Animals on your doorstep: Living the Dream in Costa Rica

So there's this beautiful imagery about a part of the brain that resembles a tree. It even grows branches. It's called the arbor vitae and it handles things like sensory perception and motor output. It feels like we must have grown a forest 'up there' over the last four and half months. 

Baby-O captured the mayhem and hilarity of it all a couple of days ago when I was encouraging her to speak more Spanish (her understanding is 100% but she speaks very little Spanish these days and her teachers recommended we try to talk to her about speaking more). She looked at me dubiously and replied, "merci poo-poo". 

No joke.

Soooo we have some work to do. 

Ok. Ok. It's not the arbor vitae area that handles speech, but Broca's Area; yes, that's the real name. We have been torqued, yanked, and pulled in every single intellectual direction trying to make sense out of every day life. 

photo by manonthelam

My arbor vitae has however gotten a workout driving in Costa Rica. It's a place where road signs are non-existent. My favorite debacle owing to the lack of road signs was when I entered what I thought was an on-ramp on to a major highway only to realize it was an exit ramp. My clue? When a big, white, truck stopped short of my hood. The three guys crammed into the front cab's first take? They cracked up! On the other hand, there are copious amounts of potholes, speed bumps, cows in the road, men on horseback, and other wild things that cause my arbor vitae to branch. 

We're headed back to Washington in just a couple of days for the holidays. When we come back, we will begin a new chapter as we move our life across the Central Valley to Heredia to be closer to the European School and to friends. 

One of J's friend's hamming it up in our new backyard.

We leave on a high note with Gigi having successfully delivered a Neil Simon monologue  during a school end-of-semester function (in complete hippy attire and with a full-on Southern accent)  and J rocked his performance in the lead role of a school holiday production. Gigi just went through a week and a half of Finals.  We go to the school on Friday to pick up the kids' grades. The next day we will be on a plane that takes us from an eternal 70 degrees to our much missed in-the-30's degree city. 

Here's a pictorial summary of the past bit:

 A big dose of wonder.

And horror. 

This fellow was on our doorstep one recent morning.

Milestones still happened. 

The cakes were just fancier. . . and don't ask me how expensive it is to buy cake pans here. :(

Oxcarts got a festival.

 

   

                                           
                            But, the majority of the time was spent being a regular person living a regular life instead of 'touring' like a tourist. (The rocking Smiths get to dominate that category!!)

It never failed to thrill to catch others living their 'regular' life. 

Holidays still happened. 

Celebrations like Halloween were tempered by the Catholic Church here declaring Halloween a pagan activity.

Baby-O's choice of costume didn't help that PR problem.

A delicious Thanksgiving was spent with new friends---most were expatriates, many had been living in Costa Rica for more than ten years, others, mere months like us. There was an equally big group of boys, but they didn't stand still long enough to be photographed. 

    

Two of the girls in this photo won a literal 'golden ticket' for an all-expenses-paid trip to NYC to meet the band, One Direction. They left a week after this photo was taken. Their report on the modern day Beatles? "They smelled good."

 It was sad to be 'alone' in the country when performances would happen.


























Or presents from loved ones were opened and we couldn't show them what a hit they were. I know that happens state-side too, but we don't like to think about being 4500 miles away, it seems f-a-r.









But, then butterflies would mate on your leg and it would all seem worth it.

Can you spot that there are actually two butterflies on my jeans? I would add that they stayed there for a LONG time. 

 There would be instances when you almost felt local when you joined in 'shooing' the exotic animals trying to steal your picnic food instead of trying to photograph them.

I often wonder how much is sticking with the kids. How is being here changing them? Only time will tell.

There's no question that there's a lot of theory 

to practice in our lives.

Baby-O and Bobby studying a caterpillar to see what it will eat.

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I've found that living here forces you to look for the rainbows or the storm clouds.  It's funny how they seem to reside in the same space. It's been a wild ride. 

 But a good one.

I hope you'll laugh until you cry like I did when I spent a hilarious late night with Gigi stumbling upon this primer on Beowulf. Spoiler Alert: it is not G-rated. It is a riot.

Happy Holidays. We miss you.