Impressions (Feeling Tall)

I remember, when abroad in Korea, writing about how ironic it was that the subway train played recordings of seagulls squawking when its doors opened for Haeundae Beach in Busan, even though I had never once seen a seagull there.  I wrote that, and then Kory and Jason visited us about a month or so later.  And, of course, what do you know: they went to Haeundae while we were teaching one day, came back and reported more seagulls than grains of sand.

Impressions.  I do not imagine, this time around, that I am sending you any part of Costa Rica. Rather, these are just our limited perspectives on such and such a day, doing such and such an activity.  For Costa Rica, the same as Korea, the same as all the rest of life, is a moving thing--a river you cannot step into twice, as they say.  Even in regards to what we might consider typical, these notes are more like imagination than examples of true understanding.  They are real interactions, to be sure, but real only in the sense that you cannot pin them down sufficiently--ever (ooo, sound like Shakespeare there: "...the great Globe itself...").

I thought I should thus qualify the following series of blog posts, as I will now try to share with you a number of notes I have collected since first arriving here--collected while our internet was still uninstalled.  If anything should strike you as funny, I assure you, it is not the culture of Costa Rica that makes it so, but my wandering around in a wondrous culture with the best intentions, a nearly complete ignorance, my greatest friend in the world, and three little crazies who are all increasingly difficult to keep a lid on...

Anyway, let's start here:  "Feeling Tall (or Why Our New Home Was Still Available for Rent)"

As you may know, our good friends Mike and Andrea hooked us up with this place.  The rent is $300 cheaper per month than the place they lived in, and it is two or three rooms bigger and fully furnished, and, like I have been saying, it is situated with a terrific vista on a farm owned by a multimillionaire.  Mike even said of it, "Man, I wish we had lived here."

So what's the catch, you ask.

Honestly, we still don't know.  The ceiling leaks in a few spots; the electricity goes out regularly; we could not use our internet phone to call back home for the first month and a half; the place has its fair share of creepy crawlies, termites, ants, spiders and these big black beetles that bang up against the glass in the night--we find them dead or dying on the porch in the morning.  We had to deal with field mice initially, and I am sure we will have to do that again.  Seem to be dealing with frogs right now: one on the kitchen table, another in the shower--both yesterday.  But, really, these are, we assume, just parts of living on a farm, just as are the big toads, and lizards, the bright-breasted birds, the horses and cattle, the blooming flowers, fruit laden trees, and expansive pastures, from whence spring never seems to leave.

Snake sloughs, but no snakes (yet), and guard dogs that keep you pinned inside from 8:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M., probably to keep the crying coyotes away, more than any desperate and dangerous person  (I'll talk about some of the hazards of life out here in subsequent posts).  Granted, Grandma Martha and Aunt Katy and now our great friend who "helps us out" once a week, had and have a lot to do with how clean and comfy it feels, but, really, it all just seems to be just one more instance of our continuing great fortune.  We love it.

Oh, well there is this one fact about it too: if you were even only so much as an inch taller than I (I am 5' 8"), you could not enjoyably work in the kitchen, or pass easily through the front hall.

You might also not like the shower.

Well, you might not like the shower for another reason.  Instead of a water heater, the shower is fitted with this little electric heater on the shower spout--I know, electric heaters in showers don't sound especially safe to me either, but it's like they say: When in Rome, electrocute yourself...

To get a relatively warm shower, you have to direct more than half the running water out of the lower faucet, so the electric heater can sufficiently heat the rest of the water coming out of the shower spout.  It took us a number of cold-to-lukewarm showers to figure out the best possible balance, and it is really tricky for our ninos--the water from the faucet splashes high off the shower floor and it is all cold.  To get hot water above, the water almost drips more than sprays from the shower head, so the little guys have to stand close to the lower faucet and the splashing cold to take their showers.

In any case, I assume this little fact--this small factor, accounts for its availability to us.

Now, Suzy and I, as some of you may know, are coming from a house in Colorado that was previously owned by giants--basketball enthusiasts with oodles of space and high, wonderful shower heads.  So, in short, we feel tall in our Costa Rican home, if a little less clean; and, my guess is, our kids are going to have amped up egos when we return to Colorado--they'll probably go out for the basketball team with the insistence that they play post--and they'll probably have an intractable distrust of showers, our little Napoleons.

But what fun they are having here...  (This last shot is our front yard, and these are neighbors and friends playing soccer with us--see Scout and Charlie on the ball there...)