Whooo, us?

Tuesday- 8 August

Last week we concluded our 10-week course in sustainable design at the Monteverde Institute, soooo…

Welcome to the true sabbatical segment of our blog! I’m determined not to fall into my department chair Richard’s description of sabbatical life (it involves lots of time in a bathrobe & slippers), which I’m sure he is picturing me doing. He probably figures I’m also sipping pina coladas right after lunch every afternoon too. Honest, I’m not! I’m continuing to do real, albeit often non-traditional work for a university professor, as is Norma.

This past week Norma began helping out mornings with a new local restaurant in exchange for Spanish lessons. The restaurant is a very small one specializing in traditional rural Tico specialties, and was just opened by Sarai, one of the Spanish teachers from the Institute. So Norma now grinds corn and has learned to make authentic fresh tortillas while she works on vocabulary and how to conjugate verbs. Sarai is wonderful at keeping a working conversation in Spanish going, even when our vocabulary is clearly limited, as well as gently correcting mistakes or coaching pronunciations or conjugations as you go, all without allowing lapses into English. As for me, I’m still wrapping up a few of the student’s projects, and then I’m beginning my planning project with the local municipality. I’m also helping out with some rough carpentry at the restaurant--- my Spanish needs work too! This week I’ll be helping building some tables and benches in typical rustic style with Sarai’s husband Melvin. I’m sure you’ll hear more about this later!

Learning Spanish is proving to be both a challenge, and at times, very rewarding. While neither Norma nor I can really carry on a meaningful conversation as yet with our neighbors, we have progressed far beyond either our German or Czech skills. I’m proud to say I managed to both drop our car at the mechanic’s this morning, with adequate instructions for him to do the work, as well as to understand his excuse for not having it done when I returned at the end of the day. Some things are universal, regardless of culture or language!

This week’s animal sighting was made by Norma. While out hiking on Saturday, we were watching a pair of Emerald Toucanettes moving up into the canopy along our trail when Norma noticed a group of jays making even more noise than usual near where we were searching. When she scanned the tree canopy with her binoculars, she spotted a group of Mottled Owls—a mother and two nearly grown up chicks. Like crows in north America, jays here love to harass the owls, and this group looked resigned to an afternoon of being squawked at while they tried to get some sleep before setting out to hunt at twilight. All three seemed very content to just watch as we moved in fairly close to gawk at and photograph them.

Other animal news includes the expansion of Niall’s menagerie to include a second lizard. This one is smaller, but of the same species as Garfield, his first lizard. It hasn’t yet been given a name, but Niall is convinced it must be a female, so he’s waiting to see if the two will mate. We’ll keep you posted if the second one actually turns out to be a female…

I guess that is about it for this week, as everyting is just settling onto a new routine. In the meantime, we're enjoying very nice weather (we're experiencing a "veranillo" or 'little summer', which is typical of this part of the wet season), and finally beginning to get an opportunity to relax and live a bit more at the local pace (Tico time). We're also beginning to plan some short trips (back to Nicaragua, and then down to Panama in September) which we'll share in the future...