A day of coincidences

Despite the continued completely abnormally cool and wet March we’re having recently, today was a great day for all of us.  There was no school for the kids today and we’re not exactly sure why.  Fortunately, the kids were pretty motivated to do some extra math and homework this morning.  Sullivan continues to crave nothing more than building legos.  Today he spent a couple of hours designing and resdesigning a house for a pet beetle, which he finally managed to find this evening.  There’s a long tunnel, bed, water bowl and grass for the beetle to eat.  A car was also made for this lucky guy but I really don’t think he fully appreciate how good he has it.

The six-legged guest of honor is towards the left, looking to escape.  Note also the long tunnel on the right, complete with a window.

We made it to Henry’s optometrist appointment at 1 pm in Tilarán, where it was only slightly sunnier.  Dr. Martinez comes from San Jose two days a week to see new patients in Tilarán.  He’s the only eye doctor of any kind within an hour of us.  And he did not disappoint.  Henry was a compliant and eager patient and did indeed have some glasses ordered for him.  It also came out that Dr. Martinez did his PhD at Berkeley many years ago.  We became great friends when he learned that Erica and I met there in graduate school as well, just a few years after he was there.  He was also very excited to hear that I was an emergency physician and offered his office there any time for me to see patients as I wish.  

For us it was our first foray into the Costa Rican health care system.  According to Dr. Martinez, there are no pediatricians or Ob/Gyn physicians within an hour of where we live and most folks go to Cañas, another half hours from Tilarán.  No emergency specialists either, according to him.  He does report that there is a Cuban nephrologist in Tilarán, though.  Go figure.  We’ll catch up with Dr. Martinez again next Friday when we pick up Henry’s glasses.  He insisted on not charging us for the exam and gave us a special price on the glasses.  A super guy on many fronts.

Henry and our new friend, Dr. Martinez

Who doesn't love a good grocery store horse ride?

After we arrived back home, we had an absolutely fantastic find that turned out to be yet another interesting coincidence for the day.  Through a very useful website we'd heard about (http://www.code.org), we discovered a fantastic free computer coding program for kids called Scratch (found at http://scratch.mit.edu).  All three kids loved it and we loved the fact that they are using logic to have fun and essentially learn some computer programming.  I have to admit that I think it’s a blast too.  The coincidence is that this is the same program Madeleine and Henry have used in the computer lab at their school here in Nuevo Arenal.  How ironic is it that we discovered this in Costa Rica?  It’s a great tool that should be used by kids in all schools, in my opinion.  Check it out.  There was some music playing, more lego building and snacking before a great dinner in town at Moya’s Place, the local pizza joint.  Seems to be a bit of a local gringo hangout but we enjoyed ourselves in spite of this. 

Erica lays down some chords