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Festival de Arte y Danza

Last night was Su Espacio’s Festival of Art & Dance which was really a dance classes recital. I left at the intermission because I had to get up at 4 this morning to go to San Jose. But from the first half:

This is the Pre-school English Class which sang 3 songs in English – no dance.
A friend in my Spanish class from Atlanta volunteers to teach this class. 

Tomorrow I will tell about my experience being fingerprinted for my residency application.

Dancer’s humor! 
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Yellow Bells Begin Blooming

Dry season begins and these trees in my yard begin to bloom
and if like last year will continue through March or April.

 

 

I zoom in for the flowers because . . .
They are on the opposite side of trees from my terrace where the afternoon sun
shines, but maybe later they will bloom on this side too! Summer has begun!

 

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.”–  Lady Bird Johnson, Public Roads: Where Flowers Bloom

Busy days ahead!

Tonight I go to Su Espacio’s “Arts Festival” which is more of a dance recital. I’m the photographer.

Tomorrow, Thursday, I go to San Jose early to be fingerprinted for my residency application, which is no guarantee that I will get it soon, but at least it is in the process!

Friday I may have to help shop for any angel tree kids we have not received gifts for.

Saturday is the Angel Tree party in the morning and I get a rent car in the afternoon for my Sunday to Wednesday birding near Volcan Turrialba.

Then just a couple of more Spanish lessons for this year before I get a break from conjugations and verbs! I’m considering a trip to Nicaragua over Christmas but if I don’t do that, I will make the border visa run on December 30.

 

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Rock Band at Youth Festival

Just another Rock Band to me but I guess the youth liked it.
Youth Festival Sunday Afternoon and this was the main attraction.
Central Park Atenas

I went by Sunday after sitting at Su Espacio to receive Angel Tree gifts. This Saturday morning is the Angel Tree Party and that afternoon I get a rent car. The next morning I am escaping to a new birding haven, Rancho Naturalistic, in the shadow of Turrialba Volcano. Three nights with all meals and a birding guide for just $80 a night as a ” Costa Rica resident’s” price! Been wanting to go and tried to get a time later, closer to Christmas but after next week they are booked solid. So I’m off! Nearly!

A book I’m reading on solitude quotes some neurologist saying that time immersed in nature restores the brain. Sounds good to me!  🙂   Of course I’m listening to birds right now outside my window, but getting away makes it even better! 
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Thanksgiving and Angel Tree Completion

Our Angel Tree still had 6 left yesterday a.m.
but by afternoon all 6 were taken!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday I am one of about 4 volunteers staying at Su Espacio to receive the gifts as they are brought in. They are kind of trickling in with still 99 not here yet out of the 300, but Ticos do everything at the last minute David keeps reminding me – so by Monday or Tuesday most will probably be turned in (Sunday is the deadline). We have plenty of money to buy gifts for any children that are missed and until next Saturday, Dec. 5. I got more deeply involved in this than I really intended, but it has been fun with a purpose helping a lot of poor children get some nice Christmas presents – possibly the only gifts they will receive this Christmas. So a good thing! And I like to do good!  🙂

Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner at my neighbor’s house next door Thursday.
Don & Lynda on right are from Oregon & live across our shared driveway.
The lady and her daughter on left are “snowbirds” from Wisconsin
renting a house 2 doors down for 2 months. 

Snowbirds are beginning to arrive, though some wait until after Christmas. One Canadian couple I was with in the apartments are already here and will stay until sometime in January. Others will come in January. It kind of reminds me of my two years in Miami where the population increases in our summer or your winter with the cold weather residents. And I’m sorry to say that the rain seems to have stopped. We will probably get a few more showers up into December maybe, but “Dry Season” has started.

One good thing about dry season is that I won’t have to put my leather shoes out in the sun to keep them from growing mold! And I recently found a new place for mold to grow – on the sweat bands of my ball caps. They are now hung upside down to help the sweat bands air out! And I have been throwing some of them in the washing machine too! Pura Vida!  🙂
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Spanish Homework with an Oropéndola

Photograph on the Yorkin River, Costa Rica, by Charlie Doggett
La fotografía en el río Yorkin, Costa Rica, por Charlie Doggett

I will not copy it all here or translate it all to English, but you can see what I said on my Spanish Learning Blog, ¡Aprendo español en Atenas!


Some of the data was copied from Spanish language websites, but I do write simple sentences on my own now. I’m still a slow, slow learner! Yet it is fun! ¡Pero es divertido!


❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.

If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞

‒Nelson Mandela

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FALL? The Interesting Strangler Fig

Recently all the leaves were falling off the Strangler Fig Tree – still green!
This is the Strangler Fig Tree before.

Now it is almost bare, but . . . 

Immediately new buds started popping out and then . . .

Buds turning to new leaves which will again soon hide its host tree in there.
The host tree is nearly dead with one limb showing leaves.

Read more about Strangler Fig Trees (a bunch of different species) on Wikipedia. Note that it is not a fig tree for the fruit we eat, but a type of  Ficus aurea of which this one does have a type of fruit that animals and birds eat, but not humans. Birds drop or deposit seeds in a living tree. The seeds first germinate in the tree like an epiphyte until the roots grow down to the grown. Then a real tree starts growing around the host tree until it eventually chokes it to death. My host tree still has one living limb with green leaves. After the host tree dies, then in years rots away, some of the strangler figs collapse for lack of support. They also share an interesting mutualism with the fig wasp, another story!   🙂

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Magnificent Hummingbird Female

Magnificent Hummingbird Female
Though it could be a Female Ruby-throated – Female harder to identify
Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica

Magnificent Hummingbird Female
Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica

This is right off my Terrace, which is what I’m calling my balcony now. I love this flower, which my gardener surprised me with, and the hummingbirds love it too! 

My Birds of Costa Rica Photo Gallery has all my hummingbird photos together in a sub-gallery.  
Did you know that a hummingbird eats about 60 time its weight each day? Of course he only weighs as much as a quarter (U.S. currency 25¢ piece)!   🙂

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Visited New Mall Yesterday

While on business in Alajuela yesterday, I met a Tico friend there and we looked around the new mall. Some photos:

They claim it is 80% finished or maybe occupied, but did not look it to me.

You cannot drive up to front entrance yet because road is not finished! 
The entrance road coming soon!?
The street in front is bumper to bumper cars!
But they are widening it, in time. 🙂

Some Chinese tourists get photos
in front of one of many Christmas trees!

Once I got past this entrance tree I somehow forgot to make any more photos. So I will show the inside the mall another time! It is very large with stores for about anything you could possibly want. The prices were not as bad as I expected, but still expensive. The food court is large and has a good variety, but my friend wanted Taco Bell, so we did! (Somehow it seems wrong eating American Fast Food in another country!) But it was good, even though they serve french fries with every combo! ???

Today, Friday, I spent 4 hours from 7-11 at the Feria (Farmers’ Market) trying to get people to take an angel from our Su Espacio Angel Tree. We gave out 24 and still have nearly 50 left with only one week left to get sponsors. David thinks they will go fast this week. If some are not taken, we have plenty of money to buy gifts for them, BUT someone has to go shopping for them! We’ll see what happens. I may get another job. 

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Simple Pleasure 4: “Mi Patio”

Mi Patio is simply Spanish for “My Yard.” It is more than just my flower garden. Only 4 shots:

I do selective pruning to keep my garden art bird visible.
It is so full now that a major pruning will be needed by Dec. or Jan.

Coming in from the driveway.

Front yard from my terrace.

Terrace view of the Guarumo (Cecropia) Tree which has really grown! 

My yard is truly a constant “simple pleasure” that I enjoy all the time I’m at home. Living in the country or in a forest, next to a national park was always a temptation to be in true wildness all the time, but it would require a 4WD vehicle in most cases, be further from healthcare when needed, and shopping which I could handle the easiest, and further from people, especially those who speak English which I also would like in some ways when my Spanish is better, BUT . . . I think this is the best of both worlds and I am in a small country town. I just need this particular simple pleasure of a garden yard to have nature around me. And a very comfortable house!  🙂

And there is always cut flowers for inside!
🙂

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.~Luther Burbank

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Simple Pleasure 3: Sidewalk Cafe at Coopeatenas

At the entrance to my favorite Supermercado is this little sidewalk cafe
for excellent coffee & pastries (Banana Nut Bread my favorite) and
the best deal on ice cream in town! Half the price of POPS Ice Cream Shop.
That’s my coffee and carrot cake at the first table with my shopping bags.
I walk to here and mostly walk home, unless big load/rain, then a taxi
Coopeatenas is the farmers’ cooperative super market & farm store out back

And fun, friendly Ticas behind the counter with Santa on the Cash Register!
Helados is ice cream. They have sandwiches too! And Gourmet Coffee!
Many of their bakery items are from Crema y Nata, my favorite bakery.

And that cash register sign says in literal English translation: 

order, cancel, and remove your order here

Of course you know that “cancel” means “pay” and “remove” is like “pick up”
This same sign is in most “fast food” restaurants, called “cafetería” here.

“I wish I could show you the little village where I was born. It’s so lovely there…I used to think it too small to spend a life in, but now I’m not so sure.” ― Mary Kelly

Yep! That’s me! I was born in Warren, Arkansas, a small farming town like Atenas, Costa Rica and never thought I would ever live there again! Now I do sorta – well, here it’s coffee instead of tomato farms and Alajuela Province is a lot different from Arkansas and Costa Rica is another world from the states. But I do live in a small town again!  🙂