My turn!

Sarah says: My turn! David gave a great overview of the valley in which we live, and an overview of our journey to our new home. But what have we been doing since we got here, you might ask? We have been extremely busy. Once we unloaded all our belongings, groceries and all, we looked around our new apartment to see what we could unpack Monday evening already. What we found was our closet space occupied by all kinds of tools and equipment and random other stuff so that it would be stored in a safe place. We decided we were too tired to think about it, so we went over to the local restaurant and ate our first meal.

Tuesday began our days of cleaning and organization. We unloaded our closets and set everything out in the lab area, to be dealt with later. We cleaned out everything, killed a bunch of spiders and dismantled their homes, and moved our clothes in. Wednesday and Thursday we spent tearing apart our kitchen. It was obvious to me that there have been lots of people staying in our apartment on and off for the past couple years, and all have left their food supply and cooking supplies behind. We took everything out of the pantry and all of the cupboards, washed everything, swept out the dead bugs, and re-organized all of the food and dishes and cooking supplies. And finally on Friday, we cleaned the desk area in our apartment. It was full of papers and books that are great to have at QERC, but we moved them out into the reception area outside of our apartment, and moved our own books and picture frames in. Now we have a great looking apartment, personalized and clean (except for the little spiders that keep rebuilding their webs overnight, no matter how many times we knock them down during the days!).

Besides cleaning and organizing, we’ve spent some time walking around outside. It gets light early, sometime between 5:30-6:00am, and for the most part David and I have been able to get up by 7:30 or so. It’s still the rainy season here in Costa Rica, so it’s guaranteed to rain every day for close to 5 hours between the hours of 11:00am and 6:00pm. We found out early that even though it may stop raining during those hours, it may pick up again. Tuesday we went on a short hike after it stopped raining. About an hour into our hike, it started pouring and we got soaked!

As we have been walking around, we have gotten to meet a few people. Up the hill from us lives a Canadian lady (Laura) who is married to a Costa Rican. We went to visit with her on Thursday and she filled us with some great information about the community. Her daughter is in 4^th grade at the local school, and so Laura told us about a school gathering on Thursday evening. Friday, September 15^th, was Independence Day, so the school had a special presentation the evening before. The kids had all made faroles, or lanterns as they called them, which looked sort of like piñatas. They were decorated with Costa Rican colors and the kids walked in a sort of processional as the principal and some adults talked about the history and politics of Costa Rica. At the presentation, we were able to meet the patriarch of the Chacon family, don Efrain, and his wife, Marianela. They were very nice and even gave us a ride back down to our place after the ceremony.

As most or maybe even all of you know, David is a bird fanatic. However, living here has made even me appreciate the birds more. There are beautiful and bright-colored birds everywhere, so it’s hard not to appreciate their beauty and diversity. We even have a number of hummingbird feeders right outside our windows and there is always a number of them swooping in and out. We had our door open a few days ago and one even came in the house. It was quite a sight, and the poor fellow ran smack into the window trying to get back out to his freedom. David was able to pick it up and found it only stunned, so when he took it outside it flew away. I’m sure that will be the first of many rescues. :) The best bird I’ve seen is by far the Quetzal. It’s the famous bird in the area, and I’m pretty sure I’ll develop some sort of obsession over it. We saw one in a tree right outside our apartment last week and it was breathtaking.

For lunch on Sunday we were invited to go to our housekeeper’s place to eat with her family. (Yes, we have a housekeeper—Liseth cleans the entire QERC building, including our apartment. She's wonderful--she even left us a vase full of flowers when she left on Friday!) We are excited to get to know her better and her family as well. Tomorrow (Thursday) Liseth has invited us to go with her and her husband on a two-day trip. We're not exactly sure where we're going, we only know that we're staying with her husband Rigo's dad, and it's going to be HOT. So, we are excited to get out a little bit and be with Rigo and Liseth.

Another thing to note is that there is no Christian church here--only a Catholic church, which is considered to be very different than the Christian church. And, the priest who comes to this small community also travels to other small communities. So, Mass is held usually on Tuesdays (random), sometime later afternoon, and not usually every week. We went yesterday for the first time--we met a girl working at the hotel (Diana) and she informed us when Mass would be taking place. She also invited us to go with her family so we wouldn't have to walk, which was very nice! Her dad is Melvin, an excellent birder and one of the guys who helped David do his research when he was studying here 4 years ago.

Today we got up and went hiking again. We were able to avoid the rain this time, and we hiked the trail "La Quebrada". It was beautiful--we saw lots of birds, some butterflies and even a frog! And to top it all off, as soon as we made it down from the trail, we saw a Quetzal close by--not more than 10 feet away, in a tree at eye level. It was incredible!! He flew away before I was able to get pictures, but there's plenty of time to get some good shots. :) That's all for now!