Writers’ gonna write.

Tamarah,

Wow! The first few weeks went slow. The last few have flown by! I cannot believe it is already November! I thought I would just share a few moments.

I have been working on making it a habit to go down to the beach or to ride my bicycle somewhere new to explore a few times each week. It has been just cool enough to write without sweating dripping down my fingers and smudging the pages. I am thankful that it is so easy to get to beautiful places to sit and think.

Dreutch fixing Anna’s breaks

Shots from Anna’s bike rides.

These are so beautiful, it is just crazy.

Dreutch was sick a few times these past few weeks. When I wasn’t stressing out that he had dengue or typhoid or some crazy sickness, I got a chance to learn a few things about medicine in a different country. (Note to self – using google to look up symptoms for hours can lead to rabbit trails and paranoia.) Over the counter medications are not available at the small supermarkets in town. They are at the Farmacias – tiny little pharmacies – like Walgreens, just without any of the extra random things for sale. You explain your symptoms to the pharmacist and they find you what they think will help the most. Awesome right! Unfortunately, my lack of understanding of the difference between the Spanish words for dry cough and wet cough meant that I walked away with Mucinex. Dreutch promptly rejected that solution. The next day I returned after googling “Costa Rica Nyquil” and finding out, thanks to a random twitter post that it is called Tabcin. Insert Anna’s most professional doctor voice: “Dreutch is doing fine now. While we feared the worst, we are happy to report that it was just a version of the flu. A full recovery is expected.” No need for me to break out my new knowledge of manual rehydration techniques in case of severe dehydration caused from any number of serious tropical illnesses… yet….

New vocabulary that matters: Tos seca – dry cough. Fiebre – fever. Etc. etc.

New vocabulary that’s just fun: Speed bumps are called muertas, which means dead people. Bahahaha… Wait… that’s disturbing…

Harvest Festival

We helped with the Fall Harvest Festival that the church put on and we had just as much fun, maybe more… than the kids did. We had a bounce house, tons of games, and carnival food. I am not going to lie; I had a lot of fun fishing for kids. I mean… running the cookie on a string booth.

        

Dreutch has been enjoying his return to playing beach volleyball! We also enjoyed hanging out outside of volleyball on Halloween with this group.

Anna’s friend, Christina, being awesome.

Dreutch, being awesome.

When Dreutch wasn’t sick we started to do a few adventuresome/touristy things – We spent a Sunday afternoon on a local catamaran – my first time snorkeling! I was so surprised when I actually saw a fish! (or 50) Dreutch and his friends have been spear fishing a few times… and we had Sashimi again the other day. Yea!

Cheers to your adventures wherever you are.

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.”

JRR Tolkein – The Hobbit

One last photo….this is why I love these two.  They packed the Thor costume and took it with them 🙂