Here's a super long catch up post for the last week.

Leaving Costa Rica by bus. Monday August 16, 2010

We are on our way to Nicaragua. We got up this morning at our hostel, Vida Tropical, and had breakfast and repacked our bags (9 of them, plus the kids each have a backpack and Joe and I each have a bike messanger bag, or satchel, if you will). A taxi bus picked us up and took us to the bus stop in Alejuela (about 5 minutes from our hostel) our English speaking driver was very helpful waiting with us and making sure we got our bags loaded on the bus and telling us it would be $10 more dollars since we had so much luggage. That seemed pretty reasonable to me since we really do have a lot.

We each had reserved seats on the bus (seats 25-29) and when we got on there were 2 people sitting in 2 of our seats but they got up for us without much communication needed. The bus is currently showing the A-Team movie in Enlish with Spanish subtitles so they boys are pretty happy. The bus stops a few times so that we can get food. We are still not sure how long we will be on the bus as the full trip from San Jose to Managua is about 8 hours but we got on at Alejela about a half an hour after the bus left San Jose.

It is very stressful to be traveling and at the mercy of strangers as we try to communicate. I couldn't imagine being an immigrant not speaking the language and coming to the US with my family and trying to get by without help. Even this morning I tried to order my breakast en Espanol, "gallo pinto, heuveos y no jamon (ham) vegetariano". But then the cook kept asking me questions that I didn't understand that were apparently important for her to have answered before she could make my breakfast. I had to ask Norman, the hostel owner, to translate. It was "scrambled or fried?" I am going to have to learn the word for scrambled as that is the only way I will eat eggs. So much to think about and so many choices. While on the subject of heuvos, they are not refrigerated and they are fresh and they taste very different from US refrigerated eggs. I remember my mom telling me that when I was about 3 or 4 I would eat eggs from our chickens but then we got rid of most of our chickens because the racoons were using the chicken coop as a snack box, and my mom started buying store bought eggs to supplement the eggs we got from my 2 pet chickens (Emily Elizabeth and Amy, in case you are wondering what their names were). My mom would make me store bought eggs and I wouldn't eat them but if they were from my chickens I would. I could tell even if she was trying to trick me and after eating Costa Rican eggs for a couple days I can definitely tell why.

We have emailed the San Juan del Sur Spanish School about starting classes tomorrow but as of this morning (Monday) when we checked email at the hostel we had not heard back yet. We are not sure if we are going to start classes tomorrow and we don't know where we are staying tonight but we do have the name of a clean reasonable hotel in SJDS that we got from a friend of the hostel owner who has traveled extensively in Nicaragua although she is originally from Alabama.

The owners of Vida Tropical are Norman and Isabel. The are both Columbian but Norman and his family moved to New York when he was in 6th grade. He sounds very New York, which was funny to hear when we ate at his restauant (our first Costa Rican meal). Isabel and Norman were so helpful in getting our tickets and having our room ready at 6 AM and connecting us with their friend who could answer questions about travel to Nicaragua. We also met Jenny from Yakima who was staying at the hostel with her 2 kids. They have been attending a local private school for the past month and learning Spanish. Both Jenny, who is Bolivian (but US born) and her husband who is a gringo who grew up in Othello, WA speak fluent Spanish and are considering a move to Costa Rica. So Jenny decided to spend 2 months down here with her kids in school so that they could learn Spanish. I couldn't imagine selling that one to the kids. "OK kids, now it's summer, let's move to another country without Daddy so that you can spend your summer break in school and learning Spanish, and we'll come home just in time so that you can start school in Yakima with your friends!" My kids wouldn't go for it. This was a hard enough sell. I did offer our kids the opportunity to go to school down here, which I think would be a great experience for them but they decided moving, leaving their friends, learning Spanish and moving to another country was enough of a stretch for them so I didn't push it.

I am going to try to upload some pictures to this post (if they aren't currently here, check back). Some of the things we noticed in Alejuela, Costa Rica were the sidewalks are all in disrepair. Imagine the worst section of side walk in your city and it is like that everywhere if not worse. I took a picture and I am hoping to post it. You have to be very vigilant when walking because there could be a big hole in the middle of the sidewalk 6" in diameter. The drivers are crazy and cars have the right away. I would never want to drive there, walking is scary enough. I will not run there as I would probably break my neck. I am really hoping to find a route in Nicaragua (where ever we land) where I can run.

The bus ride out of Costa Rica is pleasant so far but the bus bathroom is pretty bad, no toilet paper, no soap and the toilet seat is spring loaded to stay up (visualize that for a moment) but there is hot water but no paper towels. I am going to limit my water intake today and hope the kids do too. The view from the bus is amazing. There is so much green. Before we left Washington we had several trips east to Spokane, Couer d'Alene and Missoula and I paid attention to the greenery on the side of 1-90 which is beautiful in Northwest sort of way. We see those trees all the time and I think it's going to be weird to come back to the Northwest after seeing tropical greenery for so long.

I am optimistic about our trip but a little afraid of the effort it may require to learn Spanish. I haven't been a student for so long, can I really do this? Do I have a choice? Not really.

Tuesday August 17, 2010

We are in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua which is a small beach town. We got off the Transnica bus in Rivas and took 2 taxis from Rivas to the beach. That was very stressful to be alone in the taxi with Bridget and Gus while Joe and Joey were in another car. The taxi driver of the car I was riding in spoke a little English along with my little Espanol and we were able to communicate on a basic level. Joe's taxi driver tried to charge him $5 more than agreed because he has air conditioning but Joe said no and he left it off. It was raining when we arrived and not welcoming. We found a hotel which had air conditioning for $94 a night but it was about half the size of a US hotel room with 2 double beds and 1 twin and the "air conditioning" did not work. A fan would have been much more useful. There was no ventilation. Bridget had a Coke with dinner and couldn't sleep so I stayed up with her sitting outside the room until mosqitos got us. I had to sleep with Gus because he and Joey were not cohabitating well and Gus woke up too hot to sleep at about 2 AM and was up for about an hour.

I am blogging this difficult first days honestly with the hope that we will have something to look back on with how far we have come. The kids did not enjoy last night. We went to the Spanish school today to find out about the homestay as it is $300 for the week including 3 meals a day for all of us. Between last night's dinner and hotel it was about $150 so the homestay was very important to stretching our budget. We are thinking that we will try to rent a house in SJDS for 1 month after our homestay if we can find something suitable. The kids are already much happier about the homestay accommodations than the hotel. The accommodations are still a bit rustic (no AC or hot water) but we have space and people to practice our limited Spanish with. There are 3 kids here a girl, Kaylee, who is 10 (yeah for Bridget) and boy, William who is 5 and a little baby (no se nombre).

So we are getting ready for lunch and then we will go to the Spanish school for 3 hours of classes this afternoon. The school is right on the beach so it is pretty although the water is of questionable cleanliness so I don't know if we will allow the kids to swim.

Friday August 20, 2010

This has been a busy week and we haven't had much time to blog or get online. We went to the Spanish school on Tuesday AM and spoke with the director. They got a driver to take us (all 5) to look at 2 possible homestays. We chose the house that had all the rooms we needed available right away. The family we are staying with is very nice. There is the mom/grandma, Susanna and her daughter, Chilo who lives here with her husband, William and 3 children. Keyline is 10, William(cito) is 5 and Andru is 2 months. Susanna makes us desayuno (breakfast), almuerzo (lunch) and cena (dinner) every day. We have had Gallo Pinto (Nicaragua's red beans and rice, also popular in Costa Rica) most days although sometimes just rice and just red beans and we have to combine them ourselves. There has been chicken for the kids and she has made me a vegetarian option for every meal. The first few days I was so nervous from the stress of traveling (that bus ride from Costa Rica to Nicaragua was very stressful) that I found it hard to eat very much. That combined with the heat or humidity and I wasn't eating very much. Now I am eating better and feeling better but still eating less than at home, which is a good thing. I have not attempted to run yet. I would like to run at about 6:00 AM but the house that we are staying in has a gate that locks us in at night and I don't want to ask them to wake up early so I hope to try running next week. I am having a difficult time getting to sleep at night with the sounds from the street (the house is on a major road) and in Nicaragua (and Costa Rica) it is customary to honk when you are at an intersection, driving past a car going the opposite direction, when passing a bike, when pulling over...pretty much a lot of honking. And the cars here are very noisey. So sleep doesn't come quickly. I am hoping the house we rent in San Juan del Sur is much quieter. So no running yet for me but we are walking quite a bit. Each trip into town is about a mile (more if we don't make it a straight shot) and we go into town at least twice a day, sometimes three times. Today we went into town twice but we walked as far as we could on the beach and then ventured back through the streets seeing other parts of SJDS that we hadn't seen before. We all got to see our first nude surfer today too. We think he is a local who is "loco" (after discussing the incident, en Espanol, with my teacher) and we learned that there are no nudist beaches in all of Nicaragua so if the police found him, they'd bust him. Good to know.

Today was a very rainy afternoon. We go to school from 2-5 Pm each day and then walk back to the house for dinner at 6:00. Today we got stuck in a major downpour. It really knows how to rain in Nicaragua. Joey pointed out that it sounded like home, the sound of the cars driving through the rain. We opted to stay in for the evening and play a rousing game of Skipbo until the mosquitoes decided it was a buffet and were chowing down on our legs and feet under the table. Joe had to call it a night early and we all had to take a break and put bug repellant on and "afterbite". It was pretty miserable. When we were walking to school today we saw a woman who looked American, with about 30 giant bites on both legs. She was walking on the opposite side of the street and that was what we saw. I told Joe to take me home if I looked like that!! I hope to get a handle on what works to keep the bites at bay. At first it was just Bridget and I but Joe got attacked pretty good tonight.

We hope to look at houses to rent tomorrow, Saturday. The director is trying to line up some to look at but she is in Managua on Sunday so if we want to look with her, we need to look tomorrow. There is also a Saturday Market that we are going to try to go to. They sell fruit and vegetables as well as craft items and natural remedies. The "natural remedies" are sold by some expats and I read about them on the Nicaragua expat forum so I hope to check them out as Gus has had a cough since we were back home that I would like to get licked. Joe, or Jose as he is called here, has a Spanish test tomorrow as it is his last day of school. The kids' teachers aren't available on Saturday so we will all have our last day of school (and testing) on Monday (I get the whole weekend to cram!).

I understand that there is an "evangelica" church in town and I think we will try to go to service on Sunday. My teacher, Margarita, and her family attend there. There is also a Catholic church nearby.

We are learning so much about Nicaragua and hope to fit in soon. We have seen several people who might be English speakers but we don't really reach out to each other. We did run into some 20-something guys at the ice cream shop who are from California but one guy has a house here. We went to El Gato Negro today. It is a coffee shop/used book store run by an expat couple in their 30's. They have lots of books (and signs that say this is not a library, please don't take the books to a table and read them) which are very expensive ($12 for most used books). We didn't particularly like the feel of the place so not sure if we will be back.

I am really looking forward having a house to spread out in and drawers for our clothes and shelves for our things as well as internet access all day long. I have enjoyed the food that we have eaten here so I hope to learn some Nicaraguan cooking. I thought it would be difficult to eat a vegetarian diet here but most restaurants seem to have several options. The family we are staying with does homestays for many students so they are very willing and understanding of vegetarian needs. I have made it clear that I am not a vegetarian but I prefer to eat vegetarian. There is a difference, especially when communicating in Spanish. We are at our homestay until Tuesday morning and will continue to have very limited internet access.

My esposo quiere dormir.... buenos noches!

Saturday August 21, 2010

Today was our first Saturday in town. We went to a local "Saturday Market" which was about 8 small tables set up in a local expat owned bar. Didn't see anything worth buying though. We stopped by a local bakery run by a young guy from Chicago and bought chocolate chip cookies for $.75 each. They are not big cookies but homemade cookies are not seen in the local stores or bakeries. About 2 blocks from our homestay there is a local "Supermercado" which is owned by Walmart. They sell apples (I bought a bag of 4 small apples for about $1.50) and other produce (about $.45 for an avocado). They also sell packaged cookies like the Shrek Oreos with green filling that I bought so the kids Spanish teachers could "motivate" them (we are talking about Gus in case you didn't get that). We have been getting ice cream or ice cream sandwiches about twice a day here but we are walking about 4-6 miles a day and the kids have been in Spanish school for 3 hours a day.

Joe had class today (his final day) and scored a 94% on his test, so even though he says he isn't doing very well on his Spanish but I would beg to differ. The kids and I will complete our last class on Monday afternoon. It was a bit challenging for me with the kids today. Joe decided to stay in town and study and have lunch while I took the kids back to the house for lunch. We were without him from about 12-5:30. I read about 4 chapters of the Percy Jackson book we are reading to the kids and the power went out so we had to swelter while I read since there was no fan. Then I took the kids to the Playa (beach) so they could play, but not before the afternoon ice cream stop. They played in the waves for a full hour and a half. I was a bit grouchy with them though because I told them at 20 min to 5:00 that we would leave in a few minutes and then they all went way out in the waves and couldn't hear my call them and I had to be angry mommy to get them to come in. We are definitely going to need to come up with a better system for leaving the beach as I thought I left angry mommy in Los Estados Unidos.

There was another downpour tonight and it really makes a lot of noise on the parts of the house with a tin roof (the kitchen and dining room). Gus was very proud of himself tonight as he came in to tell me "I know how to say downpour in Spanish! lluvien!" I asked how he figure it out and he asked Keyling "Como se dice rain?" and when that didn't get an answer he started miming rain and saying "agua". I am not sure if lluvien is downpour but I am super proud of my reluctant Spanish speaker taking some initiative and learning new words!

Joey had a chance to Skype with the Wesleys today and that was reallly fun to watch. 11-13 year old boys are funny and talk about funny things but it was good for Joey to have a chance to connect. I really think he is doing the best here. Surprisingly he is very eager to learn Spanish and has been working the hardest to ask questions and use the Spanish he knows. Si has become his new favorite word and I NEVER thought that would be the case with him. He is really adapting well. Oh and today I discovered that his forarm is longer than mine now. Bridget has had some challenges with missing her friends. She had a great time playing with her friend Faith at the hostel but she is having a harder time playing with Keyling because of the language barrier. I am hoping that they will continue to learn more Spanish after we leave because it is going to be so important. Everyone told us that they would learn faster than we do so I hope that is the case. Gus is still Gus and continues have similar challenges in Nicaragua as he does at home, mostly about being the youngest, most sensitive and hungriest member of our family.