All doped up

You know its concerning when you come out of the doctor with not just one medication you need to take to get better, but four. Yikes. For the past two weeks plus a few days I've had a cold which has developed into a crazy cough that I can just not shake. Each evening, I lose about two hours of sleep while I hack a lung into the sink. Needless to say, for the first time in a long time, I'm actually willing to take antibiotics to help my body fight this thing. The doc told me I have bronchitis and he is concerned if we let it go to long it can develop into a chronic cough. So, now I have antibiotics, expectorants, anti-cough stuff....AND....to top it all off I got a shot in my nalga today that is supposed to reduce inflammation of the bronchial tubes. Which brings me to another episode of...

Its not BAD...its just different.

When you need a shot of something here, there is really no need to go to a doctors office. You buy the vial and syringe at a farmacia (if you can find one that carries the medicine you need - it took me five to find everything today) - and the lady behind the counter gives it to you at the little tienda. Very strange. Nothing bad happen, the needles are all take and toss individually wrapped and sterile, the lady was so gentle I hardly felt anything. But, that does not prevent it from being just different enough from the states to be very very strange.

Costa Ricans love them some salchicha

Salchicha. It sounds like something that would be awesome - like some sort of really fancy sausage. However, do not be confused. Salchicha is simply a hotdog without a bun. (Amusingly enough, hotdog is translated directly as 'perro caliente' in Spanish). Do not get me wrong, I'm not a hotdog hater - however - I certainly do not eat them very often - if ever. So, you can imagine my horror when I saw this add in our front gate. Does anything look more disgusting to you then this? Salchi Pops - mmm. Just when you thought Pizza Hut could not out-do themselves, they always come through....

You've been there before

You don't eat breakfast. You had a small lunch. Its starting to get late and you you are hungry. You love pizza and do not get it very often. You stare at the three sizes....you don't even acknowledge the first two because towards the end you read 'Eliminator' as the last size. Its simply gravy that when you buy one eliminator, you get the another entire one free. Then, as icing on the cake, you impulse buy spicey buffalo wings as well. Needless to say, more than half of our already too small freezer is full of pizza and I feel moderately ill. On this evening, Dominos wins the battle, yet again.

I wish I could report that we are all healthy besides the pizza overeating, but, no. Christy got over her pink eye in the left eye on Monday which was nice, but then caught it in her right eye. Thankfully though she managed to chase that out with some antibiotics. Elizabeth and I both have colds and by Christy's increasingly low voice, she is either taking HGH or she has the same thing we do (PLEEEAAASSEEE be the second).

I have a few more pictures. A couple below show the kids and I having a fun activity last weekend - washing the car. I asked them if they wanted to help me. They assured me yes, but the did nothing of the sort. None the less, it was fun to spray them with the hose for a bit. I have also included some pictures from the traditional dance put on buy several of our teachers at language school. It was really great to see....the pictures don't do it justice, but you can get a small taste of the event from friday.

The 'anti-help' as I like to call them. Every time I finally got the car clean of soap, they soaped it up again.
The real brains behind the operation. Did you forget that I dented my van 2 months ago? I didn't. There is the orange dent from the gate in the picture.

This water is cold....why am I out here?

Who wants to be a billionaire?

Times in the U.S. and around the world can be pretty scarey. Oil is expensive, food is expensive and how we might afford things in the future is uncertain. However, when I read arcticles like this, it is a reminder to me that as bad as things are, we are still in a different stratosphere then many other people. In the picture you can see the 500 million-dollar-note in Zimbabwee. They just added a 100 billion-dollar-note to keep up with their 2.2 million percent inflation. 80% of their population lives below the poverty line and they have shortages of basic goods. Puts it in perspective, no?

Little glimpses of the past...

It seems to me that sometimes when I am missing the U.S. more than usual, little things that made me laugh back there often cheer me up. Today was one of those days. Believe it or not, it was not the 'Chuck Norris is so...' email that circulated back maybe 3 years ago - I'm saving that one for another day. Today, rather, it was an email that my brother sent me maybe....hmm....seven years ago that I cried when I watched it. At the risk of losing more prayer supporters I'll embedded it below. You have to use my lense. I grew up playing Ikari Warriors, Street Fighter (I,II,III, Hyper, Versus Capcom, IV, Super Hyper, etc) and also other competition martial arts style games. This little short makes fun of everything that was both stupid and unfair about those games, and thus, makes me laugh. This game actually looks about as fair as the original Star Wars Return of the Jedi arcade game for those of you that can think back that far. I'm thinking specifically when you are flying on your vehicle through the forest after the imperial storm trooper - yeah, thats right - crazy hard.

As I was trying to transfer some files...

My computer told me the file would take a while. About 77 years....its going to be a long afternoon. I need to contact my friend who works at Microsoft and tell him it is crazy that this message would ever come up....ever.

Another week in paradise

Generally, a slow week except for the following:
1. Sammy got a fever right before his birthday
2. Christy got Pink-Eye on Thursday
3. I caught a cold this morning
4. Someone t-boned our car back in the states (in a parking garage!)
5. Someone hit my van on Saturday here in Costa

However, I want to turn a new leaf and be positive too:
1. Sammy had a great birthday
2. We had a date on Saturday as one of our friends watched the kids. It was nice to sit in peace and talk some without having our ears yelled in or me having to say, 'No no no no no no no'
3. Our landlord fixed the shower in our bathroom on Saturday
4. The person who t-boned my car in the US admitted guilt so it makes it easier with insurance
5. The person who hit my car here damaged his fender, but luckily only hit my tire which was fine

Besides all that happenings, things are good. I happen to have a lot of pictures so I've posted them all at once below here. The slideshow was an easier route, but if you want any individual pictures you should be able to pull them directly off the online photo album. If you have a slow internet connection or worse yet a dial up, this post will kill you. Sorry.

Lizzy gets more girl every day. She constantly talks about painting her nails or dressing up. In this short video, Christy has dressed her up with the new play silks and made her into a butterfly princess. Lizzy was pretty pumped. As a guy from an all-guy family, I don't get it.



Sammy's birthday was last week, he had a great time. We were hyping it the whole week before - so when July 16th finally rolled around, he was pretty excited. Christy, as usual, made the day very special with cake and many fun homemade gifts. I got him a soccer ball that had Nemo on it, but I had already given it to him the month before so they kids had two balls to play with instead of just one. Roxana got him a cute outfit and also a toy car that moves and signs on its own. I hope it runs out of batteries soon.



Christy did not go to school on Friday because she had to go to the hospital to get her eye checked out. We thought Lizzy might have pink eye too (was a little red and she was rubbing it). Thankfully, she did not. She enjoyed the day because she got to stay home from school and play with mom and Roxana.



Here are some shots we snapped this morning just for fun. Its a lazy day now. I am sick and Christy has pink eye - so we listened to church online and played some.

Sammy's birthday is tomorrow. However, tonight he came down with a 101 fever - poor little buddy. Here are some recent pictures of him to celebrate. Get well soon my friend. I love you.



Being silly with a hat.









Wearing dad's shoes.










Up close with the hat.

Not feeling quite right in the afternoon...

A fever on my birthday....how sad.

Why didn't you just ask me?

Usually when we have any interaction with our landlord - who is also our next door neighbor - it has been with Zeidy, the wife. She has always been really attentative to all the questions we have, and is overall great. Today we met her husband for the first time. He came over to let us know he wanted throw away a whole bunch of bamboo that was stacked up in our front parking area It was not in our way, but I'm just as happy to have it go in the trash. He, like Zeidy, was really nice.

We got to talking about life, what we are doing, where we are going, etc...and in the conversation we mentioned that we were happy to have a working dryer now with the rainy season. He said - in spanish of course - 'Dryer, you should have asked! I have one just sitting in my house waiting for people who rent this house to use. The last renter did not want it so I put it at my house...' I mentioned that he did not have a 220V line into thishouse and he said, 'Its easy, I would have installed one quickly for you...' I guess he probably just would have taken a 220 from his house through the wall to our dryer? I'm not sure what he had in mind, but it made me think that it probably would pay off for us to ask more questions around here like 'Do you have...' or 'Could you...' Oh well, we know for next time to ask our landlords for help when we need it.

Tonight we watched about half of Horton Hears a Who with Elizabeth and Sammy. Sammy was not all that interested, but it was neat to see how into the movie Elizabeth was. Not simply watching TV for the sake of watching TV, but asking questions like 'Is he going to fall!?!?...' 'Where is Horton going?' 'Whos is he talking to!?!' I think that the whole idea of the book is probably a bit hard for a 3 year old to grasp; however, she was doing a great job picking up on the smaller themes. Little kids grow up so fast. I've attached another example of how big she is getting. We work a fair bit at helping her read some basic words (mainly every night when I read books before bed time) - and Christy worked on this little lesson with Lizzy this morning. I am impressed that she wrote lift by herself! 'F' is a hard letter to draw

Dia de Cultura

Today was culture day at at school which means we did not have school! We did however get to experience a familiar site for many Costa Ricans - an example of a local carnival / fair. We came to school about the same time we would any other day, but instead of going to class, we went to several exhibits that contained many of the games that would normally be found at a local carnival. These include: trying to catch fake fish, bingo, ring toss, dart throws, jacks, bean bag tosses and many other games. We also got to learn about the art / history of making large masks / costums - AND - we got to experience a real live parade that contained a band and many of the life sized 'puppets' that might be in parades like this (see the video and pictures). Overall a pretty cool experience - I hope that we get to experience this in actuality too over the next couple years.

Thanks to Amie and Cohen, fellow ILE students mentioned in a previous blog entry, I have pictures and a small movie of the event (see below). I can't say thank you enough to them for being deligent about using their camera to capture meaningful events. In general, I don't use the camera unless something is shocking and/or amazing to me - however - there is certainly value in capturing daily events in our lives and they have proved that to me again and again in these few short weeks.

One of the more funny things that happened is that when the puppets were dancing and getting ready to leave - one came into the group of the students and starting dancing / coming close to everyone. I had Sammy on my back in a backpack carrier, and when the puppet came within a couple inches of his face, I could feel him stiffen up like a bored. He had a scowl on his face the rest of the time we were at school. I guess the puppets are good from a far but far from good.

Also amusing to me....I did not notice it when it was playing, but now all can think when I hear the band playing in this video is the Blue Oyster Cult Saturday Night Live skit titled 'MORE COWBELL!' If you've seen it, you know what I am talking about. Else, never mind this short paragraph.

Good news all over

The first good news is that we got water back on Sunday early in the afternoon. I think the entire city of San Jose breathed a sigh of relief when the first trickle started pouring out. Although because many got their water back almost 12 hours before others, there was some mild water envy going on for sure. We were able to get showers, clean up the dishes, clean up the house and make a good meal on Sunday evening which was a blessing after feeling pretty gross most of the weekend. Some students at school were joking that they had beards because of the no water - I can't grow one so I felt a bit left out. None the less, I've attached some pictures to let you know how I feel about my long-time but recently reaquainted friend Mr Water.

More great news is that Elizabeth told me that she was not going to be bad anymore - but rather - she would be kind to her brother and good all day. What a blessing - I'm always wondering how best to parent her through example and through teaching - when all I had to do was ask her to be good. In all seriousness , she is a pretty awesome 3 year old so I could not ask for anymore - but that unprovoked (I think) comment from her made a) Laugh hard (not to her face) and b) Feel pretty good that she really is trying so hard to do what is right and make mom and dad happy.

Lastly,Christy and I have both been doing well in school with our grades, but more importantly we feel like we are really making progress with speaking too - and yes there can certainly be a disconnect between those two. We have lots of practice time talking with Roxana and others on the street or in stores.

Acabamos de terminar

We just finished up. The plant hides the tank nicely and also keeps the kids away. We are venting it out on the bottom shelf of the grill - which also keeps the kids away. Also, you can see our innovation from last weekend, a shower curtain tarp to help keep the dryer dry (say that ten times fast).

Now....if we could only get the water to turn back on. Except for a couple hours, it has been off since thursday morning. Awesome.

I hope you have your fire suit

Have you ever taken a 'shower' with a mixing bowl using stagnet water you collected at the last minute before they shut off the water? No? Me neither, until today. But, it felt great. Once you are past the initial 60 degree temperature of the water, its really not so bad. AND, being totally declothed in your courtyard is a little exciting too.

Also, today was the first day that I got to turn on our dryer when it was fully functional - hot air and all. The project is not totally finished yet, but we are getting close. Lets run through where all we have been...

1. Find a dryer that is only 110v that is not too expensive

2. Get someone to deliver it to our place

3. Figure out how to convert dryer to propane

4. Get parents to buy and send pieces needed for conversion to Costa Rica

5. Figure out how to install said pieces

6. Figure out how to get propane from the tank to your dryer

That brings us to tonight. We decided to stop into ACE hardware late this afternoon to see if they had propane tanks, regulators, hoses, etc that we needed to make our dryer work now I had installed (hopefully properly) the methane to propane conversion pieces. It turns out, they had pretty much all the pieces I was looking for. You see, as the instructions to the left show, I had a big shopping trip, I had to buy an elbow, an adapter, a metal flexible gas line connector, an ANSI plug 221.24 cm long, a CSA bolt 6.10 in depth, another adaptor, a 1/8' NPT pip plug for checking my inlet pressure and finally a shut-off valve with at least 1/2''. Thank goodness I found Ace. Also, thank goodness they did not make us buy the $100 dollar sink that Sammy pulled onto himself and shattered.

In reality though, ACE did not have all the piece I needed, so I I had to mix it up a bit. You can see my connection to the dryer. I decided to go with the 'straight' instead of the elbow. Also, who needs metal pipe when you can find rubber. Also, the whole 'shut-off valve' and pressure tester thing just seemed a bit silly, so I just took the hose straight to my regulator. Why buy all that extra junk just to clog up my perfectly good courtyard? To be honest though, I joked around with Christy, there were times in the states were I would install something differently than instructions or break the housing code a bit - but I always felt like I was making it better and there was no danger. As I was nearing completion of installing the propane hose, I've never been so worried about turning somethng on in my life. In case my parents are reading this, don't worry, I bubble tested all the connections on the outside of the dryer like crazy. I will do this again tomorrow and I will also do it on the methane to propane pieces I installed on the inside. If you are costa rican authorities - please ignore the description of said dryer. At the end of the day, I ran it for about a minute tonight and I think that it seems good. Gets warm (not too warm, not too cold) and it seemed like the internal temperature monitor was working as it flipped off the burner after it reached temperature.

Who thinks on the instructions I make for Roxana I should put 'Run inside' after turning the on switch?

GE was nice enough to include some pictures of what happy and sad dry dryers should look like. If everything on the install goes well, it will aparently shine and grow arms to give you the okay symbol. I'm not sure what mine will say, but I'd guess something like you see in the picture. It is saying 'hammer-head' in honor of my father. That is what he used to call other drivers when they cut him off. It seems like an appropriate name also for someone who breaks all sorts of codes and violations during a flammable gas appliance install.

Please Rain Today

I find myself praying for rain this morning. Its not that Costa Rica is in a severe 20 year draught though. Nor does Costa Rica have raging wildfires that need to be quenched. Nope, I simply want to go out to my courtyard and take a shower. Starting on Thursday morning we lost water. Luckily it came back on for a little bit in the evening so I was able to take a shower after 2 hours of soccer. We woke up Friday morning to no water again. its now Saturday morning and we still have no water. I'd be concerned that our water was just shut off at our house (that has happened before too), but I know of many other houses in a several block radius who have no water as well.

I rate water like electricity in that you don't really know what you have until it is gone. And, given that the temperature it pretty mild down here, I'd even put it above electricity (e.g., I'd rather lose my power here than my water). We can't drink water, we can't shower, we can not clean dishes, we really can't cook because of a) no dishes b) you often need water to clean up and c) we need water to bleach much of the food we eat. Bummer.

Water, come back, we miss you.

Sufficiently American for the day

I was not sure what we would do for the fourth of July - but I think we qualify as being sufficiently American for the day. The US embassy sponsored (or at least endorsed) an American get together picnic for the 4th. It was held at the Imperial factory grounds. Imperial is the nationalized Costa Rican beer company (they have a very cool logo) - however - the grounds were not simply a beer factory. They had vast amounts of open space, nice athletic courts, a swimming pool (not in use), etc. Pretty amazing actually. We got there at about 8:30am in the morning and got right to work by having cotton candy, TCBY yogurt with M&Ms & Oreos and Diet Pepsi. The kids were able to play many games like bean bag tosses, fishing games, a moon walk, etc. One of the best things was all the candy the kids won like Skittles, SOUR SKITTLES (my favorite), a three musketeer bar, runts, etc. To top it all of, we had a bagel, tons of cheese, and multiple hot dogs. At a minimum I feel like we earned out our 8 dollar entrance fee to the activity.

The one downer on the whole day was that our car got stuck in the mud. They made us park on about a 15 degree grade grass hill on the side of the road. I had a bad feeling about it when I parked, but we really had no choice. When I came out after the picnic and tried to back out, not surprisingly, my back tires just spun uselessly. We had four guys try to help us push it but with no results. Luckily, a city tow truck stopped and was able to hook up some cables and get us out. Praise God that they happened to be driving by because we could have been stuck there for a while.

Another unexpected thing happened. I found myself more annoyed with some of the oddities of Americans than I ever normally might be. One of the things we learned about during orientation is that reverse culture shock (readjusting to the society in which you left initially) can often be more difficult than the culture shock with the initial move. After only 3 months, I can see how if you were on the field for several years, or even more so for a full career, it would be very hard to move back home and not go a little bonkers - or at least feel like you do not fit in.