Dia de Acción de Gracias (or better known as Miah's Favorite Holiday)

Sorry we are so delayed getting this posted. We know your curiosity is killing you as to how Thanksgiving in Costa Rica played out. It was quite an ordeal that began 6 months ago when we realized that turkeys were very difficult, and expensive, to come by here. No matter what part of the world we've been in, we have always made sure to make a Thanksgiving feast, so this hurdle wasn't about to stop us now.

Thankfully, our coworker's mom has a farm about an hour away and was willing to raise a turkey for us. We named our turkey Mr. Gobble and he had a very happy life until November when it was our job to get him oven-ready. The drive to the farm was absolutely beautiful. Once there, one of the farmers helped us catch Mr. Gobble and have it drink cheap liquor until it was good and drunk. We let him stumble around for awhile before hanging him up to kill. We weren't sure we would be up to the challenge, so someone helped us out. Then, it had to be plucked before we could take it home.

Mr. Gobble was quite a substantial turkey by Costa Rican standards, but only 10 pounds which was not quite enough for the 20+ people we had for Thanksgiving the next day. We had a very cross-cultural feast combining friends from the US and Costa Rica, with traditional Thanksgiving dishes as well as typical fare from here. Keeping with the tradition though, there was more than enough for all and we were happily stuffed and sleepy after eating.

All in all, Thanksgiving was quite a success and certainly a learning experience for us as well. Next we'll have to teach the art of southern BBQ when Mrs. Oink is ready...



Back to the US tomorrow,
Team Wander

Club de yates de los campesinos (redneck yacht club)

We thought we were finally getting a handle on all the surprises that Costa Rica had in store for us, but boy were we mistaken. See, we had some grandiose plans for a Thanksgiving dinner (a family friend has been raising us a turkey for the past 6 months - that we will soon have to go butcher), but then we got wind of something new and exciting that was going to fall on the same day as said Thanksgiving. A little social maneuvering and a couple of emails later, we had everything reorganized and were on our way to Raft-Up.

Turns out that Raft-Up is really like the Costa Rican redneck yacht club. Erm... correction: it's like the Costa Rican Expat Community's redneck yacht club. At 9 am Sunday morning, we caught a surfboat (complete with deckhand Golden Retriever) out to a hidden bay along with some 300 other expats and the occasional fortunate tourist. The boat showed up in the bay and dropped anchor along-side fifteen other boats and we caught a dinghy to shore (well, Miah jumped ship and swam, but he was pretty excited to get off the boat).

From there we had a day of beach volleyball, grilling out, snorkeling, body surfing and live music. It was great! But it has inspired us to hold our own redneck yacht club sometime after we get back in North Carolina. You should come.

The one heartbreak about raft-up is that it was going to be the kickoff event for our week with the most recent group of visitors, Graham and Julie. Julie is in school at C.I.A (Culinary Institute of America) so her timing for a visit was pretty much perfect! Unfortunately, there was a little bit of a passport finding fiasco that caused them to spend the day they were supposed to be flying down here driving over 20 hours hunting down passports, so they ended up missing raft-up (insert emoticon super sad face here).

They did manage to make it down the next day, however, and we had a fantastic, food and adventure filled week with them. We went and worked on the houses together, cooked up a storm, golfed, played some Killer Bunnies and generally had a great time. We miss you guys already!




Anybody watch the Wolfpack beat Carolina last weekend?
TeamWander

House Photos

En el trabajo

Things have really picked up here as we find ourselves in the last month or so of our first neighborhood of houses. It has been extremely exciting to see them come together and they have turned out nicer than we could have ever imagined. We have floors, ceilings, electrical, stucco, etc. on half of our houses (photos to come). In early November, Miah put in a lot of hours at the worksite installing everything electrical and learning the true inner workings of our construction team. It´s still a toss-up as to whether this helped or hurt his Spanish, since 10 hours a day is plenty of time to practice, but most of the Spanish he´s learned can not be repeated outside a small group of local guys (think crude surfer guy speak).

There is never a lack of interesting stories from the worksite, but here´s one we want to share. We had stopped by for a quick update from the construction foreman and to check on the delivery of some additional materials., but when we arrived, everyone was crowded around one of the holes that had been dug for a septic tank. Slightly confused, we walked over to see what was going on, and upon peering down in the hole saw a cow´s head with horns. At some point that morning, it had managed to fall in the hole and so the guys were trying use bars and ropes to get it out. The poor cow was absolutely terrified, but just watching the entire situation play out, it was quite comical. Fifteen guys were heaving with all their might to haul this cow out and it was doing everything in its power to stay right where it was. We were worried it might have broken a leg or something in the fall, but when they finally did manage to get the cow out, he was perfectly fine as far as we could tell. Needless to say, we were late for our next meeting, but we couldn´t walk away until the rescue operation was complete.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving feast,
Team Wander

Dientes Limpios

Thankfully, we´ve been super lucky so far on our travels not need any sort of medical care. We were long overdue for a good teeth cleaning though, so we decided to try our luck at a local dental clinic. We had seen one situated in a small town about 15 minutes from us, next to our favorite pizza place, so that seemed as good a sign as any to choose that clinic.

We walked in for our appointment and as usual, things are running on Tico time so we had plenty of time to strike up a conversation with the receptionist. She was a Nicaraguan who had moved to Costa Rica with the hope of making more money to send back to her children who were living with her mother. Not five minutes into the conversation, she was baring her soul to us. It was great to have a truly candid conversation with someone from such a different background, not only to learn about her life, but to get a different perspective on the project we are working on here. If she could bring her family down here to live with her, these are exactly the type of hard working families that we would like to be helping. She brought up some interesting questions and concerns though that can be used help us to improve before our next project.

The other patient then came out of the exam room, in one piece and looking happy enough, so we figured things couldn´t go too bad. The dentist was super nice and started the cleaning innocently enough. Next thing we know, he had placed a towel over our face and chest and proceeded to start sand-blasting our mouths with baking soda. If you have ever been out on the beach when a huge gust of wind picks up and you feel the sting of the sand against your legs, you can begin to imagine this, but then transfer that feeling to your tongue and lips instead. When he finished, despite the best intentions of the towel, our faces were covered in a thin-film of baking soda. Certainly an interesting experience, but short-lived enough and well-worth the sparkling clean teeth afterward.

Big smiles,
Team Wander

Los Estados Unidos

Sorry, apparently we forgot to post this when returned, but here it is now...


Whew, we made it back to the land of rice and beans after a whirlwind of a trip to the US. As some of you might have heard, Leslie´s grandmother died suddenly on September 30th so she had to make a quick trip to Florida that weekend for the funeral. Traveling started by leaving the house at 3am to catch a bus to San Jose airport. Everything went smoothly until arriving in the US where the custom´s officers played 20 questions about anything from being out of the country too much to not having enough luggage. It was all worth it though because the service went really well and it was fantastic to have all our family together.

Leslie flew back to Costa Rica the following Wednesday only to fly back out on Thursday morning. We spent Wednesday night with some friends who live near San Jose (Jessica, they may be our toughest Boggle competition yet). We left our car at one of their friend´s houses whose German shephard had puppies about 3 months ago. Three of the were quickly growing as you would expect, but the runt of the litter had barely changed size at all. She was a tiny ball of fur and the cutest thing ever. We´re not sure if she´s ever going to grow, but it took every ounce of our strength to walk away empty-handed when he offered her to us.

Next we made it to DC to spend some time with Miah´s mom and for him to take the GRE. Our first day there was a blast, we took a bike tour around the Mall (the best way to see the sights), visited the Smithsonian, and ended the day with a night-time boat ride up the Potomac. In between test taking and essay writing the rest of the weekend, we managed to cram in tons of good food.

One of the most interesting things we saw in DC was the solar decathalon taking place on the Mall (http://www.solardecathlon.org/). There were 20 universities competing for the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. All the houses were less than 800 square feet, so not only was the environmental impact of the houses amazing, but so was there innovative use of space. We learned so many neat things, we´re ready to build our own house now. Here are a couple pictures of the houses:









Love to all,
Team Wander

Muchas Aventuras de Comida (entre otras cosas)

Kiddies, we've got a lot of ground to cover, so I'd recommend before getting started on this post you make up some hot chocolate and grab the comfiest chair in the house. The past few weeks here have been wonderful: progress on the houses is coming along extremely well, we should be finishing on schedule; we've made quite a bit of progress beginning the permitting process for the next lot as well. We have also been fortunate enough to take part in a couple of awesome adventures over the past few weeks and those are the experiences we'd like to share with you all.

First off, two weekends ago us and a few of the people who work for the foundation decided to have a road trip. The two of us don't travel too much within Costa Rica because we're living on the traveler budget, and focusing a lot on developing our relationships with the folks around here, but we're sure glad we were a part of this trip. Seven of us took the hour drive down to the very tip of the Nicoya Peninsula to a town called Mal Pais.

We spent the weekend relaxing, hanging out at the beach and hiking to some neat waterfalls. Oh yeah, and eating. You'll quickly notice that food is very much the central theme of this post. As we spent the majority of our time less than a quarter mile from the ocean, the seafood was wonderful, so we made sure to concentrate our consumptive energy on that cuisine. One of the neatest parts about the weekend, however, was the cultural mix that we had within the group. There were three Ticos and four of us from the US and it's fair to say that the weekend was completely bi-lingual; it was perfectly acceptable to speak to someone in either of the two languages (irrespective of what their native language was and even in what language they had just spoken to you).

That was a really neat experience, it made for some neat polylingual conversations, and of course, the everpresent meta-conversation about languages. All of us non-spanish speakers took advantage of having three friendly, walking dictionaries at our disposal and worked hard to pick up as much spanish as we could during the weekend. We even spent a few hours one night playing Catchphrase in Spanish. For the silly little gringos that we are, I think we did pretty well.

Here's a picture of the lovely little bungalows that we stayed in (close enough that the sound of the surf rocked you to sleep at night). What a great weekend (Thanks Yanith!)

Next on the docket of fun things to talk about is one of the culinary adventures that we've been having here at home lately. We've been experimenting with food a lot lately and are absolutely loving it. Produce is cheaper here than it will ever be again in our life (at least that what my mom hopes for, because cheap produce would imply another transcontinental adventure) and so we're making the most of it by cooking at home lots and lots.

We've decided a fun thing to do in the blog is to start posting more and more of the recipes that we're currently trying to let the foodies in all of you give it a try at home.

This past week we made a loaf of bread that was absolutely spectacular. Miah has gotten in to breadmaking (he's still pushing to open up a bakery / B&B somewhere in the south of Italy - sorry mom) and decided to hunt down and try out a recipe for fresh thyme bread. Here's the result of some of the experimentation:

Thyme Garlic Bread
4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tsp sugar
4 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp yeast (more colloquially known as yeasty beasties)
2 tsp salt
2 Tb finely chopped fresh thyme

Dissolve yeast in warm water, let sit for 10 minutes. In a large bowl, mix 2 cups flour, sugar and salt. Add yeast mixture and mix together well, scraping the sides of the bowl. Slowly add as much of the rest of the flour as you can stopping at a medium dough. Turn out the mixture on to a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 minutes. Flatten out the dough and spread the thyme and garlic evenly throughout. Knead for 2 minutes more to distribute the spices. Place in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a moist cloth. Let rise in a warm place until doubled (roughly two hours). Turn out dough on to a lightly floured surface and knead for two more minutes. Put in to a bread pan or form in to a loaf on a baking sheet and let sit, covered, for 10 more minutes. Bake on 250 for about 50 minutes. Enjoy

A word to the intrepid about our baking temperatures and times: our oven is loco. Our cooking temperatures seem to run pretty low, so you might want to consider bumping up to 300 or something. I look cooking this bread so low because of the way the crust turns out (not too thick, not too tough), but you can experiment and see what you like best.

We made grilled cheese, avocado and tomato sandwiches out of this bread and they were absolutely incredible. We highly recommend (5 gold stars for you little buddy), and we have included a salivation inducing photo.

Lastly, let's talk about football (and food). For those of you who live on the moon, both college and pro football are now a few weeks in and possibly the most exciting thing currently happening on the face of the planet. This last weekend was sort-of devoted to that end. We spent the weekend with our buddies Zach (yes sir, you made it in to the blog) and Eric, bouncing around from house to house watching obscene amounts of football. The true trump-card of the weekend however was not the 10 hours of football we watched over the course of two days, but instead the meal we cooked on friday night. If anybody from 1410 is reading this, they'll be proud to know that this meal was brought to you by the letter bacon, and worth every artery-clogging calorie.

The menu in brief: NY strip wrapped in bacon, portabella mushrooom slices wrapped in bacon, pinapple wrapped in bacon and banana stuffed jalapeño peppers (we ran out of bacon). We cooked it all up on the grill and feasted. Hooray.

As for now, we're back to the grind, trying to get some houses built and write some grad school admissions essays,


We hope everyone is doing well, we love and miss you,
Go Pack! Go Chargers!
TeamWander