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Published: September 10th 2007
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Well, we have become quite well established here in our new Costa Rican home. We now have appliances (fridge, stove, microwave, and washer/dryer). Nancy has scrubbed all the cupboards and drawers - which we have filled with dishes, etc. Kyle & Sam have decorated their rooms with posters and such from home. We are all getting used to the mildly warm showers and the occasional creepy-crawly bugs that appear. The boys have also made fast friends with our landlord's children (boy age 10 and girl age 6 - who speak only Spanish) and animals (1 dog and 1 cat). They particularly enjoyed showing the kids how to play catch with a baseball and American football.
And, thanks to our landlord's current service, we have cable TV - an interesting collection of local channels, American cable channels (TNT, Animal Planet, Disney, ESPN) broadcast in Spanish, American cable channels (HBO, Cinemax, TNT, CNN, etc.), and - get this - the Denver affiliate stations of ABC, CBS, and NBC. It is tough to tell the boys to turn off the TV when they are watching Nickelodeon completely in Spanish - it almost seems educational!
We also have a rental car which
gives us the freedom to get around and a local cell phone. We plan to buy a car next week. The roads are not great but frankly not as bad as we expected - of course, we will see what we find once we start exploring the outlying areas of the country. Steve has become quite adept at navigating the interesting traffic patterns and we have not yet gotten lost.
On the food front, we are all getting used to the slightly different tastes to the products here - orange juice, cheese, ice cream, etc. all are just a little "off" what we are used to. But that is an easy trade-off to make for the amazing fruits and veggies. Bananas are 3 cents each (that is not a typo), whole pineapples are about a buck. Steve's fruit smoothies are a hit every morning. Ciudad Colon (our town) has a Saturday morning market, where we stocked up on fresh stuff and discovered some new things - including an amazing shaved ice stand. The guy literally shaves the ice from a huge block, tosses it in a cup and mixes it with the juice, some kind of powder mix, and
then tops it off with what Nancy thinks is sweetened condensed milk. YUMMY!
Language-wise, the boys - particularly Kyle - are doing an AMAZING job of communicating in Spanish. Everyone is very impressed not only with their knowing the language but also having a very authentic Latin American accent - thanks to years of instruction by Latino teachers at their Spanish immersion elementary school. We are also finding that Ticos (as Costa Ricans call themselves) are very patient with our butchered Spanglish and some speak and understand English pretty well, particularly Steve's new best friend at the local hardware store.
We have been doing lots of shopping - to set up the house and to get food. We have shopped at everything from street vendors to local Mom & Pop stores to large shopping markets to the big new Hipermas (an exact replica for WalMart).
The boys start school this week at Pinewoods, a K-6 school about 15 minutes from our house that prides itself on being "in harmony with nature." Kyle's class has 16 students; Sam's has 20 - so that will be a nice change from the 30 or so they had last year. They
teach the following subjects in English: grammar, spelling, composition, reading, science education, physical education, arts & music. The other subjects - math, social studies, and Spanish - are taught in Spanish. The student body is about 95% Costa Rican - so the playground chatter will be in Spanish, which should lead to some interesting vocabulary additions for Kyle and Sam.
We have been out to the clinic a couple of times. This week there are about 20 volunteers in town so we will be helping out with all of that. Then our plan is to try and take some Spanish classes in the morning and go to the clinic in the afternoon. The Costa Rican doctor who Nancy will be working with (Christian) is headed to El Salvador for 2 weeks at the end of October, so Nancy will be "in charge" during that time!
We have also been introduced to the notorious Tico bureaucracy. Setting up a bank account requires a letter of recommendation from an existing bank customer - so fortunately the non-profit's local coordinator could vouch for us. Setting up a cell phone required 2 stops - one to buy the phone, the other to
set up the service with the state-run telecom (and to make it happen smoothly, we did it in Christian's name). And the home phone takes a week, with the internet service to follow another week after that.
One interesting little story involves the toll booth on the highway between our house and the clinic. First, the toll is only 75 colones - or 15 cents! I don't think that would even cover the labor costs to run the booth in the States. Second, there is a lane where you can pay 100 colones but get no change (they explicitly call it a donation) under the reasoning that the lane will move quicker. Third, we approached it one day and there was a fairly big line-up when all of a sudden when we were about 3 cars from the booth, a supervisor jumped out and just started waving everyone through for free - apparently it is more important to keep things moving than to bring in a few extra dollars of revenue. Very intriguing and not something I think one would ever see in the US.
Well, that should be enough to give you a sense of what we
have been up to. Feel free to post questions or comments in the Comments section. We will try to respond as soon as we can. Take care,
Steve, Nancy, Kyle and Sam.
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Michael Stiffman
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Kitten
Sam and Kyle, George and Sammy think your cat there looks just like Penguin. They loved looking at the pictures. Pita's favorite drink when we were in Micronesia was fresh young coconuts just like you're drinking from in the picture. We love following along with you on your time abroad. Michael and family.