The road construction continues and continues to make a pure mess of things. The stretch of highway being revamped is about a 15 to 20 mile stretch from downtown San José to the foothills of Ciudad Colon.

The chunk of road represented here shows an intersection that if it’s flow of traffic doesn’t kill at least three people a day, it’s a pure miracle. There’s a train track, a seven way (and some could argue more) intersection, and oodles of pedestrians. All of that flow is being crammed from one side to another to trench an isle for widening the traffic to three lanes and then re-tarred and striped.

As I approached the intersection to make a backward turn - that’s right a reverse turn - a guy driving a minibus put on his hazards and just stopped. Stopped. Since there is no longer a shoulder, he stopped in one of the skinny, make-shift lanes where’s there’s barely enough room for moving traffic to pass.

The word about town is that there are all sorts of new “rules of the road” being established - and this is the hard part to believe - enforced in Costa Rica. Child seats in cars are now a law and there’s all sorts of new tougher drunk driving laws.

It hasn’t been an easy thing to live with this road construction. We’re now into about our eight month or so and when the kids go back to school and all those other minibuses take route, there will be even more space and less room to squeeze by. From the photo below, you can see the buses now have to stop right in the right lane, which halts everything once again.

I’m hoping with these new laws, perhaps some of these drivers that believe in the motto: “As long as I put on my blinkers I can do anything on the road” are caught. That’s going to be the tough part. Training a bunch of new officers that are going to catch a guy in the middle of the freeway who’s illegally backing up - (with his hazards on of course! - might end up killing more traffic police and add to the horrendous mortality rate Costa Rica now has on the road. These are some of the complex dilemas a tiny country has in trying to move up from it’s second world status to a more, well, second and one-half world status.

When this freeway is finally finished, we’ll be able to reclaim a bit or paradise with a few less potholes and hopefully - hopefully - a few less guys causing all those hazards.

Every work day comes to a screeching halt between three and four p.m. in the afternoon in Costa Rica. The only thing that could cause such a ripple is coffee. And bread.

Drive by offices buildings and undoubtedly you will see men and women perched out on the stoop nurturing the life blood of this country. I rarely witness a coffee break with out a slab or chunk of bread or at least some odd pastry item like the round dyed red fried crispy things I’ve seen that make me whince in pain for the poor person’s stomach and pancreas that’s going to have to decipher what the heck all those ingrediants are. (Not to mention they are as hard as a rock!)

It also seems to be a custom for employees - ranging from maids to gardeners - to haul a loaf of bread to work and partake in the morning coffee ritual about an hour (or less) after they’ve arrived. i must say it took me awhile to not get my feathers all a-ruffle when I first saw this. Today, I happily will offer to make the coffee and even make sure I always have bread on hand for my nannies.

Bread lacks fluff and flavor in Costa Rica. It’s improved greatly from when I first arrived. I remember buying this gorgeous, round, buttery-looking loaf that screamed at me from a baker’s window. The bread was hard and there were chunks of margarine nestled between fibers. Today, there are lots of places from grocery stores and cafes making a better loaf of bread. The chosen filling for bread? Natilla - which is sour cream or queso crema - cream cheese. Again both products a bit lacking in texture and consistency, but these too are improving.

This afternoon, I brewed up another cup of joe for a tired nanny trying to keep Addison from crying over every little thing. His recovery is slow and everything from his mouth - due to soars from the fever - to his bone hurt. Since he can’t speak all that well, we get to hear loads and loads of crying. I set the coffee cup next to the nanny and Addy eyed it. He’s most likely will follow in this Tico tradition.

With sugar of course.

Travelojos - new site dedicated to Latin American travel and expat living - has listed MotherJungle as one of the Costa Rican sites to follow. I like Steven’s site as it’s clean and crisp, and he seems to be posting quite regularly. (I think he also may know a lot more about me than traveling Latin America, but I’m not willing to admit that too readily.) From his “About Me” photo I can see he clearly enjoys the coconut - a subject near and dear to my heart.

What I really like is that Travelojos is out to bring us “newbies” at the Latin thing - whether the big move or just a trip - together to share ideas, comments, and information. My good friend over at Open Toe Shoes was also placed as a blog to watch. I’ve mentioned before the lovely artwork you can see at Open Toe. Plus Alison gives a nice perspective on life a bit more out in the campo than I could ever do since I live within a stones throw from so much shopping it’s amazing I just don’t spontaneously drop right in my own home.

I wish Travelojos a bunch of luck. We’ll keep following and hope they do the same.

Pura Vida.

Fruit stands offer a lot of, well, fruit. Costa Ricans eat a lot of fruit. Crave a papaya or watermelon or tasteless, water apple? Some bloom year around and can be purchased at any pulperia or market at any time. A few, like that water apple or the super, sour green mango, come seasonally.

After fresh fruit, I believe most Ticos boil the bleep out of every vegetable that comes their way. Or, they are pickled. In restaurants, the salad of choice given with a meal tends to be coleslaw - with lots of sugar added to temper the vinegar. In the city, greens can be found nicely blanched and a salad can be the main course.

Those greens we’ve all become hip to in the past few years are tough, if not impossible to come by. A reader mentioned wheat grass. I found a guy who knew a guy who could get me some of the stuff when it was ready and then I lost the number for the guy who knew the guy. When I found out what it tasted like, I decided to search for another alternative. Hard wheat berries are readily available in stores like Bio Salud - an alternative health store - and even Auto Mercado.*

Kale is a real rarity, (which is amazing considering I could keep it growing in snow when I lived in the States!); mustard greens I’ve found - at least I think I have; celery is plentiful; broccoli and cauliflower almost always can be had; and fresh herbs can be found at any time of the year.

I eat a majority of foods raw. I love that other readers do too. (Congrats on making sprouts work, I have a tougher time though it’s a goal of mine like walking down the red carpet someday.) There are raw foods that I’ve mentioned before such as those raw eggs. But did you know you can find raw milk? Raw goats milk? A topic that could cause a grip of terror across the faces of a few and a rage of controversy. But let’s face it, a lot of world still lives off of little farms. India comes to mind. In fact for lunch, I savored an herbal goat cheese sandwich, which I got from a friend who just so happens to own the goats that gave the milk that then made the cheese.

Doctors, across the board in Costa Rica, always talk about food. The more “alternative” doctors will use food, teas, and those vegetables before running to drugs. I’ve had conventional doctors prescribe eating lime with the meat to drinking carrot juice to rubbing garlic on body parts. And every doctor I’ve ever come across prescribes tea. I’ve even climbed a tree to pick the guava leaf guava, which is then boiled and taken for digestive troubles. (I’m not going to even begin to describe how horrible it tastes!)

As always, I love to circle back to that coconut. The agua de pipa alone can keep one not only satiated, but also alkaline. I’ve discovered a way to take it up a notch and sour the water with a product called kefir - a culture much like yogurt that ferments the water and makes it a sour, bubbly-like soda. It’s got so many good, pro-biotics, I feel tingly just looking at it as it brews.

When it comes to finding kefir starter or those wheat grass sprouts, it’s time to get on-line and order them. Then, I have to either find a willing relative to haul it down or way to disguise it in the mail as the aduanas do not take lightly to sending food products, which includes vitamins and supplements like spirulina.

It’s always a give and take moving to paradise. I just made a pro and con list of moving away from Costa Rica. The pros still have it, which includes a great variety of greens. If you buy it and bring it home, you can have a great, locally grown, green diet.

*Forgive me. The Spanish name escapes me at the moment. 

Going green can mean two things: go green on the outside and go green on the inside. We all know about changing light bulbs, right? Though I take a deep breath every time I buy another one of those energy efficient bulbs, I stick it in again with the certainty that it’s going to help, if even just a little bit.

During the dry season, I do smaller loads of laundry and dry them in the garage. Even though it takes a day or two, I haven’t run my dryer more than an hour in over a month. I’m so excited to get my next electric bill to see how much I’ve saved.

Then there’s the inside. Our insides need to go green. I admit to being a big lover of potato chips with sour cream for dinner and a Cafe Britt boxed espresso drink for lunch. But I’m a believer in those greens. I mean as a species, we haven’t been around all that long. It wasn’t that long ago that we killed a buffalo, or snake, or whatever and ate on it for weeks. After our morsels of protein, we bopped around most likely munching on green things. And I know a harvested cucumber may not look like the ones they used to find in the woods but it’s got to be closer to what our body needs than a greasy, cheese-flavored potato chip.

When I got the urine test back for Addison, everything was normal. Turns out his bronchitis was just what I suspected - a viral thing. Though we did eventually give him a round of antibiotics because a small, underlying bacterial infection can come along for the ride. Coco blew through the bronchitis without the drug, and I think Addison’s slower immune system needed that help.

A few nights ago, when the fever just kept coming back for those last hurrahs, I looked to the ceiling and asked for the answer to whatever to that piece I was missing. What was I missing? We’d flooded this kid with more things in every orifice, and I knew I was missing something. Then came the urine tests. The boy was too acidic. He needed more greens!

Now this is a complicated issue with Addison as he has allergic reactions to greens that are hard to digest like those cucumbers and avocados. If I could Addison’s pH balance up to a seven rather than a six, I knew the virus couldn’t survive. Every hour we fed him with a dropper (his lips too blistered to drink) and kept the herbal teas going between meals. It’s not easy job and it would be hard to drink that much green stuff all day, every day.

Addison’s doctor suggested ayote tierno. I knew it was a squash but didn’t know that tierno meant “un-ripe.” In the photo, it is the big green skinned squash with a pale, whitish center. Ripe, it’s called maduro and it’s usually dark yellow or orange. Eating ayote or platinos or even bananas unripe is another way to eat green. I’ve been boiling the ayote and adding oregano. Addison spits most of it out, but I think we get about half in the hole.*

This morning, after a night of odd, calm sweet breathing by Addison, I awoke to two little hands trying to calm up onto my bed. He grabbed the edge and pulled himself up and smiled. It is a smile I will remember for the rest of my life. It was as joyous a moment as the day I was wheeled out of the hospital with him wrapped up in my arms.

We’ve got some healing still to do. He doesn’t want to walk and has really honed his ability to whine. He’s got a few more days to go before he’s up to smacking his sister again and playing with his Little People school bus.

Dumping out the vaporizor this morning, I looked up to the ceiling and said thanks. Plus I promised we’d all keep going green and get to changing those bulbs in the bathroom.

*The photo shows readily available, CHEAP! vegetables in Costa Rica.
Starting with the big ayote and going clockwise: Ayote tierno;
lemongrass(for scrumptious lemongrass tea); thyme, oregano, limes,
and avocados.

The El Museo de los Niños - children’s museum - in downtown San Jose sits down the lane and then atop a hill. The former military prison was turned in museum in 1988 because after the revolution in 1948 and disbandment of the army, there wasn’t a lot of need for military prisoners.Though it took awhile to pull it together, the museum is a well-used and dearly loved landmark in Costa Rica by children and adults alike.

It’s not hard to imagine the space once housing caged cells. Photos line the hall ways to show how it used to be compared to how it looks today as a center with an interactive science and learning museum for children. I’ve spent many afternoons learning about recycling and musical notes. You can even experience the rattle of a real earthquake in one room.

There are a few antiquated exhibits like the talking Franklin Chang - Costa Rica’s beloved international astronaut and a few doctors in the basement that my daughter refuses to go near. Other than that, it’s a great place to climb on helicopters and learn about the “olden days” of Costa Rica. You can even rent out a space for birthday parties here.

Because the prison was such an expansive place, there was room to put a theater and a large art gallery. I’ve been to several international art exhibits there and many-a-nights in the basement, preparing small ballerinas for their performance.

Besides passing the day inside, one can’t help but think there isn’t a princess or two stashed away somewhere in those towers. It’s a great tribute to Costa Rica that it managed to keep this old building in it’s life.

Everything’s just a little slower in our world. We walk, talk, eat, move, spin, digest, comprehend, run, climb, respond, and heal at a slower pace than the hip hop world of fast moves and spinning wheels.

Upon entering our world, you will see that all this walking, talking, eating, moving, spinning, digesting, comprehending, running, climbing, responding, and healing must be forged with more thought and concentration.

So in the speedy world of walking, talking, eating, moving, spinning, digesting, comprehending, running, climbing, responding, and healing we learn a lot along the way because we look.

And see. And realize how A goes with B.

As we assemble the puzzle pieces of life, we get to see it as if we were paddling through the back rivers of an ancient forest instead of whipping by the beach in a speedboat.

Listen. Did you hear that?

I think I heard something grow.

And so, we paddle on.

Phone etiquette in Costa Rica takes me to places I didn’t know I needed to go. I get frustrated and irritated with un-returned phone calls and wonder how anyone talks to anyone if you don’t catch them not only home or in the office, but not in a meeting or on the other line. Returning phone is not a part of the mañana, mañana culture.

In the pursuit of an answer you may need to get over the phone in Costa Rica, be prepared for the sound of silence. I’ve written before about the goofy thing of people call your home and then demand, and I mean demand, to know who it is they are calling. It matters not that they called me and should have a clue to whom they were dialing.

When making outgoing phone calls, it sometimes feel like if I chat with the palm tree outback, I’ll be actually making the same amount of headway. As I called doctors and offices to get test results for Addison’s this and that count, no one would return my phone call. No one would even take my phone number and call me back. I think in one sense, the secretaries know the doctor most likely won’t return and figure we’ll all have better luck to keep calling him/her.

In Costa Rica, you must call and call and call if you want an answer to your question. My friend at CR Travels, who has to call hotels and buses and tour guides, said the only way to get anything done is to follow up yourself. Add in the fact that I have to strain to understand Spanish on the phone, and it’s like facing all these ridiculous, hidden, dark demons in the belly of my bowel that do nothing but give me stomach aches. I don’t like making phone calls because I have this weird thing of feeling like I am always a bother and am inevitably going to ask a stupid question. I also tend to procrastinate and put off the simple task of calling the school or the doctor or the hardware store because I just don’t want to, darn it.

When I first arrived in Costa Rica, a lot of people just hung up on me. I now feel good enough to get past my fear of making mistake after mistake in my second language. Or perhaps I’m just getting older because not only do I not care who laughs at me or thinks me an eccentric Gringo for trying to find out when the doctor’s in. (I also don’t care that day after day after day I forget to pluck that hair growing out of my chin…but I digress and probably just shared more than anyone every need know…..)

I’ve got to run and make a phone call or find my tweezers….I just can’t remember which.

The reality of single-parenting grabs me and shakes me up - not every once and awhile - no, every day. Those images of children playing the newest plastic wrapped game in the commercials while the mother happily makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwish are not even wishful, they’re wicked.

Coco asks an average of 6248 questions a day: Why is that green? Who is that? What do they do? Where is my doll? Why does the earth turn? Where is New York? Why doesn’t he have a leg? What kind of puppy do you want? Who’s on the phone? Where’s my socks, my shoes, my sweater, my toothbrush and that itty bitty thing that I always play with and always lose?

This is where I fall, especially late at night right before teh 6000th question when she’s decided she doesn’t like the macaroni I’ve made. Last night I knew I was fading and brought the computer to the dinner table - (see where this is going?) - for diversion from me being crabby and her being whiny.

We did it earlier in the day and giggled at a few funny videos during lunch. Our arms collided on the table and a glass of water came within three centimeters from spilling onto the keyboard. We wiped it up and moved on. But that was at noon. Six in the evening is a different story.

She pushed around the macaroni and kept telling me how to make it next time. I loath explaining to an eight year old that macaroni with plain, old red sauce on it is as dull and yet pleasantly palatable as it gets. Not many kids can’t stomach that - except mine.

I got up for a second and Coco decided to look at the laptop. I freaked and as it’s been said, lost it. I knew in another second, she’d accidentally knock something over. I ran to the table and grabbed her, pulling her back harder than I wanted to. The weird thing is, I didn’t want to let go. If I’d had been on a reality show, the judges would have called me a disgrace to parenthood and raked me over the coals, sending me home after the first round.

I could have handled that situation a million other ways, and I chose the easy way out, the embarrassing, sad way. And even after a couple of exhausting weeks nurturing Addison back from the land of sickness, and two more exhausting weeks of Coco being sick before that - it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Single parenting is this non-stop ride of all day, all night, all decisions, and all pressures coming down on the one adult left in the house. Since I’m told over and over again that I get nothing I can’t handle I quickly gathered my self back from the raging wolf I’d become for an instant; apologized to my daughter; and told her she still had to eat her macaroni.

We put together a puzzle and watched the snoozy inauguaral parade. I read her a bedtime story, and we did all our little kisses goodnight after saying thanks for another day where we showed up, threw our hats in the ring, and gave it another try.

As Obama became president of the United States, I watched and was amazed at the effect it’s had. Yes, I can see the ripple effect on the people of the United States and those here in Costa Rica, but Coco’s been asking me since the election when Obama becomes president. And it has nothing to do with the political….it’s those girls. And the puppy they are going to get.

I almost forgot the inauguration was today as I carried my coffee up to my office. We turned on our set just as Bush and Obama were driving from the White House to the Capital. Coco had a million questions. I tried to explain to her about all those old presidents filing into room and the ladies with them or the other important office holders, of which I knew only a few.

The girls get a new puppy?

Yes. Her dad said they would.

Coco is running her own campaign for a puppy, or a cat, or perhaps any animal with four legs, fur and somewhat taller than a guinea pig. I told her that couldn’t happen until we had a fenced in yard, which buys me some time. Adding another animal to our homestead would be unmanageable. Perhaps someday a well-trained mutt will be a nice addition, but the images that flash before my eyes are either a dog jumping up and knocking Addy over, or it running out into the street and either getting killed or lost. Since I have started a new life campaign to avoid chaos - this is a perfect example of that.

Watching the change of American power from another country is no longer weird. It just is my reality. As an American living abroad, I like to think that I have something to offer other countries in what I’ve learned from my homeland. I’ve watched a load of Americans come down and roll up their sleeves and give and give and then give some more to this tiny, dot of a country that doesn’t have a lot of money clinking around in it’s piggy bank. Around every corner, ex-pats are saving dogs and helping those in poverty and spreading some of that “hope” we all so must have to go on.

As I watched the president’s daughters file into their seats for the inauguration, I started to cry - surprising not only Coco but myself (and I just don’t get political) - yet - I deeply connected to the fact that this election was about healing. I grew up with that hate. And I didn’t always know what to do with my feelings when my friends, classmates, neighbors, or myself suffered from discrimination from race or gender or disabilities. Something so ineffable happened at the moment Obama took office, everyone felt it. I guess that’s why more than a million people stood in the freezing cold and how more millions watched, like Coco and I, on television.

Maybe once the president took office he/she should have to swear off an affiliation to any party and just get the job done. Real progress comes from realizing we are all one - each with a job to do - but we’re just as here - as the poet Elizabeth Alexander said along with a few other pretty smart people said to love your neighbor as yourself.

Coco would add: And your puppy too.