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April 26, 2006
Callista’s Birthday
Callista was the first of our family to celebrate her birthday in Costa Rica. We invited our Canadian neighbors over for cake and ice cream on Sunday the 24th as well as our local friends and their son who had his 5th birthday the previous week.
Our Canadian friends were returning to Canada the following day for 10 days to tie up some loose ends and wouldn’t be in town for Callista’s actual birthday. It was important to her to have her friends celebrate with her.
For Callista’s ‘real’ birthday we celebrated by spending the entire day in San Ramon together. Shopping for gifts without Callista this year was a problem so we shopped together on her birthday. Bill wanted to buy her a bicycle and had looked in several other towns but wasn’t thrilled with the prices or styles. I’m glad he waited because the bike he picked out that day was not one Callista wanted. The usual ways of thinking are not always best in Costa Rica. Bill wanted to buy her a bike she could grow into. Not a good idea. She needs to have total control with the
crazy roads and drivers here. There no “safe” place to ride bikes. No bike paths like in Tempe and Scottsdale. After walking around and making our purchases we had hotdogs (perro bravos) in the central park. We ended the day with another cake at the house. Bill and Callista can never get enough cake and ice cream.
Our friends Karol and Hernan invited us to join them for a day at Parque de Diversiones in San Jose to celebrate both children’s birthdays in lieu of either of them having a big fiesta as is tradition here. We planned to go on Thursday 27th. Our plans changed when we arrived at 8am to find the park was only opened Friday thru Sunday. The children were a little disappointed while the parents were pleased to find out if we came back the next day admission was two for one! Not wanting to return to San Ramon right away we decided to go to La Sabana Park and let the children play for awhile.
La Sabana is s huge park in Central San Jose with beautiful trees Bill calls them painted Indian trees. The real name is Eucalyptus deglupta or Rainbow
bark, Deglupta. What ever you call them they are spectacular. It looks like someone finger painted on all the trees. The children played on the climbing toys and teeter-totters (yes they are still allowed in Costa Rica and so are merry-go-rounds). After our walk we went to the Central Mercado for a typical lunch. This was Bill’s favorite part of the day. You can buy anything from bunnies to belts in the Mercado. Bill did buy a belt and the children begged for bunnies but neither got one.
After lunch we decided it still wasn’t time to return home. After all, Karol and Hernan had both taken the day off from work and wanted to enjoy it fully. Given a choice of either the local zoo or the Children’s Museum Callista chose the latter. It turned out to be an excellent choice and one that was on our list of things to see. For a day that could’ve been a big disappointment it turned into another grand adventure.
There are two additional blogs in the works about both the Children’s Museum and the Parque de Diversiones. Each adventure war rents it’s own blog, too much to tell and
too many pictures for one blog.
I’ll end this blog saying that for one ten year old girl a week long celebration was a heck of a way to spend her first birthday in Costa Rica. We ALL spent the following weekend lounging to recover from all the activity. None of us is used to keeping up with a five year old (not even Callista).
Pura Vida,
Jennifer, Bill, Callista and Bear.
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j
non-member comment
hi
muy lindo