August 3 2007

Today was our hermana tica´s birthday. We had a party with a lot her friends and family, which was a wonderful experience. We sang songs and played games with Costa Ricans )for the record, telephone is much harder in Spanish and they got a huge kick out of watching try to repeat what they said in Spanish).

They also have a wonderful tradition in which the birthday girl gets the first slice of cake, but they have to bite into the cake so that icing gets all over their face. Ana´s mother pushed her face into the cake and it was hilarious. Yorleny, our madre tica, made SO much food....ice cream, cake, candy, and some sort of rice and meat dish. Then afterwards we just sat and talked and made fun of ourselves. It was nice to just spend time with the family.

Deborah and I almost made them cry from laughter. We kept joking in Spanish about how the sugar made us happy and that we couldn´t live without sugar. I also told her that I was sad to be leaving her because our next family couldn´t possibly be as wonderful, so she told me she would give me a bag of sugar to take with me to make me happy when we left her house.

I´m a little nervous because our home at the beach is actually in a little town called Brasalito, and we have to take a 30 min. bus ride to school every morning, which I´m not looking forward to. The problem is that the school is in a resort area, but we´re living in small fishing communities.

Anyhow, I told Yorleny that if I didn´t like the bus I was going to live on the beach with the turtles who are my friends. She thought that was really funny.

I love what Costa Ricans call the ´pura vida´ which is just their whole philosophy about enjoying life in the moment. They are, from what I´ve seen, generally relaxed about everything. They work hard, but take time to enjoy themselves, too. They aren´t so preoccupied with material possessions, partly because they don´t have as much money, but also because they don´t need or want more than they have. I guess I mean that they are content with what they have. At least that is true for our family. They just talk and drink a lot of coffee.