The Turning Point...

First, in response to some e-mails: The address of our apartment is: del Automercado Heredia, 100m al sur, 25 este, portones blancos, apt #4 (i.e. from the Automercado in Heredia, 1 block south, a little bit east, white garage doors, apartment #4). The Automercado is the nicest (and most expensive) supermarket in Heredia -- if we ever get a hankering for a certain food from America, we most likely can find it there. Now you know how to get here, but please don’t send us anything, we’ll never get it. We found out yesterday the only way to receive mail is to get a PO box (which we will after we get back). The only way to get things via UPS, Fedex, DHL and the like is to go pick it up at their offices in San Jose - I guess they don’t do too much e-bay business here.

Also, we did get a menorah, candles and a dreidl -- there is one store in all of Costa Rica that sells Judaica. We ventured down there last Friday.

Now back to our story...

Last Thursday, as we were doing our house hunting, I was starting to get a little down - not depressed, more just a low bio-rhythm. The thoughts creeping into my mind were along the lines of “What have we gotten ourselves into,” and “it would have been a lot easier to have just stayed home.” I was not worried about finding a place - the first place we saw, as a matter of fact was very nice. It was a big, beautiful, new, 3 bedroom villa completely furnished. The problem was that it is in a gated community of 8 villas, all rented by expats from the US and Canada - my mom would have loved it, but it was hardly the experience we were envisioning. In addition, it is outside San Rafael, a small town a few miles northeast of Heredia. We thought it was a little far away (although it turns out not to be so).

This was the case with the places we had seen (aside from the ones that were just dumps) - they were fine, but not exactly what we wanted. Also, that morning the kids were particularly whiny. Ellie has been taking naps just about everyday, a habit she had given up long ago. This, naturally, leads her to not sleeping so well at night, which means she wants to take a nap the next day (in addition to us not sleeping so well at night -- although Ari, who shares her room seems not to notice). As an aside, she did not nap yesterday, had a great sleep last night, so one can only hope. Unfortunately we have a long car ride today - best for taking naps - so our hopes may be dashed.

I knew that everything was going to work out and that no matter where we lived we were going to enjoy it and have a great experience, it was just that Thursday was a low ebb. Even after we had seen the apartment, when we walked up to the Automercado and were having lunch, the kids were being super cranky. In addition, as I mentioned, the owner of the apartment had rather strong opinions about the school we had chosen and she suggested a school around the corner. We went and visited that school, and, surprise, surprise, we really liked it, too. So, we had one issue settled, then the other thrown into turmoil. For those of you who know me, decision making isn’t my strong suit - give me 2 good options, and I will go back forth over them and be pretty snippy until I get things settled in my mind (at least I admit I have a problem).

Then, like a rainbow rising after a thunderstorm (well, I guess the correct comparison would be more like the sun coming out after a particularly dreary day), things changed. It was at that time that I talked to the guy from Instituto Asis. Since we had our accommodations settled (or at least we thought at the time), I gave him a call to find out about the program. We had been thinking about going in January since Ari’s school wouldn’t start until the end of January. I found out that we could go there right away - or really any time, they are not very busy - and that it all sounded fantastic. I was excited to go up to the mountains but just as much I was excited to get the kids’ Spanish progressing a little faster so they could make friends more easily.

From there, we decided to do something “touristy” and headed up the road to the Britt Coffee tour. This is something that is written up in all the tour books - Britt is a big coffee grower and they put on a very entertaining tour and skit about how coffee is grown and made. After a quick walk, we arrived early for our 3:00 reservation. While I sat on a bench holding a napping Ellie, Dara and Ari checked out the shop and walked around the well-manicured lawn. As a surprising highlight, Kaldi, the goat, provided great entertainment for Ari (as anyone with a 7 year old - at least a 7 year old boy - can guess, this has to do with peeing and pooping and subsequent head-banging, literally).

Luckily Ellie awoke in time to shake off her standard post-nap grouchiness before the tour. The tour was very entertaining and informative (they take you through a small idyllic forest of coffee trees and 3 tour guides perform their well-scripted, tongue-in-cheek jokes in 2 languages) and the factory where they roast and grind the beans was very interesting, too. From there they put on a short, multi-media show about the history of coffee (Dara was selected as a volunteer to take part even - of course I forgot to take a picture). Highlights of the show (for Ari) was when one of the guys on stage had to jump around to try to get into the elusive spotlight and when one of the actors got water splashed on him as he pretended to bring coffee trees to the New World. Of course the show ended in the gift shop where we could taste all the different coffees and chat with the tour guides. Did you know that in order to make decaf, they send the beans to Germany to be decaffeinated then bring them back to Costa Rica to be roasted and ground (they sell the caffeine to drug companies and Coke which helps defray the costs)? Also, they had samples of all the different chocolate candies they make so the kids hung out in that part and pretty much finished off the samples over a ten minute period.

After that, we headed down into the center of Heredia and had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant -- the restaurant was nothing special, but the kids had seemed to turn the corner, too, so we were all in high spirits. From the restaurant we wandered up to the central plaza and, lo and behold, there was an orchestra set up on the bandstand, and lots of people milling about and seated on the benches around the plaza. We found a bench -- it was a beautiful night, temperature just right for a light sweater -- and listened to the music while the kids ran around. Just as I had imagined it would be...

Lastly, I would like to take a little break and say a quick thank you to everyone that has been reading these blogs and making comments -- it is very rewarding (especially thanks to those of you who have posted compliments!). Just to let you know, I usually write the first draft, then my editor, Dara, goes through and cleans things up. Also, Dara is the photo maven -- she takes most of the pictures and the ones she doesn't take she suggests that I take and she does all the downloading, captions and posting. Check our gallery for more pictures at http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/TheBortmans/Gallery/.

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