Thursday morning was our reunion with Profesora Ana. She gave us both big hugs and seemed genuinely glad to see us. We were delighted to see her, too. We spent the first half of class chatting away. I suspect that was a bit of a test from Profesora Ana to see what damage 10 days away from class did to our budding Spanish-language skills.
Profesora Ana was excited to tell us that her son Giancarlo had been written up in the national newspaper for his volunteer work with the Humane Society in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. She showed us the paper and there was a smiling picture of Giancarlo on the front page and a full page article on pagina dos (page two). Apparently there has been an explosion in the population dogs and cats in Puerto Rico following the hurricane. Giancarlo has been on a volunteer mission running a spay and neuter clinic to help get the population under control. It was a neat story and it was fun to see Profesora Ana beaming with pride. Because we were discussing it with her, we didn’t get to do much more than glance at the actual story so I don’t know if we could have digested it on our own.
Jill knew Profesora Ana was going to ask us to give her an update and was prepared to update Profesora Ana on Stephanie’s visit. Jill continues to be well ahead of me on overall vocabulary and sentence structure. Just before class on Thursday Jill and I had a discussion about the proper way to say “My sister is visiting.” Jill correctly planned to say “Mi hermana esta visitando.”… but I convinced her that “Mi hermana visita.” was the right way to go. When Jill used my errant sentence, Profesora Ana corrected her to “Mi hermana esta visitando.” Profesora Ana is such a stickler that Jill and I both revel in every instance where we say something without being corrected. I totally deprived Jill of one of those moments… D’oh!
Profesora Ana reinforced the message we got from Profesora Maria on Wednesday. She is pleased with where we are after six weeks and from here on out it’s a big focus on conversation and on expanding our vocabulary.
Jill had a full afternoon of clients yesterday from 1-5PM. So, I took Stephanie into Atenas for lunch. We planned to go to a soda (a family restaurant where they cook a simple fixed menu), but when we parked the car to go to el mercado (the market) I spied Poco Loco. Jill and I had some legitimate TexMex food at Poco Loco when we were first here last October, but we hadn’t laid eyes on it since we got back. Among the selling points of Poco Loco is that they’re the only place in town that specializes in gin and tonics. I called an audible and we dove into Poco Loco instead. We had a delicious lunch. Stephanie had the Taco Trio (three old school crunchy tacos) and I had the chicken quesadilla with sour cream, pico de gallo, and guacamole. Poco Loco is now firmly in the rotation. One unintended consequence of my judgement call was that Jill was disappointed when she found out we went to Poco Loco without her. I will make it up to her one day next week 🙂
After Jill finished up her work day we headed off to La Feria (the farmer’s market) to stock up on fresh produce and then we headed to Pizzeria La Finca for dinner.
Pizzeria La Finca was delicious as always. Having learned about the tres leches cake topped with passion fruit glaze when Jackie was here, I asked our mesero (waiter) “Tiene tres leches?” and he said “Si!” and I said “Un tres leches, por favor!” and he said “Claro!” A nice thing about Spanish speakers (at least the ones we’ve encountered so far) is that they go out of their way to let you know they understand what you are saying. They do so by saying “Claro!” As novice Spanish speakers Jill and I both love getting a “Claro!” from the person we are talking to.
We were up with the sun this morning to take Stephanie to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. We’ve previously taken Jill’s parents and my parents to La Paz Waterfall Gardens and everyone has really enjoyed it.
Everyone had a cup of coffee and an omelette and we were out the door at 7AM. It’s important to get to La Paz by 9AM because the hand-feeding of humming birds runs from 9AM to 9:30AM. Jill has declared that feeding hummingbirds by hand “is her very favorite thing in the whole world” and I can attest to the fact that she is indeed euphoric when she does it.
We made it to the park at 8:45AM, paid our admission, and arrived at the Colibri (hummingbird) Garden at 8:54AM. Right on schedule the staff member came around the corner with the little hand held hummingbird feeders. For the next 25 minutes or so I bet I took 300 pictures of hummingbirds large and small eating out of their hands. Stephanie gets it now. It’s fun to watch grown adults giggling like children trying to hold still so that hummingbirds will land on their fingers. It also turns out that your arm gets kind of tired when you hold it out in front of you for a half an hour 🙂
From the hummingbirds we went on to see the butterflies, the toucans, the sloths (who were sleeping), and the jungle cats. Unfortunately the frog enclosure was closed because they were working on it so we only got to see a couple of frogs.
Then we were off to the cataratas (waterfalls)! Like the hummingbirds, the La Paz waterfalls never disappoint.
After the waterfalls we went back to see the sloths and were happily surprised that they were active (well, active for a sloth).
At that point we were all famished so we went and got a table overlooking the forest at the restaurant where we’d previously had two delicious meals with our respective parents. We’ve now had three delicous meals there. We all had chifrijo, which is a delicious bowl of fried pork, fried cheese, avocado, pico de gallo, rice and beans. Both Jill and Stephanie had a caiperinha, which is a delicious adult beverage made from the locally distilled liquor. I abstained because the drive home requires 100% attention.
We cleaned out the gift shop and then piled into the car. The next destination was the town on Poasito in the slopes of the Poas volcano. Poasito is the strawberry capital of Costa Rica. I covered the strawberries of Poasito in a previous post, but I will plug them again. Poasito strawberries are mind blowing. One bite and you will remember what strawberries in the US tasted like 50 years ago, before they were ruined by genetic modification that made them giant and helped preserve them for cross country shipment.
On the way home we stopped at La Coope to get some fresh limes for Jill’s pico de gallo (and maybe for gin and tonics?). We had a nice afternoon snack of fresh mangos and Poasito strawberries while we wait for the pico de gallo flavors to develop.
It is now time for happy hour. Gin and tonics on the upper deck with Jill’s pico de gallo and the fantastic corn chips from la feria.
Life is good.
Adventure is out there!
Jill and Todd in Costa Rica 