Waterfall Gardens

A traditional Costa Rican ox-cart

One of the beautiful waterfalls

Feeding the hummingbirds

The rain forest

If you only looked at our blog, you would think we were on vacation. It's hard to blog about the day-to-day activities like studying, going to school, laundry, grocery shopping and rainstorms.

After a week of the kids being home from school and mostly being stuck at home because of rain, we awoke on Sunday morning to bright sun and decided to take a day trip to some Waterfall gardens that were recommended to us.

The drive was incredible. A windy road through the mountains of coffee plantations. When we arrived at the gardens we found out that half of the trails were closed due to an earthquake in January. As a result, we were only able to hike to 2 waterfalls instead of 5. But we got a discount which was fabulous, since we've found that the tourist attractions can be quite spendy here.

In addition to waterfalls, there was a small "zoo" of rainforest animals---monkeys, frogs, snakes, butterflies, birds, and our favorite the hummingbirds. They were amazing!! How is it possible that their wings beat 60 times per second. It was so nice to get away from the city for the day. And the rains held off until after lunch--what did we expect, it is a rainforest! =)

Field Trip

Our tour guide, showing us one of the many stores of wood. This is "purple heart"as you can tell by its' natural purple color
Mike--busy with his small project =)

Mike's class had a field trip on Friday. It was billed as a chance to learn and use their spanish and see a local business in action. But mostly it was a chance to buy curios from the gift store =) Although walking through the factory was quite interesting--and the amount of wood was unbelievable. It was amazing what they could make out of the wood--And we (and you) are probably happy to here that for every tree that has been cut down, ten more have been planted.

Happy 6th Birthday Sam!

Today was Sam's 6th Birthday! Here is a snapshot of our day!!
We had dinner at McDonald's with a playland!

Sam and Alton played on the playground after school. It's Alton's 6th birthday today, too!

Sam had a special muffin for breakfast and those are all the signs we made for him to celebrate his big day!

'Here his class is singing "Happy Birthday" to him in English and then in Spanish. Then the class enjoyed cupcakes.

It was a very fun day! And we are thankful for Sam and the blessing he is to our family!

Lankester gardens

Can you tell what we did this weekend? We thought about making a trip to the beach but instead we stayed locally and visited Lankester gardens. It was a beautiful get-away without really getting away. We saw beautiful plants, trees, and forest and enjoyed the quiet setting.

Walking through the forest

Syd and I in the orchid collections

We were blessed to have dry weather which is unusual this time of year. But we did find the mosquitoes--but thankfully, no malaria to worry about--just itching.

"Our" first house in CR

The road leaving our cul-de-sac

The kids in front of the house

Abby and the kids

Here are some pictures of the house where we are staying in San José. We will be living here until mid-August. The Happ family has been very generous to us--in exchange for watching their house and their dachsund, Abby, we are blessed with the use of their house and their car. This house is about 15 minutes away from school by car, depending on traffic.

In August, when the Happs return, we will be moving closer to school. We found an apartment that is about 3 blocks from school. It has a big common green space which is a bit unusual for the city. And as it is rainy season, and the rain always seems to come about the time the kids are finished with school, it will be nice to be so close for the wet walk home.

Volcán Irazu

Sam and Mike at the main crater
The lake at the bottom of the main crater

Sydney and I --happy that we have some jackets to block the wind

After just one week, we were already feeling the need to get out of the city for awhile. So on Saturday we headed east out of San José to Volcán Irazu. It is the highest mountain in Costa Rica and thankfully, it is currently dormant. Luckily we read the guide book before we went which told us to go early before the clouds moved in, and to bring warm clothes. Because it was freezing! And just after we took these pictures the clouds moved in and we could barely see more than 10 meters ahead of us. Since we couldn't see anything after that, we headed back home and were home for lunch. It was a nice opportunity to begin to see more of this beautiful country.

Costa Rica!

The kids at school

Me at Instituto de Lengua Espanola--what a view!

Well, my blogging is back by "popular" demand. At least my mom likes to read about our adventures. But because we are no longer in Malawi--we have changed the blogs name to match our newsletters. Peaks and Valleys.

We arrived safely in San Jose, Costa Rica last Sunday after a whirlwind 2 weeks of leaving Malawi, visiting friends in London, and hanging out with family and friends in Minnesota. We have hit the ground running as Mike and the kids started school on Monday. Mike is studying in a 1-month intensive course and he kids are attending a day-camp. I am just trying to help keep things in order for the time being.

We are very grateful to be house-sitting in Costa Rica for our first 8 weeks. It was nice to move into a furnished house--it has made this first week a little easier. We will be looking for a house or an apartment closer to school starting mid-August.

So far the biggest adventure has been driving to and from school. It's a busy city with lots of cars and not a lot of great roadways. It's different than Malawi where you have to avoid the pedestrians and bikes. Here it's just a lot of other cars on very narrow roads. And because we are new, if we make a wrong turn, we get easily lost. So far, nothing horrible.

On the other hand, we live close to a big store--HiperMas. It's like Wal-Mart and outside is a little stand that sells McDonalds ice cream cones. That has been our treat after 12 hour days at school this week.