Hi all!
April has been a very busy month in the Bennett house. We spent a very enjoyable Semana Santa (Holy Week) here in Costa Rica. Enjoyed Easter Sunday Mass all in Spanish. Finished up our unpacking and organizing. Spent an awesome weekend at the beach on the Pacific side on a whale watching tour with friends. Pulled out the big suitcases and headed north for 10 days in the US for Corwin’s first communion and our chance to provide a one family economic stimulus package for the US economy.
Whew! I’m tired just from typing all of that.
Oh…and we bought a car! Woo hoo!
Let’s start with the car. It’s a “chick car”. It’s not a fancy brand. It’s a Hyundai. It’s not a turbo. It’s a 1.6L. It’s not black. It’s a wine color (like the color of a cabernet). It’s not a 5 speed. It’s an automatic. Definitely a RARITY in Costa Rica with all of our mountains. It’s not a 4 wheel drive SUV. It’s a small hatchback with 2 doors and about a dozen airbags. I describe it as “cute”. James has other preferred adjectives. :) It gets us from point A to point B without paying off the chart rental car fees. It’s fuel efficient. This is a very good thing as gas is twice as expensive here versus the US. It’s not for long distance or rough driving. It’s just for getting me the 6 minutes on the interstate to work and back. We’re still looking on our Don Quixote quest for the “decently priced small SUV”. But at least now no more rental cars. The irony of this little car was how easy it was to buy. It was a private owner who was a retired public school ENGLISH teacher (there went the language barrier out the door). A friend of ours has a friend who was a mechanic. (easily checked out the car for a fair price). The owner’s daughter in a law was an attorney. (needed an attorney to complete the sale) We picked it up at the Nissan dealership where the owner’s daughter in law leases out her power of attorney for car transactions (avoided an hour long one way trip to Cartago to pick up the car). The whole sale took like a half hour to sign the papers, pay the transfer tax and drive away. It’s taken us longer to buy cars in the States.
We drove our new “cute little car” to Easter Sunday Mass at San Rafael. It was 430 in the afternoon. It was packed standing room only. The Mass was all in Spanish. But we were able to follow along well enough. We were dressed up. No one else really was. So we stuck out more than usual. Everyone wanted to touch Audrey’s hair since it’s blond and feels like spun silk. But I actually understood a good part of the homily. Holy Week is, outside of Christmas, one of the most sacred religious holidays in Costa Rica. This is a country which is like 80% Catholic. There were parades downtown. Specials on TV (all of the classic movies ran on TV). Many people went to the beach for the week (to the tune of 60% of the country). We went out to Rosti Pollo, our favorite restaurant. Look up Rosti Pollo on the web and you’ll understand. It’s all “roasted chicken” and it’s great. I had Thursday and Friday off work. We spent the time together as a family at home. Worked on the house and just enjoyed being together.
The weekend after Easter Sunday, we took our first foray outside the city on a whale watching tour to the Pacific. Whales come to the Pacific side of Costa Rica to calf in March and April. Along with friends of ours (Joel, Lisa and Elena) from Chicago, we jumped in the bus with everyone and headed for the beach! We had a great time. Learned a few things about the coast. Saw dolphins swimming in the wild. Didn’t see any whales (a rarity evidently) but the dolphins more than made up for it. We saw them swimming wild and free. We saw mothers with babies. Our son went snorkeling in the ocean for the first time. The food was the best. The humidity was OFF the chart. We were definitely in the tropics. Everyone enjoyed the beach, the sand, the sun and even a little shopping along the way. Check out Jim's Facebook page for an awesome dolphin video a friend of ours on the tour took from the boat.
Then, three days after coming back, we pulled out the big suitcases. We packed one of them about half full and headed north to the land of St Patrick’s Church, Target and MicroCenter for almost 2 weeks of time with friends, family and doing our part to help the US economy. We had a wonderful trip. We spent quality time with our family including my 90 year old grandmother. We shared pictures from our ocean weekend. The kids played with friends and charmed their grandparents. We enjoyed evenings with friends at familiar places. We laughed, told stories, shared successes and planned for future “good times” in both Kansas City and Costa Rica. Coming back last weekend, we filled up all 5 of those very large suitcases with all of our US bounty and headed back home.
However, while getting through Costa Rica Immigration was almost a non event, Customs would be a different story with 5 very full large suitcases of recently purchased US export products including some significant electronics. The solution? Act like a tourist. Essentially we bullied our way through Costa Rican Customs. When we arrived at Customs, we just started throwing suitcases on the xray machine belt. We didn’t even hand our declaration form to the customs agent. He was busy trying to keep up with the bags on the belt. The only thing which caught their attention was the DVD box in which James had brought a very used and very not working desktop computer. When the agent asked about it, I replied with my best “rude American tourist” voice, “It’s a used computer not a DVD player. It’s for parts and it DOESN’T work. Do you want me to open the box?” Considering it was 9pm at night, we had small children, a lot of bags and with my tone of voice implied, the customs agent wisely said, “No” and let us go in our merry way. I think he realized all of us would be there a lot longer into the night if they opened any one of those 8 pieces of luggage. LOL!
This week is now the week of “unpacking”, reclaiming the house and getting back to our routine. I think it won’t be so difficult with a glass of the MacCallan scotch which made it’s way through Customs, while wearing the new Nikes from other suitcase, mopping with the Swifter mop and staying in touch with our friends and family on our new Nokia N900 cell phone which traveled the distance in its box in the bottom of my back pack. Wish me luck!
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