Dan has done such a stellar job entertaining you for the last three months that I’m nervous to even weigh in. However, there are a few interstitial stories still untold that will round out the saga.

Kessler’s World

The first is about Kessler’s trimester at the Caribbean College, a small private bilingual high school founded in 1969 by the United Fruit Company to educate the children of company employees. English composition and grammar are in English, but math, chemistry, biology and physics—yes, they study the sciences concurrently—are all in Español. With quiet determination, Kessler persevered through 8-hour school days mostly in another language. Happily the school had a uniform so the daily wardrobe decision was easy. Through her new friends, Kessler became a fan of contemporary South Korean music, aka K-Pop. Cultural exposure comes in many forms.

After the trimester ended, Kessler volunteered for two weeks at a bilingual pre-school on the University of Costa Rica campus. Students in the early childhood education department interned at the pre-school. Kessler loved it, coming home with observations about her miniature students, fellow teachers and what constitutes effective pedagogy, something I didn’t contemplate until pursuing a masters in teaching.

Enter Sam, Stage Right

Sam finished up his freshman year at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in late May. I had just wrapped up three weeks of work in the US and we flew back to Costa Rica together. Prudently Sam had packed his soccer ball and cleats. Within days of arriving in Limon he was practicing with a local soccer club. Soon thereafter our entertainment room (remember the disco ball?) was converted into a clubhouse where his newfound soccer buddies played FIFA 16, a virtual soccer game on the widescreen TV. I couldn’t shovel them snacks fast enough.

Enter Neighbors, Stage Left

Soccer is a universal language that brings people together in more ways than one. As Sam practiced his new soccer moves on the front patio, the outdoor faucet was the victim of a wayward bounce. The result was a five-foot waterspout that was threatening to flood the rest of our casita. After a few choice words, Dan managed to fashion a plug by whittling the end of the mop handle. Unfortunately it was Saturday night in a town where we didn’t know any plumbers.

By Monday evening we had still not secured plumbing expertise and we were slated to vacate our house later that week. Dan shared our woes with one of our friends from the Movimiento Misionero Mundial, the Pentacostalist Church across the way. Within minutes a crack mission team had been assembled, all neighbors, all men of the Church, and apparently all able plumbers. The source of the gushing water was isolated, the cracked pipe was replaced, and a new joint was soldered. The joyful sense of communal accomplishment on our watery patio was palpable.

A La Playa

Later that week we bid a sad adios to our helpful neighbors and headed 45 minutes south to reside in the beachside village of Cahuita. For a month we rented a wee cabina surrounded by the rainforest and a 5-minute walk from Playa Negra, a local beach with silky black sand. We traded the roar of Limon truck and motorcycle traffic for the roar of the surf and howler monkeys. Have you ever heard a rainforest wake up? It starts at 4:15am when the monkeys begin their lively discussions about which monolothic ficus tree belongs to which tribe. These conversations can be heard for miles. After the trumpeting of an elephant, howlers have the largest vocal chords in the animal kingdom. Around 4:30 the birds join the symphony. By 4:45 the deafening din of insects heralds the rising of the sun as if it’s never happened before. By 5:15 everyone has settled into yet another day. I know all this because my secret pleasure for that month in Cahuita was to rise with the howlers, brew a pot of of coffee, settle into the porch hammock, and witness the dawning of the day.

Other rainforest neighbors included a dozen toucans with colorful hooked beak profiles right off a Fruit Loop box. One morning a poisonous dart frog found its way under the kitchen sink. Dan-the-Gladiator chased it out armed with a spatula and a pot lid. Evidently a defensive squirt from one of these cute frogs can stop the heart of over a dozen grown men. A week later I encountered a tarantula hanging out on the wall. Inside at 2 am. It was the size of my palm and as thick as a fat meatball. I swept that critter out of our abode with such vehemence that I strained my shoulder and was sore for the next three days.

Dan commuted to Limon by bus for his classes. For the kids and me, our early Cahuita days consisted mostly of competing for hammock space and internet bandwidth. I had to kick the entire family of the network whenever I had a coaching call. Fortunately we were then blessed with wonderful visits from our friends, Ellen Yee and Hillary Seitz, propelling us from our hammocks and out on some adventures. These included surfing lessons with Tito, the local surfing guru, and snorkeling on the coral reefs. We toured the Jaguar Animal Rescue Center and the Sloth Sanctuary, both committed to rehabilitating and re-introducing animals to the wild. And we had an educational and delectable chocolate tour, showing us the entire process from bean to bar.

Of all the creatures we’ve encountered here, the sloths have been the most fascinating. Their defensive strategy is to move so slowly that they don’t even register on the radars of their enemies—raptors, snakes, jaguars, crocodiles. Sloths are masters of energy conservation so that when they do need to make a move, they can. Sloth sex lasts 45 seconds and conception is 100% successful. Impressive statistics. They can also swipe a predator with their scissor-hand fingers. In fact, the majority of sloth injuries are due not to their lethargy, but from taking shortcuts by crawling across power lines in the rain. It has got me thinking that strategic slothfulness may be an underleveraged competency in the leadership world.

Our final week we explored other parts of Costa Rica. We started on turtle-hatching grounds on the remote beaches of Tortuguero, accessible only by small plane or a 4 hour boat ride through canals. The turtles are highly protected with researchers and certified guides diligently managing the flow of eco-tourists. By moonlight we witnessed a giant 5-foot greenback turtle in the trance of laying her 120 eggs. Each one was the size of an orange, but milky white and rubbery. In spite of being in the midst of dozens of other gawking tourists, we felt like privileged guests at a sacred ceremony that has remained unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years.

Next we headed west to Rio Celeste which is a truly blue river originating in the Tournon volcanic region. The shockingly azure color is explained by both chemistry and physics but I’ve long forgotten what the plaques said. We hiked to the source of the river and then frolicked further downstream in a local swimming hole.

From there we headed to the Guanacaste coast and indulged in two nights at a Marriott hotel. We luxuriated in the endless hot shower and powerful flush of the toilet. Kessler mused that anyone thinking they had experienced Costa Rica by spending a week at a resort like this one would be about 99.9% mistaken. But we did enjoy ourselves.

Finally we ended up in Mal Pais, a funky hard-to-reach surf town on the southernmost point of the Nicoya Peninsula. Here Sam and I surfed in the Pacific on even smaller boards while Dan continued to perfect his bodysurfing technique . A note on surfing—it is as gnarly, rad and addictive as they say it is. I only had bruises and jammed fingers to show for my novice efforts, but the exhilaration of finally catching an epic wave or two was unforgettable. 

As we wing our way homeward, I find myself looking forward to the familiar, the comfortable, the known. The last half year has been a stretch for all of us in different ways, some expected, some surprising. It well may be a few years before we can take the full measure of how this has shaped us individually and as a family.

What I do have right now is that delicious sense of deep gratitude for all that is home, large and small.

Thank you, Leonard, for caring for our home through a wicked Maine winter.

Thank you, Gretchen and John, for loving Finnegan so fully that he barely noticed our absence.

Thank you, Dan, for sharing this vision of a semester abroad. You made it happen, Baby.

And thank you, Dear Reader, for being on this journey with us. It made it all the more meaningful to know you were there.

Pura Vida,

Kim