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Published: December 18th 2005
Since we are woefully behind, I am going to have to skip ahead to fill you in on some important developments. Tomorrow afternoon we are off to the jungle/mountains to study Spanish and do some volunteer work at Instituto Asis (www.institutoasis.com). We are really looking forward to it. They do have an internet connection there, so we will try to keep up to date. We are really hoping that this will jumpstart the kids’ Spanish and give them a good base as they head in to school.
We are going to be there for 1 or 2 weeks -- we'll see how it goes. Over Christmas, we have been invited to a rural farm there along with the 2 other volunteers who will be there and the director. There are supposed to be lakes, rivers, waterfalls, horseback riding and more. We'll probably have a trip to a volcano, too.
The other big news it that we have found a place to live. It is a nice 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment on the northern edge of the "center" of Heredia. It is a pretty good sized apartment and it is nicely furnished (anyone who wants to visit, we should be able to make room for you!). It has a little yard in front and a nice view out over the valley. We are going to drop some bags off there tomorrow then move in after we get back from the mountains. We’ll try to get some pictures up.
Finding a furnished place is a pretty big deal -- most places we came across were unfurnished. And when they say unfurnished, they mean unfurnished -- no refrigerator, no stove, no showerheads, no lightbulbs in the sockets -- really stripped bare. One realtor that we had been talking to offered to help us buy some used furniture and buy it back at 1/2 price at the end of our stay. Actually, this was not a bad option and if we hadn't found this other place, that was probably where we would have ended up. Money-wise, it would not have been a problem, but I was dreading the hassle of having to buy dishes and wastebaskets and lamps, etc.
All in all, I think we looked at about 15 different places. They ranged from absolute dumps to beautiful 3000 sq ft villas (one even had a little casita out back!). Nothing quite seemed to fit. Some of the nicer places were further out of town and would have required us to get a car (which is not what we were hoping to do). This was a trying experience for the kids (there was one day I went out on my own to "cover more ground" while Dara took care of them) but it is over now and we are very pleased with what we’ve got. Actually, it was Thursday that we saw this apartment and once we saw it, we knew that was the one. We told the owner right then that we wanted it.
Of course, the next day (as we were on a pilgrimage down to San Jose to the only Judaica store in the country to buy a menorah) I got a call from another guy who had a furnished apartment in an area of town that we had liked. I had called and left messages 2 or 3 times for him over the week. (We found apartments and houses available from signs posted in store windows and on light-poles, in newspapers - English and Spanish - and from a couple realtors. The two realtors we talked to even showed us the same apartment once.) So, of course, then we were torn - should we just stick with what we had? Should we go see it and, if we liked it, bail on the other one (we hadn’t signed anything, but the lady and her daughter we had dealt with were very nice and we would have felt very bad backing out on them)? Long story short, we couldn’t stand the suspense and went and saw it this morning. It ended up not being as nice and not as well located (no map to tell where it was, naturally) as the guy on the phone made it out to be (surprise, surprise). So we feel much better and think we are lucky to have the one we do have.
Also, of course, while chatting with the owner of our apartment it came up that we were planning on having the kids attend the European School. Well, she didn’t think the European School was very good - it was ok if our kids were going to be there for a few years, but if our kids went there for just 6 months then they would be way behind when they went back home (the kids in kinder - Ellie’s class - don’t learn any letters or numbers, etc). More on this later…
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Robin Terr
non-member comment
Amazing!!
Every entry I read just makes me more amazed with your experiences. I am truly speechless by all of this. Enjoy your work in the mountains. We all miss you.