Home Making

So after traveling around as much of the country as we could stand for a month (mid-November to mid-December) while toting our two high-maintenance pieces of luggage, we settled back in Heredia. We chose Heredia primarily for the cooler temperatures (about 70 degrees in the morning and almost always sunny, rising in the afternoon to the mid-80’s , then cooling again with the afternoon rain) and the proximity to San Jose, schools, and other services.

Our first weeks back in Heredia were surreal. While looking for a home to rent, we stayed in a little apartment with an open-air kitchen the size of a closet. Seemed nice at first, until I found myself wondering how to dry the dishes in the rain and how to keep the boys away from the stove in the living room while making dinner. As I was about to lose my mind, Frank found us a beautiful house just outside the city (see photos) which we have really enjoyed making into our first real family home over the past six months.

Christmas and New Year’s passed in a blur of sickness and explosions - firecrackers. For weeks before and after the New Year we had them landing on our roof and all around us. Costa Ricans are absolutely in love with explosions. The boys were freaking out at all the noise at first, but slowly got used to it.

After the holidays, we settled into a relatively normal suburban life, with the boys starting school just down the road (see pictures of them on the first day in their uniforms). There are only about 25 kids in the little school from ages 1.5 to 5 years. They speak Spanish most of the time, but two staff members speak English, so they can understand when the boys need something and don’t know how to say it in Spanish. Most of the kids are Tico there, but there are a number of kids from other countries like Norway, France, and Korea. We’ve mostly been happy with it, and have learned a tremendous amount about how schools and care for children in general here differs from the states. They are very, very different. Ask me if you want details - I could go on and on!

Frank has been exploring many aspects of being a musician - talking with recording studios here, teaching bass for a neighborhood music program (which allows the boys to participate in music classes for free), writing and recording his own music in the home studio he has put together, playing with a rock band here, and using this special time here in Costa Rica to refine his own dreams and goals. I’ve been doing some of the same, writing a few stories for kids, learning Spanish on my own (turns out it is ridiculously hard to find a tutor or class in Spanish here, despite the many language schools).

We enjoyed a wonderful visit from my parents at the beginning of April. The highlight was a trip to Playa Hermosa in Guanacaste where we stayed at a little hotel right on the beach with its own sailboat, about 30 feet I suppose. We went out for a sail one evening with the boys - very low key. The two guys sailing the boat made a bowl of ceviche that we ate out of paper cups while we talked and looked up at Michael Jordan’s castle on the cliff. The boys loved it and didn’t seem scared at all! They even took a trip up to the bow, one by one, to feel the wind and look up at the sails. The boys were SOOOO excited to be with Mimi and Papa (my parents), and started talking more and more both during their visit and after they left, spurred on, I think, by the very receptive audience my parents provided.

We’ve also taken a number of family “field trips” in the local area. Two highlights include a biodiversity theme park very close to our house called INBIOparque. We go there almost every week to see the iguanas, caimen, spiders, etc. and play on the playgrounds, have a delicious Costa Rican lunch, etc. The boys have learned a lot about animals here, in part because of pairing these regular visits with watching Go Diego Go on TV in Spanish before we go to the park. We look for the animals we’ve seen on the show at the park or ask the animal scientists in the research station at the park about them.

Also close to us are several volcanos and a beautiful set of waterfalls, called “La Paz.” We enjoyed seeing the La Paz falls in an absolute downpour - very exciting to be climbing up and down slippery cliffs with two squirmy little guys in an aquacero (downpour)!

So we’re all good here and hope you are too, but we really miss home and everyone, so write or call when you get a chance!

---

---