A Day in the Park

Wow what a day! I would liken today to a full training day, actually much more tiring. We started off by hitting the pool. I went early and swam my workout and then the girlies joined me. I was able to snag a kick board and baby took off on that thing. She is pretty much swimming now and I think she is going to be our little fish.

After a couple of hours playing at the pool we headed over to Parque Central to chase pigeons for awhile. It is right in the center of Heredia and is the place to hang out. Also the pigeons are a blast for the kids to chase.
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Benjie has decided the pigeons can be a little aggressive so he prefers to watch from the sidelines. Now he looks like one of the old pervs at the parque watching the kids.

This man makes the best icees in town! He begins by shaving the ice, then layers it with the milk powder and then tops it with the sweetened condensed milk and sarsa flavoring. They are so good, kind of like a root beer float.

Here you can see the finished product. Looks pretty darn good ha? Well maybe not to all of you that are dealing with snow right now.

Here is the true face of appreciation for a icee well made!

And here is one tired out baby! This dude is just plain tuckered out.

After the park met up with the guys who had been having their pool tournament. They were all ready to head to the Lebanese guy for some Swarma sandwiches. Nothing better than this guys swarma sandwiches, except maybe his falafel sandwiches. A great day, now we will make some brownies and hunker down to watch the Biggest Loser :)

Swimming and Patience

Apparently here in Costa Rica they don't observe lane lines in the pool anymore than they observe lane lines on the road. O.k. maybe they do observe them, they just choose not to act on them. As in they just cross right over the little suckers and swim right in front of you! It is so difficult to get into a swimming zone when you keep running into people. At least I don't have to drive here, I just sit on the bus or in the taxi and watch the driver cuss people out when they ignore the lane line :)

For the first time today I saw a lady yell at a couple of kids. Usually they are just ignored, but these kids really pushed it. In that they were trying to piss her off I believe. I'm just glad she yelled at them so I did not have to do it in English and they would just stare at me and say "no entiendo".

All that aside it was a beautiful day for a swim and the water has actually warmed up a bit. Must have something to do with the fact that it has been really hot for the past few days.

And (drum roll please) baby has finished all her school books! I mean we are truly excited, as well as scrambling for something to keep her going here. She loves doing "schoolwork" every day and I am trying to keep up with her. I am sure getting slow in my old age. Speaking of old age.

So Rick and I were walking down the sidewalk in San Jaun, just minding our own business as usual. We were on our nightly adventure to snag some ice-cream at the Eskimo store on the beach. Anyhoo so here we are going along and a old hippie comes up along side us. He was like old as in sixtyish, long gray ponytail and the works. He has a kid with him that looks half gringo half nica and he's about nine or ten. Well the guy had had a few too many and was yelling at the kid to get out of the street. The kid of course is just ignoring his old man.

The old man gets next to Rick and I and starts complaining about kids this and that. We are both just staring at him and suddenly he looks me right in the face and says, "I guess you're past all that though." Wham, why not just slug me in the nose! I wanted to yell at him that as a matter of fact I am on my period at the minute and I have a six year old at home, and NO I AM NOT PAST ALL THAT! In fact I am working very hard to not be past all that ever!

Schoolin'

We started school yesterday. You know the first day is always the best, and then it quickly declines from there. Yesterday both girls were excited to dive in and learn to read and finish up some books. But alas today the reality of how much work it was going to take sunk in and my girlies wilted. I mean like melt down. Baby has a photographic memory which is great unless you are trying to teach her to read phonetically. So she will look at a word and spend about 15 minutes trying to see if she has had it before, guessing and finally she will sound it out. At that point she is done with that word and I have to get some new ones.

The part that really drives me to distraction is the guessing part. For example the word "live". We discuss the l sound and the short i and the v. Now we try to put them all together. We get like, love, and every other l word in the school room. Then she finally really looks at the word and tries to sound it out. Of course it does not help to have your teenage sister glaring at you across the room, just because you are getting on her nerves!

So now I am wondering how in the heck did I teach 6 other kids to read? I do have to admit some were easier than others, but we did it and I'm sure we can do it one more time. She does have a deadline to learn to read in English before school starts in Feb. I told her if she does not know how to read she can't go to school until she learns how. Don't know if I will last that long.

Then of course is the teenager wanting to just leave and go for a run, eat lunch, anything but stay there and get that darn math book done! O.k. mom just breath and know that they are not going anywhere and there is no hurry for them to learn these thing.

On a fun note I did my first swim today and got in a good 800 before I felt like my arms were going to fall off. It felt great and I think sure enough the time was about the same as when I quit swimming eight years ago, how sad ha?