McCanns in Honduras

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: Lu and Lins after a bath.

One of the amazing things we have witnessed since we’ve been here is Lucy’s Spanish development. For most adults learning a new language is a laboring process, and one of the most difficult parts is translating from your first language to your second. For Lucy, this is not a problem. She is just learning new words and phrases daily. It may look like she is learning English and Spanish, but to her it is just one big language with a lot of words and different words for the same thing.

For example, she knows how to count to three in both languages, but if we ask her to count in English or count in Spanish she just gives us a blank stare. On the other hand, if we start with “one” or with “uno” she can easily finish the counting in the proper language.

One reason she is learning so fast is that she is in day care for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and her teacher, Gloria, only speaks Spanish. So her little growing mind is hearing 30 hours of Spanish a week. Just the other day we decided to test her and started asking her where her body parts were in Spanish. Though she didn’t get them all, she surprised us with what she did understand.

Her Spanish vocabulary includes mas (more), pato (duck), agua, uno, dos, tres, cuatro, pan (bread), vamos (let’s go), aqui (here), pina (pineapple), boca (mouth), adios, gracias, chao (bye). Some of these words she say exclusively, as in she never says water, more, or thank you. And those are just the words she can say, they don’t include the dozens more that she hears and understands.

There is a good chance that by the time we leave Costa Rica, she will understand more than us!

Above: Lucy playing on the playground.

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: A tranquilo Lucy on our porch.

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

Tranquilo is a word we’ve heard often here, and has become one of our favorites, both because of what it means and how it sounds. It basically means to relax, calm down, chill out. We’ve heard it in class when a student gets too frustrated and the teacher tries to calm them down, we’ve heard it on the basketball court when a player takes a bad shot and his teammates try to get him to slow down, and we’ve said it a lot in our home to try and help Lucy relax when she is upset.

We also like the word because it reflects to some degree the attitude of the culture. LIfe in Costa Rica is not lived at the crazy pace that it is in the states. People love to stop and chat, have some cafe, never rush (unless they are driving), and absolutely never look at their watch to start (or end) anything.

Though tough to apply at times, we are trying to embrace our new life, tranquilo-style.

Above: This is the white board in Lindsey’s grammar class after a particularly mind-boggling day of studying direct and indirect objects.

We’re half way through our intensive language course and we can already see it paying off in our daily interaction. The first day of class we were tested to see how much Spanish we knew. Lindsey was placed in the 3rd class (out of 5), while Sean ended up in the 1st class (that would be the lowest).

We go to school around 1 pm every day, drop Lucy off in nursery, and begin class at 1:30. We each are in a class with 4 other students on the same level, or at least close to our level. From 1:30 to 2:45 we study grammar (ie: verb congregation, pronouns, direct/indirect objects, etc.) Then after a 10-minute break, we go to our conversation class until 4:10, we were learn new vocabulary and put everything that we have learned into action.

In Lindsey’s conversation class she has had to give oral presentations on the city of Charlotte, a summary of a newspaper article, and a retelling of the parable of the sower. Sean has presented in class what he is wearing, his different body parts, and his family tree.

All in all we have enjoyed our learning experience has it has challenged us, but at the same time truly helped us as we interact with the culture.