

Ah.  "Oh, thank you, that would be so nice."

So she backed up and I left, and next time I'm going to ask for what I want directly.  

Now I just want to know: why has it taken me so stinkin' long to figure that out?

Lame Apology

OK, this is my lame way of apologizing to all you amazing people who have left such thoughtful, kind, and stimulating comments on some of my posts over the last few days.  I'll confess, I'll never be able to give them the attention they deserve.

Yesterday, of course, I was livid, and today I spent all day at the hospital.

Not for me.  Thank goodness.  I think?  Actually, time in a hospital bed with prescription drugs is starting to sound like a vacation.....

Anyway, my neighbor called at 6:45 a.m. this morning needing me to take her to the hospital, and from then until I finally got home at 5:30 p.m. (with a lot of scrambling in between to take care of the 7 kids we have between us!) I was constantly on the go.  I don't remember if I ate lunch.  She needed minor, albeit semi-emergency surgery, and her husband was out of town.  (Came back the instant he got her call; meant 10 hours in the car for him.  On Costa Rican roads.  Ugh.)

Oh, and our internet was out today too.  We're guessing someone stole a section of cable to sell as scrap metal for the money.

So, there you go.  Between fury and the hospital, I'm completely worn out and running frantically just to stay in place!

Tomorrow WILL be better:  I'm cutting Spanish class to take myself, I mean, my KIDS to the library.  And two friends are going too.

Ah, books!  Actually, that might be almost as much fun as prescription drugs!

Thank you all for all your amazing comments (I'm going to be chuckling over your Spanglish, Meg!), and I'm sorry for being such a lame blogger today (and yesterday and the day before....)!

I Fired the Bus Company!

I fired my kids' school bus company this morning.

At 7:00 this morning, I went with my kids to wait for the bus.  Already waiting outside the gate was a large white bus which had brought one of our school's students, a third grade girl.  You may remember that I mentioned that it is specifically in violation of the school's contract with the bus to transport our kids on buses with students from other schools?

Anyway.  A few minutes after 7:00, when it became clear that the bus to our school was going to be late, the chaperone from the white bus escorted the third grader to the gate, and asked the guard of our condominio if she could come inside the gate to wait for her bus.  The guard obligingly opened the gate, she was ushered in, the chaperone returned to the big white bus....

AND THE BUS DROVE OFF AND LEFT HER!!  WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS!!!

Did you catch that?  COMPLETE STRANGERS.  Lucky for her, I am an exceptionally nice stranger.

I was livid.  I was literally shaking I was so angry.  In fact, it took me two hours to calm down enough so I could hold a coffee cup.

A few minutes later, the girl pointed past my shoulder to the street:  "Hey, there went the bus!  I recognized some of the kids through the window!"

Apparently, not seeing the big white bus, our bus driver thought he had time to make a few more pickups before coming back for my kids.

FORTY MINUTES LATER (and 20 minutes after school had already started), he arrived.  I was still livid.  If anything, I was even more furious than I had been before.  I stalked out to the bus, and shouted in my horrible, toddler Spanish:  "Where were you?  Why did your bus leave this girl here alone??"

Do you know what the bus driver did?  HE ROLLED HIS EYES AND GLARED AT ME!

I fired him, but he didn't know it.  I had to let the kids get on the bus -- I considered driving my kids and the abandoned girl to school, but realized that was a bad solution, since she wasn't my kid and I have no idea who her parents are, since I'd never seen her before today.  Remember?:  Complete Strangers.

So I let them go, called the school, and fired the bus company. My children will never set foot in one of those buses again.  Seat belts are one thing -- I mean, I've taken my kids in taxis with no seat belts -- and DVD screens on the windshield?  Not preferable but is it so different from what I've seen in some SUVs in the States?  But to abandon a small (girl) child to complete strangers because she's INCONVENIENT to you, just takes the matter to a whole new level, one that even I won't put up with.

An hour or so later, after I'd written several surprisingly calm e-mails, the director of the school called me and told me she was livid as well and that she had just fired the bus company from the whole school.

So, that's right, writergrrl, firing the bus company means I've hired myself.  At least until the school can check out a new bus company.  And even then I'm going to check it out pretty closely myself.

Going to bed early tonight so I can bus my kids to school tomorrow.  Just hope tomorrow is better than today.

My School Bus Story is Stranger than Your School Bus Story

"I was watching Lilo and Stitch on the bus today, and..."

"I'm sorry," I interrupted the 6-year-old's tale.  "You were what?"

"Watching Lilo and Stitch!"

"Yeah," the 8-year-old chimed in, "They've got a little TV screen on the bus that the kids and the driver can watch."

Excuse me?  That the DRIVER can watch??!

"Where is this screen, exactly?"

"Where the rearview mirror would be, if there were a rearview mirror," the 8-year-old said casually.

No rearview mirror??

"Ah.  So, um, is riding the school bus here your favorite part of the day like it was in Zagreb?"

(In unison, shouted)  "No!!  It's the most horrible part of the day!"

"I'm pretty sure the bus drivers don't want to admit it," the older one added, "But they get lost a LOT!  They spend a lot of time going the wrong way down one-way streets, going around the same block three or four times, and having to back out of dead end streets."

Right.  With no rearview mirror.

"And they sometimes run red lights, too," chimed in the younger one.  This statement was confirmed by his older brother.

"But," the 8-year-old said cheerfully, "At least we all have our own seatbelts now, and Timothy doesn't have to sit on the older girls' laps anymore!"

Ah.  I'm so glad?

Thank Goodness My Kids are Weird

We had to go to the dentist this week, and I'd never been before, so I asked for directions.  This is what I got.  (Remember:  this is the country with no street names and no street addresses):

"You know that big road with trees that's a few blocks behind the Embassy?  Turn right on that.  After a while, you'll see a big building with a huge yard -- the Nunciatura (Papal Legate).  Turn left at the far corner and go 100 meters down that road.  Look for the sign, it's somewhere near there."

Believe it or not, with that amount of information I was pretty sure I could find the place.

Except, my informant forgot to mention (and I forgot to ask) how FAR I needed to go down "that big road with trees."  Turns out it was quite a while.  But I didn't know that.  I kept driving and driving and driving, looking for trees, grass, yard, big building, a nice, flashing neon sign that said "NUNCIATURA!!"  I would have even been happy to see a hitch-hiking priest to let me know I was in the vicinity.

Nothing.

I was past despair and next door to tears.  I'd already taken one wrong turn that put me in a very interesting barrio with no room to turn around (I had to back out on to a very busy highway on a blind corner), had no idea where I was, and was seeing nothing like the landmark I was looking for.

All of a sudden I heard from the back seat, "Hey, look!  It's the flag for Vatican City!" (That was the 8-year-old.  Huh?)  We're not even Catholic, and have never been to Vatican City, so he can't use that as an excuse.

"Yeah, look, there it is!" (The 6-year-old).

Apparently, we'd found the building for the Papal Legate.  I didn't even check for oncoming traffic, I just turned hard left, and what do you know?  One hundred meters down the road, there was the sign.  We'd found the dentist!

As I was parking, the 8-year-old was telling me that the flag he'd seen was just the yellow and white colored version, without the crossed keys shield which is on the more official version of the flag.  

Yeah, I knew that.

Now, why do my kids know -- and apparently look for -- the flag for Vatican City?!  They're just weird.  

And I'm so glad, or we'd be in Nicaragua by now.

In Trouble With The Police. Again.

That’s twice this week I’ve had a run-in with the law.   On Tuesday I was pulled over on my way to Spanish class because, well, I’m a strange looking white woman driving an expensive SUV with Texas license plates.  The cop took one look at my diplomatic ID, though, smiled cheerfully, and sent me on my merry way.

This afternoon I was at the school waiting for my kids to get out of chess club when the school custodian approached me and said I’d have to move my car.  I didn’t understand why, but I’m used to being confused, so I gathered up my purse and prepared to move it.  My Spanish-speaking friend kindly translated the “why”:  the police were coming to tow it away.

Ah.  Turns out I had parked in the “bus depot:” two bus routes intersect at the school.  So, if one bus gets there early, it parks along side the road in front of the school.  Is there a sign?  No there is not.  Is there even a parking spot?  No there is not:  the busses park in the ditch, and I was in their way.

The school has been trying to get this changed, but no results yet.

Sure enough, when I passed the office I saw the receptionist speaking quite animatedly with a grumpy looking police officer.  My first inclination was to go in and apologize profusely.

My second, more intelligent, inclination was to mentally slap myself in the forehead, comment internally, “What, are you stupid??” and move my car without saying anything to anyone.

So I hurried brightly past the office, wishing all the while that we had our diplomatic plates (“Any day now!” in response to queries), smile cutely at the disgruntled bus driver, and park my car behind a tree.  I later saw the policemen (his motorcycle parked exactly where my car had been) talking with the bus coordinators who hang out on the corner – young men with clipboards who, presumably, tell what busses to go where, when – and looking confused.  I don’t know if he was looking for someone to ticket or tow (me) or talking about the problem of backing large city busses down a street frequented by schoolchildren.  Or, perhaps both.

(Ah!  My husband just brought home our diplomatic plates!  Yippee!)

Ashes to ashes... to ashes

My living room is covered with a not-so-fine coating of ash and chunky little bits of charcoal.  The carpet is positively saturated with ash and half-burned bits of paper and after walking on it, my children's feet leave black smudges all over the rest of the house.  My laundry room is covered with a not-so-fine coating of ash and chunky little bits of charcoal too.  The clean clothes in there are no longer clean and the floor is positively gritty.

Have we been grilling in the house again?  Nope, it's near the end of the dry season.  And all that stuff that piled up during the rainy season and has been slowly drying out over the past four months is finally dry enough to burn.  And so everyone is burning it.

I'm not sure what the fascination with burning things is, really.  I know a lot of it here is just to get rid of the mounds of jungle you have to trim from even the smallest patch of land to keep nature from overrunning you completely.  I, myself, however, automatically think "wood chips" and "composting" not "bonfire." 

In Indonesia, there were always little piles of trash on fire on the street corners, with several men sitting on their haunches in typical Indonesian fashion, the smell of their clove cigarettes mingling aromatically with the smell of burning plastic.  But in Indonesia, I think the main impetus for fire was the lack of a regular trash pick up service.

Here, I'm starting to suspect it's got more to do with 'fun'.  And, given the graceful Costa Rican style architecture which so seamlessly blends indoor and outdoor spaces -- meaning, in this context, that I have deliberate holes in my walls that just can't be closed up -- all the outdoor stuff is coming in to my indoors.

Unfortunately, the biggest holes are right over the only space in the house we can logically fit our largest bookcase and our computer. AND the holes face squarely into the wind.

So.  I spend a lot of time dusting off our computer and books and knick-knacks and shaking out the keyboard and vacuuming the carpet.  Now, I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have to add "stomping out fires" to the list?? 

How many more weeks till the rainy season starts??

NO INTERNET???!!!

Our credit card was recently cancelled because someone hacked one of the websites we used to purchase something and made off with a bunch of credit card numbers; ours included -- one of the dangers of shopping online so much.  But, I ask you, how else are we going to get English-language books (oh, right, I forgot.  There's a library here!!!!) and spelt flour??

The credit card was cancelled, but we forgot to change the information with the cable company and internet provider which charge our credit card automatically.

The cable people called and we straightened that all out -- new credit card number, faxed copy of passport and diplomatic ID, and everyone was happy.

That evening, our Internet service was shut off.

Internet and cable are provided by the Same Company.

Go figure.

My husband raced around like a madman trying to get it fixed -- new credit card number; pay fees at the bank; fax copy of passport and ID; fill out form....

But it took two days.

Meanwhile, life has come to a screeching halt at our house.  I can't e-mail; I can't write; I can't function; I wander around in a daze.  My boys are currently obsessed with an on-line game (www.clubpenguin.com.  Very sweet site.  Very clever marketing.  VERY clever marketing.) that, of course, they couldn't play.  And they're begging me, in tears, to make it work.  And I'm telling them, in tears (well, ok, not really, but I could have cried!) that the Internet is broken.  And we sat us down and wept by the rivers of Babylon.

I coped as best I could -- I finished my Agatha Christie novel (The Clocks; which I got at the LIBRARY; which I'm sure I've read before but my memory is so bad it might as well be a brand new book....).  But still, every five minutes I thought of something I NEEDED to do RIGHT THEN on the computer, and couldn't because the Internet was down.

OK, I'll just admit it:  I'm so totally pathetic.

What did we ever do before the Internet existed????

Prostitution in Costa Rica

"Costa Rica, where adult prostitution is legal, is rapidly becoming the capital of sexual tourism in the western hemisphere.  It is estimated that thousands of women, girls, and teenagers work in the brothels of the country.  In fact, the largest brothel in the world is located in San Jose.  

"Costa Rica currently holds the highest childhood prostitution rate in the region, each year attracting thousands of tourists from all around the world.  Aware of this alarming reality, the Rahab Foundation started working against sexual exploitation in 1997.

"The vision of the foundation is to bring healing to families connected with commercial sexual exploitation through knowing the gospel of Jesus Christ and returning them to society with new skills.

The mission of the Rahab Foundation is to facilitate quality of life improvements and restore dignity to the families linked to commercial sexual exploitation."

This is from a pamphlet written by my friend Jeanne, who started a fundraising project to help these women help themselves:  Chains that Break Chains.  The women, and volunteers from the Embassy and community, get together at least twice a month to make beaded lanyards suitable for holding badges/ID cards, glasses, cell phones, USB drives, etc.

Out of this project, at least three women have gone to set up successful businesses of their own, learning valuable work and coping-in-society skills.

I feel very strongly about this project; I've had a chance to meet some of these women.  They're not so different from me.  They're not so different from you.  And yet, and yet... They were somehow set on a path -- often from childhood -- that I've never had to walk; that I never even knew existed.  Set on a path that's taken them to some very dark places; one woman I met tried five times to commit suicide before she came to Rahab.  And these dark places are legal here in Costa Rica, and there's very little help or sympathy.  Or other options for a single "working" mother with, on average, four children.

So, I offer this blog as a way to advertise both the plight of many women here in Costa Rica and as a way to advertise Rahab.

If you are interested, you can donate to the Rahab foundation through Latin American Missions; make your donation to "Associate Ministry" and note that it's for the Rahab Foundation in the Notes field.

And if you'd like a boatload of beautiful handmade  beaded lanyards to sell at your place or work or school, contact me directly and we'll make it happen!

Kissing

I think I have finally become acclimated to living in Costa Rica:   I find myself kissing complete strangers.

Just this evening, for example, a local salon hosted a sort of "open house" (read:  door prizes; free paraffin treatments; free pedicures; and sangria to boot!!), and when I left, I took my leave of the owner, to thank her for a lovely evening.  I kissed her.

I've never properly met this woman, just seen her in passing as I was having my hair dried.  I know her name because it's the same as the name of the salon, but that's as far as our relationship goes.

So of course, when I left, I kissed her.

This is a normal Costa Rican greeting and farewell:  lean in; lean left (always, always, ALWAYS lean left!!), and kiss (either in the air or on the cheek, at your discretion) the intended.  Man or woman, it doesn't matter.  Coming or going, it doesn't matter.  It's as common as -- more common than, actually -- a handshake in the U.S.

When I first moved here several months ago, I found myself, well, OK, absolutely horrified at the thought of having to kiss a roomful of people when I arrived or departed somewhere.  And for a long time, I flat out (and very politely) refused.

Now I kiss everyone; strangers included.

A problem?  Not at the moment.  At the moment, I fit in.  Finally.

But I'm planning a trip back to the US this summer.  What, I ask you, am I going to do then?  Probably face a court appearance or two for kissing the postmaster or something...

Sigh.  It's dangerous living overseas.

(And Shanika, let me just tell you:  green is DEFINITELY your color.  It goes so well with your eyes!  Come here, let me kiss you!) 

Arctic Swimming

Many people here seem to feel that diplomats are Interesting and Important People.  Ha.  Ha ha ha ha.  Well, granted, there are many in the diplomatic community who directly work to do things like, stave off war, promote human rights, and, generally make the world a better place to live.

Me, I try to figure out how to buy groceries.

But, they let me go swimming anyway.  There's a Very Nice Hotel here that has issued several pool passes to the Embassy for use by employees and family members.  And every few weeks we'll check out the requisite number of passes and go swimming.

Remember; it's 'summer' here!  Hmmm, perhaps that's why they're not heating the pool anymore??Never mind that we're next door to the equator; San Jose is at a high enough elevation that the weather is, well, perfect, all year long.  The only thing it's not perfect for is swimming; somehow, the water temperature never gets up above about 50 degrees.

So, all during the rainy season, the hotel's pool heaters were chugging out lovely warmth and it was actually fun to go swimming.  Now that it's the dry season, they seem to have turned off the heaters, and it's less fun.  (See the picture?)  Fortunately, there's a very hot tub where I spend most of my time.

Yesterday, in addition to 50 degree water, there were also gale force winds; the kids' floaties would catch the wind and they'd sail across the surface of the water.  They thought this was a lot of fun.  We watched with interest the preparations for an evening wedding taking place on the grass nearby -- chairs were blowing over; flowers tumbling around; guests clinging to trees...

I have a feeling that the hotel has issued the pool passes in the hopes of making the pool look populated (most of the time we're the only people there), but I'm not entirely sure we're very good publicity for them.  Yesterday saw us, of course, sailing across the water in a hurricane (and appalling the wedding guests); my children love most to scamper through a decorative (and not-for-swimming) fountain; we make a LOT of noise in what is usually an adults-only environment, during thunderstorms we huddle on the chaise lounges like drowned (and not very bright) ducks, and we have been known to do things like wait out tropical rain storms in the hot tub.  Then, we usher three damp and noisy children through the lobby to get back to our car.

Crazy Americans.

But, they still let us come back; if they feel like this is good publicity, I'm pleased to oblige them!

A Museum, A Prison and an Earthquake, Oh My!

The Embassy Cell Phone Guy: My Hero!!

The amazing, wonderful, incredible cell phone guy at the Embassy FIXED MY PHONE!!  Actually, he called the lovely lady at the phone company who had registered my phone, and SHE told him how to fix it.

I didn't have to try to explain my predicament to anyone in Spanish (can you tell I have a real terror of trying to make myself understood in Spanish?  Why couldn't it be something easy?  Like German?)

I didn't have to wade through a Spanish language website.

And best of all, I didn't have to try to find parking at the phone company!

And now my phone is fixed.

Thank you to all of you who expressed your condolences; my phone has been resurrected!

Car Inspection -- I'm biting my nails....

OK, so I made it to the car inspection place.  The Embassy had sent along a LOVELY man, Henry, to help me stand in the right lines and talk to people.  

First, we had to go to a window at which Henry handed over a piece of paper that said we had an appointment at 9:15.  The receptionist looked us up on the clip board, confirmed we had an appointment at 9:15, and wrote this out on ANOTHER piece of paper.  She then handed Henry both slips of paper.  By gum, we had an appointment at 09:15.  Make that 9:45 by the time we got into the garage.

Anyway.  Then we went to another line where another receptionist took our paperwork, handed it back, and we moved on.  I really don't know what she did.

Then we went to a THIRD line, where I paid $20 and THEN we could go get my car inspected.

Do you know, they checked the INTENSITY of my headlights?  They checked my suspension -- as in, with computers and are my shocks balanced.  No, but Henry thought that THIS week it might not be a problem that they weren't perfectly balanced.  The regs keep changing, you know.  But he was nervous.  I could tell.

I got nervous too when the guy checked my oil THREE times.  He finally came up to the window and showed us, shaking his head all the while, that  the oil WASN'T TOPPED OFF.  Gasp.  (I've got an oil change appointment for Friday!  Honest!!)

We do not have a new car.  It is five years old.  But it has been well maintained (it was a company car before we got it & made it to all the service checks) and it is in darn good shape.  Remember some of those taxis I've ridden in?  They are not in such great shape.

I have to admit, I not only got nervous my car wouldn't pass inspection (and I'd have to come back and do this all over again), I'm sorry to say I got a bit insulted as well to think that I could ride in a taxi in which the door flies open going around the corner -- and it passes inspection -- yet my car might not.

OK, all my worrying and feeling insulted was for nothing.  I passed.

But next year, I'm studying harder before I go.  And I think I'll get the oil changed BEFORE the inspection next time.

Costa Rica Death Race 9000

This morning Sam met me at the Embassy parking lot so I could follow him to get my car inspected.  Cleverly, I thought to ask him for directions ahead of time.

Sam started our little escapade by roaring out of the parking lot right in front of a Mack truck.  I did not follow.  The truck was succeeded by four cars and a bus in quick succession.

By the time I got out of the parking lot, I was already several blocks behind him.  Glad I had at least a vague idea where he was going.   Even so, I had to run two very very very yellow (some people call them red) lights between the Embassy and the highway just to keep in the same county with him.

And on the highway.  Oh my.  "Bat out of hell" doesn't really capture it, but you get the idea.  My favorite part was a maneuver involving a very aggressive bus driver (who slipped between me and Sam with about 3 inches to spare) and a two lane bridge on a three-lane highway.  These sort of things are common features here, and if the road is only 2 lanes -- or, more commonly one-and-a-half lanes -- the bridge will be something between one-half and one lane wide.

Anyway, when we passed the bridge, Sam driving at speeds that made light stretch out and change colors behind us, I quickly saw from his performance that I had about 20 yards to cross two lanes of traffic, slip between a dump truck and a bus, slam on my brakes, and make a right-hand U-turn to exit the freeway.

So I did.

And, no, there was no exit ramp.

When we pulled up at the parking lot of the inspection place a few minutes later, my hair was over my eyes, I was panting hard, my heart was thudding in my ears, and it took me several tries to pry my white knuckles off the steering wheel.

I stepped out of the car, on rather unsteady legs, and Sam greeted me with a cheerful, "You're a very good driver!  Many people are bothered here because there are lots of bad drivers in Costa Rica."

I blinked at him, thinking unprintable things.

I blinked again.  "Thank you," I finally heard come from my lips.

"I have some errands to run for the office after this.  Can you get back to the Embassy on your own?"

Can I?  OH, YES!   "I think I'll manage."

And I did.  With not one single near-death experience.

Anyone Know the Secret Code for My Cell Phone???

My cell phone ran out of power.  I recharged it.  When it came back on, I was confronted with the following:  PIN xxxx  (And the only reason it said PIN and not Codigo is because I figured out how to switch languages.  I'm very proud of myself.)

PIN?  PIN??  What PIN?

Assuming there must be a factory-default PIN (brilliant, eh?), I typed in some logical guesses:  1234, 0000, and something else that seemed logical at the time.  The lady at the phone company hadn't had any trouble, surely I wouldn't.

I got this message:

INVALID.  PIN blocked.  Enter PUK code: xxxx

PUK code??  What in the world is a PUK code?

Interestingly enough, the documentation which came with the phone makes no comment about either a PIN or a PUK code.  Neither in Spanish nor in English.

I'm sorry to say I threw the phone across the car in a fit of pique.  When I picked it up it still, implacably, said "Enter PUK code:"

Not what you might call a stimulating conversational partner.

So now, after all the trouble I went to to GET a cell phone, I still can't use it.  And to solve this current little dilemma I'll have to either wade through a website in Spanish or wrestle through a phone call in Spanish or maybe even go back to the phone company and pathetically offer my phone to the phone lady in Spanish.

It may be another seven months before I actually have a cell phone.  Sigh.

Enter PUK code:

Anyone have a PUK code to spare?

Of Parking Thingies and Headlights

Can you believe it?  I went to the grocery store today with one toddler and two parking thingies (had a stolen one and they gave us another), and by the time we were ready to leave, we were down to ZERO parking thingies and one toddler.  Can you guess at the connection between "toddler" and "parking thingy"?

Turns out he'd hidden them in the armrest -- only took me ten minutes to find them.

But then, as I turned on the car to leave the parking lot, I noticed that only one of my headlights seemed to be working.  I checked; only one of my headlights was working.

No big deal, right?

Big deal.

Because tomorrow morning I have an appointment to get my car inspected so that we can FINALLY get our diplomatic license plates.  I've been waiting for this appointment ever since we moved here SEVEN MONTHS ago!!

And why are diplomatic plates such a big deal?  Because at the moment, I am a strange looking white woman driving a large (and by Costa Rican standards) expensive SUV with Texas license plates.  

The police see me coming and wave me over to the side of the road.  Not every time; not as frequently as some people, but enough that it's a hassle.  

Enough so that every time I pass a police car parked on the side of the road (which is the local version of "patrolling"), my hands clench on the steering wheel and I force myself to look nonchalant and stare straight ahead, wondering if my pounding heart is making my hair fly up in the air.

So, tomorrow, my car is getting inspected and then FINALLY we'll have all our ducks in a row to get our diplomatic license plates.

Unless, of course, my headlights fail inspection.

So, where, exactly, does one go to get a headlight in Costa Rica??  I have no idea.  And even if I knew where to go, how would I tell them what I needed?

In a mild panic by this time, I'm heading out of the parking garage, fingering my parking thingy.

And the most beautiful site in the world greets my eyes:  Greenlubs -- a quick oil-change place IN the parking garage.  And every bay is empty.  And there are at least five guys standing around.

Maybe THEY know where I can get a new headlight!!

Not only do they know, several of them leap to attention and flash me flirtatious smiles when I walk up.  I'm way old enough that that is definitely flattering.  AND in about five minutes I had a new headlight.  AND it only cost $3.60.

Diplomatic plates, here I come!!!

I've decided to keep the extra parking thingy, by the way.  If the police pull me over just for having Texas plates, I'm not sure what they'd do if I coughed up a stolen parking thingy.

Two Years is a Lot When You're Six

Costa Rica has an extra school year sandwiched between Kindergarten and first grade:  Preparatoria.  We had no idea this existed before we arrived here.

Although technically, Prepa is equivalent to American Kindergarten, most kids start it around age 6, meaning they're a solid 7 when they start first grade.

And then there's the school calendar:  Costa Rican schools start their school year in January, have a short break in July, and finish the year in December.

Our kids are going to a school that's on the American calendar:  Start in September end in May.

But what do you do when you change from a Costa Rican school to an American-style school?  You've got to decide if you're going to bump your kid up a grade or down a grade.  I just found out last week that apparently, most kids who moved into our school this year (and there were a LOT), opted to move up a grade.

This means:  that my 6-year-old is the youngest in his first grade class by two full years!!!  In fact, there may even be one kid who's about to turn NINE in his first grade class. 

NO WONDER he's been having a hard time adjusting and making friends!!!  And my older one as well; a lot of the kids in his fourth grade class are THREE years older than he is.

Aargh!  I'm clutching my hair and banging my head against the wall.  Two years is a lot when you're six; three years is a LOT when you're eight.  It's even more when you're nine and ten.  Everyone is bigger, taller, and (culturally, at least) a lot rougher.  And when you're still interested in playing legos and chase, everyone else is interested in (Ew, yuck) girls.  Sigh.  

We'll have a chance to fix this when we move to the States; there's always a great deal of fluidity in regards to age/grade/ability/knowledge gaps between overseas and US schools.  But in the meantime, it may be a really long and rough couple of years.

On the Lam

I've been keeping an eye out all afternoon to see if the police are following me:  I accidentally absconded with the parking thingy from the grocery store.

I don't know what these things are.  No one knows what these things are or why they are:  they're a piece of thick, hard plastic, about the size of two credit cards, given out when you enter many parking lots or parking garages here.  The one I stole has an advertisement for Rey coffee on one side (very nice coffee, by the way), and on the other side a warning that if your car gets broken into, it's not the store's fault.  I'd post a picture, but I'm afraid the police would be able to trace it.

Every time I come to the grocery store, the guard at the entrance hands me one.  Every time I leave, I hand it back.  No money changes hands, I don't have to display it.  I don't get it.

But the guards, at least, are serious about these things:  one time I forgot to hand it back, and the guard chased me down the road until I stopped and returned it to him.  A friend lost hers once, and the guard wouldn't let her leave until he'd called the manager of the shopping complex.  As he was telephoning, she thought about it for a minute, and then drove off, shrugging her shoulders.  She said she could see him in her rearview mirror dancing in the road and waving his arms.

They didn't catch my oversight in time today, but I fully expected them to send the police after me.  I was kind of surprised not to see any flashing lights, but I've been cringing every time I hear sirens this evening.

Hey, pssst, wanna buy a parking thingy?  I'm selling it dirt cheap!

The Yard Guy Hates Us

Our condominio employs a man ("the Yard Guy") who picks up the trash and recycling, does minor gardening, and other odd jobs around.

He hates my family.  I can't really say that I blame him.  At all.

It started first with the trash -- I never could get the trash bag out at the right time; he retaliated by leaving his wheelbarrow behind my car.  I ran over it.  I now know:  trash goes out FIRST thing in the morning.

And then there was the episode at Christmas involving my boys, a long bamboo stick, and some unfortunate Christmas decorations.  I scolded the boys roundly, picked up all the pieces I could find, and guiltily stuffed an extra Christmas tree ball into the container with the poinsettias.  I knew by the glare when he'd found it.

He's also flagged me down to point out that my children were bathing in the fountain.  This didn't bother me as much as perhaps it should have -- they still had all their clothes on, after all -- but I could tell it bothered him.  I hauled them out and have discouraged repeat performances.

And the club house:  my boys and the other neighborhood children have appropriated some space behind the bushes as their club house.  Being children, they feel it necessary to drag all of their inside stuff outside to fill up their space there.  I routinely find piles of things -- legos, cardboard boxes, metal pipes, broken tiles -- all integral components of the club house, deposited unceremoniously on my doorstep.

But today was the last straw, I think.  If you read earlier, you will have seen my boys making mud with a hose under the swing set.

By the time I got downstairs, the hose had been turned off, disconnected, and disappeared.  The Yard Guy was nowhere in sight, but I recognized his handiwork immediately.  And then I saw something that struck dread into my heart:  the youngest was painting on the slide.  With mud.

With a sigh, and a guilty glance to see if Yard Guy had seen, I dragged our hose over to the scene of the crime.  Too short.  I fetched a bucket, and my housekeeper (excellent woman) joined me with a scrub brush, and together we scrubbed that slide, me casting worried glances over my shoulder every few minutes.

And now I have to face the accusation in his eyes tomorrow; especially since the oldest used some of the mud, some sticks, and a fair number of rocks to construct a "village" right under the swing.  I'm sure I'll find the remains on my doorstep.

I've tried to placate him with coffee (a very hospitable gesture in this country), but I think I may have to take it to the next level now.

I only wish I knew what that was!

Getting a Cell Phone

I passed a huge milestone in my life here today:  I got a cell phone.

I imagine the last time you wanted a cell phone, you walked into the nearest grocery or drug store, picked out a phone, walked out, and activated it at your convenience.

Here's how my experience went:

1.  We requested a cell phone line through the Embassy.  Normal wait times are several months for a phone line; as a courtesy to diplomats (who often aren't here the length of time it sometimes takes to get a phone line!), the local phone company will expedite the process for us.

2.  We bought a basic, no frills cell phone for an absolutely exorbitant amount of money.

3.  The "cell phone" guy wrote up a letter which had to be signed by the relevant Embassy official.

4.  I provided a copy of my ID, the receipt for purchase of the phone, and a copy of a water bill sent to my house (to prove, I guess, that I really do live here).

5.  The Embassy cell phone guy made an appointment for me at the phone company, to which I had to take all relevant documentation.

6.  I arrived this morning and waited in line 15 minutes (not bad) while the guy in front of me got his phone activated.  The very nice lady at the phone company and I did not share a language, so she found a translator and we muddled through the procedure.

7.   The translator guy took me around the corner to the bank to pay the $25 activation fee.  The bank teller gave me several forms and a receipt, liberally stamped with the bank's official stamp.

8.  I took this back to the phone company and signed something I have no idea what it said.

9.  The very nice lady gave me a phone number and a SIM card, and I was on my way!

And now, six months after moving into the country, I have a cell phone!  Not bad, if you ask me!

There's a Cockroach Living in My Car

I opened the back of the car this afternoon to find company:  a cockroach was staring back at me.

Technically, I'm sure that an entomologist would tell me it wasn't precisely a cockroach: same size, same shape, lime green color.

So, it wasn't as disturbing as it might have been.  It was a rather cheerful green color, actually, with gauzy looking wings.  I screwed my courage to the sticking point and poked at it -- very gently; I didn't care to see those wings in action -- with a very long stick.  Maybe 6 feet.  You know how I feel about bugs.

It repaid my tenderness not by scuttling out of my car but by scuttling INTO my car, through a little crack into the interior of my automobile.

Now, I have in fact ridden in taxis (in Jakarta) that had not only cockroaches and mice, but also whole colonies of ants.  (Jakarta is a very tropical place.)  So I was not quite as disturbed by this as I might have been.  But I was still disturbed.

When I got home from the grocery store this evening, I brought in all the bags that had been sharing space with The Cockroach and put them on the counter.  Out scurried a little green cockroach, which my husband promptly removed to the out-of-doors (he's a good man).

Now, my question is this:  was it the SAME cockroach?  Or a different one?  And if it is a different one, how many "different ones" are left in my car?????

My fear is that if there are several of these... creatures... in my car, they will decide to pay me a visit one day while I'm driving.

If that happens, I promise you will hear the screams, wherever in the world you happen to be.

School Bus, Costa Rica Style

"Sometimes the school bus is so crowded, the bus driver opens the windows in the back and slides us in that way," my 8-year-old revealed at lunch today.  "And then the little kids sit on the big kids' laps."

After I'd finished laughing -- and crying -- I asked, "What about seatbelts?"

"Oh, the big kids get those," (meaning, I think, junior high age students)  "The little kids don't get anything."

Ah.

The bus picks our kids up at our home 30 minutes late every day.  About 20 minutes before our bus arrives, another bus arrives, disgorges a chaperone and a handful of students from another school at the side of the road by our house, and drives off.  When our bus arrives, my kids and the students from the other school get onto a very crowded bus which already has kids from a couple of other schools on it.  And they drive off.

Both my boys confirmed another new bit of information for me today:  that sometime between leaving our house and reaching school, they are disgorged along the side of the road with a chaperone and are picked up by still another bus.  A similar process is repeated in the evenings.  A friend told me today that TWICE last week it took the bus TWO HOURS to bring her daughter home; there were no explanatory phone calls.

Are your eyes starting out of your head?  Mine are!

I had already started picking my boys up every afternoon I can; primarily because it was taking them more than an hour to get home every day, and they complained that the bus was hot, dirty, crowded, and the way the driver drove "scared them."

Hmm.  They're boys, aged 8 & 6, not generally the class of people most likely to notice these sorts of things.

But not everyone has the luxury of picking their kids up from school; the problem is that most Embassy families only have one car (can you imagine?) -- the government will import one for us, but the cost here of either buying or importing a second car is prohibitive (10-year-old clunkers routinely cost upwards of $10,000.)  In fact, in 15 years overseas, we've only ever been a two-car family once, and that was for two years at our last post.  Anyway, it's not really always possible to hop in the car and pick the kids up from school.  And you know what the taxis are like.  So, we rely on busses.

Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not.  I'm leaning towards "not" at the moment!

I don't remember bussing being anything like this when I was a kid.  Am I remembering wrong?  Does anyone else have an experience like this?

The Fruit of Desire

I have developed a secret passion since moving to Costa Rica:  At various street corners around town, handsome young working men stand, peddling their very tempting wares.

I resisted temptation for many months because it's often dangerous to do business on the street in Costa Rica.  But one day on my way to the Embassy, I just couldn't resist any longer.  While at a stop light, I rolled down my window, and asked in my best Spanish, "How much does that cost?"

"One thousand colones!"  (About two dollars.) Was the cheerful reply.

My eyes widened in surprised delight -- an excellent price for such quantity and quality.  I grinned and handed him the crumpled red bill, took what he offered me, and was off like a shot when the light changed.

I glanced into the seat next to me and smiled again in pleasure, "Who wants a tangerine?" I asked, and was met with a chorus of excited "MEs!" from the kids in the back.

I had just bought five pounds of fresh-picked, beautiful, juicy, sweet tangerines.  Seedless.  They tasted like summer sunshine.  I bought another bag on the way back home from the Embassy; all ten pounds were gone within 24 hours.

After that, I started planning my routes to deliberately encounter the fruit sellers:  I'd take an earlier exit off the freeway, or go around the block to be on the right side of the street.  Hardly  a day goes by now that I'm not looking for one of my fruit guys:  I know which sides of which intersections they work, where they park their trucks, when they show up in the mornings, and when they leave in the evenings.  They do not work Sundays.

Cantaloupes, watermelons, oranges, tangerines, sweet peppers, avocados, and now even strawberries are all to be had through the window of my car.  My favorite discovery has been the mango celes -- tiny mangoes, sold hard and green and mouth-puckeringly sour.  Peel and eat with salt or lemon juice.  My mouth is watering.  

All farm-fresh, delivered with a smile, superior quality, and cheap, cheap, cheap.  Best of all, I don't have to park my car or cart three children in to the grocery store to get them.    

I think it's time for another fruit run.

"Du, du Matanga!"

Costa Rica Death March 2009:  Ten kids, three moms, four guides and one Costa Rican superhero (?):  Captain Tula, aka Shell Man (pictured with my beleaguered friend Caroline).

We went on a field trip today, myself and two friends and all our kids.  We went to Fossil Land.  We had heard of this place through the grapevine; it’s not in any guidebooks we three own, and now we know why.

We were greeted at the gate of Fossil Land by…. a chicken.  What else?  Actually, it was one of the guides dressed in a limp yellow chicken suit.  Before we could enter, we were required to sing (in Spanish) the “Chicken Song”:  “Wing to the left, wing to the right; shake your legs in front, shake your behind, behind.”  Dazed after a long trip in a crowded minibus, we complied.  Then the chicken stood there staring at us.  Apparently, that was the end.  The kids ran off to play, and the moms, still rather dazed, edged nervously past the chicken into the gate where we encountered a real, live superhero:  Captain Tula!!

You have never heard of Captain Tula; he is the invention of Otto von Schroeter – whose father was German and whose mother was Costa Rican – who owns and runs Fossil Land.  Captain Tula IS Otto von Schroeter; he owns part of a mountain which is absolutely covered in mollusk fossils; and the only way I know how to describe him is:  completely loopy.  Very nice.  But loopy.

To start our adventure, he read us a long list of warnings and cautions before our hike, which, the website said was suitable “for all ages.”  More on that misconception later.  He made the mistake of mentioning snakes as one of the dangers, which sent one of the younger members of our group into hysterics.  Being from Texas, I worked hard to console her with my vast and far-reaching knowledge of poisonous reptiles, with the result that she insisted for the rest of the day on holding my hand, a difficult task when carrying a three year-old on my shoulders and dragging a reluctant six-year-old with the other hand over rough and uneven terrain.

Then, to prepare us for the rigors of our hike, Captain Tula (aka Shell Man) led us through a series of silly songs and animal noises, designed, I’m sure, to put Costa Rican school children completely at their ease.  The repertoire left our mostly American group with raised eyebrows and an attitude very close to belligerent.   That’s how I was feeling, anyway.  But it soon became clear that loopy or not, Otto was quite definite that everyone would participate or no one would move on.  So, we participated.   Then we had to learn the battle cry of Fossil Mountain:  “Du, du Matanga!!”  Captain Tula translated (loosely) for us:  “We can do it, Matanga [the name of the mountain]!”  We were required to repeat this at frequent intervals at the top of our collective lungs at various points during the day before we could move on to the next item on Captain Tula’s agenda.   Sigh, all we REALLY wanted to do was to look at fossils.

Then we set off to hike up Fossil Mountain.  Oh my.  This hike certainly was for all ages, IF you were between the ages of 18 and 25 and in shape to run the Iron Man Triathalon.  For us out-of-shape moms with three-year-olds in tow, this hike was not, really, “for all ages.”  I’m guessing this mountain was about three miles high.  Straight up.  I may of course be mistaken, it could have been more like four or five miles.  Up we went, frequently shouting “Du, du Matanga!”

We did, eventually, get a chance to dig for our very own fossils, and the kids were permitted a solid 15 minutes of pure joy with rock hammers before we were hurried on to the next item, admittedly also cool:  a cliff face with thousands of mollusk fossils embedded in it.  (That's all of us -- complete with fetching orange helmets -- in front of the cliff.)

And then, while I was still marveling at all those fossils, Captain Tula hurried everyone over to an outcropping of rock, which he felt resembled the prow of a ship.  He selected a girl, S. and a boy, T. to stand on the rock and play the parts of Jack and Rose from the movie “Titanic.”   S. stood with her hands outstretched, hair blowing in the wind, and was told to sigh “Jack!”  So she did.  T. was positioned behind her and told to sigh “Rose!”  So he did.  In the background, the adults were required to sing the theme song of the movie (I AM NOT KIDDING!) and the scene was repeated.  Then two more lucky actors were chosen, and we got to do it all over again.  Not our vigorous protests that we didn’t remember the song or the words or the tune nor our flat refusal to sing could dissuade Captain Tula.  We absolutely could not stir a step until we had sung (we settled for desultory humming, everyone picking a different tune) and repeated the scene to his satisfaction.  The picture sort of captures how we all felt by the end.

This was, without a doubt, one of the most surreal days I have ever spent.  The fossils were magnificent, the hikes were …. invigorating, and the view from the top of the mountain was unsurpassed.  Captain Tula was loopy.

But, we did get to take our finds home, so all in all the boys consider the day a success and are now satisfied and do not need to return to Fossil Land.  I have 15 pounds of fossils to deal with in my house now, but that’s a small price to pay for escaping the clutches of Captain Tula.

I Have Yellow Fever

And so does the middle one.  Well, certainly not a full-blown case.  But we have as much of it as you can contract from the vaccine.  Which, I'm sure the medical professionals will tell you is "None at all."

To which comment I thumb my nose in derision:  fever, chills, aches.....  OK, so it's not going to kill us, but it is a bit disheartening to listen to your kid scream as he's stuck in the arm, even when you know you're doing the best thing for him and in case you want to travel to Panama at Thanksgiving.

And then it's disheartening to listen to him scream because he feels so miserable.  Especially when you feel miserable yourself.

But, having read as much Victorian-era literature as I have, with main characters dropping like flies from some dread, vaccinable disease every other page, I will still sign up for every vaccine the Embassy will offer me.

And now we CAN go to Panama if we want.  It's important to know your priorities!

Arenal

Last week we went to Arenal, Costa Rica's most active volcano.  I had entertained vague dreams of providing a pictorial tour of our time there, but 1) it rained the whole time we were there -- in the middle of the dry season.  Very strange.  And 2) my computer suddenly died, and I'm just tickled pink to be able to type.  Recent pictures will have to wait a while; in the meantime, here's one from Thanksgiving, complete with smoke bellowing out of the top of the volcano.

You'll notice in the picture that the volcano looks rather small and distant-ish.  Last week, we stayed at the Arenal Observatory Lodge, and the occasional glimpses we got of this beast were neither small nor distant.  They were terrifyingly close -- terrifying in a delicious, exciting sort of way; we were about a mile from the volcano's base, separated from it only by a river in a gorge.  

One evening, while we were waiting for dinner, I stepped out on the porch of our room with the idea of reading in the fresh air.  I didn't get much reading done.  To my left, the sun was just setting behind a range of mountains beyond Arenal lake.  The clouds and rain had finally rolled back and the water and the sky gleamed like beaten gold.  To my right, the head of the volcano was still shrouded in clouds and smoke and steam, but in the evening silence I could hear the rumble, hiss, and pop of the earth as it shifted in the volcano's caldera.  A red-hot boulder shot from the crater and tumbled down the side of the mountain -- seeming to fall from the clouds, it scattered sparks behind it as it fell.  A hypnotic-sounding bird settled in a bush next to me, and began echoing the cries of its brothers deeper in the forest.  And the air was fresh and cool.  I was enraptured.

Then, mosquitoes started attacking my ankles, and I recalled warnings I'd read earlier about malaria, and my three boys tumbled out of the door, ready for supper.

Magic moments never last long.  I think that's what make them magic.

Language Barrier

I thought I was doing well in Spanish; I really did.  I mean, my grammar is atrocious; I will NEVER get the hang of 'ser' vs 'estar', and I toss "mucho" and "muy" around like they're completely interchangeable.

But, I can buy a bagel and coffee, converse with my housekeeper, get my hair cut (!! huge, that one), and tell any taxi driver in the country exactly where I want to go.  Political commentary, it ain't; discussion of current events, it ain't.  But I'm functioning.  I thought.

This morning, Benjamin's school had a special presentation for the parents.  Part of the presentation included a song sung by the kids in Spanish.  The other students sang lustily and used all the right hand motions.  Benjamin played with his shirt and looked hopefully at me the whole time.  I wanted to say, "Honey, I don't know the words either and I've got them printed out in front of me."

After the song, the children were told to go to their parents.  I thought, based on the notice which had been sent home, that the children were going to give their parents homemade cards at this point.

No, the PARENTS were supposed to make the cards and give them to the kids -- along the lines of "Merry Christmas"  "We love you"  "You're a special kid," to judge from the elaborate, perfectly-executed examples of hand-crafted skill that were being bandied about the room.  And you think YOUR do-it-all neighbor makes you feel inadequate!  Benjamin, of course, got nothing.  Well, a hug, of course, and several smoochie kisses, but no card.  I'm hoping he didn't know was was going on either.

My only consolation in this is that my English friend, whose son is in the class and she speaks impeccable Spanish, didn't get the announcement either.  She had known to bring a Christmas card, but she thought that the KIDS were going to put something in it for the parents.  So her son got a very nice, blank Christmas card.  Still, a definite step up from Benjamin.

Oh, and do you know why we're giving out Christmas cards at the beginning of November?  Because the long holiday -- about 10 weeks -- starts NEXT FRIDAY.  Maybe we can make our Christmas card then.

Third World Blues

My living room is slowly drying out; the green wavy tentacles and gray moldy patches which have infested most surfaces of my home are finally starting to shrink and disappear.  I've actually seen a sunset (instead of clouds and torrential rain); and, my de-humidifiers inform me that atmospheric humidity has dropped to around 75%.  All these are signs that it's summer time here in Costa Rica.  Oh, happy day!

Good weather means "no mud," so on Saturday for the first time our family went to the huge Sabana park in downtown San Jose -- a chance for fresh air and for boys to stretch their legs; a beautiful little lake to stroll around... what could be more picturesque?

Now, I am not a squeamish person; I have a healthy attitude towards a healthy amount of dirt; and I'm even pretty relaxed when it comes to germs:  that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Well, the whole time we were at the park I found myself repeating that little mantra -- over and over again -- through clenched teeth, usually with my eyes closed.  "Don't touch that!"  "Is that a puddle of pee on the ground?" (Yes)  "No, don't play with that!"  "Agh!"  "Ugh!"  "Ewaghhh!"

The park is beautiful -- there are tiny forests of trees dotting the landscape (every tree has a suspicious mound of toilet paper at its base); stands of unimaginably tall bamboo plants gracefully surround parts of the lake (ditto with the toilet paper here, and add smell and flies); there's a lovely, paved path around the lake (which is an unhealthy green color and clogged with trash and other detritus near the shore); and there are lots of playgrounds for the kids (something is broken on every single playset, there's trash everywhere, and my three-year-old toted around a large piece of fiberglass broken off of one of the toys for 15 minutes before my husband realized what it was).

Ewagaahhhh!

One thing I have learned from living overseas -- even in places like Germany -- that NO WHERE in the world is such a premium placed on the appearance of public space as it is in the U.S.  In the U.S., for example, doctors' offices are gleaming, filled with lovely acquariums, staffed by friendly, cheerfully dressed staff, full of toys and books for kids.  In Germany, the most cheerful doctor's office I was ever in had two cracked plastic chairs, one book, and a plague-ridden stuffed animal.  The walls were gray, and the doctor doubled as the receptionist.

So for years I have been constantly working to re-train my eyes to see things as they appear to my hosts in whatever country I'm in.  After 11 years of living in a European culture, I had finally reached some form of zen there and no longer expected things like well-lit (or even swept or painted) hallways in public buildings; and I learned to look past things like public urination (by men and women!); and the occasional gay nudist sunbather no longer made me hyperventilate.

But that was Europe.  And I apparently have a loooong way to go to re-train myself here.  In fact, I'm not sure I'll ever get there.

Today, the boys and I went to the LaSalle Museum of Natural History:  Dinosaur bones, (taxidermically) stuffed animals, rocks, minerals, and a complete cave bear skeleton.  What could be better for three small boys?

From my point of view, the place was positively grisly:  the taxidermic specimens included, among six thousand other flea-infested items, a two-headed pig and a two-headed deer.  I walked past acres of badly stuffed, poorly preserved (as in they forgot to put in the glass eyeballs), mangy dead animals.  I felt like I was in a mausoleum; I've been in zoos with fewer animals.  And there was an entire, vast room dedicated to insects.  You know how I feel about insects.  

But the "best" part was the specimen jars: 20 or 30 shelves of jars full of... specimens.  There were jelly jars, olive jars, pickle jars, and a smattering of "for scientific purposes" jars housing everything from some guy's kidney stones (really) to the tongue of a tiger to the stomach and intestines of something I couldn't decipher in Spanish.  And what must have been thousands of frogs, fish, bats, and snakes.  Maybe ten thousand bats; they packed them in five or six to a pickle jar.  Ew.  We were all grossed out by this section, but, predictably, that was the section the boys wanted to spend the most time in.  And they all wanted me to hold them up so they could see the sort-of preserved, only slightly moldy human heart on the top shelf.

Ewagahhhh!

But, here's the truth of the matter -- not my I-wish-it-were-more-antiseptic view of the world, but something much closer to the truth -- my boys loved it.  And BECAUSE this is Costa Rica and it's a small, dumpy, out-of-the-way museum next to the Ministry of Agriculture, it was mostly deserted.  So, when Benjamin and I got tired of looking at miles of stuffed birds and way too many scary sharks, we sat on a bench by the dinosaur skeletons and my other two boys were able to have unsupervised access to the whole rest of the museum.  I gave them each a pen and a scrap of paper I found in my purse, and you would have thought it was gold-plated they were so excited.  They ran around for an HOUR AND A HALF! (they're 6 and 8, remember!) making notes on animals they'd never seen or heard of before, and came back -- when the custodian shooed us out at closing time -- hugely excited about their discoveries, jumping up and down with glee at the thought of doing more research on these animals on the computer and making a field journal (a la "Go, Diego, go!") -- for fun!!

So (deep breath here), I think I will learn that, really, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I WILL learn that cleanliness may be next to Godliness but it's not even in the same neighborhood with fun, and I think I will eventually re-train my eyes and my mind.

And, since the boys can Hardly Wait to get back to the museum -- again and again and again -- I may have lots of opportunities.

Zen, here I come.  

I hope.

P.S.  I was going to attach a picture, but really, you're glad I didn't.

How to Get to School in Costa Rica

San Jose, COST RICA, October 11, 2008 – And here’s a bit of history on the first day of school in a new country, just in case you were wondering.  If nothing else, it’ll make you feel so great about your life…..

 ******

Today is Tuesday, August 18, the first day of school for the boys.  Why Tuesday?  Because last year, when the school schedule was set, no one knew for sure if Mother's Day would be celebrated on the 15th (Friday) or if it would be moved to the 17th (Monday), which it sometimes is, but not always.  So, to be safe, school started on Tuesday.  Mother's Day, by the way was on Friday and is a national holiday here.  Not a bad idea.

So school started today.  At 7:30 a.m.  The bus was supposed to come at 6:15 a.m.  I spoke to the bus guy last week.  In Spanish, which I don't speak.  But even so, I'm quite sure he said 6:15.  The bus didn't come at 6:15.  It didn't come at 6:30.  It didn't come at 7:00 or 7:15.  I called.  Donde esta?  Five minutes, he said.  So we waited 15 minutes, and then I called the school.  Oh, yes!  One of the bus lines was delayed, I'll check on his progress and call you back.

In the meantime, I had been working another angle:  trying to call a taxi.  Not too hard.  But, oh, wait:  there are no addresses.  How do I tell the taxi where to come?  I'm smart:  I went to the guard house for our condominio, and asked in my best, most polite gringo Spanish if he would please call a taxi for me.  Taxi?  Taxi?  I don't have the number for any taxi companies.  So, I went back home to get the number.  I brought him the number.  He dialed the number.  Sorry Senora, it's impossible; I can't get an outside line on this telephone.  

Hmmm.  I hope there's never a fire.

So, I went back home and tried a few more taxi numbers and got either no answer or "estoy occupado," or indecipherable messages in Spanish.  All the while, the middle one is lying on the wet driveway reading, the little one is tossing his snack bag against the house and occasionally running into the street, and the oldest one is sprawled all over the floor inside reading a book.  At least they're not in my way.

About this time, the driver shows up to take my husband to work.  Oops.  My husband forgot to tell him he had the company car today.  Never mind, since the driver was here, I pressed him into service, asking him to call a taxi for me.  He tried three numbers with no success, and, clearly more interested in getting back to work than helping a crazy gringo lady with three kids, he left.

By now, I realized that if I persisted in clinging to my American-cum-German heritage ideas about how the world should work (i.e. that a school bus should show up on time, taxis should come when called, and company drivers should do just that), I was probably going to go into cardiac arrest by lunch time.  So I let it go and started trying to enjoy the farce I unwittingly found myself starring in.  The Costa Ricans have a saying:  pura vida.  I don't have any idea what it means.  But in the few days I've been here, that phrase has already been tossed at me several times, usually with an expressive shrug of the shoulders and a smile when things don't run exactly as scheduled.

The Middle East runs on "In sha'allah.  Bukra.  Mumkin." (God willing.  Tomorrow.  Maybe.); Israel runs on "Rega" (Just you wait a minute.); Germany runs on "Jetzt!" (Now!).  Costa Rica runs on "pure living."  Whatever that is.  But frankly, it doesn't sound too bad in comparison.

Anyway, after 2 more phone calls (thankfully in English) I tracked down the number for a private taxi company.  And then I called the school because by now, it was after 8 a.m.

"Your kids didn't come on that bus?  That bus arrived at school already; those kids are already here."  Well, not all those kids.  I had two of them in the driveway and one inside.  So I called the taxi.  He came, in a 1972 Ford Pinto.  No seatbelts, and I quickly learned that the bedspread on the back seat was there to protect passengers from the soaking wet seat back there.  It rained for 6 hours yesterday afternoon, and either his window was down or his car leaks.  When he drove up, Jonathan took one look at the car and asked how I knew it was a taxi driver and not someone who was going to kidnap us.  

Frankly, I didn't have a good answer to that question.

I didn't care.  I gave him the directions I had gotten from the school, and we were there by 8:30.  On the way, we passed three goats on the side of the road and a herd of cows on the hillside and several busses carrying advertisements for medication to correct certain specific medical conditions pertinent to the male half of the population.  Thank goodness the oldest doesn't know he can read those words in Spanish.  Then Alejandro -- the taxi driver and my new best friend -- took the little one and me to the little one's school, and brought me home.  He's coming back in 15 minutes so I can go get the little one, and I've already asked him to come back tomorrow morning.  He might even come in time to take the boys to school, although the school has assured me that the bus will come at 6:15.

Who says you need fluency in a language?  So far today, using only 4 verbs, 2 personal pronouns, and an odds-and-ends handful of nouns I picked up somewhere, I've negotiated with 2 taxi drivers, the guard at our condominio (about 5 times), the taxi dispatch, 3 more guards at the school, 2 preschool teachers and the administrator, the guys who just came to bring bottled water, and the guy who is now crawling past my bedroom window and onto my roof to fix a considerable leak in our living room ceiling.

Speaking of leaks.  When I say it rained for 6 hours yesterday, please don't make the mistake of thinking that it misted, rained gently, or even rained "really hard" yesterday for 6 hours.  It poured; not cats and dogs, more like tigers and wolves.  The heavens opened up, and for 6 solid hours (and then again in the late evening) all the fury of an angry tropical rain spent itself over our house.  I think world sea level is going to rise an inch or so by the time all this water makes its way to the ocean.  It was the kind of rain that in 15 minutes will turn any flat area into a non-navigable lake and any hilly area into a raging torrent, the kind of torrent that rips up asphalt, rolls small boulders into the middle of the road, and carves canyons the size of the Grand into every hillside.  It rained like that for 6 hours yesterday.  It wasn't even a storm.  Just rain.

Our home has a tin roof and several large skylights, so the cumulative noise effect of tons of water dropping onto our house is rather like being inside a jet engine while it's running.  We have to shout to make ourselves heard across the kitchen table (which is nowhere near any part of the roof) and it's impossible to talk on the phone.

One of our skylights (it's about 8 feet square) is leaking.  Just a small leak on one end, but there was so much rain, that by the time I found the leak there was about a gallon of water on the floor.  I don't have that many containers, so I took the trash bag out of my single trash can (the garbage sack is now pirouetting all over the kitchen floor) and placed it under the worst leak.  I collected nearly 2 gallons of water.

It sounds like the guy on the roof just dropped the ladder up there.  There may be more leaks to fix now.

*******

And the bus driver just called.  He still can't find our house, and it's raining again, so I can't hear (or understand) a thing he's saying.  I could hear him negotiating with the students in the bus, asking if any of them speak English.  He found one I could communicate with him, and I offered directions to our house.  Again.  I suppose third time's the charm because the bus just pulled up and is disgorging two wet elementary school students who bear a striking resemblance to my kids.

And just think, we get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Sigh.