Funkler

Playing with my new phone

2011-03-26T14:24:00.001-07:00

Two lovely photos taken with my new phone. The first is a waterfall near my house that gets very active in the spring. The second is a tulip at the Smith College bulb show that reminds me of my friend Laura's hair.

Singing, Oh My God, Singing.

2010-02-01T04:46:00.000-08:00

This weekend Kathy Bullock came to Ashfield to facilitate a weekend of gospel goodness and I had the fortune of being allowed to go purely on the merits of my bread baking and dish washing and shoulder massaging skills (well, and maybe some singing skills too). I am reminded of every other intentional short term community that I have ever been part of, as the experience was moving in many, many ways.

If music is how I experience that which is god, this weekend was so god-filled that I was left overflowing with that sense of peace that only comes out of having gone through hard times and allowed them to well up and be healed. That is perhaps the best part for me about singing gospel and spirituals. They take those hard times, tell them truthfully, and allow for that bit of hope to sneak in. Even those songs which are written in times of despair, like Thomas Dorsey's "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" when he lost his first wife and child during childbirth, allow me to let those feelings of grief and frustration out, openly in the company of others, breaking off for moments unable to sing, grab a tissue and start again when the moment passes. Those who perhaps are less familiar with this singing through grief sometimes have told me (ie. at funerals) to keep singing, but really, for me the moment of letting the feeling and the tears and the lack of voice through is just as important as the moment of continuing with the song. The others hold me and it up while I am unable to continue and I, in turn, raise my voice in adoration and praise when they are stumbling.

That said, I opened talking about intentional short term communities. I miss camp and my classroom. I miss those places where we are consciously working towards something more and something better and something sillier simultaneously. This community where I live approaches that feeling, and I understand that we can't all be woven so thoroughly into each others' lives when we are simultaneously working and schooling and having children and and and. So I make do with the littler moments with fewer people. I miss singing and checking in, though, and wish that I could find that space here. Maybe once Greenfield Harmony starts back up again I will not miss it as much. As for now, I have to go and put pickles in jars with an excellent crew of people. Though we do not sing together, they give me hope.

January Thaw

2010-01-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

So everyone is freaking out about how it's 50 degrees and pouring rain with a chance of thunderstorms later, but I know this is normal. It happens every year and is crucial to my mental health. Let's say cold is not my favorite weather. It reminds me that there will eventually be an end to the freezing. And I love the little rivers in the street sand, the bigger rivers made on dirt roads, even though those roads are a pain to drive on later. Sorry I still don't have a camera.

My job at the library is still really fun. Yesterday was Casino Night, last week was the donut on a string game, and next week is a drumming workshop. Then I go on vacation. Hooray! Anyone have any brilliant ideas for the anti-valentine's day/love sucks party coming up? Mean candy hearts, making chocolate, making ideal partners out of gigantic gingerbread men. I need a good PG-13 movie and some music suggestions, as well as other funny ideas.

infrequent at best...

2009-12-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, the good news is, I get to play with firefighters and cars. They cut them open, we pull people out of them with simulated injuries. The unfortunate part: it's going to stop being summer by tomorrow and we will be standing around or strapped to back boards in colder weather.

My question, though undoubtedly no one much reads this, is what's the best way to go about creating and sharing music files? I am going to need to be doing some musical collaboration in the upcoming months and am trying to figure out what options I have, aside from garage band, which I already know about.

Emmy sent this video about quakerism. I kinda think it's pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XlMkK4_kTg

And, to finish, please think happy job thoughts for jordan. Another rejection, check. Boo on them.

Jor has a Job

2009-11-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I have finally found a little bit of library work and I love it so far. A teeny tiny library in Wendell, MA just got a grant to hire a teen services coordinator and buy lots of things to make the library a cooler place for the 10-19 year old crowd. I get to be that person 7 hours a week, though to get it off the ground it's definitely taking up more brain space than 7 hours. I don't mind since I am not otherwise occupied, except with the occasional writing of a cover letter and interview. I am so tired of this process. Anyway, my first meeting with the teens was hillarious and a little bit crazy - give 13 teenagers a few rolls of duct tape and suggest making wallets, etc. but instead they imprison each other in their chairs, tape legs and arms together, tape boys together. Still, they were able to reign it in when it came time for business and we got a lot done. And David Detmold wrote a really nice article about the meeting from observing it and it was on the front page of this week's paper. I definitely need to get a copy. Can't post it here because they don't do an online version. Maybe I'll scan it in. So basically this job means that I am willing to compromise a little more for my other job that I don't have yet because at least I will enjoy myself and be advancing my career some of the time this way.

Annie bought a new bread cookbook today and I'm super excited to try some of the recipes. Mmmm. I LOVE that my house is a giant bread oven on Fridays. It smells so good and people are so thankful for fresh bread. It's a serious part of my happiness. Please don't ever make me cut out gluten!!!!!!!!

Busy is as busy does

2009-10-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

I have a million things going on right now. I'm working at Real Pickles M-W which is AWESOME! Then on Monday and Wednesday nights I have EMT class from 6-10 which could be more awesome if the TAs were more on top of their game. I suppose it's a bit much to expect that TAs will have any teaching experience whatsoever and will be older than 20. Some of them are (for the most part, the good ones) but there's one in particular who just drives me crazy with his ineptitude. I stay over in G'fld on Monday nights so I don't have to ride the almost 10 miles early after being up late. That's terrific because I get to see my friend Zoe who is a lovely individual. She's so lovely that she's hired me to do some computery helping on her dissertation and is paying me in actual dollars. And then Fridays I make bread for between 8-12 families who live nearby. I wish we had a working camera (it broke and we gave it away in CR) so I could take pictures of the breads. I am feeling like, for the most part, I'm getting my homework and studying done and having a good time at all of my sundry jobs.

Yesterday I got to pretend to be a caterer for the Real Pickles open house. The place was hopping with every crunchy foodie in the Valley in attendance near as I could figure. I spent all evening walking as briskly as the crowded warehouse would accommodate. It was so fun to weave in and out of the people and answer their questions before they asked them (or after). There was even one person who I didn't know before but who I kept having great interactions with. Plus, there was Red Hen Bakery bread to nosh on. That stuff is like crack. I almost want to move up there just so I can learn how to make bread with them. Damn. They've even found a local way to get organic white flour (even milled locally) recently.

I'm wondering about this apparently manic part of my personality. Just go and go and go and feel pretty good about it all of the time. I haven't crashed yet, but this week wasn't easy on my body. There is a plot to deliver bread and get a hottub out of it.

When I was little and I wanted to take a bath I used to say that I was going to take a tub. I wonder if anyone else says that. Honestly, I still say it. My brief google search says that yes, other people use the phrase. I wonder why my mom always made fun of me when I said it... Not in a mean way, just a goofy making fun of the little girl who says the funny things sort of way.

That's really all I have to say right now. jor's been having interviews and is hopeful about an option that's hopefully coming her way on Saturday, but I'm not supposed to jinx it.

Filling in the Summer

2009-10-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

Hey dudes who are still reading this. We intended to continue writing just because it's kinda fun and we'd like to know this kind of stuff about our friends who live far away, even if it is in the same country.

Quick rundown of the summer:

Arrived home after significant travel stress
Friends and neighbors were awesome at helping us get settled again
Continued looking for jobs
Went on an eight stop, six state/province road trip in the new car to see ten sets of family and friends. Toast swam in three great lakes and is no longer afraid of waves.
Got our cat Truck back from the shelter where he was living for the last 8 months (long story...we didn't put him there but we got him back and he's happier than ever)
Annie started her EMT basic program class and work at a pickle packing plant. Jordan is still looking for work.

It's really good to be home, even though we miss our friends and lifestyle in Costa Rica so much. And even thought it's hard to find work now, I'm so glad we went.

And since so many of our friends in Montague had babies while we were gone or right before, I now have a bunch of people wanting my flexible babysitting schedule. And I can bike there and bring my dog. So nice. Today was a dreamy kid named Uli. I hope I get to see her more. 18 months old and very communicative and easily distracted from sadness. Today we worked on not being afraid of the dog with much success! We also played peek-a-boo with her inside the tunnel on the playground and me peeking through the holes in the side. Did I mention how dreamy she is? She already uses English and Estonian at home and moms are psyched for me to do Spanish too. Today she said milk in three languages. This will be fun.

And this weekend, Costa Rica is coming to visit! Two of our friends who are still working at the school in Monteverde are going to be in NYC visiting another friend from the school who is back in the states and we will all reunite and eat lots of yummy city food that we cannot get in our respective rural homes. I got a million advance reader copies of juvenile and teen books from a local bookstore to send to Monteverde and I tried to read them all beforehand so I could make video booktalks for the students, but five boxes of books is a little much to ask in 45 days. I did make a significant dent and prioritized books they'll love or ones that need a little selling. I even read depressing books for these kids because I know how much impact my booktalks (and acquiring good books) had on them and it makes me feel good to spread the love of reading. So I work on the videos this week.

BREAD!

2009-10-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick update:
I'm working at Real Pickles (realpickles.com) and quite enjoying myself. The only, and I mean only, downside is that I don't work on Thursdays or Fridays which is meaning not enough income to make the ends meet. Taking the lemons, making the lemonade, I've started baking bread to sell and barter with my friends and neighbors. This Friday was my first day and I made about 9 loaves of bread all told: challah, white/wheat mixed up and cinnamon raisin bread. They were all supertasty and my customers all seemed quite pleased. This is beyond useful as they are also my friends. We shall see where this ends up going (applying for a permit with the health board might be a good first step), but for now, it was an enjoyable day and I'm going to try doing it twice a week: Friday and Sunday. Should be good, even if it ends up being short lived (or long lived).

Nicaragua Trip

2009-06-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

My favorite thing about Nicaragua: random parades at every turn with mini monks and nuns.
My least favorite: the guy with the fireworks who thought that every day was a holiday (even right outside the church during the service, and they didn't make him stop completely, just sometimes when the priest was saying something important).

Our trip to Nicaragua with Nicole was perhaps the best traveling we’ve had yet. To begin with, Nicole is a lovely travel companion, who balances out my inability to ask questions even in my native language in exchange for unlimited back, shoulder and foot rubs. She also likes hanging out immersed in water just as much as I do and it’s nice to have a friend in the pool to practice your flip turns with. As I’ve undoubtedly mentioned before, her Spanish is also excellent which helps jor out too. Mine is getting a lot better, but Nicole and jor haven’t stopped making fun of me for all of my ums yet. (Though on the way onto this plane I did explain where banjos come from without many of them.)

Granada is a lovely city for tourists, though like all cities it has more than its fair share of poverty, garbage and troubles on the street at night. I know that there are tours and connection possibilities with people who actually live in Granada on the poorer end of the spectrum, but this trip was purely for the pleasure of experiencing the many environmental wonders around the town, so we didn’t partake in any of them. At some point I would definitely like to get back to Granada for some intensive Spanish and getting to know the community better.

We stayed at Hotel Oasis because of the pool and possible A/C and comparatively cheap prices. Granada is way too hot for a bunch of gringas from up the mountain in Costa Rica so it was more than worth it to have the option of cooling off at night. When we showed up the pool was being fixed, but fortunately for us, it was only a day and a half before it was filled and functional again. I freely admit to my spoiled United States-ian nature when it comes to being really hot in a city where there is no clean river to go dip my toes into. Plus, I’d been looking forward to the pool for weeks, ever since we changed our trip from the Osa Peninsula to Nicaragua. Getting to Granada was easy because we used TransNica and just took the bus straight from La Irma up to Granada. The border was ridiculously simple since we didn’t have to do any of it ourselves.
Once we got to Granada there was a lot of lying around and playing on our computers. Again, though we were in a lovely foreign city it was just so nice to have a connection faster than 9 Kbps that isn’t connecting through a telephone line. We got a lot of our businessy things done. I even planned a summer project for a student and went through a bunch of negotiations about due dates. I am not going to be sad to be done with that part of the job, but I think I did a pretty good job considering the rushed nature of the thing. If the student had 4 more percentage points for the second semester the grade would have passed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering how many struggles this particular student has had with projects and working up to par, there is still more work to be done to pass my class. Oh well. We’ll work together and get it figured out.

Our first full day in Granada was spent at Laguna de Apoyo. It’s a crater lake near Masaya – about 20 minutes north of the city. The whole area is relatively undeveloped. You could look across the lake and see all of the logging that hasn’t happened recently (if ever?) and hardly see any lodges or roads or buildings of any kind. The place where we went allows day use and there was a swimming raft, kayaks we didn’t use, inner tubes we did use and hammocks galore. Nicole and I spent a lot of time floating around on inner tubes and then later I spent the majority of my time flinging myself off of the raft. When Jordan first met me in 2000 I had a hard time with diving. I can’t really explain why, but it was the swimming skill that has always been the roughest for me. Maybe it’s because of the on-off transition that causes me so much trouble with roofs. Anyway, she and Katy Weseman coached me through a bunch of summers at camp and I’ve got a decent dive now. I started the day at the lake with a bunch of diving and got tired due to the whole end of school year + traveling + moving out of our home concept. So then throughout the day jor and Nicole were coaching me through learning how to do forward flips off of the raft. It’s about the same height as rafts at camp – 3 inches above the surface maybe – and it’s pretty hard to get your body flipped around fast enough. I never really got it, but I did get a bunch better. Then I was working on diving with jumping up, curling a bit and then kicking out to be going straight up and down. The best time I did it involved me jumping up (not very far because I can’t jump good like Samuari Jack) and then kicking up and then curling. I know I’m not a kinesthetic learner, but honestly sometimes the connection between my brain and my body seems non-existent. Thanks to our time on the water I have now perfected my reggaeton backbeats and can sing along with any and every reggaeton song ever written, much to jordan’s chagrin.

Highlights of the Granada food scene: Garden Café is still lovely and wonderful. They no longer offer their pirate map scavenger hunt, though so you’ll have to create your own like we did (minus the map). If you ever end up there, try the lime, coconut, pineapple smoothie. And then have another one for me since they’re closed on Sunday and we had to leave at 5:30 on Monday morning. The ambiance is gardeny and the food is tasty while not being pretentious. The people who run the place are nice and were around when we were there with my mom too, so I think they’re the hands on kind of restaurateurs. There’s a Mexican place on the main tourist/bar street called Taqueria Vallarta. Oh tasty goodness. Though I also really like the tortilla soup in Alajuela at Jalapeños, it was nothing to scoff at. Jor said I should talk about the Taqueria, but at this moment I’m feeling rather at a loss. It was tasty, we had leftovers for lunch. Yum. The last place we went in Granada was a new restaurant called Voodoo. They had some troubles with the kitchen being out of things, and they may have dropped our shrimp on the floor, but damn it was tasty. There are definitely still some kinks to work out, and someone’s chair broke under him while we were there too, but overall, they did an excellent job with the mixups and I’m not complaining about the free drinks and carrot cake that tasted just like my mom’s.

Many of our adventures in Granada included Nicole’s friend Casey. They met in the DR last summer on a teaching program. He’s a teacher from California who is witty, interesting and likes to hike up volcanoes so he was a really good traveling companion for us. We went out to Volcán Mombacho (which towers over the city) on our third day in Granada. We missed the earlier Rivas bus so we had time to have breakfast (and another quick chat with the Fransiscan monk from California) and catch the next one. Since we didn’t know where the actual bus stop was (further down the block) we asked 10 people and went with the most popular answer to figure out when the next bus would be leaving. The options ranged from 8:30 – 11 so we had a pretty big window of time. When we went back we figured out where the bus was leaving from and asked the guys who had our bus’s hood open and were clearly working on it when they would be leaving. With such solid information, we felt fine going on a market adventure while we waited for the ½ hour + to pass. The market in Granada is definitely NOT just for tourists. I would love to have something like it where we live, though the unrefrigerated fish and meat definitely smell the place up a bit. This picture isn't from quite inside the main market area. Jor scored a handkerchief, though we wouldn’t know how much of a score it was until a little later in the day when we were hiking and hiking and hiking and sweating. We got off at the right spot, walked the 2 km to the park entry (where I'm pointing in the picture, the highest point closest to you is where the trails start at the top) and missed the 10 am shuttle up the mountain by five minutes. The lady at the little building said it was a hour and a half walk and about 5 km up to the trails on top. The road was paved with paving stones (not cobbles, but concrete patio block type stones). We went past some houses before the first entry point and there was one tree with fruits that are totally globular and almost the size of my head. There was a brief moment when we thought maybe a van was going to pass us and could give us a lift, but sadly that didn’t happen. Nicole and Casey quickly outhiked Jordan and myself and we were left trudging up the mountain. Jor hadn’t felt well in the morning, and starting the day with a strenuous hike up a relatively steep road isn’t ideal for her even when she is feeling well. About the time she was starting to feel reallyreally nauseated, a truck came by with some seismologists and they picked us up. I tried to be friendly and engage in the geospeak, but my Spanish is definitely not good enough regardless of all of the nice crossover words and it didn’t work well. We then kept going up the mountain and passed our lovely friends sitting at the half way point, (the guys wouldn’t stop for them) right before it got steeper than any road I’ve been on for the past 20 years. The only one I’ve been on that was steeper isn’t quite a road and involved a glacier (Athabasca) in Canada on a bus with tires bigger than any adult on it. They claimed it was the steepest road in North America, if I’m remembering my 10 year old brain well enough. Nicole and Casey got to walk up with a bunch of university students from Managua and got there after jordan and I had a good long time to rest up. They were completely soaked from the sweating 2 hours after we set out. I have rarely seen shirts that wet that weren’t also involved in some sort of falling water or getting dunked in a lake while canoeing. After they had some downtime, we confirmed for the third time when the bus would be going down the mountain before we set out with our guide. For the most part, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but this “tunnel” was made by lava making its way out of here rapidamente. The vents didn’t smell too much like sulfur, and I’m sad we don’t have a picture of us sticking our hands into a smaller vent that was near the trail. If we had been on our own I definitely wouldn’t have stuck my hand in it, but it was cool, so cool, to put my hand into the earth and have it be warmer and the air was moving out as well. That was cool. Have I mentioned how cool it was? We were thinking it might be nice and cozy for a nighttime animal shelter but our guide says no. The only animal evidence in it was a dead cricket. We saw some Howlers and a chameleon and our guide showed us a plant that pulls its leaves in when you touch it (or when it’s raining). We got some video on Nicole’s camera. Maybe I can figure out how to link to it once we get settled back in. The views were pretty great, even though there was a bit of haze happening over the city. It may be smog, but it also may have been that we were a bit higher than some of the clouds. We were able to see the isletas where we kayaked the next day and learned a bit about how they were formed (ash from one of the more ancient eruptions?). Our guide José was friendly, but I’m sure there is a part of the job that can get boring. Twice a day wandering around with tourists doesn’t exactly appeal to me, though. Climbing up to the communication towers they have on the highest point of the volcán was bit of a trip. On the side you climb up on, it’s all steep stairs made out of lava rocks. Then you get to the high point and there’s your standard wooden platform. Then you go down the backside and there are little buildings for electronics and about 10 towers, complete with guys working on them if it’s not a windy day. It can get pretty fierce up there. On our way down and out, there may have been a swarm of wasps to run through. Casey and José were stung, and there was one I couldn’t get out of jordan’s hair for the longest time, but all in all, a lovely adventure with minimal injury. Turns out it was good that we had asked so often when the bus was leaving because it ended up going a half hour before they said and we were on it. Despite the apparent reversal of jor’s transportation karma (see the blog post from coming back from Nicaragua the first time) it’s not all that awesome that she has to get to the point of actual physical breakdown before the positive karma kicks in. See the post about getting Toast home for further proof of this reversal.

The guide book said that you can’t really do Volcán Masaya and the town of Masaya in one day while using public transportation. Frankly, they’re full of it. There are busses up to Managua every 20 minutes and the transportation up the side of the volcano is on demand (though it costs a little more than a dollar a person). Plus, the park entrance is right on the highway so there’s no 2 km hike to get to it. We couldn’t find Casey once we knew what our plans were so it was just the three of us. Many tourists just go up to the active crater viewing area and then leave. They’re silly. We totally gawked at the steam and particulate coming out of the volcano for a while and then went on a hike around one of the dormant craters (it also goes by two other dormant craters). Though the area near the active crater was windy and reasonable temperature-wise, the hiking was oddly lacking in wind despite the lack of trees to block it. It got hot and sunny. As we were leaving the parking lot they gave us directions and asked us our residence so they could radio ahead that 3 United Statesian girls were on their way around the crater. It would have been fun to go on the cave/bat tour too, but we can’t always do everything and we had plans for the afternoon. There were a couple of spots on the hike that were pretty lacking in trail, and I fell down once, but without any scrapes or bruises. The tree in the foreground of this picture is the national flower of Nicaragua. Funny to a northern girl like me for the tree to be the national flower. I’m used to national trees and national flowers that grow on the ground, but national tree/flowers? I guess. They might have a national tree in addition to this one, and I didn’t catch the name anyway... While we were hiking I made a bird friend that I talked to for a couple of minutes. It might have been a flycatcher of some kind, but I didn’t have my book with me, nor did I check right after we returned from our adventure so by now my visual memory is too far gone.

On the way back from shopping in the Masaya tourist market we stopped at the old hospital and climbed the bell tower at the Iglesia de Merced. It’s super close to our hostel and the same place Jordan and I spent New Year’s Eve watching people get their haircut from (there’s a barber’s kitty corner to the church). The views were great and I’m sure it’s worth the very small 20 cordoba entrance. Way cheaper than the cathedral tower I climbed in Germany years ago, but that one also had more than 71 stairs. The roof picture at the beginning of this post is from that tower, and the volcano glowering in the background is Mombacho.

I’m going to let jordan talk about our trip kayaking on Lake Colcibolca (Lake Nicaragua). If she ever gets over this cold. And I’m not sure which of us is going to eventually write about the harrowing and stressful trip home, but it’ll come, I’m sure.

Impatience!

2009-06-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

I consider myself to be a very patient person. As a teacher, I am patient with my students. As a community member, I am patient with other people's ways of doing things. But when I've applied for a job I really want, I am NOT patient. I submitted my application online last night for a middle school librarian job and I'm expecting a response today. Totally unreasonable, yet I still want it. Partly, I want some job security going home, but partly it's just because I haven't gotten to do this work for a while and I'm itching to get back to it. I have loved my time in Costa Rica and have some great memories, but I want to go home. For a few weeks in May, I was feeling like maybe we shouldn't be leaving now. But now that rainy season has started again and I'm getting Massachusetts summer urges, I'm really happy about it. I was dreading our trip to Osa Peninsula also, mostly because we can't really afford it and because I didn't want to do a lot of sitting around when I'm so anxious to get home. So instead, we're going back to Granada, which I LOVED the first time. We'll have more time to do some day trips to volcanoes and kayak through the hundreds of little islands on the lake. And we'll get some last minute gifts for folks too. I occasionally need city time with ethnic food and shopping to offset the rest of my time which I spend rurally. So the city will be fun and we'll take a million pictures this time because we'll have Nicole's camera. Our last big hurrah with Nicole, who we will miss dreadfully.

I finished up my English classes last week. This is a photo of three of my five students and me in my office. I really enjoyed hanging out with them and talking. I got so much better at casual conversations because that was always the first hour of class. I finished with some of my music students when they performed for the open mic coffeehouse or the cabaret. Our cabaret performance pretty much sucked because we didn't practice. Oh well. The kids were awesome. But I still have a few lessons with kids who want to milk every last minute out of me. They are the more dedicated students who are fun anyway. If my work schedule isn't too grueling, I might try to squeeze in some music lessons in Montague because I've enjoyed it a lot. We also had our last contradance on Saturday, which went really well. There were a million kids there in the beginning, so we started with Zodiac. All you Farm & Wilderness folks know what I'm talking about. It was fun and intergenerational. I'm getting Toasty all ready to go home: health certificates, travel documents, ride to the airport, etc. Her plane ticket costs more than mine, but I know she'll be treated well.

I want to make it home before the rain starts, so I'm off. Rain starts early these days.

something perhaps a bit more serious.

2009-05-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

So for the year we've been down here I have been regularly:
1. walking to and from school every day at a relatively quick pace.
2. going to yoga between 2 and 3 times a week with an occasional 4 thrown in
3. going for a run on the days I don't do yoga and sometimes even when I do
4. playing ultimate infrequently lately, but I did play more earlier in the year
5. walking to and from every friend's house, gathering, party, etc.
6. walking the dog on top of all of that if she didn't go on a run with me

This has understandably had a profound effect on my body. I am the smallest I have been since high school. In the last week or two, no fewer than 4 people have commented about how skinny I've gotten. I have dropped between 30 and 40 pounds. I had it to lose. I was close to 200lbs and had sworn to myself that I wasn't going to let it get to be more than that because this frame is not built to carry quite that much. People telling me they're noticing how much weight I have lost has had a profound effect on my emotions.

I like this body that I have. I like it when it's heavier, I like it when it's lighter. I can do more when it's like this, but I am not incapable when it's heavier. I can ride my bicycle fast, hike long distances, carry heavy things, and build to my heart's content no matter what my body has looked like so far. Now there are a few changes. For the first time in my life I enjoy running. I like the challenge of the hills (same as riding my bike) and trying to slow down my breathing when I'm going as hard as I can. And someone recently said that I'm doing excellent high altitude training for when I want to be a firefighter. Too bad the effects will be long since worn off by the time I'm ready for those tests. Maybe I'll come down for a month before them...

So I'm stuck feeling conflicted. I know that I feel better; my cardio-vascular health is much more awesome than it was; I can twist my body into positions I could only dream about a year ago; the endorphins keep me feeling positive and wonderful even when I'm stressed; I have other options besides riding my bike when I need to get out and let my brain work its way through complicated things... These are all good.

But I have also spent a significant portion of my life working on feeling positive about my body. I do not like the BMI crap or the weight watchers crap or the other dieting crap. I do not like that so much of our culture is built around being as skinny as you can be healthily (I'll assume for the sake of argument that we're not all built like supermodels and that many of us actually do understand that). I have a deep and abiding love for all of my fat friends and the culture that has grown up around being fat and proud. I also have a deep love for food of all kinds and make fine choices about my food, even if sometimes I eat more butter or bread than one of those silly diets would call for.

I have also struggled with people telling me that I needed to lose weight to be healthy, including all of my parents at various times. This is perhaps the hardest piece. I know that they will be "proud" of me for losing weight. I hope that they can realize that I'd much rather them be proud of me for being active, finding things to do that make me happy, and for finding a way to balance all of the parts of my life that are important. In that way, I could care less if I lost weight. I almost wish I hadn't so I could prove that my body was lovely the way that it was (and might be again).

I am worried that when I get back to the states I will not have as easy a time keeping this whole exercise for the fun of it going. I will lose my deep teacher discount at the neighborhood yoga studio. I will be going back during the hottest season and can't stand heat. I'm actually pretty conviced I'll be good through the summer, though, because on August 2nd I'm planning on doing the Greenfield Triathlon with Tamara, my neighbor (and anyone else who wants to play swim/bike/ride). It's a sprint distance tri, so it's a .3 mi swim, 15 mi bike and 3 mile run. jor's going to do our swimming training at the Mill River Pool this summer. We've already been planning everything and I am quite excited. My new running shoes are even already at Emmy's house just waiting for me to get home. It's the winter, though, when it's hard to get on my bike, and I REALLY don't want to go to a gym, that worries me. I like my running on trails in the woods, not even on the roads outside, much less on a treadmill or a fancy machine that'd be nicer on my knees. I don't want to lose all of the progress that I've made this year on my journey towards firefighter status.

I don't really have any good closure to this post. I guess it's clear that I'm feeling conflicted. I just wanted you to understand that, especially if you're one of the people to whom I'm coming home. Instead of telling me how much weight I've lost, feel free to invite me for a run/ride/walk/hike/swim/etc. Thank you.

Anyway, those are the meandering thoughts of a winkler late at night. I've been trying to write this post for a while. It's good to finally get it out.

Beaches and Farms

2009-05-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

A lovely time at the beach, Playa Sámara on the Nicoya Peninsula. It was Toast's first time at the ocean and she seemed to tolerate it. It was really hot compared to Monteverde and the water wasn't any cooler than the air for the most part, even in the tiny swimming pool at our hotel. But Tosti Pantalones (her name in Spanish) fetched sticks and balls tossed into the waves and was so cute when she jumped like a dolphin. To the right you can see the stick in the air and Toast going after it. She also served as cultural ambassador once again. There were some nice Tico families at our tiny hotel and the little kids loved Toast. So I taught them how to play with her and they played for hours. Toast was so good and patient and tolerant as long as I was around. Then the family invited us to their campfire on the beach and fed us roasted marshmallows. The next day they gave us their leftover gallo pinto and eggs for breakfast. Mmmm. And we got to eat yummy Mexican food at a restaurant. It was all super relaxing and fun. We traveled with some teachers from the other private school in Monteverde, one of whom went to my high school (weird...there are actually three of us in town currently). And we appreciated that it wasn't sunny because we didn't get sunburned so fast. Annie and I finally got the hang of boogie boarding, which was awesome. The waves were just right. We'd catch a good wave and ride all the way into the shore where Toast would come and meet us. It was nice to get to bring her along, though she may have appreciated staying home.

I wanted to post some photos of the organic farm tour we went on with Rhi while she was here. To the right is the farmer, Hernán Brenes, head of the Brenes clan around here. There are many. He's been here since he was 15 and is now something like 75, still farming. He grows veggies and runs a dairy and has chickens. He's the only organic grower in the area. He showed us how he makes his own pesticide by stewing a combo of 7 local plants. He walked us through his fields, which look pretty similar to a field in western MA, minus the amazing trees around the edges and bushes lining the paths. He gave us all a strawberry (wow...yum) and a carrot pulled right from the ground. Super yummy, a little spicy. I can't wait to dig into my garden even though I won't get to grow everything I like. Starting too late. After the fields, Señor Brenes took us through the woods to his Tarzan swing and we all got to jump. Really fun, though not quite as extreme as the Tarzan swing at the Selvatura canopy park...super fun! Yishai, our personal photographer now that our camera finally died, took some awesome photos of us on the swing. Look how he kept Annie in focus while blurring the trees. Photography is not something I wish I did. Not that interesting to me. But I can appreciate a good photo when I see it. Thanks Yishai. Señor Brenes then took us to a lookout where we could see some volcanos and back toward the town where we live. The geology here is such that there are all these ridges everywhere and you can't really see what's on or in them. But it sure is beautiful. Annie could describe it better, I'm sure. At the end, he recited a poem about the people of Cañitas, where he lives, and how the men are strong and willing and I don't remember what else. Very noble. Costa Rica is an interesting study in literacy because something like 99% of the population is literate, but they don't read. It's still an oral culture. People prefer to learn from people instead of books. I'm sure this poem was passed down to him from another person and he memorized it.

In other news, we found ourselves a new tenant for the rental part of our duplex in Montague. Phew. I anticipated it being very difficult to do from here and perhaps having to pay someone to do it for us. But it worked out beautifully and I think our new neighbors will be a great addition to the neighborhood. Even if one of them is allergic to dogs. Poor Toasty. She will be so confused.

Just so everyone is clear, we fly to Newark, NJ (nonstop flight!) on June 16th and will probably be back in Montague that night. Can't wait to see people!

Visitantes!

2009-04-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

Summarizing the last few crazy weeks...

Emmy Bean came to visit!!!!!! We spent much of our time together singing and playing and practicing for the gig people here are still talking about. Wish we could do another. We are rockstars here. Actually, this is the first time since working at camp all those years ago when my rockstar self has come to visit. It's about the audience. Monteverde is the best audience I've ever played for. They don't care that we're still learning how to play our instruments and are experimenting with songs we haven't fully arranged yet. It lets me try things and feel confident playing. The concert was fun and I hope we'll do some back in Montague. I promise to keep practicing and learning more about music theory so I can arrange songs how I want them to sound.

Emmy and I went down to San José a day before she had to leave so we could go shopping. I was a little nervous about getting it all done. Then the taxi showed up later than expected and I didn't think we could do it. But our driver turned out to be the amazing Sergio, who took us to the mall in Escazú and dragged us around to the stores we needed. I desperately needed new shoes. My old ones had holes in them and no traction and my feet hurt just thinking about walking down the rocky road in them. My new ones are shiny red and make me bounce. And I can't feel the sharp rocks through the soles. We also bought some gifts for some of you loyal readers, which I cannot divulge at this time because you haven't received them yet. But having Sergio along meant we got the Tico discount. You really can bargain a little bit here, even in the mall full of U.S. stores. Weird to see Abercrombie here. We had a great time. And when one of the shoe store clerks started flirting with Emmy (who was blessedly unaware of what was happening) by asking about her tattoo, Sergio went off about how she got it on their honeymoon. Then he and I both started calling her wifey, a new vocab word for him that he loves. He speaks really good English but we got to teach him a few key slang phrases. Bimbo is my favorite. It's the name of the really big bread company here than sponsors fútbol teams and such. It's printed on shirts and in stadiums. He told us a great story about when he was just starting to learn English and was giving a presentation to an auditorium full of Canadian high school students. He spoke about how great the beaches of Costa Rica are and how everyone like to visit them because they are hot and you can relax and lie down on them. Except he was pronouncing it like bitches. Everyone was laughing but he didn't know why until after. I love stories like that. It turns out Sergio is also quite knowledgable about pirate history in Costa Rica.

The night I came back from San José with Rhiannon, I had to call a contradance. I thought nobody would show because at 7:30 there was still no one there. However, people eventually came and we had a fun short dance. I enjoy calling, but I miss dancing. Can't wait to get back to contradance central, but I hope the mean Greenfield dancers have gotten nicer since I left.

The next night Annie and I were invited to an A-list party in Monteverde and felt like part of the in-crowd. We have always enjoyed hanging out with people a few years older than us. We were definitely the youngest adults there, and we're not all that young anymore, both in our 3os. I've been getting asked by friends and strangers alike lately when we're going to have kids. Don't worry, it's in the plan, but we need some money and a baby daddy first. We're hoping for the next few years. We already have a name picked out, lucky kid. According to my half brother it's not bad growing up with old-fashioned and weird names. Just hard to go by the middle name all the time. We'll keep that in mind, Shockey. Thanks for the advice.

So, just like when we left Montague to come here, things are going much better than they had been. Rainy season was hard. We were really homesick. We had a few friends here, but nothing like our community in Montag. We didn't like our work and missed our house. But now things have improved a lot for me and I'm feeling sad about not having another year here. I love teaching music lessons, even on instruments I'm not really qualified to teach. My students are making rapid progress though, so I'm not freaking out anymore. My advanced English class is awesome and I always leave in a good mood. I've started teaching computer skills to a group of middle-aged housewives who have never touched a computer and gotten a ton of requests from people for private lessons. It seems I have some needed skills here. If we should ever return to this beautiful town, Annie will work for the zip line people as a guide and I will teach music and computers to Ticos and gringos. I will also offer dog training classes. I hate being around poorly behaved dogs and I don't like the Tico attitude towards dogs. They are either guard dogs only and stay chained up at the house all day or are allowed to wander and behave in a way controlled only by their instincts. Very few people spay/neuter their animals so there are always animals needing homes. People take the puppies but don't like the behavior and so give them away or chain them up. I want to teach people how to train their dogs so that they are loving and lovable parts of the family. I can deal with them not being allowed inside the house because it never gets too cold for a dog here. As long as they have shelter and enough food (Ticos think skinny is healthy) and love from humans I'll be happy. Toast is doing her part as an international ambassador to improve the well-being of dog populations here. She convinces Ticos in a heartbeat of how great and happy a well-trained dog can be. It helps that she is naturally soft and clean and smells good. Mmm. I love her smell.

This week I spent a million hours trying to organize showings of our soon to vacant rental unit. Muchisimas gracias a Tamara who is saving the day yet again. There are some good-looking prospects, but I'm nervous about not getting to meet them before having to choose. I want friendly helpful neighbors. I wouldn't mind if they were bilingual Spanish too. Annie and I want to keep up our Spanish for when we go traveling again. You know, with all our money.

Things that happened recently that I wish I had documented.

2009-04-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

On the way home from our gig and then again a couple of nights later there was a HUGE sloth using the power lines to facilitate its quick traveling. There's been a baby sloth living with Benito and it's been cool to see it on occasion, but huge giganto sloths climbing along power lines are very different than baby sloths in bags (don't worry, not suffocating) because they have diarrhea. In addition, though it makes just as much sense as birds and squirrels using power lines, I never thought to see a sloth on a power line.

The other day at lunch I looked up (on the day when the sun was directly overhead at noon, so it would have been Monday) and saw a swallow-tailed kite. It was the first time that I recall seeing the sun directly over my head (though it should have happened in August too, but I probably wasn't paying attention). That was cool enough. But then there was a new bird of prey to add to my list of birds. I like new birds. Your job, people with faster internet connections than mine, is to do your own darned google search if you want to see it because not only did I not have my relatively crappy camera, but I also didn't have my glasses on so it was literally just a silhouette with a cool forked tail.

Also, I recently saw a meter long brown snake while I was out with Toast. She missed it and had barreled on ahead, but I apparently scared it enough that it needed to run for cover. I've heard rumors that there's a quetzal building a nest in a visible place up at the reserve and I am going to try and get up there sometime soon to see it.

Other recently spotted critters that aren't new, but are recently on the upswing, are various different sized ticks. I found one that was about the size of a period (.)while I was combing Toast; I think one tried to bite my leg that was about four periods large (if you put them in a little circle), but I found it and there was an almost normal dog-tick sized one that decided to hitch a ride on my shorts that same day. I say boooooo to ticks and that they should go back to wherever it was that they've been for the previous 9 months when they would only occasionally show up on Toast and not on me.

I promise I'll bring the camera to our tour of the only local organic farm run by the father of the old school secretary (meaning there's a new one now, not that she's old). We buy most of our produce from him so it'll be good to see his layout and know more about where our food comes from, plus he's a nice guy. That's all for now.

The week after vacation.

2009-04-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I didn't want vacation to end. Emmy being here was (she and jordan are in San José right now and her flight's tomorrow early) frankly pretty amazing. We played music for more than half of the hours that we were awake together, I think. Additionally, we played a gig with 20 songs, more than half of which we had never played together before she got here. Basically it was four days of rehearsal and then a huge set list and a lot of fun laughing at each other. I've really want to include a photo took of our superexcited audience, but it'll have to wait because the connection is awful tonight. Many of my students (and some of their parents) are now more aware of the things I've gotten in trouble for in the past thanks to jordan. It's relatively innocuous, I guess, but when I don't think I ever told my mom about the time I got to go and visit the Dean's office with my friends... Maybe I did. Really, all we did was break into the pool and go swimming. We had lifeguards. And a lack of swimming suits. I can't remember now which thing the dean thought was worse, the entering (one of the lifeguards had taped the latch on the back door to the pool) or the swimming because the cross-country team had just streaked a bunch of alums, or parents, or board members or something. We got more of a lecture about inappropriate nudity than we did about breaking and entering. Odd, considering that all of our nudity was consensual whereas those silly runners were subjecting unwilling participants in their antics. (Don't get me wrong, I just wish there were more acceptable ways to be in the world, including with less clothing on occasionally.)
The concert at Rio Shanti was pretty freaking amazing. Using just word of mouth we got a sizable collection of people who were willing to sit on the floor with blankets and pillows and yoga mats that smell sweaty. There was singing along, people learning new songs, and now a good selection of the ex-pat community in Monteverde know "I wanna be sedated" by the Ramones. Emmy does a really excellent impression of Joey Ramone. I thought I was going to blow out my voice, but it turns out I just used up the few reserves I had accumulated during vacation. A bunch of jordan's students came, both music and english, which means we actually had some Ticos in the audience. During science today I will freely admit that most of us had a five minute nap. Anyway, my new personal motto might be something about how perfection is unattainable. Given how much time we had together, we cobbled together a credible performance that was appreciated by many. We even got to give out tamborines and maracas for the Stevie Wonder song at the end. Next will be finally getting around to writing our own material and doing gigs in the states, I suppose. We shall see.
While we were out today Toast and I came upon some Capuchins. They like to bark at Toast and she only barked at them once. I think, perhaps, that my dog is scared of monkeys. I came around one corner of the trail to see her staring up at one of them and it was standing partly on a branch and partly on a stubby piece of branch that it was wiggling back and forth in an apparent effort to fashion a spear to throw at my dog. I guess I'm glad it stopped when it saw me because I don't want my dog to be assaulted by monkeys, but it might have been awesome to witness the monkeys throwing projectiles they had made themselves.
Anyway, I thought I would go to sleep hours ago, but instead I watched a movie and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog and now am finally approaching extreme tired. If you're still reading, thanks... We'll be home sometime around June 16th or 17th. Devon was wondering about a gemini party, but I think we might be busy trying to find furniture and moving back in since we sold or gave away almost all of ours including the bed and the couch. Any help on that front is, of course, appreciated.

Just a few things...

2009-04-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Again it's been a while since we've written. I've been having lots of thoughts about how I should be writing down stories about what I'm doing with my classes (making fireballs above campfires) and the animals I'm seeing (Toast chased a pisote the other day when we were out for our run) and the excitement I have about Emmy Bean visiting on Friday (uncontainable at this moment) and the gorgeousness that is the dry season finally upon us. Instead I've been teaching, going for runs, thinking about our upcoming gig at the yoga studio and trying to fend off yet another ear infection. I didn't even go swimming this time. That means it doesn't matter if I go swimming and I can just do whatever I want, right? I hope so. Anyway, the moral of the story is that I am on vacation this week and I hope to get a chance to catch up on all of my grading and some of my blog post writing. Right now, though, I need to go buy milk and then go home and grade some math tests. And some science assignments. And a quiz or two. I hate grading. Oh, and I need to write up my reports that I've been putting off all year. It's a good thing I have the whole week and not a beach in sight... Here's a picture of me diligently working in the backyardof the institute. The little building is where they do classes about greenbuilding. It's got a nice loft situation happening, and some skylights. I like skylights more and more.

You Lost Her, I Found Her, Now Give Me A Footrub

2009-03-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Last night Toast got "lost" for the first time. In Montague, she has gone adventuring alone, but this time she didn't know how to find us. It's cute and a little stressful for her when Annie and I go different directions. She doesn't know who to follow and generally runs back and forth between us until one of us makes sure she follows. Yesterday she decided to follow Annie, who went into a store to look at and pet a rescued tree sloth. When Annie came out Toast was nowhere to be found. In the past, she has always stuck around. She's learned that she isn't allowed to come in with us, except at the little grocery because the owner is a sucker for dogs. He has a tiny chihuahua named Bruiser that is his baby. I was already home by the time Annie called me to tell me that she couldn't find Toast. So after Annie went out and called her again I retraced my route and found her patiently (and a little anxiously) waiting for someone to collect her at the yoga studio where Annie and I had parted. I was annoyed at Annie for losing her and making me find her, since I figured she was closer to Annie's location, and a little annoyed at Toast for not being smart enough to go home. But I guess she's only two and parents always tell their children to stay put and wait for help instead of running off, so I guess she did the right thing. And as soon as I found her I wasn't mad anymore. But I had to tell myself that Annie would never leave our future human baby and lose her.

Our life here has become so normal that we forget to blog about it. It just doesn't seem like an exciting foreign adventure anymore. We went to the beach about a month ago for a long weekend. That was fun. I sat in the hammock and read three books. I went swimming twice and successfully body surfed for the first time. We saw these really cool teeny tiny snail type creatures buried in the wet sand. When the wave washed over them they would open up their "arms" and collect food I guess. Then when the wave left they curled back up again. We played a few rounds of underwater leg charades - one of the genius ideas of a crazy friend. Basically, you flip upside down in the water and make some sort of shape or motion with your legs, sustained for the few seconds you can do a handstand, and then the other people guess. It's surprisingly fun and humorous. The first photo is the view from my hammock. The second is an iguana in the tree off the veranda. It was nice to be in the heat and sun, since most of the dry season this year has been cold and rainy in Monteverde, requiring beach vacations. It finally warmed up about a week ago and now it's gorgeous, though still chilly at night. The sun can be really intense, even if it is only 70 degrees.

We're starting to plan our end of the school year travels to the Osa Peninsula and our return to dear old Montague, but still trying to be present here. A college friend happened to be vacationing in Costa Rica a few weeks ago and had dinner at my house. That was fun. Emmy Bean is coming to visit in a few weeks and we're going to sing and play and sing and play and then sing and play for other people in a little concert. Teaching violin lessons makes me practice so I have actually improved quite a bit this year. I've been thinking about the house and the garden (even though most of it is still buried in snow I'm sure) and lamenting that we won't get to do many vegetables this year since we return June 16 or 17. But that means I can do some landscaping and flower gardening that I never did in the two years I lived in the house. We won't have any money, so we still can't get those horrible stumps from the horrible cypress trees removed. But I did my federal tax returns today and get a nice big refund, which will pay our half of the mortgage for June. We still have no jobs to return to, so keep your ears open for library work for me and temporary work for Annie, preferably not in an office. She's going to take an EMT certification course in the fall and then hopefully work for an ambulance service, while getting herself in really good shape so she can take the firefighter exam next year.

I made pierogies from scratch a few nights ago. Mmmmmm. And not that hard. Just a little time consuming. But worth it. The complete lack of frozen food in the Monteverde zone has made us cook more, which is good for me. Because usually once we get started, it's fun. We cook together well. It's only not fun when we have to cook alone. And if I'm cooking for just me, I eat scrambled eggs. Easy. Comfortable. Yummy.

Escapism

2009-03-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

This is an amazing escapist cow that sometimes ends up in our yard. Usually he lives in a barbed wire enclosure with a little shelter, some nice grass, wild flowers, and a stream. Don't know why he wants to leave, but he often does. He also does this really cute frolic dance. He and Toast have staring contests and they are both afraid of each other, though still curious. See that stick tied to his collar? That is to make it harder to get through a fence. I don't know how he does it.

Decisions are made...The email update, blogified.

2009-02-18T18:53:00.001-08:00

Here is the update on our lives in Monteverde.

What many of you have been waiting for is the answer to a nagging question. Are they going to really go away for two whole years and leave us in the lurch? Well, the original answer was yes. And in many ways I wish that I could stick with that answer. This teaching gig has been the one I have liked the most. This community is just as great as the one we have back in Montague (heck their names even both start with Mont so I miss-write them constantly). We have played more gigs and gotten more involved with the contra dance scene here than we ever would or will in the states (because without organizing it, there wouldn't be a dance, even if we only have three this year...). I see monkeys, tucanets, mot mots, and various and sundry other wild things on my walks home. There are almost daily rainbows...(sometimes multiples, and often more than one a day in the season we just finished). Anyway, you get the picture. If someone were advertising an amazing place to go and live while the US economy is in an uproar, this location couldn't really be beat, well, aside from the 12 or 17% cost of living increase this year.

That said, we both have been struggling mightily with homesickness. Even though the community is great, it's not ours. Even though the school is great, and there is a library, I have to say confidentially that the library pretty much sucks when you want to read young adult fiction that was published within the last ten years, and that's certainly not the fault of the volunteer librarians who have no budget. It can be tedious to download anything at an average rate of 2-4 kbps. That's the rate my first dial-up connection was in high school. And, perhaps most importantly, we have come to a place of balance with where we want to be.

jordan wants to go back to her work as a librarian (though of course this is one of the hardest times to get work when libraries are often the first cut). If you have any sway in the budget process at schools, now is the time to exert your power. I am ready to be brave and try something I am not certain that I'll be good at, or even like. I am ready to not take my work home every night and that obviously means a career change. While the two possibilities remaining from my list of five possibles upon graduating from college are massage therapist or rock star, I'm not feeling quite that brave. Much thought has been going into the possibilities, and a whole lot of research on the ridiculously slow internets, and I think I might have been right when I was 3. I think, just maybe, I want to be a firefighter when I grow up. So, upon our triumphant return to the greater northeast, I plan on enrolling in the GCC (or other?) EMT course and get started with dual paramedic/firefighter career training. Of course if you have any knowledge about said career path, and no I don't think I want to do wildfires primarily, I'd love to hear it. Finally, we're experiencing a lot of baby-lust and hope that once we get settled and employed and all of that, we can finally figure out how to get that baby thing happening. I'm not holding my breath, so you shouldn't either, but just be aware we wish we were among those Montaguites who were having babies all over the place this fall...

We can't wait to be back, but if you even have the possibility of visiting, we still have room in March, most of April and all of May. Plus, if you get out of school in early June and want to go exploring in Costa Rica with us, you should let us know. Though it won't be a free place to stay, and we won't be up in Monteverde after school gets out on the 9th, we will happily include you in our plans for the Osa Peninsula and maybe some other locations equally amazing.

Your love and support has been amazing. In some ways, it has caused this perhaps unsurprising turn of events with all of the "Come home now! We miss you!" emails. As always, we skype under the pseudonyms funklera and jorjorjorjor. We are facebooking quite a bit lately if you're on that silly thing, though thanks to the aforementioned slow connection, we're not actually addicted. And gchat works when we remember to log in...

As always, we look forward to hearing from you even if it's a "wish I could visit" sort of email. If you include information about your own life, you know, that makes us feel even more connected. We miss you terribly.

Jordan Enjoys Teaching Again

2009-02-12T14:38:00.000-08:00

Is it any surprise that the weather affects my mood? Not really. I'm seriously appreciating the dry season, even when it gets really windy and misty, because I'm not wet. I hate being wet. And there is so much more sun. And when it's warm and sunny I can leave the door open and then Toast doesn't whine at me to sit outside with her. Usually because I do sit outside with her. She wants to be where I am, but wants that place to be outside, so she can be a little whiny. I think she's missing having a constant canine companion. Also, she got spoiled when Annie was wogging (walk/jogging) with her a few times a week and now she wants constant attention. I have been walking her on trails in the woods (or should I say jungle) near the house and we both like that. But Annie has been too busy or sick lately to give her the exercise she wants, but I don't have the same kind of endurance.

I'm only teaching one English class this term and I love it. It's basically an advanced class of five students who are all really interesting and funny and willing to try most anything. So we have a lot of fun together. This week they are reading in pairs either Green Eggs and Ham or The Cat in the Hat to practice the short vowel sounds, especially the short a, which is so hard for Spanish speakers. We'll do some cooking together next week. Maybe macaroni and cheese, the fancy kind, like Ken makes. :)

I'm also teaching a few guitar and violin students, which is going well. I'm kind of tired of the guitar as an instrument. I don't love how it sounds (especially since my baby, my jumbo Martin Mahogany is still in Massachusetts, and I'm playing Annie's Seagull) and my calluses are gone and folk music is boring. But teaching is making it fun again. I like the fiddle better, but it hurts my neck and I could probably use a lesson or two of my own. Instead I'm teaching a 6 year old, trying to do some semblance of Suzuki, and an adult who likes to play what I like to play. I just hope I'm not screwing them up forever. I look forward to getting back to the cello when I return to the states, though I probably won't be able to afford one for a while. Anyone know of an extra lying around that wants to be borrowed?

We're going to Playa Hermosa this weekend because Annie gets presidents' day off for some weird reason. I don't mind. It's time for another surf trip and hanging out reading on the beach. Maybe we'll finally get some photos of us surfing. It's nice to have a reliable, cheap dog sitter just around the bend because now we feel like we can go away whenever we want.

horsies

2009-02-08T08:45:00.001-08:00

Here is one reason why I like teaching at MFS:
Any day you can look out onto the playground and field and see horsies randomly grazing.
So there.

Etc.

2009-02-01T16:46:00.001-08:00

Well hello there...
Lately we've been a little busy. For example, today I sat down with the computer and did a little google verb meme that I saw on a vlog from Hank Green. This is what I got when I googled my name and a bunch of different verbs...
annie needs to release a live album
annie looks like a bit of gossip
annie says you can’t run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely
annie wants someone to love on '90210'
annie does live here
annie hates shots!
annie asks media to stop publishing untrue reports
annie likes bananas! stinky dog treats; having her belly rubbed; running...and boy is she fast!
annie eats grass
annie wears her holiday best
annie under arrest for poisoning her sister
annie loves God and R~no (R~no is a person that this other annie is apparently in love with so much that her last name on myspace is "loves God and R~no)

Additionally, today we hosted our second open studio book making reality (party). It was good to have a completely new group of people over, but this means that the others who were partway done are now at the same step as the people who started today and we don't have that many curved needles... We'll just keep having book making parties on Sundays and hopefully one of these times I'll get to make one myself. Today's party had some kids, some almost adults and some real adults with kids and stuff. It was good to be helpful, even if Toast didn't really like being ignored. I'm looking forward to the day when one of my students (who did come today) actually gets the book down in writing that he wants to put into the book he was making. We only damaged the table a little bit with the rotary cutter...We miss the self-healing cutting mat more than I can say. And, you know, once we've gotten the ability to pay the morgtage worked out again and have acquired a couch and a bed, I'm really looking forward to purchasing a paper cutter.

On Friday night there was a cabaret. This guy Hank puts them together, making posters, getting the space, organizing the acts. He's a genius with slide shows. Anyway, we were later on in the show which was of course a good place to be. I can't say that I ever really like going first, and things got moved around and that was good because the guy who was supposed to go before us, and actually has a weekly gig at Moon Shiva, wanted to go first so he could get home to his baby. I'd never heard him before and we asked someone if he was going to be a lot better than us because we were nervous, having virtually no time to practice. Anyway, the good news is that he got the crowd warmed up and it just kept going from there. Our friend Tim doesn't normally play his own stuff but he did and it was just lovely. jordan said he reminded her of Dave Mallett. I just can't get enough of listening to him sing. So mellow and beautiful. There were a bunch of movies between the musicians: an older movie from my school that was an ironic take on bullying and a video put together by some younger kids (maybe around 10-12) that was a long string of mini-vignettes. I LOVED IT! It opened with a sketch about a box alien - her face was altered by her computer - who was asking for donations because her eye had been destroyed and there was a war happening on Mars. It just didn't stop. Their comic timing was genius and I especially liked the ones that reminded me of movies my friend Christine and I made with her little brother Billy when we were kids. One of my students performed too and she did a fine job, though I know that she and her accompanist didn't have enough time together, just like jordan and myself. Tricia did the Jabberwocky and that totally made my day. That brings us, of course, to our playing. We played Good Riddance by Green Day, Through to Sunrise by Girlyman and Quest for Spinach. It was a crowd pleasing sort of set. There were so many people singing along to the first and last songs, and I have to say, since Tim et. al. had been playing up the comedy, there was a bit of hamming it up between songs and as we were tuning. I ended up telling the story of why my name isn't Funkler and jordan made fun of me a bunch. All in all, a good night. There were a bunch of Mt. Holyoke students there (and some from Goucher in the same program at the Institute) so they were excited that we said the word Massachusetts and are more excited than I am that I'm legally married.
Anyway, there is a large tired factor happening at our house tonight. No one wants to cook and the pizza guys in Turners don't deliver down here... Oh well.

A slightly embarrassing photo

2009-01-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a photo of us talking to Tamara via skype. You, too, could have this amazing opportunity to see us make funny faces and wear scarves on our heads. It was good to talk to Tamara. Hi Tamara!

It's raining today, which is common in the rainy season, but now it's the dry season so it hasn't really rained for weeks. It reminds me that I like the dry season.

Annie went on a ridiculously long hike yesterday. And now I will write about it. We met up at this end of town and then walked through Santa Elena, Cañitas, and then past a bar that is quite literally the only building on the road in the midst of farm fields. The views across back to Monteverde were awesome and at every stop the folks I was with (and Toast too) pulled out the binocs to see what we could see. The middle of the hike was a hill that may or may not be called Pinnochio Hill in spanish because it sticks up steeply into the sky. We watched cows being herded from a distance that made them look like micecows. Toast thought she could herd them using only occasional barks and a stare, but they didn't listen very well to her. We could hear the caballeros even though they were far away, and that in and of itself was pretty fun. Toast clearly wanted to go and help with the whole situation, even though she's still rather afraid of cows and horses. On the way back we went past a hill where the kids had bags filled with something squishy (I assume grass of the long variety) and they were using them to slide down a hill. They were clearly having an awesome time and some of the high schoolers I was with reminisced a bit about how they had done that a bunch when they were younger. It was fun to go for a hike with students I don't teach because then even though I answered some geology questions for them about geology I don't really understand well enough, I got to be friendly and funny and all of my normal things too. I'm going to figure out if there's a way to get my 5/6 class out to the cliff with the nifty columnar joints, but from our viewpoint, I think it might be a scrabbling adventure. Anyway, I didn't get too sunburnt and I had a good time and Toast was tired for at least 4 hours afterwards. We were out for about 7 hours so I was hopeful for a tired dog today too, but oh well.

The guy skyping next to us is talking about how his hotel was burgled and they managed to get into the safe. He lost $10,000 and is talking very calmly about it. I can't even imagine. The only time I held that kind of money was when my father wrote me a check to help with the down payment on a house, and I kind of freaked then. That is such a huge amount of money to me to posess all at one time. But I guess we all have different lifestyles.

My Instructions

2009-01-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

So Annie instructed me to write about a few things and I figure it's been too long since I contributed, so here goes.

Getting home from Nicaragua really was an adventure and I'm super glad I speak Spanish because it would have been much harder (or more expensive) otherwise. We left Wendy in Liberia to fly home and figured we'd just catch one bus to the next bus, but Monteverde is pretty difficult to get to by bus. Only four buses go up the mountain each day, two in the early morning (which we missed by about a half hour) and two in the mid afternoon (which would have meant waiting 5-6 hours in the hot sun). I have this instinct to trust bus drivers, but maybe I should stop doing that. When Wendy was trying to get here she told them via my written out phrases that she wanted to go to Sardinal and could the driver please tell her when to get off. Well, he told her she was on the wrong bus (which she wasn't, but she had to trust him) and put her on a bus to a different Sardinal. It doesn't help that there are 4-6 instances of each place name in this country. Anyway, it was an ordeal with her not speaking Spanish and not knowing how to get here. So during our trip home, the bus driver said to take the bus and he would let us off at the turnoff to Monteverde where we could catch that bus. And oh no, we wouldn't miss it. Except we did. So, for the first time in our lives we hitchiked. And it was successful. There was a fair amount of walking first, carrying all our stuff and walking on the highway. And also, I see to have really bad transportation karma. I miss buses, they drive right by me, my schedule is wrong, cars break down, etc. This time I caused a freakin' accident! Well, not really caused, but somehow my bad transportation karma caused the accident in front of my very eyes, just as we were about to start hitching. A bus rear-ended a pickup truck and they dallied in the middle of the road right by a bridge for a long while, meaning that any potential ride givers were held up for a while! So we walked for maybe an hour and were very very hot. Many people honked hello at us but didn't stop. We came upon some howler monkeys in trees above the road and stopped to record some video and then a car stopped for us. He turned out to be really nice. Probably around our age, driving a hand-control car. He said he'd never picked anyone up before because it would be difficult to get away if anyone tried to hurt him, being unable to walk and all. I learned that cars adapted to be hand-controlled can also be driven in the common way with foot pedals. And he told us a bit about his life and we about ours. We only went about 15km down the road and it was fun. It is definitely easier to hitch a ride when wearing a lot of luggage. So he dropped us at the gas station where all the taxis turn to go to Monteverde and hired a pirata (unofficial taxi) for $50 and got home in no time. It was a little more expensive than we had hoped (the two bus system would have cost only $15 total) but we arrived home to find that Toast had such a good time with our house-sitter that she wanted to go home with him.

In more recent news, last week I attended a week-long workshop for language teachers that was basically pointless. Except that I usually find I get something unexpected out of these things. The content of the workshop was nothing I will ever use, but the course was entirely in Spanish I had been feeling like my Spanish had stopped improving because I speak English most of the time, even at work, but this course proved to me that I am more competent and can understand a lot more than I used to. My transportation and food Spanish are really good because I get the most practice with them, but explaining in Spanish my inspiration for becoming a teacher was a bit harder. Still, I managed pretty well and made some Tica friends who teach Spanish locally. They’re really sweet women who speak little or no English and they seem to like me, so now I have new friends. Also, I got to do something I really miss, which is teaching people how to use their computers. Our instructor has a brand new MacBook that she had no clue how to use, so I walked her through a bunch of things. I really really miss my work in the states, books and technology. I have found small ways to teach those things here, but not enough to make me happy. As much as I complained about my job last year, I really miss it. I miss the kids and my colleagues and being around books and having a budget to use according to my judgment. And I miss reading good teen literature. On my trip to the states in November I was given some money by the school to purchase teen lit for classroom libraries but I bought mostly books that I had already read and could vouch for. Now I only have two or three left that I haven’t read and then I’ll be back to complaining about the lack of books around here.

So, of the recent reads, I loved The Hunger Games, Impossible, Paper Towns, and The Graveyard Book, and I got to read the latest Artemis Fowl. And if any of you readers have books to send me let me know and I'll tell you where to send them in the states so a visitor can bring them to me. It's cheaper that way. If you want to see everything I've been reading then check out my Goodreads page .

Other good news: we hired someone to help us with the house cleaning and it's making a big difference in my house happiness. I was not prepared for the amount of mud during the rainy season and dust during the dry season (which it is now) and you really have to stay on top of the cleaning. Which I'm horrible at and hate. So now we have help and I can stop feeling like a bad person for not cleaning my house. I'm great at tidying up at least, and then I know where things are when Annie can't find them, such as her glasses, her planner, her chapstick, etc.

I start teaching guitar and fiddle lessons soon, so I better go do some planning.

recent adventures.

2009-01-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

So, jor said maybe we should write an entry tonight. It's been a while and we've been on a few adventures since either of us last wrote. Wendy was here for three weeks. We went on a grand adventure to Nicaragua. The island of Ometepe was sadly only okay. The water level of Lake Cocibolca (aka Lake Nicaragua) was way up from the rainy season so there was no beach to hang out on. Some of the highlights included going to Ojo del Auga which is a not-hot water spring and you only have to pay $2 to go and play in the water for as long as you want. It was interesting to be there during a time that many Nicas had off as well because it was the weekend so there was a mix of people visiting the springs. I was sad that there wasn't a rope swing anymore, but we saw a bunch of parrots!

Then it was off to Grenada which I think might be jordan's new favorite city. We spent a few days there wandering around, finding food to eat and generally enjoying the ambiance. I've included a picture of one of the many churches around the city. One night jor and I went for a walk and ended up lost in the market (it was HUGE and confusing with so many people) and then in the end of town that isn't on the tourist map across the very dirty river when the sun was just setting. It didn't feel too unsafe, but we were probably the only gringos within a mile radius. It wasn't the side of town where the books say you should always take a cab because of the nervous knife wielding muggers, but we were a bit lost. Then we found the church near our hostel and just sat on the corner for a long time and watched the world go by. Even on New Year's eve at 7pm you can get a haircut in Grenada. During our whole trip, sitting on the corner was the only time that we were bothered by someone past the initial asking for money, and he persisted in bothering everyone else near us as well.

We made a sidetrip to Masaya to visit the tourist/artisans market and the hammock making neighborhood. That market was not nearly as confusing as the one we later went to in Grenada because it was open to the sky and during the day. We found lots of presents for various people who send us letters and emails and read our blog. And wandering down to the neighborhood where the buildings/houses are where they make hammocks was cool too. We got to see them working on them and buy directly from the artists which of course made us happy. jor was set on getting one of the chair kinds and we found a hammock for our friend Nicole too. Mainly it was just nice to be wandering away from all of the other tourists wearing stickers that said things like 303A. Why would you need a separate sticker for the different 303s? Seems like you could just add on a 304... I'm not in charge of sticker making for silly tours, though. I can't remember if it was my mom or jordan who said if they ever found themselves on a tour like that they'd refuse to wear the sticker. I'm still confused why any of us would find ourselves on a tour like that... Anyway, then we wanted to go and see the lake that is right next to Masaya and maybe stick our feet in it. Hah! It is right next to Masaya, that at least is true. You can see where the land stops and the lake begins. And the closest road on the city side is at least 1000' higher than the water level and I'm not sure if there are any trails anyway down the heavily forested steep bank. Looking back at the Masaya section of our guidebook, I guess I should have been reading more closely. "Allow extra time in Masaya city to walk to the cliff-top lookout point near the baseball stadium, where you'll also find the hammock factories." Right. It was a lovely lookout point. And the baseball stadium is named after Roberto Clemente because he died in a plane on his way to participate in the relief for Nicaragua after an earthquake before I was born. My mom asked me if I remembered when that happened, despite her being around for both my birth and Clemente's unfortunate passing.

Grenada was fun for other reasons too. We went to this tasty joint called the Garden Cafe and were going to purchase their scavenger hunt map done up pirate style, but they had run out and then the next day we didn't get there early enough due to our Masaya trip. We also didn't get to eat any waffles at the waffle house and due to an email from Tamara and the missed waffles at her house, I have been craving them consistently for two weeks now.

Getting out of Grenada was trickier than we thought it would be. We wanted to take a public bus, but it being Sunday and January 1st, we missed the only one of the day by not showing up until 9am. Fortunately for us, we did run into some other tourists who were in a similar bind, so we chartered a truck (or got some guy with a beatup pickup to drive us) down to Rivas where we caught the next bus to San Juan del Sur and they all went to Ometepe. I have been appreciating riding in the backs of trucks very much since I've been down here, and it was fun to have over an hour to talk with people from all over the world. There were two girls from Berkley, a guy from Switzerland with a very nice camera, a guy from the Netherlands, a guy from Australia and a girl from the UK. I think I saw the guy from the Netherlands on the beach at the end of our time in San Juan del Sur, but I wasn't sure. We made the bus to San Juan and then, despite it being the 1st of January, we were able to secure accomodations despite the multitudes of Nicas and other tourists at the beach for vacation. One of the things I liked best about being here was the fact that the majority of the tourists seemed like they were from Nicaragua or Costa Rica (and probably not many of them due to the prejudices in CR against Nicaragua and Nicaraguans). On the bus ride down my mom pulled out her famous "where's the silk handkerchief" trick to much acclaim from the young folks. She also performed for the family that ran the place where we stayed our whole time in San Juan. Many times. They just kept asking her to do the trick. I love that it is so easy to communicate without words sometimes. The kids (grandkids of the woman who ran the place) were supercute about it and honestly I spent a lot of time wishing that my Spanish had improved much more than it has because even though my comprehension is through the roof compared to where it was in August, I'm still always nervous about communicating verbally. I've been doing some studying since we've gotten home to combat the nervousity. While we were in San Juan del Sur we had a surfing lesson, tried to go snorkling despite the waves and churned up water, went on a day long sailyboat ride, practiced surfing and boogyboarding and hung out at the beaches as much as possible. mmm. I like sun. My mom has a whole new classification system for different varieties of waves including: slappers, whackers, rollers, hoppers, jumpers and others. Plus, jor and I can now both consistently stand up on a board. We're not quite good at paddling ourselves to catch a wave or picking the right ones to catch, but I figure that's one of those things that only comes with time. Plus, I now have an excellent bruise on my left forearm that looks like a shark! Well, it did two days ago. Now it's just a really big blob, so I can't take a picture and post it for you.

Getting home was harder than it should have been, but I'll leave that for jordan to write about maybe later. The moral of the story is that we had a lot of fun on our adventure and I really just wish I had more time and money to wander the countryside.

fostering and touristing

2008-12-23T19:10:00.000-08:00

We finally found Flora Segunda Panqueques a home that doesn't involve waking us up four times a night to bark at phantoms outside!!! She's gone to the home of a cousin of our pseudo landlord down in San Luis. He had already met her at soccer that happens on the soccer field in our yard every weekend, so he knew he liked her. We don't know him, but we're pretty sure he's going to be good to her, based on the opinion of the daughter of the pseudo landlord. The relief is sort of overwhelming, although it's accompanied by a realization that Toast will be expecting a lot more from us for a while until she is reaclimated to being an only dog again. And then we're going on vacation on Sunday.

My mom is here and we're planning a trip to Nicaragua. It should pretty much be awesome. Over the past couple of days we've gone to the Orchid Garden, the Renario (frog pond) and learned how to make tamales at a massive tamale making extravaganza today. My mom's favorite frog red eyed tree frog. She liked how colorful it was - it has seven colors - blue, white, red, yellow, green, orange, and black. Here is a picture of one that we did not take. We went as dusk was coming on and got to hear them begin to call to each other. It was not quite cacaphonous. Oh, and there was a fancy dinner and the requisite trip to the farmer's market on Saturday. It's been a little weird to finally be a tourist here when we've been living here for four months. My mom says one of her highlights was that I got to play at the open house that was happening at the yoga studio. It was fun to play with Michael and I got to meet the local Italian who plays lots of different flutes and goes by his sanskrit name. It was a good time and there are potentially options to have a music night at Rio Shanti which would appeal, methinks, to the more laid back musician that is me. Sitting on the floor in a yoga studio is certainly laid back.

The orchid garden was amazing too. We wandered about a little bit before getting a tour and walked past most of the flowers that were pointed out to us on the tour. It always makes me happy to learn new stuff and I know my bio background is weak, but it was fun to expand a little. Here's a picture of my mom with some of the orchids that were growing in the greenhouse part of the orchid garden . Oh, and I forgot to mention that my student's family runs it so my mom got to meet one of my kids. We've been running into students all over the place. Makes me happy.

Sometime in the future I'll put up some pictures and commentary about our coffee tour. My friend Carol saved the day with some batteries when my mom's ran out in her camera.

Mamas

2008-12-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

So, my mom got here and we've been having adventures. First there was the adventure where she went on the wrong bus to the wrong Sardinal and then there was the part where she was waiting and I was waiting and we were less than 100m apart from each other. And then there was the adventure in the taxi on the way down the mountain where somehow the taxi was going around in circles like it was on ice (but mom wasn't in the car yet, which I was glad about).

We played scrabble with the scrabble folks today and I like them and jordan finally came along because mostly she didn't know where the game was before and it involved leaving home which is where the books and the interwebs are... We visited school and tomorrow there are the standard Saturday activities at the market and grocery and a special trip to eat breakfast out. jordan stopped scratching my head so now writing this blog entry is less fun :(.

Anyway, the leadup to xmas involves lots of activities in this community and some art making for both jordan and myself because we found ourselves in the gift exchange involving gifts that have to be handmade. I'm doing some watercolor collage something or other inspired by my friend Allison who taught with me last year. Oh, and tomorrow I'm oddly playing (and it'll probably sound odd too) for the yoga studio's open house. It's been a long time since I played background music. I'm hoping I can figure out some more music so I only have to bring a banjo and no guitar.. Or maybe Tricia will let me play hers. The options apparently abound.

not a list of complaints.

2008-12-11T19:19:00.001-08:00

So, we've been in a bit of a funk lately:lots of rain + missing friends + wanting maybe something resembling winter... It's made it hard to write because we don't want to just complain all of the time. I'm going to try my best.
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a secret friend thing happening at school. Now, I don't generally like secret friend things because I spend a lot of time trying to think of presents, making them and then trying really hard not to give it all away. The person who organized it looked sad when I said I didn't want to participate, and it's true, I didn't. I would much rather wait around to see who's complaining about not getting presents and then get inspired about them and give them things. So that happened and I got to help the volunteer who has been working with my classroom because he was confused about what he had agreed to. It was so much better to help him make bread for the first time (and make a loaf separately for his secret friend) than it ever would have been with my own. I really rather like that.
My mom is coming down next Wednesday and I'm also really excited about that. We're going to hang out here and do the million things that lead up to xmas around here and then do some traveling in Nicaragua and on the Nicoya Peninsula afterwards. I'm still trying to figure out how to organize the whole trip, and since it's superhigh season I really should get on the reservation aspect of it, but I'm still so busy with school...
That said, my reports are nearly complete. I have to put in some numbers on some checklists, add a couple of final sentences and send things to the people that need them. Oh, and I should actually calculate some grades, but that's in the plan for Saturday when I totally clean my area of the classroom. The paper pile is vying with my high school piles in both height and complexity.
All in all, though, things are okay. Nicole and I just designed and did an awesome project with the 7/8 graders where they had to create an ancient civilization/city and map it and estimate water usages, and represent the other parts of a civilization through writing, art, sculpture and performance. The presentations were today and even though they were ridiculously long, it was awesome to see all of the thinking that had gone into their projects. I think two weeks was the perfect amount of time because only one group was self-destructing at the end and it was clearly because of the people involved, not the project itself. So there. Now, if it hadn't been the end of the semester, I might have actually followed in Emily's footsteps and done the project with Nicole myself, but the whole write a million reports thing kind of got in the way.
I am hopeful that soon this will look more like a traveling and living abroad blog instead of a teaching one.
Oh, and I saw a toucanet this morning in our yard. Like a toucan, but littler. It sounded like a toucan too, but like one with a bit of a cold. And there were multiple rainbows to greet the morning. Doesn't suck.

hopefully...

2008-11-24T17:52:00.000-08:00

jordan will use her fast connection and write a witty, interesting post about spending time in chicago. the wind finally died down here and i got my keys back so I don't have to climb through the skinny bathroom window anymore. (not that I did after the first time, but if I had locked the other door I would have needed to...) the doggies are feeling rightly neglected and though I'm feeling guilty, that hasn't prompted me to much action. oh well. here is a picture of me being bored.

the blahs and the jordans

2008-11-19T18:19:00.000-08:00

So, jordan is leaving tomorrow to go and visit her family. Yay for mama's having their birthdays! And yay for neighbors who grew up close to where jordan grew up but now live in Montague so when major holidays come around, they all decend on the north shore of Chicago for family time. These things are excellent for people like jordan and the lovely people from 59 Taylor Hill Road whom we adore so much. I'm sure you are all figuring out by this point that this is the part where I start whining. I wish I could go along. I wouldn't mind some winter-like weather and seeing friends and family. But alas, I will have to wait until December 17th to see my own momo and longer than that to see friends.

The major stuff in my life right now is trying to get everything done. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to most of you that I'm behind on the paperwork that is associated with teaching here and it's overwhelming me. I'm hopeful that with jordan gone I'll not be distracted by her beauty and may actually get some writing done that is due next Wednesday *no exceptions.*

I am totally enthralled by the weather here lately. The windy misty season is more of both of them than I expected. The wind comes whipping through, sounding like it's going to pick up the whole house some mornings, and it seems like you won't get too wet when you go out, but once the relatively light mist is blown up, down, and sideways into you, it's like you've been through the automatic carwash without the dryer at the end. (That runon was just for Julie Ann Carroll). The bonus is that even though it's strong, it's not nearly as loud as a downpour in my classroom so there haven't been many days lately when I lose my voice from overuse and maximizing my volume.

The contra dance was awesome. I begged out of the band for the second dance before most of the people had shown up. We did a pretty good job playing, considering the caliber of musicians we're working with and the relatively low committment to practicing over all. jordan ended up calling seven dances and there were only a few minor flubs. One comment afterwards was that she's got the schtick down. Another person called and left us a message about how it was the most fun she's had dancing in years. We're hoping to have another dance, probably in February, and hopefully we can make more connections with the Tico folks who come to the square and english dances sometimes. Maybe they were busy. It's kind of interesting because they tend to show up in large groups, often wearing matching t-shirts about various god associated things. The one I remember best says, "Jesus wears jeans." If you can help me understand the message I was supposed to get from that one, I'd be grateful.

Anyway, as a group, they're fun to dance with because they smile a lot and don't have a superhigh expectation of their own dancing (or so it seems) so it's just fun. The gringos have very similar behavior, I just like it when there's actual mixing, even if there's a bunch of progress to be made on the talking to each other during breaks front. Our fiddler even played a hambo and a waltz so I ended a very happy girl. jor got to dance the hambo with a dancer who is excellent, and well matched height and gravity-wise. They were spinning crazily off into the night and she had to hold on to the post at the end to stay vertical.

That's the not so brief update from here. I'd love an update from wherever you are if you have time.

turning 30 apparently means...

2008-11-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

that I get to have entirely new feelings. Well, feeling. Just one. I´ve not been homesick before that I can recall. I´m having a hard time following the advice that I´ve given as a camp counselor. Or when I follow it - being busy, doing things I enjoy, etc. - I just slide right back into homesick when I´m done. Bother.

ex-pats and televisions

2008-11-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

So, the good news is that we got to watch the elections on a real live television. It was mainly a collection of teachers and parents at the two bilingual schools and a few of the other ex-pats in the community. When there was a part in one of the speeches about people abroad listening to the returns on the radio, I was pretty glad not to be one of them. It was amazing to see the crowds in Chicago and the group outside of the White House and I'm glad to have a visual memory of this event to go along with the emotional one. There were many things about this election season that concern me - taking away rights by popular vote without the support of the legislature and against the will of the supreme court of CA is of course the one at the top of the list. I'm left wondering if there were any similar things that happened in the transition period when interracial marriage was becoming legal. I guess I'm still frustrated because ultimately, I don't think that marriage should be something controlled by the government anyway, but rather by the people who want to be in unions with each other. Oh well.

I don't think I ever wrote about our experiences getting finger printed for our visas. When it came time for the are you single or married question I was slightly flustered, in part due to the spanish nature of my interview. In MA, I'm married. According to the US government, I'm single. So I told them I'm married to jordan and then when she was fingerprinted, they asked her if she knows me (but not if we're married, which was weird) and of course she said yes. When the lady who was processing me brought me over to the guy to do the finger printing she felt it was necessary to pull him aside and whisper about (presumably) my confusing status as a girl who is married to another girl (though they didn't ask jordan's gender during my questioning). Anyway, I know it's a Catholic country and all, but I thought they knew that those crazy gringos up in the states occasionally have same-sex partners that they're committed to. And some of them even get government (state government, anyway) approved papers in support of their committment. That's an aside, but ultimately, I guess, I'm pretty happy that I don't have to stay down here for 4 years, and can still come back after 2, though I'm betting I'll still have to figure out that whole war tax resisting thing. Too bad there's not a quaker opting out box on the tax forms...I'll happily pay for schools and health care and roads (though I'd prefer to pay for bike trails and renewable energy investments). Ramblerambleramble.

Why you need to come and visit

2008-11-03T19:08:00.000-08:00

Right now there are several reasons why you should be visiting us:

Every morning when I take the dogs out to play, there are rainbows. Our yard is strategically placed for optimal 7am rainbow viewage.
Our foster dog, Flora Segunda Panqueques, has finally started to learn to not jump, though she still does some, but she's gotten really good at the "abort, abort" motion which looks like she's going to jump on you and then she does a quick 90 degree turn.
The mist blows around and sometimes thinks it's rain but mostly just thinks it's mist and that's fun because it's not quite enough to need a raincoat and not enough to get drenched either (most of the time, unless you've forgotten your raincoat and then sometimes, I admit, it does start pouring just to prove me wrong).
Toast is the best dog ever and you miss her dreadfully, unless you've never met her and then you still miss her.
You want to bring us things like maple syrup.
We miss you as much as you miss us, sometimes more because we're in a new place, so you should skype us or call us or email us at least, even if you can't come and visit (or send us packages to jordan's mom's house because she'll be there on the 21st for her mom's birthday!)
We see morphos and motmots almost every day
We're mastering some new cuisines - eg. beans and fried cheese - and I think, maybe, you don't know what you're missing and that's why you aren't here visiting.
The sunsets are to die for, additionally, a community gathering time just down the road, sometimes complete with Spanish tourists (who we had to give directions to twice, separately), but more often just with our neighbors and dogs.
We're having a contradance on the 15th. We've got extra instruments for you to play...and we need more dancers who know what they're doing...
You haven't yet experienced the yin/yang dogs. Sometimes the black dog and the tan dog sit with each other all curled up and looking like a little yin/yang symbol. Or just opposites. mmm. cuteness reigns.
You want to know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night to an armadillo love fest. (the dogs have been bringing it to our attention regularly)
We've heard rumors that the coffee here is tasty, and we know several people who have little coffee farms, and you like coffee... It's local...
Bananas and pineapples and oranges and tangerines and melons and lychees and avacadoes... all in season right now. Mangoes and bananas and pineapples and guayaba and guanabana and many other things that are in season now will be in season when you come to visit. It's all local too.
The cheese factory makes excellent milkshakes.
There's a frisbee game on Saturdays. It can be really really fun, though when played in a downpour sometimes slightly dangerous on the sloping field.
We have a soccer field in our front yard and there's a regular pickup game with guys we don't really know, but they seem really nice...
There's a bamboo fort area in our yard too
And there are trees for climbing all over
And we live in the cloud forest - I finally went to the Monteverde Reserve this weekend. Yay for 40 species of orchid on one tree (according to the signage).

Anyway, that's the list for tonight. I have a math test to get ready for, or maybe I'll just go to bed. Yay election eve! We voted a week ago. I hope you get to vote by the end of today. And especially if you're in Montague I hope you enjoy the little dinging box. We made the sound for each other when we were done voting so we wouldn't feel left out.

Tortuguitas

2008-10-27T07:41:00.000-07:00

I made a little video showing the little tortuguitas running like heck for the ocean in Tortuguero.

Aren't they cute? Too bad only 2% of them will survive to return to this exact beach to lay their own eggs.

Facebook brings joy but sucks time

2008-10-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

So Annie and I just joined Facebook...finally...after years of resisting...because we realized that many of our good friends check their Facebook more than their email or this blog and we miss them. The unanticipated result is that we are both reconnecting with long ago friends. I'm still looking for Meg Norris if anyone knows how I can find her. With Facebook sucking our time and attention, we haven't written on the blog for a bit. So here is the news:

We had an awesome vacation in Tortuguero, one of the national parks (of which there are many in Costa Rica) and saw so much wildlife. 8 kinds of water bird, 2 kinds of tree frog, a caiman, spiders, birds, a fresh water turtle, and a few dozen baby green sea turtles making a break for the ocean, and probably more that I am not remembering. Check the picasa album for photos.

We travelled in the style of my father: a package tour with transportation, food, fancy lodging, and guided tours all with the same group of people. It isn't how I would have chosen, but I ended up enjoying myself a lot. Because the purpose was to be on vacation as well as see wildlife, it was nice that we didn't have to figure out where to stay and where to eat once we got there. And the rooms were clean and showers were beautiful (you come to appreciate these things in a wet climate where mold grows on everything, including you, and where you get hot just walking around and need more showers). There was a little covered hammock hut where we spent some time relaxing. And a pool. Now, maybe you think "why do you need a pool when your lodge is 100 meters from the ocean?" It's because you shouldn't swim in those waters. The undertow is really strong and sharks frequent the area to eat the cute baby turtles. So we swam in the pool to cool off. Quite a luxury, but we definitely enjoyed it. And the only reason we agreed to do it the package tourist way is because we get a really good deal for being residents of Costa Rica and a friend of ours knows someone who works there and he got us an even better deal. Our tour guide was pretty good, though he didn't always say the same things when he translated for himself, so it's a good thing I understand Spanish and English. I got a better tour because of it. And there were some nice folks from other countries. Actually, no one from the states. Just Iceland, Spain, and Sweeden. So all in all a nice vacation. We even got to spend some time shopping in San José before we headed back up the mountain.

Our second dog, Flora Segunda Panqueques, is better than before, but training is a little difficult because she is a serious jumper. And with all the mud around here it means keeping clothes clean is impossible. Toast loves her though and is much happier with her around, so we keep trying. She has gained enough weight to seem in the range of healthy and she doesn't freak out about food anymore, though she still won't eat her vegetables like Toast does. We sneak them into her food covered in yummy things like yogurt so she'll eat them.

My English classes are going pretty well, though I wish I had more students. It's hard to play games or do pair work with such small groups. I find that I enjoy myself a lot while I'm in class, but that I don't especially love planning. And it's difficult to build on previous knowledge when students are not reliable about coming every week. Oh well. Still fun and they pay me.

vacations

2008-10-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

We're going to put up a bunch of pictures, actually, they might already be up on jor's picasa thinger, from our recent vacation to Tortuguero. If you click on the slideshow on the right, you can then get to the Tortuguero photos. Or you can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/jordanfunke/Tortuguero101708# You should know a few things: I'm procrastinating my planning, I really would rather still be on vacation seeing cool animals and not responsible for decisions educational and I am frustrated by some of the teaching that I'm doing right now, but not so much that it's driving me crazy. This is the little poison dart frog that our guide went and found just for jordan. It was really really cute and made up for his grumpiness with us at the beginning of the trip when we were running late. Oh well. We saw a ton of different birds, spider and howler monkeys, a baby caiman, basalisks and iguanas and other kinds of lizards unidentified, some green frogs with red eyes whose name i have forgotten, only two cockroaches and some really HUGE bats that were pollinating the banana flowers. any idea about their id alex? We also saw lots of baby green sea turtles making a run for the caribbean and lots of mama tracks that looked like mini-atvs coming in and out of the ocean. We went with Nicole who I teach with and it was great to have someone else along because these sorts of adventures are really best shared with many people. We met two couples from Spain, one from Iceland and one from Sweden. The Spainards were shocked and amazed that Nicole and jordan spoke Spanish. Oh it's good to prove that all Americans aren't stupid sometimes.

skype etc.

2008-10-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

Just in case you're one of those who knows that we're often on skype on Sunday afternoons, today is a different situation. We're going to someone's house to have a bluegrass jam because I fixed my banjo and it's good to play music with friends. I have to say I'm often intimidated by others and their musical abilities, but since moving down here, it's much less of an issue. Maybe it's partly because I'm carrying one of the few banjos around or maybe it's because I've finally got enough time to practice so I'm feeling good about the songs that I do know, or maybe it's because I'm okay with being a beginner at this because I can balance that out with being really good at other things, like singing. I went to the choir practice this weekend and it was good to be able to mostly sightread the music that they're doing. Not sure how much of it I'll actually like singing in the long run, but it's good to get some exercise and to be working towards something.
Ultimate yesterday: I finally got to play because we've finished all of our house visits and then had conferences. It was muddy and slippery and we had at least 21 people out there so we rotated teams in and out as three points were scored by one team or another. The rain on the glasses doesn't really help, though, so I admit I was a bit of a wuss and stopped playing during the downpour after I couldn't really see anymore and was worried about torking my knee. There were a bunch of CEC teachers there, the other bilingual school around here, and it's fun to have some more men to hang out with. We've only got two at our school and I only get to hang out with one regularly. I know teaching is a predominantly female profession, but damn, only two? Even though they're both good guys, I'm still missing PaulTonyTomKenScottChrisColinPaulandTim and the guys who show up to play frisbee and football and the teachers from the Center School. The funny thing is, it's not even because we're hanging out with a bunch of queer girls. Aside from the director, I only know of a couple of other "lesbians" probably, and we're not friends with them at the moment for whatever reason. Most of my friends at school either don't have boys or didn't bring them along. And those that do, many of them speak Spanish so I'm not able to carry on long conversations. Fortunately, boys do like to play frisbee and that means I'm getting more boy time now that I've got time to play.

That's about it for now. Yay for playing frisbees and banjos. I'm feeling quite homesick lately, so anything like home is good...

feh

2008-10-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

my banjo done broke again. and we´ve got practice on wednesday so i´ve got to get some superglue somehow magically between now and tomorrow so it´ll have time to set.
bother.

Busy Busy Busy

2008-09-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

So, my life got busy pretty quickly here. I just had my first day of teaching English classes and I think I was maybe a little too hard for the lower intermediate class, but just right for the higher intermediate class (which came second of course...I always do things better the second time around). But I'm pretty excited about teaching, which makes me feel good. I had a bit of a crash for a few weeks where I felt like there was nothing valuable I could offer in Monteverde. I've also got a million people begging me to give their children music lessons, even though I keep telling them I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, I can teach guitar fine, as long as no one wants to learn fancy fingerpicking or theory. But Suzuki violin? I've never done it. I did Suzuki cello from age 5 to 18, but only one person wants cello here and she'll only be here for a few months. And I don't have a cello. Or music. Nor do I want to lug a cello around on these horrible rocky roads. But violin, maybe. I found a person today who is willing to lend me a bunch of violin teaching resources, so maybe I'll do it. But not the three year old. Just the six and olders. I'm also starting a contradance band, which I think I mentioned before. Pictured are some of the key players, though I'll be calling, not playing. I'm not good enough to do them simultaneously. I'm no Bill Olsen. We played for an open mic coffeehouse pizza night fundraiser for the school. It was super fun. Annie's 7-8 science class played this whole routine on the instruments they made, some of which were amazing.

The other reason I've gotten so busy, or at least preoccupied, is that we've taken in a street dog, photo included. Please notice how thin she is. The vet in town only spays/neuters animals every so often, doing them all on one day, so a local group of residents (including myself) organized to collect all the street dogs they could to get them fixed. But then we needed people to care for the animals post-surgery. We volunteered to take one they've been calling Flor. She's very malnourished (see photos of how skinny she is) and wouldn't eat for three days after the surgery. We tried everything we could think of in the house. Finally, I gave her a frozen marrow bone, which I get from the butcher who recognizes me and remembers that I want huesos (bones) for my dog. He's cute. She devoured it so the next day I got some pork sausage from the fábrica (cheese factory that also makes pork products with all the pigs that eat the whey) and then all of a sudden she's eating 4 times a day. We had been force feeding her up to this point, and not very successfully I might add. Pureéd chicken soup, soaked dry dogfood, pancakes (she did briefly show an interest in these). But now relief. She's eating. She won't die in my care. I was really worried about her on top of starting a new job, being pressured to teach music lessons, and trying to fix the school's technology problems (I don't know as much as people think I know. I just like to teach web 2.0 stuff). But now I can breathe a little easier. We even went on a short walk this evening and she was almost sprightly. She and Toast have played "bite my face" a few times today, which I love. Puppy TV is one of the things that can pull me out of any funk. Kind of like a really good LOLcat photo. Please see http://icanhascheezburger.com if you don't know what I'm talking about. We call our new dog Flora Segunda Pancakes (last word pronounced in Spanish pahn-CAY-kees). Flora Segunda is the name of a book we liked, and since they were already calling her Flor, it fit. She is the color of pancakes, ate pancakes as her first solid food, and I had decided weeks before getting her that I wanted to name a dog pancakes (to go with Toast and the non-existent Burger). So far we like her pretty well, though she did eat a book today. Hmmm. What does that say? Good taste? Or she knows what we value and wants to destroy it? Hmmm. She sticks very close to us and seems to be adapting to having people quite well, though we know she was decently cared for at the hostel where she was kind of living before. So. There's my life this week.

animales

2008-09-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

I dearly love agoutis. They run around and are total cuties running away with their little wide rumps. Additionally, I love young cows who have escaped from their pastures, when I'm not in charge of getting them back into it. This morning there were two of them, one of the darker ones that almost matches the boycow across the street so I was confused at first, and one of the lighter tan ones. The darker one was up on the little hillish thing that is on the side of the road on the right nearer the pasture, so when I walked by it just jumped in the air, looked at me like I was going to chase it, and went the other way. The lighter one was across the road from their current pasture, though, so when I kept walking (cuz I needed to go to school, not herd up little cows who have gone looking for sweeter grass to eat) it walked, jumped, ran, and gamboled its way down the road for quite a while. I feigned interest in the side of the road for a time hoping to convince it that I wasn't a threat, but eventually, the same person who drives by on her 4x4 every morning while holding a helmet (and wearing her own) herded the poor cow back towards her pasture. Honestly, though, I'm not sure that the cow didn't just run past me and then keep running past her pasture with the big scary atv chasing her. I like to imagine that all of the mooing of the other cows was enough encouragement to help her back to the land of friends.
The other thing that was lovely this morning was the man and his daughter and their associated horses bringing milk up from San Luis (from the farm of one of my students). Dad was in front, and his horse also had two milk containers - metal, and he had the lead line of the horse that was carrying 4 milk containers and then came his highschool-aged daughter. Both dad and daughter were wearing rain cape looking things with two layers in bright plasticy blue. The best image part of it, though, was that dad was wearing a kind of wide brimmed hat and daughter was riding along holding an umbrella. From a distance it looked like a parasol, despite the black coloring and her posture was impeccable. It looked a little like this, but with the man in front of the milk containers and they rest a little lower on the rig they have on their horses.

Friendly 8s, dog training and I don't know what else

2008-09-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

So this weekend on Friday we did the Quaker version of Small Group Ministry. It was pretty similar to what I did out in Olympia, with the addition of dinner beforehand. Now, I love a good dinner, potluck and all, but when you add up dinner plus an hour and a half of talking, it can be pretty long. We did end earlier than we thought we would and then because of the group we had at the house, we pulled out all of the instruments and had a little folky jam. It was good to be playing with people who play well and excellent to have a chance to sing with them finally. Hard to believe it took almost two months to have our first real session and it was only an afterthought. (Well, it was a pre-thought for me, which is why Heather brought her fiddle, but an afterthought for everyone else). The queeries we were adressing were all about forgiveness and I found myself thinking a lot about my mom's group more to life and their clearing process. It was interesting to be involved in the conversation, but I definitely found myself distracted by the dogs (the neighbor's was over) and not really wanting to engage. A little weird for me because when I did SGM in Oly, I was in a very different place and the very calm dog at that house only centered me while I engaged on at least three different levels with the questions we were addressing. Even though I was only part of that group for a few months (4-5) I felt very connected with each of the people and felt like I knew them better than I knew some of my other relatively new friends even though I only saw them once a month. Then again, at this point I've forgotten all of their names and wouldn't have a clue about where they are now.
We've been helping to take care of a neighbor's dog while she's in the states. Her 7th grade son is still here, but he's not staying at the house. He's supposedly coming by the house to hang out with Crystal and feed her dinner. She's got some issues with her training, so jor's been on re-teaching her how to sit and behave properly. We've made some good progress, but more and more it seems like she really needs owners who assert themselves as the pack leaders which is hard with a german shepherd big enough to pull both of the people to the ground. Also, she doesn't quite know how to play with Toast yet, so there's been a lot of socializing.
I guess the only other thing I have to add at this point is that the other teacher who teaches 5-8th english and social studies and I have undertaken a massive task. We are visiting all of the homes of our 28 5-8th graders. The only bonus is that we have one pair of twins and one pair of cousins who live in the same house which brings our total down to 26 visits. This weekend we were supposed to do 4 in one part of the area called Cerro Plano, but there was a death of a grandfather that reduced our number by 2 and then one person who couldn't see us until quite late in the afternoon when we had hoped to only go to that part of town once in one day. That meant we only went to one house. While this was good for having the rest of the day to do things, it also meant that we couldn't easily leave when things were getting uncomfortable with the dad being a skeezeball in front of his wife. No one will be surprised to hear that he wasn't hitting on me, I'm sure, but I was pretty uncomfortable none the less with all of his comments aimed at my friend. No, we're not going to eat turtle eggs when we go to Tortuguero this October (though he didn't specifically say they were thought to be an aphrodisiac, he just kept saying we should try them) and no we won't be calling you anytime because your kid's causing trouble because frankly she's much better behaved than you are and no we won't be taking you up on the offer to give us rides all around Costa Rica while your wife stays home to work really hard and care for your children, one of whom has Down Syndrome. Nonononono. At least we've got that one over with. Most of the Tico men here have been very much not involved in the conversations that we've been having at their homes so it was very weird to be trying to translate all that he was saying and insinuating. Oh well. One incidence of overt racism and one of skeezy behavior out of 13 visits isn't that bad, right?
I was involved in this conversation with a couple of other US citizens from school about racism here and whether or not the cultural acceptability of making fun and being derragatory towards Nicaraguans can be related to the racism that happens with white folks in other places. It's something I'm thinking a lot about, especially since we just went and saw an excellent performance called El Nica by Nicaraguan born and Costa Rican raised César Meléndez. We got to take the 7-12th graders to a free performance. I was blown away by César Meléndez's physical acting, perhaps because when I don't totally understand the context, a monologue is difficult for me to understand. He clearly painted so many different pictures throughout the performance of immigrating to CR in order to find work, loosing his child as he was crossing a river, being beaten and finally wrapping the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican flags together around his neck in a clear image of forging ahead despite all of the difficulties he was facing. He's been working on this play for the past 11 years, performing it for the past 8 all over the world and I was thoroughly blown away by everything that he did. I can only imagine the impact if I had understood more of his words. But I was thinking a bunch about the different ways you can approach such a performance as a teenager. The kids from the Santa Elena public school were not overtly laughing at the difficulties El Nica was facing, but there were times when the character was clearly experiencing badness, and there were smiles on some of the boys' faces that seemed like held in laughter. I was unable to watch the faces of the kids from our school, or from the other private school due to my location at the back of the theater, but I can only hope that it wasn't as prevalent throughout the audience as it was in the group of 5-6 boys that I could see. I just don't know. I guess this is just a ramble and I'll be done for tonight.
We've been getting mail lately and I swear we're going to figure out how to send some back soon. The post office isn't exactly in a convenient location and most folks send their stuff with other folks going to the states.
Lastly, if you're around on Sundays, we're generally (though not today) on Skype around 2pm est (until y'all start saving daylight at which point it changes, but I don't recall which direction).

Jordan's New Job

2008-09-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

The title of this post sounds like the the title of a children's book. Anyway, I have a job now and am currently sitting in my oficina, which I share with the other person who does my job. I'd take a picture but it's kind of dark and not very organized or pretty yet. I now teach two English classes to local residents and co-coordinate this program. I don't know yet which levels I'll teach, but it will probably be advanced and maybe beginner. I haven't met the other teacher/ coordinator yet. I'm a little nervous because English is a pretty hard language to learn with so many millions of exceptions to every strange rule. But there are good resources here for teaching and the Spanish teacher is awesome and helpful. In fact, I am in one of her classes (level 3 of 4) and she's a good teacher. She's so open and fun that people just want to talk. I hope I can be like that with my students. At least I'll be able to speak English to them. But I'm really glad that I work in a place where I have to speak Spanish with most of my coworkers. It will help me immensely. Already I know that my Spanish skills have improved leaps and bounds just from practice. I took Spanish in school from 7th grade to my first year in college, but it was all very bookish and regimented, plus I was really shy and never spoke in any of my classes, so I didn't get much practice speaking. Now I am much less shy and understand the need for spoken practice so I talk more in class. I like being corrected now, whereas when I was young I hated it. I wouldn't give an answer unless I was sure of it because I didn't want to look stupid. Maybe because all my teachers used to tell me how smart I was and if only I would put in some effort I could get all A's. Anyway, I've gotten over mysef. I don't mind being wrong now...or at least less than right. I'm still a librarian, which means I know everything, but I've lost a lot of my camp counselor self so I don't have to be super confident about everything. Anyway, learning Spanish is fun. I've always loved languages. They're like codes to be figured out.

We got our first care package yesterday from the one and only, the super amazing, our very own professional puppeteer, Emmy Bean. Thanks Emmy for sending us all those things that we neglected to bring because we just didn't know any better. For example, I was unable to bring a fiddle with me so I didn't bring any fiddle music. How was I to know that someone would very generously lend me a fiddle within my first week of being here? So Emmy send me a popular book of fiddle tunes so that I can get a contradance band going so that we can have live music for contradances. It just isn't as fun without live music. So, all you fiddler or dancer friends of mine, can you please tell me which are your favorite dance tunes, especially if they are in The Portland Collection volume 1? I do know of a great web site that posts a lot of tunes so you should tell me even if they aren't in the book. There are people in the area who want to get together with Annie and me to play bluegrass also. Gosh I need to practice more. I even have potential students if I want them.

Back to packages, if anyone else wants to send us a care package there are always things we need that are difficult or impossible to obtain here. Let me know and I will send you a list. Things like tumeric, though Emmy did just send us a bunch, and my favorite soap. We're going to experiement with making our own laundry detergent out of Borax, washing soda, and a bar of soap. It's really really cheap and easy to make. I'll let you know how it goes and if it goes well, maybe all you back to the earthers will want to do it too. Emmy's package only took 12 days to get here. And some folks here told me that even though it's a box, the prepaid all you can eat box (I forget what it's really called, but you stuff whatever you want in it up to 20 lbs and it costs the same) will get here without going through customs. So, all you people who are collecting books or want to send me enchilada sauce because we haven't figured out how to make it yet, let's give the postal service three cheers! Well maybe only two because it still costs around $30 for postage.

I'd like to reinforce that we have a spare bed in our house and plenty of floor space and a big soccer field in which to camp if that is your preference. There is even a small bamboo grove that has a little clearing inside of it that I think we might treat as our home away from home during the dry season. Magical. There is a language school here that does intensive courses if you are so inclined. There is the cloud forest. Beaches and volcanos are near enough and accessible by bus. We'd love to have visitors.

And if anyone has taught English to non-native speakers please send me advice. My classes start on the 29th.

Parades

2008-09-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

On September 15th in whatever year it was much of Central America became free from Spain. This is exciting and interesting for many reasons. One is that there is a torch that is run from Guatemala all over Central America announcing the auspicious occasion. As it gets to each new place, they light their own torches and spread the light. I must say that I quite like the concept of spreading the light among the people. In order for the torch to make it up here, several high schoolers and one very dedicated teacher took a bus down the mountain at 11pm on Saturday night. They met the torch down there and then ran and bussed (I'm not exactly sure how this part works) all the way up the mountain where they were met with more folks from each school in the community (on a Sunday no less) who each lit their own school torches and ran them off to their schools. The torch arrived at our school shortly before meeting so we were able to participate without running (always a good thing for my knees on these roads) in some singing and celebrating and silence having. Just knowing that the light from the torch at our school traveled all of the way from Guatemala boggles the mind.
Then on Monday I was in a parade. It has been many many years since I have been in a parade and I found myself recounting to many the wonders of Hoghead, my grandpa Byron - Miss Hoghead many years runnng, my mom's stint as Santa in August and various and other sundry memories of Proctor's celebration and my family's participation through our yearly float. It's not everyone who can say that their very own grandpa started a yearly celebration that involves various presumably straight older men dressing up in fancy dresses and perching on old cars in parades. This was my first parade as an adult and it also had some other firsts. I performed in Costa Rica for the first time for an audience with an electric guitar from the back of a truck (some Costa Rican tunes and some contra/square tunes) while kids were dancing in the parade. I also went to my first speeches in a building where you can't hear anything because the acoustics are so terrible. And then we performed two of the dances again there. When I say we performed, it should be clear, I played guitar and a bunch of kids did the dancing. They were excellent, we were okay, but it was at least an hour after we got to the building from the parade before the end of the parade arrived and we were allowed to perform. And then there were speeches before we could perform. And then there were other dancers and a tenor singing songs that he hadn't memorized the words of. Silly tenors. I hadn't memorized the words of the songs we were performing, but Spanish is not my native language and I did learn the chorus... Plus, there was no mic for me to sing into anyway and our singers did a great job.
Sept. 15th is also my mom's birthday so even though I spent the entire day being swamped and tired - it was hot and sunny in the truck and playing for an hour straight is hard on the body - I wished she could be here. It was a great parade and I'm sure she would have enjoyed it. Additionally, I've started making more musical connections - someone who plays mando/guitar/something who wants to play bluegrass, and there's a coffeehouse on the 27th that we're going to try and work up some tunes for to excite some people about the concept of live bands and contra dancing. We need to have a couple of rehearsals.
Anyway, I didn't get any pictures because jordan's neck was out. Maybe I'll figure out if anyone else got some shots in and I could link to them. It was the first time in years that the quaker school had anything to do with the parade on Independence Day, and the first time there was square dancing in the parade alongside more traditional Tico dancing. We're pretty proud of what we pulled together in just three weeks of school. It was a lot of really hard work on the part of a few people and I had only a very little part in it. But it does mean that I've now played a gig with two of my students (more if you count the singers) and had a chance to connect a bit more with one of the 12th graders who my mom's partner Greg is related to through marriage. Everyone's a cousin around here, even the gringos...

Toasty's Adjustment Period

2008-09-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

Well, Toast has been here for a week now. The adjustment is going slowly and is different than I expected. Now she'll explore the field by the house, but won't go beyond that without Annie or me along. That is to be expected. What wasn't expected is that she is afraid of everything. Our normally lovable, loving, affectionate, friendly dog who must personally greet and be greeted by every human and dog she comes across now barks and growls and puts her tail between her legs. Even when birds in the trees make noise. Not sure what to do about this except go up to whatever is freaking her out and show her it's okay. The cow in the photo is one that scared her for a while, but she's figured out the fence thing. She knows she isn't supposed to go in and they aren't supposed to go out, so she's safe. She did eventually make one friend and acquire one admirer. The friend is Crystal, the german shephard, who belongs to some neighbors and thinks this is her house because she used to live here a few years ago. They frolic and run around and Toast is teaching her the "bite my face" game and wrestling. But Crystal is a bad influence because she is a big intimidating barker who jumps all over people. The admirer followed us home from the market one day. He's the little white guy and his name is Leche (which means milk). Toast and milk, black and white. Cute. Toast tried to wrestle with him but he was too submissive. I'm guessing she misses Banjo and Fidjo a lot. I'm thinking of getting her a playmate because she's pretty needy and annoying right now. I don't really like to play outside in the rain and I save my walking energy for when I have to go into town. Sad Toasty. But I still love having her here. I'm home alone most days and it's nice to have some furry loving. Right now she's sitting on the front stoop growling at who knows what. Certainly nothing I can detect.

Speaking of rain, I'm finding it very difficult to go out in the rain these days. We had a few glorious days in a row, which Annie and I spent reading outside and playing with the dogs. But I just can't bring myself to go out in the rain. It has a lot to do with the fact that my raincoat doesn't actually stop any rain from coming in. It's all wet on the inside when I take it off. And I can't find an umbrella to purchase. They're all sold out. Poor me. So I just stay home and read or mope or play games on the computer. I should do more cooking and cleaning since Annie is now working all day and then making home visits to her students' families. It's going to be a long few weeks, but I'm really impressed by how well she's doing so far. It seems this school is a good fit. I like it a lot too, when I get there. I'm teaching a once a week class on using Garage Band, audio recording and editing software on macs. It's fun so far. I think this week's class will be a bit of a challenge because they should start recording. But there are three teachers for four groups so there is a lot of support.

hiking

2008-09-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

Today two of my co-teachers and I took a ridiculously long hike down the San Luis valley and then back up the goat trail/horse trail. Lets just say it was a steep down and a steep up. The down was dry and sunny and we were doing it so we could go and visit the families of our students. I can't even begin to describe how beautiful it was and how great it was to be able to go to homes with teachers who are fluent (or mostly fluent). Now I'm thoroughly exhausted and we're making pizza and watching planet earth. I'm happy to be here..

guess what!?!

2008-09-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

She's here she's here she's here!

The work of Rye and Emmy and the folks at 59 and Hannah and everyone else who helped us in our mad craziness when we found out Toast couldn't come along because our plane stopped in Miami has finally paid off. Yesterday jor took a taxi down the mountain to San Jose and picked up our lovely puppydog from the airport. The best news was that even though we had to pay a lot of people a lot of money to get her here, it all went off without any visible hitches. Granted, we can't ask Toast about her flying experience, but she seems just fine about being a jungle dog. The cows and the oxen and the horses totally freak her out, but with a little encouragement and discouragement, she now can walk right past them. Especially the little boycow down the street gets to her the most, but I think it's because he thinks he's a dog in a cow suit, complete with running to the gate when you walk past and random frolicking and jumping as he's going to his big water trough. It's good she didn't pick up Banjo's habit of not enjoying the rain, and she also likes sitting on our little back porch that is covered to watch the world go by. Her feet do get a bit muddy though, and we need to score a rug because even though we towel the feet, it'd be nice to have some more places to pick up the mud and the wet besides our whole floor.

jor said she'll write tomorrow about the going to SJ adventure, so I guess that means I'm done for now. I'm just so relieved to finally have her here, even if we are struggling with the what to feed her when all the commercial food here is either crap or prohibitively expensive. At the moment, she's spoiled with appropriate amounts of fiber, protein, grains, veggies, etc, but I'm not sure how long we can keep that up.

More Rain

2008-09-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Rain, rain and more rain. We are entering the two rainiest months of the year. Usually, it's gorgeous in the mornings until 3:00 or 4:00 and then it rains some. We are in the cloud forest after all. But during September and October, supposedly it rains a lot more. Some days it's all day. We get rain from hurricaines hanging out in the Caribbean. And when I say rain, I mean heavy rain. The ditches on the sides of the roads here see a lot of water. Saturday night I had to walk up a very steep pasture to reach the home where we were to have dinner (and a very fun, yummy dinner it was). It was dark and had been raining all day, so we were basically walking up a river of mud and running water. Slippery. Today seems to be a lovely break in the routine with a bit of sun this morning. The picture is our shoes in the sun drying out. I'm sure there will be weeks when they never dry. Now I understand why everyone around here wears rubber boots. Time to get ourselves some.
I've been taking a Spanish class with one of the teachers at Annie's school and it's going well so far. Today I have to make a short presentation (in Spanish of course) about how scholarships (becas) work in private high schools in Costa Rica. That means I have to actually find out before 3:00 today. But I like learning Spanish. I'm better already, able to understand most of what is said, even when people speak very quickly, and I'm better at getting the words out of my mouth too, which is sometimes even a problem in English. Learning a language makes me think about how I know my first language and how instinctive it is. That's amazing to me. How my brain works always amazes me. Don't like to think about it too much, because it kind of blows my mind how much I don't understand.
Toast (our dog) arrives tomorrow. I am crazy with anticipation. I miss her so so much. We finally gave in and are paying a little more to get her here sooner because it's so hard without her. Friends have been taking really good care of her and she seems happy (she's always happy) but I like to think she misses us too. We'll find out tomorrow I guess. I can't wait for her little squeals of joy and the turning of circles and the face licks and the lap sitting and more circles and squeals. Ah, more on dog culture in Costa Rica some other time. I want to eat breakfast and enjoy the sun while it lasts.

rain

2008-08-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

So, yes, I´m living in the cloud forest, and yes I expected rain. I´m even doing pretty well with it all things considered. When it rains all night on our metal roof + bad dreams and not sleeping well + a slight lack of planning (though everything worked out just fine) all conspire together, it makes a slightly grumpy and definitely sleepy morning. And as of right now, it means I really desperately want to go home early and fall into bed. But, I´ve put the 5th tuning peg back into my banjo so I have been playing again which makes me happy. And the students are all still relatively happy. And I´ve input all of the grades I needed to put in for the first week and the beginning of this week. Well, maybe not quite all, but I have made significant progress and I´ll do some more after I´ve written this entry.

Today I was hanging out in a different classroom and watched the monkeys go swinging through the trees while she taught about text-self-world connections. Made me happy to know that there are other teachers who are thinking about these things and teaching them as well. Then it made me even happier to know that I was working on a team with just such a person. I´ve got a bunch of planning to do, and geologic time is blowing up the brains of my poor 5-6th graders. Thursday we´re going to start trying to put it on an actual timeline, instead of just talking about relative dates. They do pretty well with relative dates, which is reassuring. And they´re willing to make guesses which is great. We´ve been playing with slinkies and jumpropes in 7-8 science because waves are more fun when you can see them. And who doesn´t love playing with a slinky?

peanut, peanut butter (and jelly)

2008-08-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

This morning I went to a neighbor's house, one of the original founders of Monteverde, and bought some peanuts, peanut butter, and dried bananas (no jelly). There are a lot of ways to get food very close to its source here. She grinds the peanut butter herself, though the peanuts come from a grower in Nicaragua. There is a cheese factory in town that buys milk from a lot of the local ranchers. And there is this guy who is a 2nd generation Monteverde founder who has a cow and goat farm and sells milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and kefir. Cheaper than the cheese factory (which is kind of touristy) and supporting a local local business. I also heard about a guy who grows and sells greens in the center of town. Gotta go try him out too. There is a guy who comes to the school on Mondays selling chickens and chicken parts and a guy who comes less frequently who sells fresh fish. I can't bring myself to eat the pig parts from the cheese factory because I walk by them every day and they make this horrible squealing noise because they are never allowed out of their pens. Pigs are really smart and I can only eat meat if I think it's had a decent life, which these pigs certainly don't. Anyway, yeah for local food and farmers. And yeah for my neighbor who made me get out of bed early to get those peanuts.

There are cows in the field about 30 feet from my door. They are not the cute Jersey cows I love, but they aren't the really freaky looking ones with humps and horns that are so bony and give you this look like, "I know I look ridiculous. I'd rather you not mention it." And yesterday I saw Capuchin monkeys in the trees next to the house. It was a whole band moving through and it's fascinating to watch them jump confidently from branch to branch, tree to tree. A morpho butterfly just flew by. They are the really vibrant blue ones that are so pretty.

masaje

2008-08-20T17:38:00.000-07:00

jordan is officially my favorite boyfriend for today. she got me a massage scheduled for today, deep tissue, hour and a half, and now I will be detoxing for a little while and hopefully remembering to slow down for at least a day. that's the hope anyway. i also love the local yoga studio where i got my massage because they offer teachers special prices. what's not to love about a yoga studio that knows how to spread the love around?
additionally, my 7/8 class is officially amazing. they're cute and sweet and funny and willing to play any game i've thrown at them so far. i know it probably won't last forever, but right now, they're my heart's delight. plus, the rules they have for our class include "chew slowly" which i'm letting them have as a fourth rule when i normally try to keep it to three. the framing question was: what do you need to learn well? they decided that not only did they need their senses, they also needed creativity, freedom/free-time, food, you get the picture. so chew slowly came from the connection between food, senses and freeness. it was really just so good i had to keep it. that's all for tonight.

first day of school!

2008-08-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

The good news is that on the first day of school I made both of my classes laugh within the first five minutes of being in the room. While that's good for breaking the ice, I am rather aware that with the 7/8 group it set a rather goofy precedent and they're already a goofy group. The good news is that we're going to get along fabulously. The 5/6 class has 5 new kids out of 13, so they're going to have some identity/group stuff happening for a while and I hope that the girls aren't as cliquish as they appeared on the first day. I'm playing lots of games with them, and so is one of the other 5/6 teachers, so that'll help the situation too.
Everything I planned for the first day lasted the right amount of time. I'm wondering about tomorrow and I only made up one science lesson on the spot. I had other plans in my book, but then I changed my mind and made them prove gravity was constant instead. It was a good intro to scientific method and since that's a good place to start for science class, we'll keep going with that. Plus, I got to drop an algebra text book at least ten times (it was the heavy teacher's edition of one we don't even use) and the noise drew the attention of one of the other teachers, but not to tell us to be quiet. Everyone sing with me now, I think I'm gonna like it here. (bonus if you can sing along with jordan in the background - she's doing the instrumental parts so you'll fit right in).
I got to leave before 4pm and I even took a big nap when I got home. Teaching barefoot isn't going to be the right choice, so I'll have to score some new slip on shoes for my classroom since outdoor shoes aren't allowed. Now, the rain in Costa Rica falls mainly on my domain, so I suppose I should stop being attached to the internet through the phone line since the thunder is audible..

who knew?

2008-08-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

So, two of the teachers at MFS like to do English Country Dancing. Now, I fully admit that my main exposure to English has been watching Jane Austin movies and wondering why I would ever want to twirl around in a circle by myself and pretend to be graceful. These things being true, the two teachers at MFS also have created a dance on the third Saturday that, though performed to canned music, is perhaps one of the more joyful experiences that I've had dancing. Now, granted, that was in part due to the fact that we were laughing so much when we got things a little bit (or a lot bit) wrong, but it was an absolute joy to pretend to be graceful for a couple of hours. And when we were waltzing at the end, there was a bit of a stair to play with and somehow there was goofy dancing happening. I don't know why... I still do prefer the contra to the country, but I guess while I wait for myself and jor to get our acts together and organize a contra, I'll just have to wait. And honestly, once we do get a dance organized, I'll probably have to wait some more because I refuse to dance to canned music and therefore will probably have to be in the band. Good thing I've been practicing..
The fifth string peg on my banjo fell out, but I've got some advice in order to get my banjo back into working condition and will soon attempt surgery. I guess this means I've been doing my practicing like a good girl so it wanted a break. That means I've actually been spending time with the guitar for the past two nights and I'm always amazed at what my muscle memory holds that my verbal memory has long since mislaid the words for.
The biggest animal sighting of the last couple of days was our very own scorpion in our very own place where we keep the sheets and blankets. We needed to get a sheet out to pin to the ceiling so the little animals (antish? termitish? who knows...) that were pooping on us all night long would instead be pooping in a diaper and we could rest easy. jor opened the cupboard (the door swings down and it's at about 5') and there was a little friend. She may have yelled, or squeaked, or just demanded my immediate attention. I can't recall. But then there was a search for an appropriate capturing device and glasses with which to see said scorpion. Needless to say, I was too slow and it snuck away while I was trying to get all of the things. We pulled out some of the sheets with the trusty, ever handy, broom, but to no avail. Oh well. I've started being more cautious with my clothes and sheets, but I still forget to check my shoes every single morning.

Fridge Magnets

2008-08-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

I told Hannah I would post the link to the site that has all of the photos she took during the talent show and which now live as magnetic poetry on our refrigerator. Some of the other new teachers were over here for dinner a few days ago and were very impressed. They can tell how much y'all love us. Thanks. We keep you in our sight at all times. Anyone who isn't on the fridge can feel free to send us prints to put in our rotating frames of friends. 4x6 please. Address below:

Escuela de los Amigos
300 metros al sur de la fabrica de queso
5655 Monteverde, Puntarenas
Costa Rica

So, the link to photos is http://www.doktorwise.com/jorannfarewell/Site/JorAnnFarewell.html

Living in a Cloud

2008-08-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how cool it would be to live in a cloud forest and that sometimes I would actually be inside of clouds. It's different than in New England, where fog smells different than non-foggy air. It doesn't smell like it's going to rain. In fact, it doesn't actually smell different at all. Nor does it feel wet, even though I know it's moisture. But it sure is pretty. It moves very fast and I can see curves and thin parts and dense parts. I guess it's most like the steam that comes from a hot shower, but it isn't warm. It swirls and rises and falls and comes and goes. Sometimes, when we are at an overlook, we can see that we're actually above some clouds. It isn't fog. It's clouds. That's so cool. I think I remember being told that we are at around 1500 meters, which is supposedly the height at which some people begin to feel the effects of altitude. I have some pretty icky childhood memories of the first days of ski trips in Colorado and Montana and being nauseous and throwing up while everyone else is having a good time. But after a few days I always felt better. So my first days here had a little nausea and fatigue, which was maybe a combo of missing you all, realizing that we actually left, and altitude. We miss you, but now you have the opportunity to learn what it's like in a cloud forest, and we'll eventually come home.

Armadillo Love Shack

2008-08-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

More adventures in wildlife last night. We’ve had our share of oversize creepy crawlies but as of yet, no interesting mammals or rodents...until last night. At 4 am I woke up and heard lots of banging around, like something was in the house knocking into chairs and stuff. After listening for a few minutes to determine whether it was in the house or on the roof I woke Annie up and said, “I think there’s something in the house.” She listened and said, “What do you want me to do about it?” So I put on my slippers (no one wants to step on anything gross or get bitten on the toes at night, right?), turned on the light, and grabbed the broom. I cautiously entered the non-bedroom room and flipped on the lights. These are the times you appreciate electricity, let me tell you. A flame’s light only goes so far. I scanned the room and saw nothing, plus the noise had stopped. I entered the bathroom, broom first, and found nothing in there so I went back to bed. Convinced that the animal was not in the bedroom and wanting to keep it that way, I shut the bedroom door. I couldn’t figure out how it would have gotten in and was wondering if there were any holes in the floor or in cupboards that we didn’t know about. (Once when we lived in Hinesburg, VT there was a big hole behind the cabinet under the sink and there was a day when a very large rodent paid a visit, scrambling around in there). It got quiet enough for me to go back to sleep until 5:15 when I woke up convinced that Annie was digging around in the suitcases under my side of the bed. I said very emphatically, “What are you doing?!” and she says from in the bed on her side, “Huh?” It was then that I realized it was the animal again, except this time in the bedroom, right under the bed, pushing around the suitcases. We both stood up on the bed and pulled the blankets up so we could see if it came out. I turned on the light again, standing on the nightstand to get to the switch. I went into the other room to get the broom and a flashlight to shine under the bed. I saw nothing, so Annie pulled the suitcases out with the broom handle. Nothing. There was nothing under the bed, but it was still making the crashing noises. What a relief to realize it was under the house, not in the house, whatever it was. We made a lot of noise to see if it would go away and were about to go back to sleep when I looked out the window and saw an armadillo running in the grass. It ran back under the house and then ran back out with another armadillo. It turns out we’re hosting an armadillo love shack!

Taratulas and Giant Cockroaches!

2008-08-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well, things are exciting in Emily House (that’s the name of where we live). A few days ago there was a giant bug in the house that I first thought to be a grasshopper. Upon closer inspection, Annie convinced me it was a giant cockroach. Today, Annie was outside reading in the grass and found a furry spider on her pants leg (good reason to always wear pants) and we suspect it was a tarantula. Imagine her saying “get it off, get it off,” making me do it, then telling me, “Now it’s on you.” She was less than descriptive about where, so I was looking all over, finally finding it on my right shoulder, five inches from my neck. Eek! There is also a giant wasp buzzing in a window trying to get out. Everything is bigger here. After consulting with some neighbors who’ve been here forever, the roach really was a three inch long grasshopper chilling on a kitchen chair. The tarantula, we aren’t so sure about. It wasn’t big like the ones we’ve seen in cages and movies, but it sure was furry and brown. Baby tarantula? Our inherent fear or discomfort around insects and things with many legs is strange and strong. We saw two green parrots at the house yesterday. Did you know they mate for life? There was also a glimpse of a blackish squirrel type animal jumping from tree to tree. No monkeys yet. We’ll keep you posted.

Yesterday, at the crack of dawn...well, not really...dawn is at 5:30 and we didn’t go until 6:30...we went to the farmers’ market. Oh joy of joys! We spent $10 and came home with two bags full of fruits and veggies, all grown right here. Well, some of them are from down the mountain a little, but that’s still pretty close. One grower even uses organic practices, so we bought whatever we could from him. Some of the more exotic purchases include whole pineapples and star fruit. You can even get lychees here. They grow in this really pretty red prickly outer skin. The mangoes weren’t ripe so we didn’t buy any.
Last night we had some of the other new teachers over for dinner. Annie made really yummy sweet pepper soup, which costs a bazillion dollars to make in the US, but only pittance here. And she made yummy bread. The others brought empanadas, which we learned to make at our Costa Rican cooking class, and banana bread cake. Then we learned to play Euchre, a game a bit like bridge and spades played a lot in the Midwest. The people who work at this school really are pretty awesome.

So, we had a cooking lesson that was really helpful, especially in terms of using what’s available and without some of the conveniences we know at home. I can now make really good beans, handmade tortillas, empanadas, picadillo (which is mostly this really yummy vegetable called chayote), and plantains. I already knew how to fry cheese, but our teachers told us to use higher heat than I did before. I could totally get used to eating rice and beans every day.

We’ve been meeting a lot of people, some of them the original settlers, some of their descendants, some long-time residents who came and stayed, some tourists, some native Costaricenses (that’s how you say Costa Ricans in Spanish. A person from the US is estadounidence. And around here it is very bad form to use the word America to mean the US. To Ticos, America means both the North and South American continents. And Central America isn’t really its own continent; it just describes a geographical or political region. Here’s another interesting tidbit: geographically, Panama is part of Central America, but politically, it is part of South America.

I started work in the Monteverde Institute library yesterday. I talked a lot with the library coordinator who’s been there since the beginning, about the vision and goals of the place, then we got down to priority number one: weeding. When a library consists entirely of donations, you’re bound to get some stuff you don’t want. And we want to get the collection cataloged and into a searchable catalog so people know what is there. But it’s a big waste of time to catalog things you plan to get rid of, so first comes the weeding. We also are thinking about rearranging the materials in such a way that they are easy to find by students in particular courses. The Institute runs courses on a few environmental biology topics, eco-tourism, gender studies, and public health. Their second priority is to serve local researchers conducting studies in the area. And lastly, they want to serve the local community. The Quaker school has a pleasure reading library open to the public so we feel confident maintaining the Institute as a strictly research library. But I really need to help them get some funds. That place is very pretty, but the resources are very old and very patchy. Maybe I’ll even find an organization that wants to pay me to work in the library, since the Institute can’t. Anyone with ideas should leave me comments. This job will be a lot more fun with some money to spend on resources, so think about those funding sources too.

Not much...

2008-08-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

Full days lately. The biggest event of yesterday, visiting the clinic for my ear infection, was oddly reassuring. There are two things I learned: I can understand medicalese in two different languages about equally and the emergency room in Costa Rica (at least yesterday) is about the same speed as the ones I've been to in the states, with less waiting time in the examining room. I have been very nervous about speaking Spanish and have been taking the easy way out as much as possible. Today we spent the entire day with the whole staff doing group building stuff and having a shorter meeting for worship. It was meeting for business day, so we just left before they got started. It is good to have meeting once again so prevalent in my life. Also, one of the elders in the community spoke about her experience going to Hiroshima 23 years after we dropped the A-bomb. I had been contemplating a song that Reeve taught at camp (Friends, only love can bring peace, so let us love with all our hearts and all our minds til peace is won, and peace is won) for most of meeting up until that point and hadn't yet gotten around to figuring out what day it is today. It was good to be reminded by someone with experience. Then the Fred Small song about Cranes over Hiroshima was trying to go through my head, but I've only got the chorus left at this point. I don't have anything enlightening to say on the subject, just that it throws me for a loop every August 6th. It's good to be thrown. What am I doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, though? That's still up in the air. I guess the more people who know how to actually resolve their conflicts there are in the world, the less likely it is to happen again, but I can teach and teach and it doesn't change the rampant wars.The computer just crashed so I lost a bunch about what I've been up to at school - cleaning the science closet and workshopping about getting to know and trust each other and arting about it as well. I think I wrote some more about how school starts on the 19th, but I have time this Sunday, maybe Friday afternoon, and all day Thursday and Friday of next week plus the weekend so even though we've got a lot of workshop stuff happening, I should be okay. I want more team time, and we've only got time with our subject area groups, but I guess I'll just have to find a way to fit that in with the folks on my team. It's also a little tricky because three of us are 5-8 and one is 7-12 (the only one who overlaps) and she and I have to find significant time to talk about how we're going to do math because we're co-teaching the 7/8 class. It'll be good, but it's really hard to find that time. You'll be glad to know my ears seem to be clearing up (somewhat on their own before I went to the clinic, at least pressure wise) and even though antibiotics might be evil, it's still nice to think they can fix my problem (so long as I'm only thinking short term, I guess). Yup. It'll be good to be able to hear again, and talk without significant reverb. That's one reason I really haven't been talking, aside from the fact that most everything at school is in Spanish because there are fewer people (me) who don't know Spanish than there are non-native English speakers. They seem to know more than they let on, but they don't speak in English any more than I speak in Spanish. I'm getting more comfortable, but I have no doubt it's going to take a lot of time.

Jobs, Clinics, Urban Jungles

2008-08-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

Queridos Amigos,
Thanks to those people who sent us nice emails. Feel free to comment on the blog itself also if you have questions others might like to know. And read the comments to see more from us, though we won’t have much access until Friday, when we get our home account set up. Mmm, dial up. It’s been a long time since I’ve known that friend.
Well, we’ve had more adventures since last writing. We went to a square dance danced to records (you know those big round things with visible grooves that spin around with a needle?). Not really my style and I didn’t know anyone so it wasn’t that fun for me, but the enthusiasm for community dancing here is terrific. There is already an English Country Dance that happens monthly, but again, it isn’t my preferred style. I’m hoping we can stir up some interest in contradancing and put together a live band, which would of course make it appealing.
The next day we went to Quaker meeting. We were a little late because Annie was bringing bread for the post-meeting potluck and it was taking a while. However, in Costa Rica, it isn’t such a big deal to be late, even to meeting. There were a bunch of students from the Bank Street School of Education (in NY) visiting and another student group from CT, so it was packed with young people. Probably won’t be like that all the time. But we were very welcomed as new teachers at the school and a lot of people went out of their way to come talk to us. We’ve already met many of the community founders and elders and most of the teachers at the school. The food was delicious and conversation plentiful. Then we went to the Monteverde Institute to try to use their wireless internet, but were stymied by a locked network. But things have a way of working out somehow in ways you didn’t expect. We started talking to a woman who had seen us at meeting and it somehow came up that I am a librarian and she took this big breath and said, “Oh we need you so much right now!” The person who’s been doing this big digitization project from UVM just finished her sabbatical and went back to VT and the two volunteers who have been long-term helpful are leaving at the end of this week. We talked a little more and then I asked what her role is at the Institute and she said, “I’m the director.” Wow, did I luck out. I’m supposed to call to make an appointment to meet with her and the librarian this week. Then there was this big hullaballoo because a quetzal had landed in a tree nearby, much closer than you usually get to see quetzals, if you even get to see them at all. I’ll admit to not being a huge bird person, but it is an attractive and special bird because it is so uncommon to see them. They played a big part in Maya or Aztec (I don’t remember which) culture and art. So we didn’t get internet, but we might have found me some work (probably unpaid, but fun and a resume builder while I’m here).
I get a little lonely at night here. Maybe because it gets dark so early (6ish) and maybe just because it’s a new place. And maybe because we’re so far (30 min walk) from most of the other teachers and people we know. Tonight we’re having dinner at the home of some neighbors who have children at the school. Should be fun.
Yesterday was a big urban adventure. We went back down to San José to pick up the other new teachers and complete some bureaucracy for our work visas. The three of them were staying in three totally far apart areas of San José. The first one was not at the place she said she’d be because it was closed. After half an hour talking to people and standing around, we figured out she was across the street at a different hotel. The second one was hard to find too and when we arrived the front desk person said there was no one there by her name. We didn’t know what to do so we stood around a bit by the van. But then Annie suggested emailing her, just in case she was near her email. Turns out she was and she came running outside to find us just about to leave. Her reservation had been under another name. Oy, so difficult. The third new teacher was easy to find and all went smoothly, but she had her cat with her, so it had to stay in the car while we went to give away our fingerprints. We had to go to the downtown police station and fill out some papers and then have private interviews with a clerk who asked us things like are you married (that was fun) and what color are your eyes and do you have any scars and what is your profession and why are you here and on and on. I managed to do the whole thing in Spanish, though I did ask for a repeat once or twice. After an early surly attitude, like many clerks, she warmed up. Costa Ricans are pretty nice in general. They are known for it. We stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch because we were seriously hungry by then and most of us had the casado, which is the typical Costa Rican meal. It means married and includes any variety of rice and beans, plantains, cheese, eggs, avocado, meat, fruit, etc. Yummy. We also tried a bunch of appetizers that were yummy. I can’t wait to learn to cook beans the way they do here. The ride up was beautiful. You can see the Nicoya Peninsula a lot of the way. We all chatted a lot. Everyone is so interesting and nice and going to be great to work with. Annie is especially excited about the teacher who will be doing the English/History component for her grades. They have aspirations of collaborating a lot. Our driver, José, was also very nice. He chatted with me a lot and went slowly enough for me to understand. It has been my experience so far that most taxi drivers are chatty and personable people and like to joke around. It makes the ride quite pleasant. It was a long long day, leaving the house at 5:30am and getting back at 7:00pm.
Today was also a long day, though not quite as long. We got the official tour of Santa Elena (the biggest and most urban neighborhood in the Monteverde zone) from the assistant director, who has lived here for 5 years. We went to the bank, the bookstore, the pharmacy, and the grocery, coming home with bags of staples. There is a small grocery near home, but it doesn’t have everything you need to set up house. We bought a gallon of olive oil, some baking necessities, and things like soy sauce. We’re going to have trouble getting unscented and unchemically cleaning products here. We’re counting on visitors to bring us things like laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, etc. Let us know when you’re coming and we’ll have lots of requests.  After we sent the other teachers home, Risë took Annie and me to the medical clinic to get her ear checked out. There are lots of jokes about how Costa Rican doctors like to give antibiotics via injection. You go to the doctor and get a shot. But Annie got no shot. Just some pills and drops. Let’s hope they work. We didn’t have to wait too long and the doctor (nurse) we finally saw was great and nice and efficient and friendly. Risë translated for us, but I understood most of it. Even Annie understood a lot because medical terms are so similar in English and Spanish and she’s learning vocabulary about time and stuff. She did great. Now hopefully she’ll stop being sick and can get back to her usual high-energy self. The school paid for the visit because her insurance hasn’t started yet, but she’ll be on national health plan, which gets you all that medical care, including prescriptions, free. Rock on Costa Rica with no military.
We got our camera back so now we’ll start posting photos too.

More from Annie

2008-08-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

I would tell you about the paring knife I accidentally put in a carry on bag really late the night before we left for reasons I still cannot understand. Maybe it’s because it was late and the knife was lost when I was packing the other ones and I was confused about which bags we were checking and which we were carrying, or maybe it was just because I was tired. It’s always fun to talk to the head TSA guy and the cop who’s on duty. “Do you always carry a knife with you?” “What’s your phone number? How can that be your number if as you said you’re moving?” Right. Well, I don’t have a cell, I couldn’t remember the work number here and so I just lied, gave them my home number and said that I left it on to retrieve messages, despite the fact that I knew full well they turned it off early. Even with the “restrictions” that the airlines have about numbers of bags, they let us on with a banjo, a guitar, a backpack, a small personal bag and a rolling suitcase. I love the little first class closet. They, for the most part, are happy to let you put your guitar in there (but not your banjo because it’ll fit above). ps. The heaviest bag was 49.4 pounds. Using the scale from the neighbors it had come in at 48 so I was pretty sure we were safe, but when that number popped up, I was psyched and proud simultaneously. Not much for humble around the insane packing job that I did.

I have to second what Jordan said about Leo. Even with one of my ears mostly non-functional his stories and chatting kept us in good spirits and energized about what we’re undertaking. He visits his parents a bunch down here so I’ll be excited if we can find a way to meet up.

Speaking of non-functional ears, my right ear canal has now swollen mostly closed. I thought it was a wax thing earlier, so I was using some drops we have from CVS. After talking with Susan, I wonder if maybe I was using with the wrong meds because they’re peroxide based and perhaps that just irritated the ear tissues. I’d love to talk to any of you with medical experience about what I should do besides arnica around the outside and advil pretty regularly. The swelling has gotten worse over the past two days and now I have to pull on my ear significantly to get the canal to open at all, which then causes it to hurt in a different way: most of the time the pain comes in waves, more waves after I’ve been moving around for at least a half hour building with intensity to a sharp constant pain, not really throbbing, not shooting. It made a lot of noise on the plane, and some while we were coming up the mountain. I expected that and it’s only the really loud pops that hurt, but they’re a surprise every time, which is a little hard to deal with. I can sleep when it’s hurting if I’ve taken advil, but walking around for long periods of time hurts, as does opening my mouth widely and smiling too much. There’s the problem because when you’re trying to show yourself as a friendly person, the smile is a widely used tool. Fortunately, I’ve got some time today and tomorrow to take extra naps and walk slowly.

Starting on Monday I’m on pretty much full time with a trip to San Jose to get papers sorted out and meet the rest of the new teachers. I’m pretty psyched about both of those things. As we were standing in the immigration line, I heard someone speak disparagingly about San Jose and I have to say I’ve only had good experiences there so far. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. We didn’t spend that much time there last time, and none so far, so I’m looking forward to understanding the capital a little better and maybe learning my way around a bit better.

Sunset’s happening. Pretty. It sure is nice to be living up high and have a consistent view of both the sunrise and the sunset for a change. Not quite as much sunrise as sunset, but I’m not arguing. And yes, for reference, I was up for the sunrise.

We have a request. We brought with us one picture showing device that has room for three
horizontal pictures. At the moment, the only one of you represented is Hilary. We would love it if you could send us a picture of you, oriented horizontally, and yes, it will need to be on paper instead of electronic because we don’t yet know if we have access to appropriate printers. I’d like to rotate our friends and family through the picture frames so we can always have you near. We do have some excellent fridge magnets with many of the local to Montague folks, but...

We're Here!!!!

2008-08-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

Queridos Amigos… Estamos en paraíso, verdaderamente.
So much to say to you all.... Firstly, thank you thank you thank you on top of thank you to the people who helped with the frantic packing and cleaning: Kieran, Graham, Eli, Jane, Susan, Emma, Kai and Lucy and to the true saviors who helped above and beyond, we couldn’t have finished without: Kirsten, Hannah and Rachel. People cooked for us, washed a grimy closet, cleaned toilets, threw away an embarrassing amount of trash, took away things that are still usable but we no longer need, all with amazing good cheer that kept our spirits high. Thank you again and again. You know we’ll do the same for you when we return.

Now, onto the stuff you want to know…
Costa Rica is amazing. Travel here was miraculously quite smooth, with the exception being that we couldn’t bring Toast. Most airlines won’t fly animals if it’s predicted to be over 85 degrees Fahrenheit in any of the places the plane is on the ground at the time it will be there. We might have to wait a long time until it is under 85 at noon in Miami. I miss her already, though I know she’s in good hands with Rye until then. There is another airline that shuttles animals around in climate controlled vans and therefore has no temperature limit, but they charge a million dollars for that service and don’t have a very direct route from Hartford to San Jose. We don’t have a million dollars. We sat in exit row seats on the first flight (always appreciated by my extra long legs) and on the second flight chatted with a super nice guy named Leo who is from Costa Rica but currently lives in Miami. He gave us all sorts of info that it is sometimes hard to ask people. Thanks Leo. We found Risë, the school’s assistant director and our ride to Monteverde, easily. The taxi that carried us up the mountain was a big van with a super nice driver named Walner. He spoke slowly so I could understand and drove very, very carefully, which is somewhat unusual around here. Roads are scary and taxi drivers are scarier. I felt very safe in his taxi. He’s also good at navigating the potholes and bumps on the dirt roads closer to our destination. Wow it’s bumpy. It was dark by 6:45 and as we drove higher there was more fog, but then we came out above it. Reinforcement that we are really in the cloud forest. He drove us right to the door of Emily House, the name of our home. I want to say this very loudly… It’s so beautiful!!!!!! One of the original settlement houses, it’s made entirely of wood with metal roofing and it’s huge for two people. There is even a single guest bed, so all you big talkers who say you’re going to visit better get your butts here. Some other day where there is less to say we’ll describe the house in detail with lots of photos. Summary, it feels like we’re living in a cabin in northern Wisconsin (we’re both from the Midwest, so that is our association) and it’s dreamy. Someone left us roast chicken with veggies and breakfast fixings so we’d have something to eat right away. This school where Annie is working is really going all out to make sure we feel welcome and have what we need to adjust to living abroad. We spent some time unpacking and then slept for many, many hours. It’s been a long time since I’ve slept well and the night before traveling we slept only one or two hours. I feel so much better today.

And today was also awesome. We’re almost done unpacking and finding places for everything. Then we called Risë again and she walked us around, showing us places, introducing us to people, taking us grocery shopping. Then she passed us off to Heather who has been here for two years and she took us to the fábrica (cheese factory), which is awesome. We bought a lot of cheese. Next, we went to look at the Escuela de los Amigos, where Annie will be teaching and Heather showed us around. It’s so beautiful. We checked out some books from the library, since we brought nothing to read. Then we walked home. It’s about a 20-25 minute walk to the school, mostly uphill, but not too steep. It feels a lot like living in rural Vermont, but people walk everywhere instead of drive and everyone is so friendly (except the tourists). I am going to have to be really friendly and chatty to make sure people here don’t think I’m a tourist. Already my Spanish is getting better and I can understand people when they speak at a slowish pace. Heather was talking to a teen who takes violin lessons from her and I understood everything. Heather also thinks I might be able to teach some lessons, since she does it reluctantly and there is high demand for violin here. I’ll probably be able to borrow a fiddle here, but I didn’t bring any of my music books, so I might be asking folks to send me stuff. When I teach music I like to require performance/service elements, which could be playing for contra/square/English country dancing, which all happens here, often accompanied by records! We’re planning to attend the square dance tonight, though we are mostly “contra snobs.” But we need to meet the dance community to stir up some interest in contra. I brought my tiny collection of dance calls in case I was ever “called” on to lead dances, but if anyone has any favorite dances, they should email them to me. (That is specifically a request for Alex and Rachel Nevitt by the way, though anyone is welcome to send me dances).

Okay, I think I might be caught up, obviously omitting some things because this is already so long and Annie hasn’t even had her say yet. Photos to come. Accidentally left the camera in the taxi and don’t have it back yet.

And we don’t have internet at home yet, so we have to walk to the Instituto, about 25 minutes, to blog or email. We’ll let you know when we get set up at home and if it is dial-up or high-speed. We do have a phone if anyone wants to bear the long distance charges for a quick call: 011-506-2645-5001.

Not procrastinating, taking a break from heavy moving

2008-07-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

Here is the stuff that Annie built. I just put the shelf in the bathroom and maybe it'll get painted. It's got four shelves and when we get back we'll trim it out with tile and pretty wood. jordan finished painting all of the trim, etc. on the shed. The roof doesn't leak anymore (fingers crossed). The bikes are hung. Now I'm loading it full of stuff. Oh the joys are unending.

On the topic of the most amazing party ever!

2008-07-26T18:33:00.001-07:00

We just got some pictures from Chris, well, got in that they're on the web now. This is where you should go to see the pictures. It was pretty much the best talent show I've ever seen. The first act was from 59 Taylor Hill Road. It had some ingenious elements: the olders playing the youngers and the youngers playing us for starters. The costume elements and the props were spot on. Also, the story clearly pulled from real life experience and was funny while not making fun. All in all, an excellent theatrical performance. Pictures include evidence of improv flute from Kiwi, drumming from Chad, fiddle playing and song leading from Efan, a song in Chinese from Christine, lovely banjo playing from Joe (not Chad), a magic trick from Devon, and of course the kicker for me, my favorite song in pretty much the entire universe from Eli, jordan and Emmy. Other performances included for the first time ever before a large audience, the mosquito, cricket and snail by Zoe and Rye, an awesome improv clog by Lea complete with orange slice eating, two dance moments from Raey, weird mouth music from Carol, piano playing downstairs by Claudia, a poem recitation from Tom, and of course Emmy steering us smoothly through the evening as our cruise director. All of us singing together with Efan leading the way was nothing short of amazing. I know full well that all of the performances don't come close to representing the amount of talent there was in the room, so don't be misled by this post. Alex didn't bring his accordion, Goodwin didn't show us how to tie any special knots, and no one gave extensive powerpoint presentations on their favorite thing to do when no one is looking. I am eternally grateful to jordan for having this genius idea and roping Raey, Hannah and Emmy in to make it happen. Golly. It was just amazing. If you weren't there, I can truly say that you were missed.

My Turn

2008-07-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

Well, Annie's been doing so much posting that I figure it's my turn. We're entering the last week before we go and it's getting very real as I say goodbye to people I know I won't see again for a few years. I had breakfast with my librarian mentor this morning and analyzed my career history and future. Together we came up with a few things I can do to make sure I'm not sabotaging my career by going to Costa Rica for a while. I'm going to do some writing while I'm there, since so many of my favorite librarians are writers. Well, actually, how would I know about the other ones, since they don't write. And I guess I have some things to say about working in libraries and with teens. My mentor said she's never known me to not have something to say, which is funny because my excuse for not writing is that I have nothing to say. Guess I'll have to rethink that. :)

Our Costa Rica paperwork is finally done. That's a big relief, since that was the stuff we didn't have much control over. Now we just have to finish some projects and pack and clean the house. Yuck. I hate this part. And I have to decide how many teeshirts I'm allowed and how many pairs of socks and should I bring one hat or two? It's hard to know how wacky I can be with my clothing and still be seen as professional and helpful, so I'm going the more conservative route. No chicken hat.

We also finally have homes for kitties, which is a HUGE relief, since their plans kept falling through. Ingrid will go two houses down with a neighbor. Truck is going to someone we don't know, but found us through a friend. He'll have a 4 month old kitten to bat around. Toast seems a little anxious about all the chaos in the house and us being so busy, but she has no idea how awesome it will be to live in the jungle. Just call her jungle dog.

random links

2008-07-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

First, I do appreciate woot.com. That should be said. I borrowed all of these links from their linking blog.

Second, I've been talking about how spas should have a treatment where fish exfoliate your skin because it feels so cool. You can have your free exfoliation many places along the sawmill river, or apparently you can go to a spa in DC for fishy exfoliation like you can get in Turkey and other Asian countries. http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/homestyle/07/21/fish.pedicure.ap/index.html and there's a picture at cuteoverload.com

Finally, I really liked these pictures and think some of my teacher friends might use them to inspire some arty learning, since I'm not sure how I'll use them next year in my math teaching capacity. http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/30-most-incredible-abstract-satellite-images-of-earth

I am the queen of the almost done project

2008-07-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of days I've gotten the little bathroom toilet removed and most of the rest of the flooring put in. There's a 2 inch gap at the back of the room and frankly, that can wait until after we get back from Costa Rica now that I've taken out and re-set the toilet. That was an adventure. I've almost finished priming the entire shed. I only have to do the window frames to be totally primed which means today I'll do that and then hopefully get started on painting the entire thing. Oh, and I have to put the doorstops in and get the door to a place where it can open more easily. Hanging doors is way harder than you think it's going to be. Unless you think it's hard. I can only think of one project that I haven't even started. Everything else is almost done. And if that doesn't make you breathe easier, I don't know what will. Then again, I still am worried about not being able to "finish" everything before we leave...

Shed Photos

2008-07-19T10:46:00.001-07:00

Here are those shed photos Annie was too lazy to post. Intentionally, but somewhat awkwardly, the shed is more attractive than our house.

Not much we can do about that, but we'll paint the house a pretty red color when we get back from Costa Rica.

The Shed, etc.

2008-07-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten almost all of the shed ready for the big move of everything into it. I still have to put the door stops on the door frame, and I've only just started priming everything, but it does feel quite good to be almost there. now if it could just cool off a bit so I can work for a longer period without practically dying, that'd be great. So there. I'll put up some pics once I get it painted, probably. Unless jor takes some and posts them herself.

cars, etc.

2008-07-11T19:21:00.001-07:00

So, we looked at the IRS information about donating cars and it's less of a good thing than it used to be. That means that we're selling the 98 white subaru legacy wagon too. It's got stuff wrong with it visually that doesn't really affect how it runs, and about 150k miles on it. Only one owner - jordan - and she took pretty good care of it. Let us know if you know of anyone...

Otherwise, today we figured out that with our upcoming brief trip to Burlington, we weren't likely to have enough time to send our Coris back to Boston to get certified before we sent them to New York to get authenticated by the Costa Rican consulate and get them back before we left. And that meant an impromptu trip to Boston. The good news is that it only took 15 minutes once we got there and we were lucky with parking in the center of Boston because I could stay in the car in our illegal spot that wasn't double parking. And the other good news is that since we were feeling so good about how well it went that we wandered in the North End for a while and brought back cannoli for people (including me). I do love me some cannoli.

Random musing: when you're living in tight quarters, tenement style, do you have a good relationship with the persons on the other end of your clothesline? Do you share or do you each have one that connects on the other's domicile? This is what we wondered about while wandering. I do rather like wandering.

stuff to lend, stuff to sell

2008-07-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

We have stuff that we need to get rid of, temporarily or permanently. Here is a big list. If you want to borrow, buy or just get some of this stuff, let us know.

Things to Lend Out While in CR

* sewing machine
* typewriter
* tools
* non-gas non-electric plain old push lawnmower
* gas grill
* guitars
* bouzouki
* cats
* plants
* queen sized bed & normal sized futon that folds couchlike
* various other furniture

We are selling my green 2001 Toyota Corolla with 70k miles. It gets mid 30s mpg all of the time and if you are a hypermiler, you can probably get more, but I'm still learning. Blue book is $5500 and it comes with a cd player and good speakers up front. I've also got snows for it, but I might just sell them.

The couch needs to go, but I'll probably just freecycle it. I've also got a broken electric bass (just the electric parts are broke) and a broken mandolin (not remembering what's up with it, but it might be neck related).

Video calls

2008-07-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

I hope y'all are setting up your Skype accounts (skype.com) so we can call and video conference for free through our computers. It's super fun and a little weird like the Jetsons. If you have an account please email it to one of us so we can be in touch and see your face when we miss you.

paperwork

2008-06-27T10:00:00.001-07:00

At this moment, I'm officially sick of trying to figure out which forms I need to send to which offices and how much they'll charge me for the privilege of stamping my paper from a different office to say that it's real. So there. That's what I have to say.

Marketplace is a lovely radio program.

2008-05-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

And now they've added a lovely interactive game to edumacate people like you and me about the US budget. It's way harder to make a national budget than it is to decide about which kind of cheese you're going to buy.

Play Budget Hero

Moving to Costa Rica

2008-05-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

We went to Costa Rica for vacation in February and by the third day were saying to each other, "We need to find a way to live here." Within a few weeks, Annie had gotten a job as a math and science teacher for grades 5-8 at the Monteverde Friends School. We never made it to Monteverde on our travels, but got close enough to know we're going to love it. So is Toast, our 1 year old black lab. Just call her Jungle Dog. If anyone wants to take our two black cats for two years while we're away, PLEASE let us know.

We will update this blog often while in Costa Rica so that you, our friends and family, can keep up with what we're doing and seeing. But it will be sparse until then. A lot to do before we move out of the country.

should we keep up the blog?

2007-05-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

hey friends who may or may not be reading this since the wedding....should we keep writing on the blog to let you know what's going on? we could post photos of the house and the dog we plan to get this summer. we could tell you about our stressful jobs and why we never call you on the phone. we could tell you that the annual gemini party is june 16 this year. please come. post a comment or send an email if you want to see the blog updated. mwah.

Fun outfit or hat

2006-08-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

In the packing list, we listed a fun outfit or hat. We've pretty much decided that dinner will be a dress up in said fun outfit or hat affair. So bring one and wear it. Bring two if you want. The dance is yet another time when you could have a costume change if you so desired. If you don't have one - costume, hat or fun outfit - don't worry too much. It's just the best time to use the polyester and gold lame (I can't find the accent on this thing) that's been sitting around in your closet.

Reply Cards

2006-08-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

So, apparently the line that says "your names and kids' ages" wasn't totally clear. Someone who shall remain nameless forgot to put their name on their reply card. This person should tell us who they are if they don't want us to be surprised when they show up. They're apparently in Vermont right now - postmarked White River Junction - and are vegetarian and staying at F&W and eating all of the meals. This is all good data, but please, those of you who haven't sent your cards back yet, put your names on 'em. please please please.

Quaker-style Wedding Ceremonies

2006-07-18T10:13:00.001-07:00

Our wedding ceremony will be in the style of Quakers, which is very different from a traditional wedding. Learn more about what to expect by reading the following passage taken from a Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_wedding

A traditional wedding ceremony in a Friends meeting is similar to any other Meeting for Worship, and therefore often very different from the experience expected by non-Friends. The attendees gather for silent worship, often with the couple sitting in front of the meeting (this depends on the layout of that particular meeting house).

Out of the silence the couple will exchange what the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting describes as "promises" [1] with each other; since traditionally Friends have no clergy, there is no one person to “marry” them. Instead they declare themselves married before God and those gathered.

They then sign the wedding certificate which, for the purposes of the meeting, means they are now married. All those present are invited to share messages with the gathered meeting as they feel led (as in any other Meeting for Worship, see main article on the Society of Friends). At the close of worship all of those present at the meeting are asked to sign the wedding certificate as witnesses that the wedding took place and acknowledging their presence at the service. Often these certificates are hung prominently in the homes of the couple throughout their married lives as a reminder of the vows they took, and the people they shared that moment of their lives with.

This means anyone may share stories, songs, readings, etc. as they feel moved. Feel free to plan ahead, but trust your heart to know when or if you should speak. Unless the weather is uncooperative, we will be having the ceremony outside.

Ride Sharing

2006-07-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

We understand that F&W is far away from anything. Due to that fact, we would like to help you get there however we can.

If you can offer a ride, or need a ride, read or post here by clicking on "comments" in blue at the end of this post. We will try to coordinate rides offline as well if you send us pertinent information. We will delete this information after the wedding for privacy purposes. If there are enough people who need a ride at a specific time, we will also help coordinate renting an appropriately sized vehicle.

For example: Offering ride from Hartford airport to F&W. Space for three. Departing to F&W Sept 23 at 10am. Returning to Hartford Sept 24th arriving by 3pm. - Josephine Quiddler phone number/email goes here.

accomodations near farm & wilderness

2006-07-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

Housing and meals are provided at Farm & Wilderness. If you need special accomodations - fancier, flush toilets, a double bed, etc. here is a list of accomodations within a pretty small radius of camp. There are also places to stay in Woodstock that we did not include due to the distance. We have never stayed at any of these places and do not know what they're like. Sorry. All phone numbers are in the 802 area code.

INNS AND BED & BREAKFASTS

The Andrie Rose Inn – 13 Pleasant St, Ludlow, 228-4846, 14 miles

Combes Family Inn – 953 E Lake Rd, Ludlow, 228-8799, 9 miles

Corners Inn – Rt. 4, Bridgewater Corners, 672-9968, 7.8 miles

Cortina Inn – Rt. 4, Killington, 773-3333, 15 miles

Crisanver House – Wiley Hill Rd, Cuttingsville, 492-3589, 6 miles

Echo Lake Inn – 2 Dublin Rd, Ludlow, 228-8602, 8 miles

Governor’s Inn – 86 Main St, Ludlow, 228-8830, 16 miles

Grey Bonnett Inn – Rt. 100, Killington, 775-2537, 11 miles

Hawk Mountain Inn – Rt. 100, Plymouth, 672-3811, 6 miles

Maple Crest Farm – Cuttingsville, 492-3367, 10 miles

October Country Inn – Rt. 4, Bridgewater Corners, 672-3412, 8 miles

Okemo Inn – 61 Locust Hill Rd, Ludlow, 228-8834

Saltash Inn – Rt. 100A, Plymouth, 672-3748, 4 miles

Sherburne Valley Inn – Rt. 4, Killington, 422-9888, 6 miles

HOTELS – MOTELS

Cedarbrook Motor Inn – Rt. 100, West Bridgewater, 422-9666, 2 miles

Farmbrook Motel – Rt. 100A, Plymouth, 672-3621, 7mi

Val Roc Motel – Rt. 4, Killington, 422-3881, 3 miles