Rachel’s Breakdown, Losing another Kosher Restaurant and a Month’s Worth of Errands in 1 Day

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It’s been a long time since I made an entry. Last week my mother was in town, it was her first time visiting Costa Rica. It was a nice visit, but unfortunately she had to deal with our crazy day-to-day of not having a moment of peace, waking at 5:45 to jackhammers in the bathrooms and going to the hardware store 3-10 times a day! I think she enjoyed the trip, it’s just that she missed out on the touristy Costa Rica and in its place she was given the real Costa Rica. We wanted to go on one of the touristy trips one day, but instead we needed to purchase a replacement bathtub after the contractors broke one of ours. It was a nice visit for us though, and I’m glad my mother got to see where and how we live, the next time she is here will hopefully be for the birth of our baby!
The day after my mother left, we had a number of crises with the construction, 15 projects had been started and none had been completed. There was not a dust-free surface in the house and Rachel was attempting (unsuccessfully) to clean fast enough to keep up with the mess being created. Things were psychotic here and we essentially had no room to hide in since our little house is being painted, in the big house 4 of 5 bathrooms were being worked on, the kitchen was being completed, and there was jackhammering for 12 hours a day which could drive any sane person to the brink.
At one point during the afternoon Rachel decided to escape from the craziness of this all, she was going to take a bath in the one finished bathroom, put on my noise cancelling headphones and read a book in peace. As she walked down the long hallway passed the bedrooms and the jackhammering, a wall in the hallway exploded out as the jackhammer missed its mark and broke through a bathroom wall. The wall in the hallway was freshly painted and we have even had an artist come and do murals on that wall. This was just too much for Rachel to handle and for the first time in this whole crazy ordeal she started crying, but the reason was so silly that she couldn’t help but laugh at the same time.
An hour’s long bath seemed to have been just what she needed, and she came out herself again and was really able to laugh at the wall this time.
The week took a bit of an ugly turn when we went to what had been the only kosher mini-market in Costa Rica, and found it closed. This left us with little food and a worry about the feasibility of opening a kosher hotel here. We depend on them for our cheese and other items, as well as liking their breads. When they reopened this week, after a full remodel we have come to discover that they are no longer under kosher supervision. We are still able to get our cheese and packaged goods from them, but unfortunately this makes Rachel’s job of cooking and preparing for the opening of our inn that much more difficult! Kosher food is hard to find already, and now we are losing our best bakery! We’ll make-do, but things will continue to be difficult, there’s a new store, but things move slowly getting started here and many stores/restaurants like the New York Deli never make it off the ground.
Yesterday I spent 10 hours at hardware stores. I went to the same store I go to 3 times a day, 3 times yesterday, then to a paint store, a glass store, a depot where you buy stone, a pool supply store, a wood store, a place to buy wrought iron, a bookstore to buy English books for my gardener and finally a tile store!
Running out of money aside, I just hate shopping all day!

Matt


Orchid Lodge's Website - http://www.theorchidlodge.com
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