Bad Ideas and Precious Moments

As a nomadic family, it is hard to describe what our lives were like living on the ranch in La Lucha de la Tigra for 6 weeks. Sort of like your first summer camp experience, ranch life was one of our first steps in Latin America and our first time to volunteer on our trip. We were wrapped in total love and friendship; and fell in love. (One of the reasons we've pulled back from volunteering as a family in Panama. For it really hurt to fall in love, and then say goodbye).   In this entry, we've summarized a few cool days; glimpses, if you will, into the honored lives we were blessed to taste.
Integrating into the School

 

 Finally, finally, finally (thank God!) they are integrating into the school.They spent days holding onto my pant's leg, begging me to take them home. Orazi begged me to take him fishing. They begged for school uniforms. A lot of begging in those first few days. 

We had the best day in school today.Half the school ran around presenting us with little gifts. Just yesterday and today we've received bracelets that say 'Costa Rica is peace' and 'god bless you', freshly picked flowers, 3 avocados, an apple, an assortment of used stickers peeled off of boys' notebooks and stuck onto Orazi's, a poisonous red tree frog (I know! but he's in a closed bottle), and a few drawings.Oh, how adorable these brown-haired, brown-eyed children are.

  

Good Idea Gone Bad

An entry from June 29:

I had the best of intentions. I really did. It's just that we were soooo tired today. We walked to school today in blazing heat; the school asked me to teach class after class today, and I had a "Clean Your Soul" class tonight from our home. But, they have friends! And those friends all want to come over and play. So what if there are eight kids in the house? I can handle it, right?

They ran around, touched everything, ate more than our family consumes in a week, and made sooo much noise. All that, with a throbbing headache, I can handle. But the he-gave-her-that-toy-but-I-only-got-this-one, and the I-only-got-four-handfuls-of-popcorn-but-the-girls-had-so-much-more, and (when it was already so late and I was dying to go to bed) I-don't-want-to-sleep-here-if-he-stays-here-tonight-so-take-me-home-now. Oh, no. 

So, for me, it was hellish (though in theory, I was really so happy to host half of the countryside).  For our kids, it was heavenly!

 

Horses and Fish

A few years back, in Israel, the kids took horseback riding lessons. They had this amazingly gently, kind animal therapist named Shay. Now, we've found a Latino version of that kind-hearted spirit: Jose Ramon. He kept surprising the kids by arriving with a saddled horse. They loved every minute of it!

 

 

Our neighbors have a little restaurant named "Soda" though I've never seen anyone actually eating there. In the valley below their home, they have this large lake full of telapia fish, which they lovingly gave us free reign of. Kobi and the kids sat at the bank with their fancy fishing rod, watching the neighbors kids' pull out fish after fish with a plastic bottle wrapped with fishing rod. And, so, here, also, we learned how less is more, and simple is better.

and here we go.... we got fish!!

Posted in: Discovering Humanity, Discovering Ourselves