Nicaragua!

Although Costa Rica is sometimes a third-world county and sometimes not, Nicaragua is definitely a third-world country. There is a lot of charm, and there is a lot of poverty. The roads in Nicaragua are said to be "fairly decent, but then there are only two." In our experience this was somewhat true in that the others were dirt roads. . . I will also say that even when we were traveling on one of those good roads, I was chronicling our stay by on my laptop, and within 20 minutes, my keyboard had a serious layer of dirt on it. Oops.



Granada is a beautiful quaint city with old-Spanish charm, but also very rundown, which is not surprising given the poverty of the country. The colors are fantastic, and even though people have so little, almost every house and building is painted a different color, which adds greatly to its charm. There were very few cars in the streets, with the exception of the occasional tourist bus or taxi, and during the day time lots of people on foot or bicycles, often tandem regardless of gender and age. Helmets? No! People are friendly everywhere, and seem respectful to each other and certainly to us.

Homes in the city have windows and doors only in the front, and as in row houses the sides are always closed. Inside is dark and sparsely furnished with wood chairs, table, sometimes a rocking chair, and sometimes an armoire of some kind. That’s it. Most people seem to hang out outside their homes or near the doorway, and one can see why; that is where the light is and people too. The exception is when there is a TV, in which case it is the center of the room, and the chairs are set up around it. The homes tend to be very small and completely functional. We saw no children with plastic toys or stuffies or anything other than functional items or items they were carrying for work related reasons. In the city there were plenty of very poor children, often begging, and when the students returned from dancing late one night, they saw them gathered together to sleep at the base of the church. When one of the students brought pizza leftovers from dinner the next morning to them for breakfast they were very happy, and kept saying “share, share!” to each other. It was a meager offering, six pieces of pizza for about 10 kids, but it took us a while to realize how grave the situation really was. We learned that unemployment in Nicaragua is about 50 percent. . .



In the countryside, the houses are just like the ones in the city, and although they could have windows on all side, they still don’t, with windows just in front and probably in back. Other homes that are not concrete, look more piecemeal and shack-like, with reused materials and more precariously structured. (see the middle picture above. This house which is quite tiny, and probably does not have plumbing, has a living room with one table and 4 chairs, but central to the room is the TV!) Occasionally, single cows graze outside of homes near the road and they seem to provide the means for keeping grass cut... (IN the side yard in the photo to the right is the family pig.) In the country side, children occasionally have a hammock or a tire swing, and sticks and outside activities for play. There are trees and flowers growing pretty much everywhere near country homes, with sort of a dirt-based front area for chairs and play. Again these tend to be one or two rooms forward to back, and sometimes four rooms in a square. In the pulperias you can see the living space to the side, and maybe a tiny bedroom behind that. (By the way, pulperia means “octopus” and a person in a pulperia needs 8 hands to grab all the different things on the customer’s list.) In these little stores, you can see the laundry hanging to the side of the building, sometimes the chickens around, and sometimes a pig in the backyard.


Near Catarina we went to a potter’s shop and they did not have running water. There was a well with an electric pump that people in the town used, and then carted it to their homes. They may have had a different house that they live in now, but the part with the pottery shop had a large concrete base and then they cooked meals on top of the concrete base, using wood for the fire, and pots that sat on top of the wood. They cracked their eggs, and cut up foods on another concrete slab nearby. Very simple pots, knives, and space for cooking, and a simple small table with a few chairs for eating. That’s it.

At this shop, we saw a pottery demonstration and then tried our hand on the manual wheel (without a gutter for the water), made a big mess, and were so happy when they shared their water shared with us (we had potting mud all over our hands), and then we thoroughly enjoyed their shop in appreciation for the time they had spent with us. We also went to two markets, each of which had fabulous crafts and for considerably less money than in Costa Rica, though wow, it does still add up.

We also went to Masaya Volcano, which actually includes five craters, one of which is still emitting large quantities of sulphuric fumes, and tried a boat ride on fabulous and huge Lake Nicaragua (we got rained into a fortress that was very fortunately near by!). Along the way, we had lots of opportunities to talk with children on a school trip, merchants, and other folks so we had good practice talking in Spanish.



One of the great pleasures of being with the students is getting to try new things with them. They invited us to a club in the evening. Although we have been going to sleep at ridiculously early hours in the high elevation of San Jose, here we managed to have enough energy to stay up till 11:30 before going clubbing. And we all had so much fun! We learned from one of the students how to do the Mapeche, and we danced and danced and danced. At first I could not stop laughing because we are were all like sardines with elbows on a very crowded dance floor, so I felt like I was close dancing with at least four people all the time; they just keep changing in height, and colors of hips and elbows. But as the hours passed, there were fewer folks on the dance floor. The students and Ruthie, and Molly sampled three clubs through the night; Anthony and I were content to stay with the Latin band until we walked back to find our hotel closed down for the evening. There was a moment of surprise, but when we knocked on the door, it was just a moment or two before we regained entrance and returned to the comforts of our very large and thankfully air-conditioned room.

In the morning, Anthony had a painting date with another artist he had met in the square, and they each did a drawing for the other and exchanged little gifts. The children slept, and Amy walked around the square and had one last shopping encounter.


Then off to the Pacific, to San Juan del Sur, where we stayed at Las Cascades, a little bed and breakfast which we filled to capacity. There we enjoyed gorgeous views from the nearby hill, got doused once again just before getting into the water (third time in three days), met the capuchin monkeys who hang out with the family there, a very large macaw, a parrot, and a superb masseuse. Very relaxing. Monday we finally got into the surf at the beach which was great! And then customs and the long bus ride home.

Jewish Life in Costa Rica

As some of you know, we celebrated the High Holidays here in San Jose. The little synagogue that we have been going to was very welcoming but also expensive, and the children were also having to explain every single absence and justify it to the school, and Molly has also been very aware of the “Jew” jokes and comments at school, and also the swastikas that can be found in various places in town, including the street on which we live. So we settled on celebrating Rosh Hashonah at home and Yom Kippur at synagogue.

Services have been about 40% Hebrew, 40% Spanish, and 20% English, and Yom Kippur was no different. Many tunes were the same as at our synagogue in Durham, and a few were different but equally lovely, all of which made it very nice but also evoking feelings of missing home and community quite a bit. We were invited to break our fast with a family in Escazu, but the congregation also had a lovely break fast right there as well. Not to make folks jealous, but in Costa Rica three stars appear in the sky by 6 pm (well at least on paper, as it was of course raining). Even though we also started our fasts early the day before, it made it somehow much easier for all of us. Dinner with the Gelman family was unbelievably “hamish”, interesting, delicious, and just plain fun. Finally home to pack and get ready for our 5 am departure for Nicaragua.

September 25-28 Birthday, Market, Cartago, & Orosi

WE celebrated Molly's birthday (15!) with a pizza and card playing sleepover party with the Elon students the night before her birthday,





and dinner out on her birthday. Friends at school snuck in a birthday cake at lunch time and sang to her, and friends from home created a "virtual" party via Skype! Molly reported that the whole day turned out to be a wonderful celebration, from start to finish!


Then Sunday, we began this Elon travel day with a trip to market. Our family tends to go every weekend to stock up on fruits, vegetables, and organic bread (see our rain date there in the blog entry 'El dia de la Independencia"). In addition to the mangos, coconut (fresh and dry), papaya, watermelon, pineapple, and a fruit similar to lee chee but it looks like stiff anemones, here are some of the vegetables that we buy now:

This is pejibaye. I cook it for forever,

then peel it,

and make a cream soup with it.

In this photo from the avocado in a clockwise circle are: Avocado, which we call aquacate here, juca (cassava root) which also has to be precooked and then fried with garlic and sprinkled with lots of lime, chayote which is like an apple potato and is a very versatile vegetable that can be steamed with green beans or put in stews among other things, chile dulce which is similar to red peppers at home but sweeter and they go with just about everything, and then the two kinds of avocados. At the top of the photo is a green from the chayote plant that you can use like watercress or a green that you would toss into a stew. Very cheap, very tasty!

Finally, we have something called a tree tomato! (We also saw a wild tomato in Monteverde, but that one was really good for cleaning out your system so we only tasted that one. The point here that is so interesting, is how many tomato varieties exist in the world with many different tastes and health-related properties.)

From the market we went to Orosi, which is a nearby town and very beautiful valley,

with the oldest church, Iglesia de San Jose Orosi, still in use in Costa Rica (from 1743, after they kind of wiped out the native population, the church was not needed quite so much for a while, till they built back a population to convert).

The students, and of course Ruthie and Molly, were more interested in the soccer game going on (every town, no matter its size seems to have a soccer field, and it is often in a central location).

Some folks eventually headed down to the river, and that is where we discovered a little shanty town with houses made of recycled materials built in a helter skelter style. Not sure about the plumbing situation, but one of them had a large antenna. This lead to explorations of poverty in Costa Rica, and we learned from some newly-made Gringo friends who do a lot of volunteer work here that there are massive shanty towns and tremendous poverty but it is more encapsulated and the situation is far, far better than in Nicaragua where we will be going next.

From Orosi we headed toward the church in Cartago, the city that was the first capital in Costa Rica. This church, Basilica de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles, was built several times actually, and is the church of the patron saint of Costa Rica. The story is that a young girl found a statue of the Virgin Mary on a rock and brought it home with her, but the next day it disappeared from her home and reappeared again on the rock, twice. When the priest heard about it, he tried to lock it up, but it disappeared from the vault, and, yup, reappeared on the rock. The people thought maybe she would just like to stay there, and so they built the church around the rock, and you can see that stone and the statue (called La Negrita) that was found so many years ago. There is also a spring of running holy water, and glass cases with all the charms that people left with their prayers for health or safety in particular ways. Below is a glass case with breasts, lungs, stomachs, and what not. Next to it is a case with legs.

On August 2 every year, hundreds of thousands Ticos fill Cartago, having walked there from all corners of the country, to pray at this church. The centrality of church was very clear in multiple ways, including those ways mentioned above, and also the presentation of babies to the church, and other people kneeling as they entered the church and processing down the very long aisle on their knees. Or, as in this photo, both.

Life in Costa Rica and Monteverde (late September)

I have not written in the blog for a while, partly because we went to Monteverde for a long weekend, but mostly because my computer charger died suddenly, leaving us with 2 computers for 4 very active users. This has been a long week of heavy negotiating! I tried to find a new charger very quickly, but the first quote I received was for $194. That was for a part that Dell sells for $66 and you can find for about $40 on the cheapo internet sites. Many other stores did not carry it. One store told me it would be 2 or 3 days to first determine the price, and then two or three weeks to receive the charger. This was not what I wanted to hear. So I tried to see if Fed Ex might be a solution, but not at $356 (plus the $66 for the charger in the first place). I realized I really am living in a third-world country, and that I would have to wait until someone could bring it from the States. Now here is the zen of finding a charger. . . After giving up on the project, I happened to walk by a store I have passed by on numerous occasions. Of course, not needing a charger during those walks, I had never noticed it. Now I saw "DELL" emblazoned on the storefront, and so I rang the bell and once I was let in, there they all were: Chargers galore! 40,000 colones later (@ $80) I was the very happy owner of a working computer once again. So now I can tell you about Monteverde and show you some photos.




Monteverde is a beautiful town high in the mountains in what is known as the cloud forest. It was founded by a few Quaker families from the US after WWII, and is where much of the cheese in Costa Rica was and is still made. These families also started to protect the could forest and as a consequence of their efforts, there is now a huge reserve that is home to many many species of plants and animals. We arrived early afternoon on Friday, after a gorgeous drive up the mountain with spectacular views of the Nicoya gulf, and all the valleys for miles and miles around us. On the way, the bus got stuck in the mud on the unpaved road heading up the mountain, and all the students, the Halberstadt-Weston family, and some folks passing by who stopped to help had a great time getting very dirty pushing the bus out of the mud and up the road. We were very glad for our careful and capable driver, Jorge, and there were definitely moments in which we thought we might lose him and the bus over the edge of the very steep road.

Once we arrived some of us toured two of the notable schools in this area. We first went to Centro de Educacion Creativa , which is a child-centered school that focuses on environmental education and includes reforestation in its curriculum, and then we went to the Monteverde Friends School! Then to the hotel where we had a spectacular view of the Golfo de Nicoya, and sometimes, I confess, enjoying the view from the hot tub.


Saturday began with a fabulous tour of the cloud forest. On the way, we saw several carts carrying the morning's milking to the cheese factory, including this one: During the tour we saw fabulous trees, with incredible numbers of plants (I am pretty sure that Melvin, our guide, said that mature trees have upwards of 200 different species of plants living on them, and that they eventually fall over from the weight of all the different plants living on them). This is one of many examples; I was trying to take the photo to show all the dew midday still on the tree in the cloud forest, but it also shows how many different plants are living on the tree. Then there was the tarantula that kindly came out to play, and there most of us are on the continental divide, which is also in this cloud forest.











We spent the afternoon walking about in the town, and for some of us, reading in one of the lovely coffee shops. Sunday was the zipline canopy tour, and it was fantastic! The bus ride home was uneventful, except for the standing ovation for Jorge, when we finally did reach a paved road.

The school week that followed was also uneventful, so readers did not miss much when I was without computer. During the next weekend, Anthony went on a class trip to Tiribina, where he got to see all sorts of frogs, insects, bats (close up!), birds, etc. Anna Ruth and Molly decided to stay home to do a service project with their school which involved planting trees. Costa Rica is very busy reforesting the country. This is funny to me because I think of Israel's attempts to reclaim the desert by planting trees, and Costa Rica seems so completely forested to me. But this is a serious business here, with a great deal of concern to absorb the overabundance of the world's CO2.

This week began with Rosh Hashanah, and good wishes to all for a sweet new year! On Tuesday night, Ruthie also had a Serenata. This is an unauthorized event that seniors create, the girls for the boys (usually in the fall because, according to the school counselor, the girls get organized a bit faster than the boys), and the boys for the girls. This is what happened this time anyways: The girls created costumes (for themselves and for the boys), rented a party hall, and planned the buses to pick up the boys, then called the boys' parents to alert them of the date. Then about 5 in the afternoon they got into their costumes (German barmaids in the color of this year, so orange skirts, with black suspenders and white shirts), and went to surprise each boy in their homes. I thought they might sing to them because of the name "Serenata" but no, they seem to splash beer on them instead. Once they have picked up all the boys, they all go together to a party hall and dance the night away. Around 5 in the morning they had the typical breakfast (gallo pinto which is rice and beans), and Ruthie returned about 7 in the morning, and slept for much of the day. I hope for a photo forthcoming of the event.

Tomorrow night we go to a Juanes concert, and I hope to have posts more often now.