A busy 6 weeks

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Rather than try to create a well-crafted, eloquent blog post, we thought we would just bring everyone up-to-date with a bunch of "bulleted" snippets from the past month or so.

- Christmas was great. In addition to Steve's mom & dad, his brother Jeff and his girlfriend Marne joined us. It was so much fun. We paid a visit to the United Nation's University of Peace, where they have a wonderful park and trails - got a great family photo. We also created a non-traditional (but pretty eco-friendly) Christmas tree, built a gingerbread house, and left Santa his cookies and milk (and carrots for the reindeer). Sam made sure that we left the back door unlocked since we don't have a chimney here. And, lo and behold, he came - leaving Kyle and Sam with some nice gifts - which were supplemented by bikes from us and a Wii game from Steve's folks. This generated hours of laughs as everyone tried their hand at bowling, tennis, etc. The house seemed quite empty after the Struthers clan returned to the States.

- Before they did, we attended the annual Tope horse ride through downtown San Jose. 3,000 people on horseback, most of them drinking, having a good time in the sun. Nothing more needs to be said, I think. Check out some of the photos. This kicks off the festival season, with most towns in Costa Rica having something similar to a county fair - and many of them having their own topes. Our town has one in mid-February.

- We had some folks over for New Year's Eve. Sam even stayed up to watch the fireworks from our front porch; they sell mortar-size fireworks here so lots of people buy their own supplies and create quite large-scale shows from their backyards for their friends and family.

- The boys have been enjoying their 2-month "summer" vacation, which ends tomorrow morning with the start of a new school year. They went to a weeklong day camp in mid-January where they hiked, learned about nature, swam, and made some new friends. Other than that, they have been mostly hanging out with Steve every day as Nancy has been working hard at the clinic. This includes working with a group of about a dozen 3rd & 4th year medical school students from Michigan State who are here for 4-6 weeks as part of their education (Nancy being a US board-certified doc makes this possible). She is excited about getting to do some lectures and sitting in on the 2-hours-a-day Spanish language lessons the group is taking.

- One of the boys' adventures was to get Steve a Costa Rican driver's license (you can use your US-based one up to a point and then you need to get a local one). This involves first going to a doctor and passing a "physical exam" (blood pressure, pulse, eye exam) and then going to the equivalent of the DMV. We had read horror stories about the process taking 5-6 hours, but it was quite the opposite. There is a guy who greets you at the door to make sure you have all the right documents so you don't wait in line and find out you forgot something. He looked at Steve's Minnesota driver's license, smiled, and said, "Ahh Minnesota, the home of Jesse Ventura!" So that was a good omen. 45 minutes and 4000 colones ($8) later, Steve walked out with a license. And it quickly paid off as he was able to get us "residente" admission prices to national parks - saving us about $15 per visit for the family.

- Another adventure was getting two 40-pound boxes of donations through Costa Rican customs. These were items collected by our neighbors in St Paul and originally sent via Fed Ex to meet us at our hotel in Miami when we went there at the beginning of December. Unfortunately, Fed Ex did not live up to their performance standards and the packages never arrived. So, they were re-routed to Steve's parents in Sacramento who then filled out new airbills to have them shipped to Costa Rica (at Fed Ex's expense, thank goodness!). The only problem was that when Steve told them how to fill out the form, he told them to be honest and put down "donated toys, clothes and medicine" - the medicine being children's vitamins and tylenol. This set off all kinds of alarms with CR customs, so they could not release it until we had some kind of form filled out by the equivalent of the Commerce and Health Departments. Of course, in late December, they go on vacation for two weeks, so finally in early January Steve and Christian took 4 hours to plead our case to various customs officials. They successfully convinced the bureaucrats NOT to make them get certifications that the clothes had been fumigated (we are not making this up). We then paid various fees, including one that required walking 1/4 mile down the road to a bank and depositing 72 colones (20 cents!) into the Customs bank account and bringing back the receipt and another for the cost of them storing the boxes for a month - again, not making this up. Finally, the boxes were ours and Steve & Christian returned triumphant to the clinic. Among the important lessons learned was the phrase "personal effects" - which apparently was all the boxes needed to say and Fed Ex would have been able to deliver them to us here with no hassle.

- One evening in early January Steve and Kyle were walking home from some errand in town when they noticed a group of kids about his age practicing soccer at the main field in the center of town - complete with uniforms, cones, etc. So they asked whether it was possible to join the team and, lo and behold, Kyle is now on the Ciudad Colon youth soccer (futbol) team. They practice four nights a week and usually have a game on Sunday against a team from another city. As you might imagine, it is not difficult to spot Kyle out on the field. He is having a blast and Steve & Nancy are enjoying conversing with other parents in our broken Spanish. The team continues throughout the school year, so Kyle's skills should be greatly improved when we return home. He and Steve also went to see the Costa Rican national soccer team take on Sweden; people assumed that Kyle was a blond-headed Swede fan but he proudly cheered on the Ticos in his CR national team jersey. Unfortunately, they lost 1-0.

- At the end of January, we had our first Minnesota-based house guest, Nancy's colleague Robyn. She arrived on a Friday afternoon and we then took her on a whirlwind adventure that included the Pacific coast (Manuel Antonio), Poas volcano (which actually had an "eruption-type event" a few hours after we were there), Zoo Ave animal reserve, a day working at the clinic, a morning in San Jose, and then a 3-day visit to the Caribbean coast (Puerto Viejo). We will post separate blog entries for the two beach trips - since we took so many pictures. Robyn (and we) enjoyed comparing the respective temperature forecasts for Costa Rica and Minnesota each morning (sorry about those sub-zero days, folks)! Over the next few months, we are looking forward to visits from friends from Stanford (we will make our first trip to Arenal volcano), another of Nancy's colleagues and her family, our neighbors from St Paul, family friends from California, and Nancy's parents.

- Finally, we continued our annual tradition of a combination Super Bowl-Sam birthday party. The big excitement (before the crazy final 5 minutes of the game) was Sam's gift from Christian and Dayan - a live iguana! Named Sandia (which means watermelon because it is green on the outside and - presumably - red on the inside), it is very cute (see the photos). Our friends from North Carolina offered to help Steve build a cage for it. The day-long effort (thank you, Wilsons!) produced a very cool 4x3x2 home complete with a hinged lid and fiberglass floor. So, our house now has a small zoo comprised of an iguana, parakeet, and turtle. And, we had to resist the offer from our landlords/neighbors who offered us one of the 2 cute puppies that they rescued off the street.

We really appreciate all the letters - electronic and snail mail - that folks have been sending to us. It helps us feel connected to everyone back home. And, if you were wondering, it takes about 2 weeks for a letter to arrive from the States. Based on our experience, we think it takes about 3 weeks to go the other direction; the amazing thing is that it only costs 155 colones (30 cents) to send a letter to the US via air mail (not sure whether the slower part of the trip is in CR or in the US).

Anyway, this will hopefully get you caught up on what we have been doing the past month and a half. The 6-month anniversary of our arrival is on March 3; the time has seemed to fly by - guess that means we are having fun!

Ciao!

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Comments

[Patti]

Hello from Aunt Patti- Looks like you've had an action packed 6 weeks! I love the soccer pictures and Sandia. The Tope looks similar to some things I've seen at Okoboji....