Let’s Google That Bug

When a 4-year-old, upon spotting an insect that she can’t identify, says to her brother and sister, “let’s Google that bug”, the usage of a company name as a verb reaches a new level when it is part of the lexicon of such a young child. When I hear those words coming from Naimah, it is my call to action to grab my camera. In less than a half hour this morning, we came across some interesting species just on our back porch.

Léah and Gabriel quickly identified this one sitting on our door screen as a leaf bug.

This one looks like it is a member of some butterfly family.

But what the heck is this? Gabriel called it a “furry tiger bug”. Those glowing yellow antennae? That’s not an effect from the camera.

On the subject of discoveries, Mélanie noticed just this week that we have bananas growing on the trees outside our bathroom (close to where she discovered the infamous snake).

But Gabriel and I couldn’t figure out what this is growing 2 trees over.

And while I am at it listing some of these head scratchers, what exactly is this in front of our neighbor’s house? Is it a bat net or something?

Can I Google “weird web net thingy” and get an explanation?

When It Rains, It Pours

In Costa Rica, the rainy season (or "green season") is from May to mid-November. Costa Ricans call this wet time of year their winter. I don’t want to jinx it (even though I am probably jinxing it by writing this blog post), but so far, the rainy season has consisted of beautiful days up until early afternoon. By the time you are completely exhausted and burnt out (literally) from the sun and heat, the clouds come in and often the rains are fairly light. In general, we haven’t minded it that much.

However, when nature decides to really flex its muscles… wow, there is nothing like it. The thunder and lightning storms are amazingly powerful. The second night that we were living in Costa Rica, we experienced a huge storm and it felt like our house would be swept away by the rains (it probably didn’t help that I recently saw The Wizard of Oz with Léah). The kids were terrified and we couldn’t blame them (especially when the roof started leaking which added an extra dimension to the fear). It is hard to comfort one’s children when you are shaking yourself.

Now that we are into week 5 of our journey, the kids have gotten more used to the storms and it doesn’t bother them as much when the skies open up with their full fury.

For those of you reading from the “Wet Coast” of Canada, you think British Columbia has rain? How about this?

Mountain View

When Mélanie and I committed to Costa Rica, we knew that we didn’t want to live in San José since it is a big city. In our minds, the Costa Rican experience was all about nature and our preference was to live in the mountains in a small town. At first, we doubted that it would be possible to be in a rural area because I need high-speed Internet to be able to work. After doing a considerable amount of researching and networking, we were so excited to find out that our goal could be achieved by making contact with Ray at CRWiFi. In a nutshell, Ray beams high-speed Internet from antennas situated in the mountains. When we were ready to book a beautiful house in the hills, we coordinated the installation of a receiver with Ray in order to have high-speed Internet available as soon as we arrived.

I am very, very fortunate to be able to develop software while being surrounded by coffee plantations, fruit trees, toucans, iguanas etc.

Sadly, we have to leave this house in around 3 weeks and we will definitely miss it. We have such a spectacular view being perched up high.

(If you listen closely while watching the video, you can hear Léah ask Mélanie to smell her armpit. Don’t think she is strange, she was trying her first deodorant stick. ^_^) 

Fun with Friends on Mother’s Day

We celebrated Mother’s Day at John and Patsy’s house. They were such amazing hosts and everybody had a great time.

John is the “Grill King”… the way he worked the chicken on the BBQ was a sight to behold.

We haven’t taken many family pictures because I am normally the one behind the camera. I love how Naimah is kicking up her heal in the picture.

Mélanie and Patsy (I can understand quite a bit when Patsy speaks her “Mexican Spanish”).

Water limbo

Of course, Mélanie needed some quality “Latin baby” time.

Patsy has details on her blog as well.

Stowaway

The rest of the family was in the kitchen when Mélanie called out to us to come see something. She had been in the middle of hanging up some of the swimsuits to dry when she discovered a stowaway.

The scorpion was very much alive and had decided to camp out in my swimsuit. I transferred him to a Ziploc bag and we set it free in a field the following morning.

 

As mentioned before, creepy crawlies such as scorpions, spiders, and snakes are fairly common here. Nervous for our children’s well-being, we researched a bit on the Internet and read that Costa Rica has 12 types of scorpions, but none are dangerous; their sting is similar to a wasp. Scorpions in the United States are much more deadly and dozens of people die in Arizona from them every year.

Happy Mother’s Day: The Sequel

Mother’s Day in Costa Rica, which happens to be today, is a very big deal here. The kids have spent the last 2 weeks preparing Mother’s Day cards and presents.

Léah’s card for Mélanie:

Gabriel’s card for Mélanie:

How many Jewish Bubbies do you think had cards made for them in Costa Rica?

  

Gabriel made a card for Mamie in Gaspé:

Return to Sender

Costa Rica boasts the highest standard of living in Central America and has a vibrant technology sector, but “postal authorities say that 1 in 5 pieces of mail is undeliverable because they can't figure out where the addressee lives” (LA Times, 2007). This is due to the fact that Costa Rica doesn't have a standardized system of addresses; instead, “official” addresses in this country read like treasure-hunt clues. Take a look at the address for this restaurant in our town:

“50 meters west of the ‘Nacional al Boyero’ monument”.

Most Costa Rican addresses are expressed in relation to the closest community landmark; in the case pictured above, a monument. But to make it even more challenging, sometimes that landmark no longer even exists. Plus, when Costa Ricans give directions, a city block is considered to be 100 meters long regardless of its length. So for the address of the restaurant, it isn’t an exact 50 meters from the monument but rather a half a block.

In Atenas (where we live), the streets aren't named, and virtually none have signs. I haven’t even seen a house with a number. We called for roadside assistance this week to boost the dead battery on our car and it took them 3 hours to find us… and we were at our house!

For those of us that have become reliant on Google Maps, this is a big adjustment when you can’t use it to help you find “125 meters west of the old Coca-Cola plant”.