Unpacking Day

It would have been so nice to sleep in, but Alex and Sofia would not allow it. They were fighting over a book. They had already woken up their grandfather to investigate a rooster that had woken them up at the crack of dawn. I finally dragged myself out of bed. We started unpacking a few bags and when I found the grits that we brought, I made breakfast for the kids.

Isabella surprised us all by doing her first poo-poo in the potty (Ramón had acquired a toddler potty for us). There was applause and, of course, we took pictures.

Exhausted from the day before, we spent almost the entire day unpacking our bags, getting settled in, and relaxing. Since we were given the food vouchers the day before, we hadn’t eaten our bagged lunches. So we ate them now. Maritza tried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, even though it didn’t look very appealing after a day of traveling around the world in a paper bag. She liked it okay, but her stomach has been bothering her lately, so she didn’t eat much.

Our first mini-outing was to go to the bank and change some dollars into colones. The exchange rate was 508 colones = 1 dollar. I changed $140. Many places take Visa, and you can also get colones out of any ATM. But I brought some cash to change just in case.

We walked down to the Palí, a chain grocery store. We went with the intention of buying bread, sour cream, and eggs but we bought a few extra items (ice cream sandwiches, milk, and cream cheese). While in the store, I accidentally hit my foot on the back of Alex’s shoe and broke my toenail.

On the way back, we noticed the street had numbers painted on it for the farmer’s market every Saturday (marking where each vendor’s spot is). It will be nice to have a farmer’s market practically right outside the door every week.

For dinner, we had rice, beans, tortillas, and salad. Then it was shower time for the kids. Let me tell you something about this shower. I used to show a movie to my film studies classes called “The Tune.” It’s an animated musical, and one song is about this “lovesick hotel” where depressed people go to stay. Each room has some kind of different method of committing suicide. One room has a chair under a ceiling fan that is hanging on by a thread, insinuating that if you sit under that fan, you stand a good chance of being injured by it. Yes, this sounds like grizzly movie content, but it’s actually handled in a very lighthearted, comical way. Anyway, the shower that we use here reminds me of that room with the dangerous ceiling fan. If you’ve read my other journals, you know that most households in Costa Rica use a special type of shower that warms the water in the showerhead, rather than using a whole-house water heater. This is much more economical, but it results in some compromises that most spoiled North Americans wouldn’t be willing to make. Namely, the harder the water pressure, the colder the water is. So to have warm to hot water, your shower is anything from a trickle to a gentle sprinkle. To achieve warmth at the showerhead requires electricity, even though electricity and water don’t usually make good partners, especially when you’re wet and naked. So the Costa Rican “suicide shower” has electrical wires running all over the place. When we got ready for our first shower, Ramón pointed out that when we turn the water on and off we should do it while standing on the bathroom floor, not from inside the shower. Otherwise, you get a slight jolt. Nice. To make this particular shower even more special, the showerhead is held in place over your head by a thin black string tacked to the ceiling. It may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I have no problem using the suicide showers. The nice thing about this house is you don’t lose all your water when the neighbors flush their toilet, which is what happened in Grecia. When Alex and I took a shower this night, I accidentally had the water too hot (i.e. I needed to turn the water on a little harder). But I was already in the shower. We tried to tough it out by splashing the hot water on our bodies, but the shampoo wasn’t getting rinsed out that way. Rather than get out of the shower dripping wet to adjust the flow without receiving a shock, I put my college education to good use. Plastic does not conduct electricity well. So I took a plastic-handled shower brush and tapped the water spigot until I got the temperature I wanted. I want all you gringos reading this to think about us the next time you take a shower in your luxurious North American showers.

After Sofia and Alex went to bed, Ramón, Cristina, and I sat around the table and chatted. Isabella wasn’t sleeping well and Cristina kept having to go nurse her back to sleep every 30 minutes or so. Finally, around 11 pm, Isabella threw up after Cristina gave her some belladonna for a fever. She continued to run a fever and throw up for the next several hours, which made our second night in Costa Rica an interesting one.

To see more photos from this day, click here.