April 13, 2007 - Juán Santamaría day, Orosi houses (part 1)

I saw a picture in the paper last night that showed a parade in Alajuela for Juán Santamaría day - apparently Alajuela *does* make a bigger deal of the day than Orosi.
The holiday was Wednesday, but usually legal holidays are the Monday following the actual holiday. So we expect to see banks, etc. closed then. We were originally told that there would be no Spanish school on Monday, but today we found out that most teachers here like to have the Saturday off, and so prefer to work on the Monday holiday. So, school on Monday! We also worked it out with our teachers so that we get tomorrow off (we were going to have school this Saturday because we had no school for two days during Semana Santa) - we´ll make up the classes later. Since we will be living here for quite a while, this presents no problem.
We looked at a house for rent yesterday, and another today. Neither was advertised - we heard of the first one from an administrator at the school, and the other from our Tico family.
The first house is "normal" sized, and fairly typical for a Tico house. It is about a 10-minute walk from the center of town. It has three bedrooms, one bath, a combination living/dining room, and a small kitchen. The bedrooms are small by USA standards. It comes fully furnished, with a telephone, kitchen utinsels, towels, etc. - basically, everything we need. The electricity, water, and telephone (etc) are bills we would have to pay separately. Asking rent is a bit over $300/month (our Tico family says that is a *lot*!!).
The second house is on the same block as our Tica family (essentially in the center of town). It is a bit fancier, with a bigger kitchen, 3 large bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms, and it has an electric gate. It also is fully furnished (but we didn't ask about towels and other similar items). The utilities and telephone (and cable) are included in the rent. We will talk to them this evening to find out what the rent is (we suspect it will be too high tho...)

April 11, 2007 - Juán Santamaría day, Spanish school, Los Ticos

4/10/07 (Tuesday)

Today was my second day of class with a new teacher (Belfort). He makes it easy to use new words and verb forms, in part because we aren't very structured, and in part because we mix English in with the Spanish. During one exercise today, I was to fill in the blanks of a sentence with a conjugated verb (pretérito – past tense!); well, each sentence took many minutes, because we would start talking about different meanings for the sentence, and how to word it other ways, then slip into an aside. Usually I learned a lot about normal, average life in Costa Rica during these side trips into chat-land.

I told him about how I finally dropped in on my neighbor of 6 years, and we had a lovely chat at her kitchen table. He said “how sad that it took so long,” then pointed to every house we could see out the window and said he knew all those who lived in them. When one person bakes a cake, the neighbor comes over for a slice. When he walks by, all wave and greet him.

We keep hearing about people who work a long way from home. The father of my Tico family has one of the easiest commutes – he leaves at 6:30 each morning, and drives perhaps an hour to Turrialba. He works for ICE (the state-owned electric and phone company). He usually returns by 7:00. His oldest son also works for ICE, but he travels all over Costa Rica, and is gone for 11 days at a time. One of the sons in law works in construction in Guanacaste (in the far North-West of the country, perhaps 5-7 hours away by car), and has the same 11-day schedule. Their wives and children live here in Orosi, and we see them quite a bit. Two other sons work in San José, 1½ to 2 hours drive away.

Five o'clock is a popular time to visit people in Orosi. On Sunday, friends of the Tico family came to visit from San José de la Montaña (this is a town of 4-5 thousand people, north of Heredia, and is on our list of towns to check out). We had coffee and sweet bread. Then a family from the USA dropped by (the son had homestayed here in the past) – more coffee and bread. On Monday, we walked with Teresita to her sister's house to see her ailing father. While there, more coffee and bread (surprised?). Many different sisters and brothers and cousins stopped by, talked, listened for the lottery results, and watched the news. The jokers in the family reminded me a *lot* of my family (ahh).

I think the rainy season is upon us – today it started raining about 2:00, and rained (with thunder and lightning, of course!) for several hours – we waited out most of it at the school, then hurried home in a drizzle.

4/11/07 - Juán Santamaría day
I asked my teacher today what Costa Ricans do on Juán Santamaría day - he said there are no big celebrations (at least in Orosi. I think Alajuela has more celebrations since he is from that province.). He said that the children in the schools put on a play that depicts the war and event that made Juán Santamaría a hero.

Weather report - Beautiful, sunny morning. 72 degrees inside at 8:00 am. 2:00 rain again, this time we had a real downpour! But it was pretty much over by 6:00.