Month: February 2020

The last week feels like a turning point.

A couple weeks ago I was feeling a little lonely and life was a bit on the empty side. Reading, audio books and podcasts everyday for hours starts to get a bit boring after awhile. I think I hit a bottom of sorts…nothing major, just a low point. Some chats with folks from home helped and I started to focus on scheduling things that would ‘fill me up,’ as they say.

So, Matt and I started semi-private Spanish classes at the Wayra Institute down the road. They focus on home stays and intensive classes (half or full day learning Spanish for a week). That felt a bit much for us, so we are taking 2 hour classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Our teacher, Sylvia, is really good…so patient, so positive. She has a bunch of cards with conversation starters on them. What is your favorite book? What is your favorite movie? Should students be required to wear uniforms? Should cars be limited to one per family? Then we discuss, using whatever Spanish we have and she helps fill in the gaps. Occasionally, a student from another class is brought in by their teacher and they have to ask us a question, which we answer as best we can. A ten-year old boy from England came in and asked us to name the fan and spell it. He was so shy (and adorable)…it felt good to urge him on. Then, we had to do the same, but I didn’t know the questions I was writing were for strangers, so it was a little weird when I asked them if they would call me later. We laughed about it and they said they would. Overall, it’s a pretty convivial atmosphere and I’m digging it.

My Spanish is slowly improving. The shower in our bathroom started leaking last week and it took a total of FOUR days for it to get fixed. Have I mentioned that things move slowly down here? I think I have. Also, the quality of the work would never pass at home, but Pura Vida y’all. The guys who fixed it did not speak English, so I had to use my Spanish. It was rough at times, but we got through it. It was painful being forced to stick to the condo while we waited, but at least I got a little education out of it.

I finally got a pedicure (and a massage) the other day and only spoke Spanish with the woman who took amazing care of me. We talked about her family, who she lived with and where she lived. I tipped her well and left feeling a tad more confident about just throwing the words out. I’ve got a long ways to go, but at least I feel like I am moving up the learning curve.

Last Thursday, we went to TIDE Academy’s “Meet and Greet.” There were probably ten families that showed at Volcano Brewing up on the hill behind the night market. We worked our way chatting through about five of them. You could tell that everyone was “on” and excited to meet other people. It was lovely to be greeted by such bright, open faces. We talked about where we were from, our children and we all laughed at how much we were sweating. A few phone numbers were exchanged before the boys finally convinced us to go back home. We left in a glow, so excited to meet new people.

The next day, I was reflecting on how much I enjoyed it and how good it was for me. I started wishing the Moms could get together for a breakfast or the like, then thought “Duh, I can actually make that happen.” So, last Monday, I dropped boys off a little early and hung out for awhile. I connected with a couple Moms, suggested breakfast Thursday, then collected a few more phone numbers with help from others and started a “Whats App” group called TIDE Moms. It felt so good to hang out with other Moms and get to know them better. We made plans for a bunch of TIDE families to go to dinner at the Surf Club next Wednesday. And, our “Whats App” group continues to grow.

Sunday night, we did our first “tour” with a tour operator. I’m so glad we did because I never would have found our way in the dark in a rental car down the maze of dirt roads they took us to get to a couple hidden beaches. We successfully saw green turtles hatching and a gigantic Leatherback digging a spot to lay her eggs. I had seen baby turtles run to the ocean before…it’s pretty cool how they clumsily flop towards the ocean. We wished them well and hoped they would beat the odds. Seeing the Leatherback was especially amazing. She was probably 5 feet long and three feet wide…by far the biggest turtle I have seen in the wild. She kept digging and rejecting different spots to lay her eggs. Despite the measures the tour guides were taking to make sure people were not disturbing her, I couldn’t help but think she was not happy with our presence. As we hiked out, I hoped she would be more comfortable and successfully lay her eggs in peace. Check my Instagram @gusamom for the video.

It’s feeling like we have a little structure to our lives now, with taking boys to and from school, Spanish classes, some kind of daily exercise and, of course, constant grocery shopping. Meeting new people has really helped and it feels good to have a couple things on our social calendar. And, we’ve got a trip next week to the cloud forest to look forward to. All in all, it’s starting to feel like we are approaching a good balance.

As you know, we humans are pack animals. We need other people. We need connection.

Between Gus and Sam, Sam especially needs to be with kids his own age. I often describe him as a Labrador puppy, when meeting new people. At home, he runs in a pack of 3 to 5 kids most days of the week. It’s his natural state of being and nothing makes him happier. When we’ve traveled previously, the first day at a new place (typically a beach resort) is uncomfortable for Sam. He will often say in despair, “There won’t be any kids here for me to play with. I don’t think I’m gonna like this place.” Then usually by day two, he will have found one or two kids that he quickly becomes attached at the hip with and the daily rhythm of the trip becomes, “Mom, I’m going to play soccer with *new friend*” or “I’m going to get smoothies with *new friend*” or “I’m going to play on the beach with *new friend*.” Then, afterwards he say, “That place was awesome. When can we go back?”

We are here for five months. We know that the pattern will repeat…that he will make friends…we just have to be patient.

Our antenna have been up as we do the daily check in after school and listen for the signs. Any new friends? Anyone live close to us? Anyone to hang out with after school or on the weekend…that being the Holy Grail of new friendship.

A couple weeks ago, Sam said, “I really like Liam. He’s nice. And he kind of lives by us.” My Spidey sense tingled, I took note, but tried to play it cool. “Oh yeah? That’s nice.” Last week, when I asked Sam who he was playing Fortnite with, he said, “Liam.” I said, “Liam from here?” And, he said, “Yep.”

Then, the other night, Sam and Liam were again playing Fortnite. I had told Sam it was time to get off, so we could go out to dinner. They were having such a good time and were having trouble finishing their game (this actually is pretty typical). So I said, “Hey, Sam. Do you want to ask Liam if he wants to join us for pizza?” I felt my body tense with hope as I waited for the answer. There was some back-and-forth, then suddenly the answer was yes and we had a plan to pick Liam up on our way into town. Our golf cart buzzed with excitement as we bounced down the road into town.

A few minutes later, Sam said, “There he is!” As soon as we pulled over, Liam jumped onto the back of the golf cart with Sam and Gus, and his parents walked over. We exchanged introductions (they are from Canada; he makes guitars and she is “retired” despite being our age) and mutual delight over the boys new friendship. I thanked them for sharing Liam with us for the evening. They thanked us for extending the invite. We parted with promises to get together soon.

Pizza and a good time followed. We discovered that Liam was great kid. He and Sam had an easy camaraderie and seem to be working on developing a nice friendship.

Fingers crossed.

There is something far more rewarding about making yummy things to eat in a place with limitations. Sometimes the limitations are that ingredients are hard to find or don’t exist. Sometimes they are far away and you don’t have the right transportation to get there. Sometimes you don’t have the local know how or connections to get what you want (read the fish post below). Other times you know where the ingredients are, but you are not willing to pay “gringo” prices to get them. So you work with what you have and the success is much sweeter as a result.

Smoothies

For those of you that know Sam well, you might know that it is still hard to get fruit down him. He will eat applesauce, fruit leathers and smoothies. Fruit leathers are not great for his teeth or for him, so we don’t buy those anymore. That leaves us with apple sauce and smoothies. Apple sauce works in a pinch, but prevents any variety. So, smoothies it is. I make big batches of these all the time at home and freeze the excess into these awesome silicon popsicle holders I bought online. That way when the boys come from home school and want a “treat,” they can have a smoothie popsicle with a whole variety of good things in it.

Our first week or so here, we tried out few different smoothie places. They ranged from okay to pretty good. I consider myself a bit of expert, since Gus is always telling me I should open up a smoothie food cart “Seriously, Mom. You would make SO MUCH money!” I doubt that, kid, but I will soak up all the appreciation you throw my way.

It was pretty obvious to me that the problems with the smoothies here were that they were generally not cold enough, they were too watery and not particularly sweet…probably because of the WATER or small amount of ice they add. Water? Seriously? After about the fourth time I ordered one, I thought to myself, “This is stupid. I just need to make my own.”

So, once we figured out the best places to buy produce, I started cleaning, cutting, bagging and freezing my own strawberries, pineapple and mango. If you’d like to give it a go at home, place into blender about 12-16 ounces of orange juice, add a fresh banana, some Greek yogurt and some frozen strawberries, pineapple and mango. Blend and you have a thick, super cold, sweet bonanza of fruit flavors. I am still the smoothie queen…even in Costa Rica!

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Banana Bread

I was reading a great book (The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister, brought by my awesome sister-in-law…this is a shout out to you, Jackie…to our Book Club’s annual white elephant-style Christmas book exchange and luckily picked by me) and paused at a section where the author was talking about the importance of not mixing quick breads too much. “Hmm.” I thought “I always make banana bread in my Cuisinart. I’m probably mixing it too much. Maybe I should try hand mixing a batch here?” And, so I did.

Thankfully, I have made banana bread SO MANY times off my recipe card at home titled “Gus’s Favorite Banana Bread” that I actually have it memorized. Ingredients were easy to come by, so I was off. One cube of unsalted butter becomes soft on the counter here after only a couple hours, add in a cup of sugar and mix. Mix two eggs by hand in a separate bowl (or in my case a coffee cup) and add them to the butter/sugar mixture. In a separate bowl, mix 1 3/4 flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon (or if Gus has his way several tablespoons) and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder. Add to wet mixture in two batches. Using the now empty flour bowl, mash two soft bananas and mix with a heaping tablespoon or so of yogurt and one teaspoon of vanilla (optional), then add to other mixture and stir. Put in floured pan and bake at 350 for an hour.

I was really surprised how great it came out. Delicious. And, it had a really nice airy texture, a little less dense than at home and a little less cleaning since all the mixing was by hand. I’m sold.

Ceviche and Poke

One of the real delights here is eating seafood multiple times a week. Back home, if I am honest, we maybe eat seafood once a month. I’m realizing how sad that is as I type that, but it’s the truth. We’ll need to work on that when we get back to Oregon.

My two favorite fish dishes to make here are ceviche and poke. They are both so easy. The mixture I came up with for ceviche is Mahi Mahi (the stuff I bought off the beach…see the fish post), red onion, cilantro (sorry, Blair), jalapeno, avocado, mango, a lot of fresh lime juice, a little fresh orange juice and salt to taste.

It is SOOO good…so fresh, light and cold. It’s the perfect thing to eat in the heat.

We all love poke, but Gus is particularly obsessed with the stuff. We bought some tuna from the pescaderia we finally found at Playa Potrero which is about 40 minutes away by car. We paid 8,000 colones per kilo (2.2 pounds) or about $14 per kilo/$6.50 per pound. We got one dinner and two school lunches for Gus out of this purchase. What a score and what a lucky kid to get poke in his lunch!

Poke is ridiculously easy to make. I just cubed some tuna, then tossed it a sauce of soy sauce, fresh grated ginger, sesame oil and sliced green onions. Then, I added cubed avocado and garnished with sesame seed and more green onions. So good!

About a week ago, I opened up my Google Calendar to find only a family birthday and the reoccurring Tamarindo Saturday Market on it. For someone that is used to having between say five and ten things scheduled each day across both a work and a personal calendar, I can’t tell you how weird this is. For those of you who have similar schedules, imagine if you looked at your calendar and everything was all pretty much gone? Imagine if nobody expected you to go to work tomorrow, or the next day? It’s weird. It makes no sense to my brain. Where did all the stuff go? Oh, right. We canceled all the stuff.

After a couple days of mild ennui and a touch of loneliness, I realized I needed to start to fill our lives back up. Nothingness is great on a vacation, but at some point in the last week I feel like we passed the vacation phase and are now just living here. So perhaps we need to start putting things back on the calendar, but this time we’ll do it with things we really want to do.

So we rented a car for the weekend for the first time and we got out of town. Friday, we went to the Black Stallion Ranch for some zip lining for the boys and a Sunset BBQ. The owner, who was apparently a professional South African surfer in his youth, was quirky and entertaining as he told his story and how the ranch came to be. He drove me and another couple up to the highest point on his 1,500 acres to watch yet another incredible sunset. When we came back down, Matt and the boys beamed as they told the stories of their zip lining adventure.

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On Saturday, we drove up the coast and checked out Playa Brasilito, Playa Flamingo and Playa Potrero. Each had a unique character, which I was a little surprised to see. I am certain the boys will want to go back to Playa Flamingo for some epic wave jumping. Yesterday, we drove down 10 km of either deeply potholed asphalt or dusty, bumpy gravel to get to Playa Avellanas. It stressed the group out to different levels and for different reasons, but I’m glad we persevered. Playa Avellanas was a large, wide open beach with one cool looking restaurant. I think it’s definitely worth returning…yet next time in an SUV and on a less windy day.

I’ve also been turning my sights to the future and the other places we want to go. So, if any of you were wondering why there wasn’t much blogging last week, it was because I was madly googling, researching for our next trips. We are set for a three night trip to Monteverde (the cloud forest) later this month. It’ll be refreshing to experience some cooler weather. I am also working on putting together an April trip to Panama and the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. And, we’ll need to go to Nicaragua some time before the end of March to get new traveler’s visas.

The ennui has subsided, now that we have gotten outside Tamarindo and have some exciting trips on the horizon. I am hoping the mild feeling of loneliness will too. I am missing all the wonderful friends and family we have in Portland…you know who you are. I miss you. I am finding that I’m ridiculously excited for the “sunset meet and greet” the boy’s school is hosting Thursday. I am feeling the need to be more connected, to have a community here, since I am so far from my community at home. I know that these things take time, it will happen…it’s just a little hard to wait.

Boys have been at TIDE Academy for three weeks now. Since you never know if first impressions will hold, I wanted to wait a bit before I wrote about our experience with TIDE. We heard a variety of things about the school from people we met the first couple weeks we were here. One guy said that the school will equate to a “vacation” for the boys. “Geez. I hope not,” I thought “but, then again, they both felt bored in school at home…so if they are bored here too, at least it won’t be worse than home.” Another Mom, whose kid goes to a private school in New England, said she thought the education was as good or better at TIDE. That’s a pretty big range in possible experiences, so we just had to wait see.

So far, I would say it is about exactly what we thought and hoped it would be. The school is very small. The Director told us they usually have about 45 kids in the Fall and about 65 or so in the Spring. Apparently, we are not the only ones drawn to this place in the dry season. Everyone seems happy to be there. It’s got a good chill but upbeat vibe. The facilities are a little rough around the edges, but there is an authenticity that I appreciate. The boys report that most of the kids are from the States, a couple are from Israel and some are local. There are even a couple from Oregon. Go figure.

Teachers seem to be uniformly young and energetic. They are here because they WANT to be in Costa Rica teaching and with that comes an enthusiasm that we are really appreciating. When you ask they boys what they think about TIDE, they both say they really like it.

Sam, while feeling overwhelmed for the first hour, acclimated well, as he does with all things. He realized that he was smart here too and beamed when he told me they figured out that his spelling skills were about four grades ahead. He just brought home a student of the month award for January, so I think he has found his place and is feeling good. And, he’s met some kids he seems to like. One boy lives just down the road from us and a couple times their SUV has either been in front of us or right behind us as we made the school commute. The boys do this repetitive crazy wave, confirming with its frequency that ‘yes’ they see each other.

Gus was the one we were equally worried and excited about. Back at home, he was extremely dissatisfied with public school education (particularly with its insistence to teach him things he felt he already knew through methods he found boring), and so he had pretty much checked out of 8th grade. We had the most to gain with his experience and were nervous and hopeful as a result. Gus also seemed excited about the possibility that he could enjoy a school. And, in fact, he does. TIDE has given him some independence, which he loves. He works mostly on his own in math because the math he was doing at home is considered high school level math here, but he also has some one-on-one time with the high school math teacher that he says is the best he’s had. They have adjusted his schedule a couple times, each time with the intent to give him the best experience possible. The first three weeks, they probably initiated four different conversations about how to structure his school schedule to best meet his wants and needs. I can tell you that NEVER would have happened at home. He has also met some kids he seems to like. There is one girl, Izzie, who lives about a block away. She is originally from Bend, Oregon but has been here for years now. They are frequently “DM-ing” on Insta (that’s what they call it), so I think he is feeling connected too.

Given that we structured this whole trip around this school and its location, thus rolling some gigantic dice, we are feeling incredibly relieved and excited that it seems to be working out.

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