Hola,
Another week has passed and we are still in Costa Rica. Today I am going to talk about our third trip to the beach, our new house, and whatever crosses my mind as I write this email. I don’t really miss the US as much as I thought I would, as a lot of places look like the US, but it would be nice to practice my English more often.
On Tuesday we left the house at 6:30am for the beach so as to avoid traffic. With all 9 of us in the microbus things can get pretty cramped. Two of the seats fold down in order for everyone to exit the bus and it has even less trunk space than our van at home. As a matter of fact, I would have to say that the whole bus is smaller than our van. What makes the car ride even worse is when all the little kids feel the need to bring their personal pillow and blanket along!! Argggggghhhhh! Anyway, we went to Jaco beach which I think is the best beach so far. Dad bought four boogie boards and we could coast pretty far on them. I’m a little tired of the beach now since there is nothing really do to except swim, boogie board and swim some more. Everyone else seems to love it though. My style is 90 minutes of swimming then I’m done, any more than that you run the risk of getting sunburned for no good reason. I do realize that it does take 2 hours to actually get to the beach, but whatever.
While I was chilling on the sand, I spied quite a few Iguanas crawling about. Later we drove around a little bit and saw even more! The best ones are the blue ones, but the green and orange ones were pretty big as well. For lunch we got some pizza and hamburgers which was the first American food we’ve had in 3 weeks! For breakfast that same day we stopped at a fruit stand and got smoothies. I got a star fruit smoothie which was pretty good and way better than Jenna’s passion fruit smoothie, whatever that is. Mine was white with little black seeds and is what I would imagen Piῆas would be like if they were drained of most of the flavor and all of the color.
We signed the contract for our new house on Tuesday in which we agreed to rent the house for 10 months. The house is in a gated community so we don’t have to be too careful, plus there a little park just down the street. The house is unfurnished so we spent the rest of the week getting furniture until Friday when we officially moved in. We have a small 20ft by 20ft yard just big enough for Autumn and Luke to get dirty in and track it all over the house. The house only has three bedrooms so Aaron and Isaac have to sleep in the space in between the rooms on cots. All our beds are uncomfortable so everyone is up at 6:30am except for Mom and Dad because they obviously have the best bed in the house.
It is interesting how the natives pronounce our names with their Spanish accent. They pronounce all the vowels and every letter has one sound and one sound only. My name in Spanish is “Etan” which I think is way cool. Sean has it worse off than that, whenever they try to say his name is always comes out as “John.” Autumn in Spanish is “Otoῆo” but everyone calls her Autumn anyway. When she was born we used to call her “Otoῆo Rosa” (Rose is her middle name) and that was when Mom was going through one of her Spanish phases.
Men and women greet each other differently when they meet. Whenever men meet each other they usually shake hands but sometimes they do a bro hug but with more formality. With women it is a whole different story. When two women meet they kiss each other on the cheek though it is more like touching cheeks. When women meet man they only do the kiss thing if the know the man fairly well. I just reached that stage and I enjoy it.
The adventure has only just begun with 10 months still left to learn Spanish. The house is great even if the toilet is clogged and we occasionally find squished geckos in the door. They like to eat the bugs around the lights but I’ve only seen two so far. It not too American down here but they do have a Walmart down here (yeah, I was surprised too). It’s just a little bit of home. Thanks for reading and tune in next time to hear Ethan talk about his life.
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