Everything is butterflies!

Well, 2 weeks of school have wrapped up here in Guanacaste and so far, so good! We are really enjoying all of our new coworkers and our new principal as well. The expat community is really thriving in this area and everyone we have met has been warm and welcoming to us. Joe has gotten to surf a lot more then he did when we were living in Escazu and I have started to take a pilates class. The warm weather (even when it rains) makes it easier to be outside and active.

We have been getting to know the wildlife here a lot more and frequently wake to the sound of howler monkeys in the trees by our house. I saw fireflies for the first time recently and it was the closest to magic I've ever come across. The butterflies in the region are abundant as well. I see butterflies of different shapes and colors every single day. It sure is something to walk out of your house and see 10 buttermilk colored creatures gliding around! There is also a toad that lives in a drain near us, and a large iguana that lives in another drain. Some of the wildlife isn't so pleasant though. There are a ton of wasps that make nests everywhere. We both found multiple nests in our classrooms while cleaning and have had to knock down a few around our house as well. The other not so pleasant creature living in our new home is scorpions. While I have only come across one very small scorpion, Joe was surprised by a scorpion perched on his shoulder about a week ago. YIKES! Another wild creature entered our lives a few weeks ago. We adopted a puppy! Her name is Isabel (EEsabel) and she was one of 3 female puppies that a little TIco family had to give up. While we haven't a clue what kind of dog she is, or even how big she will become, we sure have been enjoying her!

We are looking forward to exploring our new home even more soon!

The Move

We had a very eventful summer, with trips to Nicaragua and all over Costa Rica. Our friends Robin and Ty both came down to Costa Rica, and during that time we went to La Paz, Arenal, Playa Hermosa, Manuel Antonio, and Ty and I even went down to Dominical and Matapalo to get some waves. In July we went back to the States for just over three weeks, and it was refreshing to visit all of our friends and family back home. When we returned to Escazu we were incredibly busy taking our car in for repair after repair, and of course packing up all of our things to move out to Guanacaste. During that time we also got to show my mom and sisters around Escazu, and we met up with them later in Guanacaste as well.
Packing and moving is always very stressful, and this was no exception. Plus we only had a few days to fix about a million problems that our Toyota was experiencing, including leaking power steering fluid, a back window and door that won't open, replacing our stolen CD player, fixing our air conditioner again, getting our starter fixed once again, and trying to figure out what the weird noise underneath our car was (actually we had about 4 weird noises going on under the car, but one was particularly bad). Unfortunately the mechanics that we went to did not have time to fix most of these problems, or they couldn't figure how to fix them, but we did take care of the most important one: the bad noise underneath our car was our differential, which was stripped and loose, and Jorge the mechanic fixed this the day before we moved.
We loaded up tons of suitcases, boxes, and surfboards into and on top of our car on the day that we left. Our guard Joaquin was very helpful at lashing things down to the roof, and somehow we managed to load everything up. As if we hadn't been scrambling around frantically enough before, a new hurdle emerged in front of our moving trip at the very last minute. A bridge on the way to Guanacaste was closed down, and we needed to cross it. We heard rumors that the whole bridge had collapsed, and had this been the case, our five hour trip could have turned into a 10 hour trip. We decided to chance it and take that route anyway, and our bold move paid off. The bridge had only cracked, it had not toppled down. There was only one lane open because of the repairs that were being made, but we only had to wait about 5 minutes to get across. A couple of hours later we arrived at Country Day School Guanacaste, near the town of Brasilito. We began to unpack our things and settle into our new place, happy that all of the moving was behind us.