¡Feliz día de las Madre!

“My mother was my first country, the first place I ever lived.” ~ Nayyirah Waheed

Today is Mother’s Day in Costa Rica! This means I get two Mother’s Days this year and I get to pause and give thanks for my own mama again. I love this quote because it challenges our understanding of home. Home can be a geographical place or a physical structure but it can also be your people or your beliefs. You can find home away from home when you find people or an environment that brings you that same comfort and security of “home.” In teacher orientation last week we were asked “What would be the name of your autobiography?” I said “Yellow” because it was my mom’s favorite color and mine and the story of my life starts with her. She is the reason I developed a strong curiosity for the world and why I have the tools and confidence to do brave things.

We have officially moved to Costa Rica. We are beginning our fourth week here in Monteverde. We arrived directly into the Liberia airport and came straight to the mountain (3 hour drive). Monteverde is all we know so far. But there is so much to explore here and each week reveals more cultural nuances, more unique creatures, more shortcuts and more friends.

Our rental home is a 15 min walk to the Monteverde Friends School and Meeting House. This is where the boys go to school, where community frisbee happens on Saturdays and where there is a little public library. It is a beautiful place with outdoor sinks, big classrooms, a composting toilet, and a gorgeous new Meeting House with huge windows. This is also where I work, although my classes are being held at another school because of covid and distancing rules. 7th-12th grade classes are happening at the Cloud Forest School. It is a huge campus with extra space for our students so we are utilizing some of the empty classrooms at the back of the campus. It is at an even higher elevation so the walk up to the school is quite strenuous. It takes me an hour to walk there. The views are incredible though. You can see the Gulf of Nicoya from the classrooms and there are many trails, a soccer field, a treehouse, and outdoor places to gather. School starts on Wednesday and parents, kids and teachers are equally excited.

The culture here is definitely slower but because we are new and because we don’t speak Spanish well yet we still get stressed sometimes. Buying phone cards, telling a taxi driver where to go, and shopping trips are exhausting experiences. For example, I’m on the hunt for ice cube trays. I have no idea where to find them and most people have told me they are easier to get out of town. Santa Elena, the commercial center of the area, has a good set of shops for groceries and home goods, but things are expensive and not available in large quantities. Many people take weekend trips to a bigger city to get good deals and buy things that they can’t find here. Since we don’t have a car that is more challenging for us. The grocery store is a 35-60 min walk depending on what we are carrying, if we are with kids or not, and if we run into people to chat with. We do have a closer small shop that has basic groceries. It is not cheap and is called “Whole Foods” (sound familiar?). It reminds me of a fancy campground store. Think matches and marshmallows, but also jars of Italian pesto and tempeh. There’s a farmers market on Fridays and we have managed to make it the last few weeks to buy produce, fresh bread, and cheese. There are plenty of restaurants in the area. Costa Rican restaurants are called “sodas” and you can get great platters of rice, beans, meats and veggies. Since Monteverde is full of tourists from all over the world and has a sizable population of people who are not ethnically Costa Rican, you can also find fancy hotel restaurants, pizza shops, Tex-Mex, Middle Eastern, and more. We tried using the Monteverde en Casa app the other night when it was raining hard and ordered chicken tacos and burgers from town. They were delivered on a moped to our house in the woods in 50 minutes!

One thing I have thought about the most is how nice and welcoming everyone has been. It is not just the Ticos (Costa Ricans), but also the international families that live here too. They have welcomed us by having us over for meals, watched our kids for free, introduced us to more friends and resources, and answered hundreds of WhatsApp messages of our questions about the most basic things. I then think about the U.S. and how we treat newcomers- refugees, immigrants, new kids at school, new families in the neighborhood. Do we invite them to the family BBQ? Do we send them messages about where to find the best deals on produce or about the new dance classes for kids? Do we give them rides in the rain? In individualist America I think we can do better at welcoming newcomers, especially newcomers who do not speak English as their primary language or look and believe differently than us.

Other amazing things about our initial weeks in Costa Rica:

My job is awesome. We have a really great staff that has a wide range of experiences. We have teachers who were born and raised in this community, newcomers like me from the U.S. and from other parts of Costa Rica, teachers from other parts of Latin America, and teachers of all ages. We have teachers who only speak Spanish and teachers who only speak English (me!). Meetings are conducted in both languages and no one has ever complained when they had to translate for just me. I often feel like I am a liability on the team, that group member who isn’t pulling their weight, but I’m hoping with time I will understand more Spanish and school culture so that I can contribute more.
Our experience in nature has been amazing. We share space with so many animals, birds and bugs and the sunsets and forest walks are so beautiful. We haven’t even seen the bulk of the species that live here, but each day we find another incredible creature. One afternoon we spent 10 minutes watching a mother bird feed her babies and find shelter from the rain. These past two weeks the kids have been hanging out with a babysitter, an amazing educator from Costa Rica who lived in Philly and also has two boys. They have seen more of Monteverde than me and have hiked miles and miles. Each day she has taken them to incredible places- nature reserves, family farms, playgrounds, a hummingbird gallery, and the homes of local families. They have tried new foods and learned songs in Spanish.

One of the best things about the transition here has been the kids and chill parents. There are lots of kids and Samson and Desmond have warmly been welcomed into play. It is so nice to walk to the center area of the community and informally meet up with other families and chat over a cup of coffee while the children run free- playing pick up soccer or climbing trees with the monkeys behind the coffee shop. On Friday we had a staff cookout. It was a potluck at sunset and it was so nice to see everyone outside of work and to break bread together. The kids ran all over the yard as nightfall came. We walked home with flashlights and headlamps, full and happy.

It gets dark early here and 8:00pm is called the Monteverde Midnight. Everyone heads home to rest and wakes up early to start the day. We have a neighbor rooster so we are always up between 5:00-6:00am no matter what. It is drier during the mornings right now so many people take advantage before the rainy afternoons come. The rain is no joke and I’m bracing myself for the rainy season which is well on its way. We don’t leave home without our rain jackets and have soaked them through more than once already. At school it can get really loud on the tin roofs so teachers have to scream through their masks to be heard.
Costa Rica is taking COVID seriously. In Monteverde the clinics are now vaccinating people ages 12 and up. Everyone wears a mask indoors and there are hand washing stations outside all the businesses and schools. Staff will instruct you to wash your hands before you shop or are served at a restaurant. Hotels and schools take the temperature of visitors. The only time people are not wearing masks is when they are outside, in small groups of close family & friends or eating. So far we haven’t met any locals who are pushing back on mask wearing or hand washing. The community seems compliant and worried about keeping COVID out of the community since tourism is the main economy.