In Loving Memory… First week of school, preparing for el Día de la Independendia

We are mourning the loss of our dear friend Baraah, a spark of light and joy in our lives who passed away unexpectedly last week, far too soon. Peace be to her memory. She and her family have been very close to ours over the past seven years. It has been complex for us to navigate processing this major loss while also being in our first week(s) here with so many new things. We are grateful to good friends near and far, and to the power of technology, to allow us to grieve and share in community from Costa Rica.

Ethan and Cora have completed a full week of school and they have been even more immersed than we imagined. This is a festive week here in preparation for Independence Day (1802) and the kids are involved in songs and dances and dramatic performances at school this week! A festive beginning. Part of the Central American tradition is torch runners re-enacting the delivery of the news of Costa Rican independence all the way from Guatemala, where the war was mostly fought. Costa Rica received the news about a month later, and according to Luke’s Spanish teacher, many peasants responded, “Independence from who?”

We have all been taking Spanish lessons at a food forest, Luke every day and the others twice a week. We park in a grove of fruit trees and meet in Ranchos, or open air shelters. We’ve seen Toucans and an agutí so far in this tropical eco orchard with bananas, oranges, mangos and jocotes all around us.

Jocotes are a new fruit for us and are in season, being sold out of pickups and street vendors, plum sized (also called Spanish plums) kind of custardy, but a bit tart, with a big stone. We also tried the zapote, which tastes kind of like pumpkin pie!

The kids’ teachers have commented how well they seem to be adjusting and we and the kids mostly agree. We are very proud of them, it is a lot of change for all of us!

Luke continued his streak of doctor visits with an ear infection – from the pool, we suppose. After church Sunday, we took our first trip to the beach, to Playa Herradura, 1.25 hours away! We haven’t explored much yet outside of our surrounding towns, as we’re getting settled still, but we hope to more, especially during the summer break in December and January.

You can hear more about the past week in Ethan and Luke’s recent podcast episode:

We are tired every night and we keep saying it feels like it’s been a month since we arrived, though it’s now been 12 days. But we are grateful for the adventures and surprises we are having every day. (One example: outside the bank the other day, we talked with a mom from the kids’ school, and we discovered that she went to the same Chicago high school as Luke! (Von Steuben). There aren’t many foreign families at the school, so this was a true small world connection!)

A Costa Rican neighbor girl Cora’s age has been coming over a few times a week to play, which has been a huge blessing.

We have a bit of a school routine going now, and are starting to feel more familiar with, if not quite settled in our new spot. We hope we’re over the hump of school and health logistics and can get into a bit more of a rhythm. There’s so much more to learn here and we continue to be excited to see how this experience shapes us as a family!