McCanns in Honduras

Translation: Without Water (seen ag-wa)

Every once in a while, about ever few weeks or so, we loose water in our home. It is not a big deal, it only goes off for a few hours, and usually by the time we go to bed, the water has been turned back on.

We thought this was the case Thursday morning when the water shut off around 9 AM, so we didn’t think anything of it. Unfortunately, is was a big deal, as we still have yet to have water restored, at 6 o’clock Sunday night.

Some guy with a backhoe was working outside Thursday morning when he struck a water line and cut off water for over 400,000 homes in San Jose for over three days.

We’ve been all over looking for water, putting out buckets for rain, and even joining 50 other Tico’s chasing down a water truck, as you can see in the above picture.

Today around 12 a water truck parked on our street (the picture is taken from our front porch) and we all lined up with jugs, bottles, pitchers, trash cans, coke bottles, Tupperware, whatever would hold water. We got about 25 liters and used it to flush our toilet, do some dishes, and give Lucy a bath.

Water is supposed to come on tonight, we’ll keep you posted…

Above: A patriotic Lucy.

What are Americans living in Costa Rica to do on the 4th of July? Go to the American Embassy’s Independence Day party of course.

We had a great time eating hot dogs, ice cream, and popcorn, waving flags, and hanging out with hundreds of our other fellow American citizens.

Hope you have a great day.

Above: Lucy and Sean at the park on Saturday.

Translation: Free Time.

Throughout Lucy’s whole life, she always been with either her mom, her dad, or both. When she was born, Lindsey had a long maternity leave. When Lindsey went back to work part-time, Sean stayed at home for half the week. When we both quit our jobs and starting raising support, we were all together all the time, either at home or on the road. So here in Costa Rica, with Lucy in “school” 30 hours a week, it has been a bit of an adjustment.

How does this tie in? We now we value our tiempo libre as a family more than ever. Usually most of our shopping outings are together, we love to go out to eat as a family, and we absolutely love a nice Saturday morning with no one but the three (four!) of us.

This Saturday, a children’s home in our neighborhood was throwing a fund raising festival at our local park, so we stopped by for some food, games, shows, and music. The festival was fun, but being all together was even better!

Above: A picture of our route to school every day. The blue house on the left is our home, and the green school on the right side is the Instituto de Lengua Espanola. The purple trail is our walk to school, and the purple camera icons are the places were we took some pictures.

Photo 1: One minute into the walk we pass our favorite neighborhood park, Parque Los Sauces. You can see all the grass and trees of the park on the other side of the road.

Photo 2: Two minutes later we come to the longest straightaway of our journey. This road has two little tiendas, a local bus stop, and a menacing street guard we’ve become friendly with.

Photo 3: At the end of the street in the previous photo is this park, La Copa. La Copa has a basketball court we’ve played in some, a few run-down swings for Lucy, and a couple soccer fields. Once we reach La Copa, we’re over half-way there!

Photo 4: 8-10 minutes after we leave home, we’ve arrived here, the back gate of the language school. The big blue building is the gym at the school, and the gate is right in front of it.

Thanks for walking with us, hope you enjoyed seeing a little more of our daily life.

Above: Lucy, cool shades, and half a nana.

Every morning around 7 am we take about a 10 minute walk to school. It is a weird feeling to be up and walking around that early, but the sun has been up for a few hours, so it feels like late morning. We usually give Lucy a snack to keep her happy on the walk, but lately she has just held onto her banana the whole way. Yesterday a dog came up and started licking her nana, so if she wants to eat she better learn to eat quick!

Above: All the books it takes for one beginner Spanish student.

Well we’ve finally started our first full trimester at the Spanish Language Institute in San Jose, Costa Rica. We’ve been here for a while studying Spanish, but that was all child’s play compared to the next four months. Lindsey and I have taken our placement test and been placed in good classes, we both have people on our level or a little higher who will push us to learn even faster. Here is a glimpse of our day at ILE (Instituto de Lengua Espanola):

First Hour: Conversation/Language. In this class we simple talk Spanish, a lot! We talk about ourselves, our family, our life, and anything else the teacher wants to ask us. We even pray in Spanish! Talk, talk, talk, and at 7:30 in the morning no less.

Second Hour: Phonetics. Here is where we take the words we’ve learned and try to say them so that actual Spanish-speakers can understand us. It is amazing the difference between knowing the words you want to say and actually saying them correctly.

Third Hour: Grammar. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. Remember those English classes you had as a kid? Like that, but in Spanish.

Fourth Hour: Grammar. More nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

By the end of the day, we are beat. But it is amazing to see what we can learn in just one day, and then to multiply that by 4 months truly is encouraging. We may actually learn Spanish after all!

From time to time, as we learn some Spanish, we’ll try to help you learn some as well.

Above: The family ready for a day out in the rain.

Rain (pronounced “you-via”). No other alternate translations, simple rain. In Costa Rica, and most of Central America, there are basically two seasons, the rainy season, and the not rainy season. We arrived here in the not rainy season and didn’t see any rain for a few months. Then a few weeks ago it started raining every afternoon. Although the rainy season isn’t here in full, we have had a few good tastes. The lesson we’ve learned is never leave home without an umbrella or jacket. Some interesting tidbits about the rainy season in Costa Rica:

- Despite the fact that the Tico’s are used to the rain, no one seems to want to go out in it.

- When people do go out in the rain, they almost exclusively use umbrellas, not rain jackets. Rain jackets seem to be a strictly gringo thing.

- There are taxi’s all over the place in San Jose, we’ve never waited more than 5 minutes for a cab, but when it rains there are none to be found. We were stuck out in the rain the other day and asked someone to call us a cab, but he said there were none available, they were all in use. So we put a trash bag over Lucy’s head and walked home.

- Amazingly, the rain can seem to come and go in an instant. It will be very hot and clear in the morning, then pouring in the afternoon, and clear and cool again at night.

The boy scout motto prevails here when going out, always be prepared!

Above: Lindsey and Lucy in front of the jaguar exhibit.

A while back, we headed out the check out the zoo in San Jose. We arrived early (read first ones there, we punctual gringos) and had the zoo to ourselves for a while. We checked out the monkeys, iguanas, sloth, birds, lions, cats, toucans, parrots, peacocks, snakes, turtles, alligators, and too much more to name. Our favorites were the monkeys, which we made a point to see twice. It was great fun to check out new animals and have such close interaction with the nature of our new country.

Above: Sean and Lucy checking out the monkeys.