Monday news

We have been dabbling in homeschooling this past week as we wait until our kids can start at the school in Nuevo Arenal.  Last week we tracked down Madeleine and Henry’s most recent report cards and emailed them to the school director.  We had planned for all three kids to start school today, but decided to postpone until we are able to make the swap between our rental car and the car we are buying.  This will require a full day trip to San Jose for Nik, and without a car for the day, I would not be able to get the kids to school and back.  Unfortunately our house in Las Flores is not within a very easy walking distance to town.

From our limited experience, home schooling only works well when everyone’s mood is aligned just right.  This morning that seemed to have happened, and it was a lovely thing.  Madeleine wrote a first-reader book for Sullivan to read, including illustrations that he could color.  All three kids (mostly) happily completed their work, and Madeleine and Henry have been working on designing their own games of Clue.  We brought some compact games with us, like travel Scrabble, Uno, Yahtzee, etc., but no games that require a big board.  So our industrious children decided to create their own.  Madeleine opted for the classic version, while Henry designed a Clue game based on the Wings of Fire series about dragons.  We are eager to try them out!

Henry and his custom Clue cards

We hoped to meet with the director of the school today to iron out details, however he was not in today.  We will try again in the morning.  From talking with several people around town, we have some details, such as: there is a morning (7am-noon) and afternoon (12:30-5pm) session, and kids go to one or the other.  We can buy school uniforms at a shop in town.  There is a school bus.  Now we just need to pin down the fast-talking school director and connect the dots.

While in town not making any progress toward school, we made grocery and produce store visits too.  Madeleine would like to make biscuits, so we tracked down the ingredients; hopefully what we bought is really baking powder.  At the produce store, we bought some yucca to try.  Eventually all of the fruits and veggies for sale will be familiar to us.  

Happy shoppers

We had more bird excitement outside our front door this afternoon.  We spotted a small toucan-like bird in our tree; it then flew to our bird feeding platform to check out the pineapple offerings.  Soon two of his friends joined him.  They stayed just long enough for some photos and a positive ID as Collared Aricaris (or Tucancillo collarejo in Spanish).

Aricari visitors

Our hopes for tomorrow include a successful wire transfer for the purchase of our car.  Today being President's Day in the US, E*Trade was closed and could not receive our DHL “overnighted” written, notarized wire request.  We are still hopeful that this is the week we will be able to return our rental car, pick up our car and get our kids enrolled in school!  Patience…

-Erica

La cena: insalata de taco?  Sully made the guac.