La vida se acelera

Life has really picked up the pace here in Costa Rica this month. As soon as the volunteers left, we started our first week of teaching. Two days a week Leslie is teaching first through third graders reading, writing, grammar, and phonics. Miah is subsitute teaching for a month, filling in for the math teacher. It is hard work, but very rewarding. The students are kids from all over the world whose parents do not want them to attend Costa Rica public schools but cannot afford the big private school in this area. Therefore, most of the kids speak two if not three or more languages which makes us so jealous! It is especially difficult teaching the first graders though because a few of them are still struggling to grasp the English language, much less handle classes reading, spelling, writing, etc.

We also had another set of visitors, the newlyweds, Ryan and Shannon who were in Costa Rica for their honeymoon (congrats, you two!). They spent the first half visiting the Arenal volcano and then came to Guanacaste for some beaches and sunshine. Luckily, the rainy season is very late in starting this year so the weather has remained beautiful. As usual, the highlight of their stay was the sailing/snorkeling trip which we caught the very last day before the boat is dry-docked for the next few months. The water was the clearest we had ever seen it (the guides said the same thing). We found a giant manta ray and plenty of fish. We spent most of our time trying to catch a puffer fish, but to no avail. Our guide was able to catch a large lobster though and afterwards we took it to our favorite restaurant in Tamarindo for them to cook for us. Delicious!

We also went to a going away/birthday party for our Costan Rican sister before she left for the Foundation's scholarship program at LaGrange college in Georgia. It was our first proper Costa Rican party and they certainly do things right. They had a chef in from San Jose who cooked amazing appetizers and dinner. We also played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, and other such games that had been off our radar for too long. They had made a homemade piñata as well as balloons full of flour for the end of the night farewell. Our moment of glory came when we were able to win the married couples "guess your partner's answers" in Spanish. We were handsomely rewarded for our efforts with a blue duck butter dish.

The rest of the month looks like it will stay just as hectic. Three more sets of friends are coming to visit, but only two will be staying with us. A last hoorah before Chez Wander is empty for awhile. We are counting down the days until football begins!!

Go Pack!
Team Wander

Que semana más loca!

What a week! We just wrapped up a week-long adventure with a volunteer group of 15 some-odd folks who came down from various parts of the southeastern US. Descriptions can't really do this week justice. We were dirty, soaked in sweat, hot as Hades and happy as we could imagine with how the week went. The volunteers (thank you all so much!) worked like troopers all week, mixing concrete, laying block, painting roof members and making friends. It was a beautiful sight to see the 10 local members of the construction crew working hand in hand with the 15 volunteers and everyone seemed to be having a great time of it. We went back to the worksite yesterday it just wasn't the same without the gringos.

Seeing the houses become a reality is an amazing experience for us. They're really coming up now (see the pictures) but two of the houses have roof members welded on, four more are in some state of block being laid and that leaves two more foundations to dig and pour.

Having the opportunity to work out there last week really took the two of us back to the days of Habitat work trips at NC State and it was a great feeling. The sense of exhausted completeness at the end of the day is a really wonderful sensation. And getting to learn all the new skills (in spanish, yikes!) is a lot of fun too!

At any rate, words can only say so much, so here's a few pictures to put you guys on the worksite with us!
The crew and one of the houses








Siesta, and well deserved at that








Viktor (his spanish name), our resident masonry expert









Aaaaand... Leslie O being a rock star.

Middle School Fun

Last night turned out to be too amusing not to share with everyone. It
began quite ordinarily when we were invited to dinner with our Costa
Rican family (Quick side note, dinner was a cross between lasagna
and chicken pot pie, which, as fate would have it, is an amazing combination).
After dinner, our sister suggested that we go to the town center because
there was a roller skating rink in town for the month. What?!? Not
wanting to pass up a trip down memory lane (think prime middle school
story material) we quickly agreed.

Turns out we were exactly right; the two of us were older than
everyone there by at least five years and the only two non-Ticos.
Apparently roller skating is not like riding a bike, you cannot just
pick it back up a decade later. Well, at least I couldn't, Miah still
had a few tricks up his sleeve from his rollerblading days. One lap
around and he was convinced that I was capable of skating on my own.
Clearly not the case and one of Stephanie's friends quickly came to my
rescue to keep me on my feet and not cause a disastrous pile-up
on the floor (quite a few of which we saw). Slowly it all started
coming back to me though, and all of us had a blast.

We came home and went to bed and about 2 hours later I was awakened by
a huge crashing noise. I wasn't sure if it was just part of a dream or
something outside, but a few minutes later I heard another smaller crash followed by metal scraping metal. I attempted to rouse Miah but he wasn't waking up for anything, so I bravely peeked out the window to see who was trying to break into our house. Turns out, it was a bull on our back patio who had pushed over the grill and was ramming it with his horns. I ran into the
living room and turned on the patio light, trying to scare him away, and he just stared at me, not a foot away. Then, he just went back to eating the charcoal (don't ask me why). Finally, after banging on the door for awhile, he sauntered away. Needless to say, our grill has a few dents in it this morning and is missing one of the legs...