OUR COSTA RICAN ADVENTURE

5 March

Hot day. Got some squirt bottles from the store in the morning. Spent the whole afternoon swimming in the pool and squirting everything and everybody.

Also, got some sidewalk chalk from a boy staying here from Monterrey, CA. Drew a picture with the chalk... and then squirted that too.

6 March

We just about always cook at home, but tonight we opted to head to town at dusk and dine at Escalofrio, one of our favorite places. It's the Italian place that makes their own gelato. We dined on green salads, thin authentic pizza, and of course gelato (highly addictive).

After dinner we decided to take a taxi home; a rarity, normally we walk everywhere. Brice is really keen on the hailing the taxi idea, and this evening he ran straight from the restaurant to the corner of the street wildly flaily his arms. It took me a minute to realize that he was trying to get a taxi.

I finally got around to photographing my nighttime friends that creep and crawl around after dark. I see them every night along with countless lizards.

7 March

It's been very dry here. In fact, it's only rained just a handful of times over the last several weeks. This is quite unusual, and the conditions are putting the flora and fauna under some stress. We've been finding the frogs in and around the swimming pool which seems as though it could be due to the dry conditions. Tate found a little frog friend that she played with for quite a while. It seemed to enjoy being towed around on the various floating toys.

Tate brought a homework assignment home with her from school. She worked diligently for hours on the assignment cutting, coloring, gluing. I think it was probably more that what the assignment really called for, but Tate ran with it and was incredibly proud.

Tate adores her teacher, Marisol, and is eager to present her completed work.

8 March

Bugs are one of the unpleasantries of a warm, humid tropical environment. They are so integrated in our daily life we really owe them some acknowledgement for the experience that they create for us. I should start first by laying out the larger very unscientific classifications. First we have the crumbseeking tiny & quick bug; usually travel in packs of in or around the multimillions mostly in the kitchen. Second we have the plain 'ol mosquito which usually come round in the cool evening, although we find that they retreat inside to the coolness of the house during the mid-day. Then we've got the noseums and several varieties of ants to round out the major players. The ones that require the most work from us are the tiny kitchen bugs and the mosquitos. The kitchen dwellers simply require that every last crumb of food must be accounted for, if not then the tell-tale river of microdots easily lead to the offending crumb. The mosquitos require the usual regimen of daily burning inscence on the patio and application of repellent on Tate and Brice before bed. A good night is only 5 or so bites per kid, but at this point the bites don't seem to bother them. However, Brice sort of looks like he has a chronic case of Chicken Pox.

11 March

I thought I should probably document our fridge as it's become quite something to look at everyday. We've got loads of artwork, Tate's "countdown" calendar to her last day of school, and of course the miscellaneous invitations & school notices. The fridge reminds me that liife here is quite parallel to life in Mount Shasta.

Today we went to a birthday party for one of Tate's friends from school, Steven. Steven's mom is from San Francisco, dad is from Quepos, and the party was held at the (second) home of Steven's grandmother from San Francisco. The house was unbelievably beautiful: sweeping views of the Pacific and Titi Monkeys swinging in the trees right by the swimming pool.

Tate got dressed for the 1:00pm party at 8:00am this morning, just to give you an idea as to how excited she was. The party invite said 1pm - 6pm; yes, 5 hours. There were about 15 kids there, 5 of them were kids from Tate's class. They played everything from musical chairs to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey; and then there was the sack races and pinata on top of loads of swimming. Breaks inbetween for icecream, candy, cookies, soda, more candy, and of course cake. (Tate was begging me for veggies by the time we made it home).

Tate and Brice played everything. Language was not a barrier. It was so fun to see Tate playing with her new friends in the pool. Tate's become an excellent swimmer, so she's able to swim freely all over the pool. She mostly played with her two friends, Kristi & Isis (Kristi is in the photo with Tate).

Brice hung in there quite well. He took some great whacks at the pinata, and he especially liked the "infinity" pool edge, you know the kind that drops off over a cliff...

By some miracle we made it home without hitting a sugar-induced wall. Perhaps it was the glowing pink sunset over the Pacific that made the walk home so easy.

Quick dinner, and then a traumatic (and unsuccessful) splinter extraction session with Brice... stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow...