During my teaching, I'm often fascinated to learn what sounds are difficult for non-native English speakers to make. It varies by their own native language, of course, but this particular class is 100% Central or South American so all the students seem to trip up on the same sounds.

Today's lesson was about health problems. I had great fun pantomiming having a cold, the flu, a fever, various broken bones etc. One of the maladies in the workbook was a toothache. When I was listening to the students try to pronounce that word, I kept hearing something more like "tootsache". I don't know much Spanish, but given the trouble they were all having I had to assume that that sound just doesn't exist.

So I sat there for a second and tried to figure out just how one makes that "th" sound. In order to get it, you really have to start with your tongue between your teeth. Anything else creates that "s" sound I was hearing. Also, there is actually no vocal noise generated at all. The sound is made exclusively with the mouth (at the end of a word, anyway).

Thinking through the mouth positions and sounds of a word was an interesting exercise, and it allowed me to describe to the students how to make their mouth so the sound came out right. Not everyone got it, but some students picked it up right away. I had them repeat it over and over - ostensibly for practice, but mostly because I was really excited that they got it and I wanted to be certain I wasn't just hearing things.

I've had an incredible experience so far with the teaching, and little episodes like this are part of what fuels the enjoyment. When these students walked into the class, they knew how to say hello and that's about it. Watching their progress is just so much fun. Being part of their progess is fun, too.

My new neighborhood is bordered on all sides by Rock Creek Park. Rock Creek park is one of the primary reasons that DC is at the top of the list for the most green area for a big city.

Map of DC

You can see from the map above just how huge that swath of green is that runs up the center of the city.

I'm fortunate enough to live near this park, and have recently fallen a bit in love with it.

For the first time in a long time, I really look forward to going on runs. So many beautiful trails, in the shade of the trees. Amazing how much nicer it is to run on dirt-packed paths among thousands of trees than out on the pavement among thousands of cars and stoplights at every corner. It helps that nearly every time I go for a run, I have the great pleasure of stopping to watch the deer. Today, it was 3 beautiful bucks, so close I could see the softness of their velvet antlers. The other day it was 2 fawns, out with their mothers. Maybe some day I'll grow accustomed to the sight, but for now, I feel this great affinity for them. It's somehow magical that they appear in the midst of this crazy city.

I have been spending a lot of time in my garden lately. This is a somewhat recent phenomenon that took place after I realized that my yard looked worse than the yard of the house next door. I know I shouldn't worry about "keeping up" with the neighbors too much. It's just that the house next door is actually abandoned. So it was bad.

I have grand plans for my back yard. It's big by DC standards (i.e. it exists) and there is plenty of room for a patio and a vegetable garden. The problem is that my grand plans are expensive, and time consuming, requiring the two resources that I have the least of at the moment. Which honestly, is fine. I have other things to worry about. But, I didn't want to go an entire season feeling bad about buying small quantities of herbs from Whole Foods at exhorbitant costs, and then chucking the rest after I used my 1 tablespoon.

So my compromise was to try to tame the jungle, and to plant just a few things for the season to see how it went.

I had a little area dug out to plant some herbs and also one zucchini plant, one squash plant, and one tomato plant. The rest of the yard is currently a combination of grass, weeds, and conglomerations of bushes that look to be a synthesis of an original plant, a weed that grew to strangle said plant, and then another weed that grew to strangle the original weed.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been slowly trying to tackle and conquer one small section of the yard at a time. If I can maintain the work I've done, and keep adding sections, by 2011 I should have the yard totally under control. Which is probably when we'll be just about to tear it up to put in my dream yard.

Honestly, I can easily see why people just hire someone to do this. I spend hours a day in the hot, hot sun, getting eaten by mosquitos, doing deep knee bends. (Who knew gardening was such a good workout?) And yet, there is something personal going on here. It's war. And I want to win.

It's satisfying, too, to see what a good pair of hedge trimmers and tiny arm muscles can accomplish. I honestly love the feeling of looking out over what I've just labored on and seeing a real difference.

It's also nice to look out over my yard and realize that it's just edged out the vacant house's yard next door. Progress.

For non-computer geeks, != means "not equals". Tights do not equal pants.

I saw this statement on a shirt the other day, and I burst out laughing. It was undoubtedly in response to the recent fashion trend where women wear just tights, and a shirt or sweater just barely long enough to cover the things that are important to cover.

I am not a fan of this trend, as it really does seem indecent to wear only tights. But, at one point in my life, I was a huge fan. In fact, it's possible I started this trend.

I must have been about 8 years old. One day I came downstairs after getting ready for school in what I thought was a perfect outfit. I was wearing my favorite sweater at the time - a purplish-magenta sweatshirt dotted with two-inch puffy penguins. On my legs were a pair of black gymnastics tights.

Upon seeing this outfit, my mom, thinking that I was just forgetful, reminded me that I needed to go put on pants of some sort. It was the 80's, I'm sure a jean skirt or jean shorts would have sufficed. But I was stubborn, and I refused to change. After a bit of back and forth, my mom gave in, and sent me out the door, wearing just tights and a purple sweater that covered the things that were important to cover.

Once at school, the teasing began almost immediately. The two most popular girls in the school - popular because they were twins AND pretty AND older than I was - were the first to start in. Perhaps it wasn't teasing. Perhaps it was mere curiosity. "Rachel, why aren't you wearing any pants?" My retort to that was elegant, and though I don't remember my exact word choice, it was something like "Why are you wearing a shirt with shapes on it?" (which she was). In my embarrassment, it was the best I could come up with.

I spent the rest of the day fielding questions. I also spent the rest of the day feeling ridiculous.

Salvation came after school, though. I went to an after-school program a few times a week called Kids Club, where we did our homework and played lots of fun games. That particular week was gymnastics week, something completely unbeknownst to me, but nevertheless convenient given my attire. Both of the popular twins went to this same after-school program, and they came up to me and said "Oh, you were wearing your tights for gymnastics! Why didn't you say so?" I played along, of course, claiming that I didn't tell them earlier because they were being so mean.

It's amazing to me that I can recall so much of this event, so many years later. I'm certain it was formative. I wasn't teased much by my peers growing up, so the times that I was really stand out. But it was also one of the (many) times it occurred to me that maybe my mom did know what was best for me.

To my mother's credit, I love that she let me leave the house looking ridiculous. She repeated the same technique many times when I went out during winter without a sweater, and later in life, too, when I was finding my bearings during high school. I'm sure it wasn't always easy for her, but I was stubborn as a mule, and I learned my lesson every single time.

I only wish that for each person out there wearing tights, there were a disdainful set of beautiful twins ready and waiting to mock them into wearing pants.

I made crepes for the first time tonight. I had previously feared them, and thought of them as something only an experienced cook would undertake. It turns out they're really quite simple. The simplicity starts with the ingredients - there are only 5, all of which I had on hand: flour, milk, eggs, oil and salt. You basically just mix everything thoroughly together and then let it chill for a bit.

Cooking the crepes was slightly more complicated. You basically have to put barely enough batter in a hot pan and swirl it to cover the bottom completely. That part took some getting used to, and it was pretty easy to spot my first attempts given the misshapen appearance.

The next step is just to turn the crepe over. The turning was much, much easier than I thought. I am awful at turning things. Even fried eggs - which should be easy - end up folded in half when I try to flip them. But crepes are different. The batter coats the pan so thinly that it's practically finished cooking when you go to turn them over. So it's not like an egg where everything is slipping around when you try to turn it. They hold together pretty well too.

Tonight's recipe was for savory crepes. I filled them with asparagus, swiss cheese, and ham, and topped with a mustard sauce. It was a rich but good meal. Next time I want to try sweet crepes. A local restaurant serves the most delicious lemon and sugar crepes. If I could replicate them at home I would be in heaven!

And the best part about the meal? No fires this time! Whew.

This weekend was outstanding for 3 primary reasons:

1) We got rid of 40 boxes that were just sitting around, gathering dust (literally - our place is still quite dusty).

2) I finished and filed my taxes.

3) 30 Rock had a new episode which Mark and I watched on my computer.

And onto the very small fires. Tonight I decided to try this quesadilla recipe which sounded good. The recipe called for broiling the quesadillas. I hadn't tried the broiler in my new oven yet so I thought this would be a good opportunity. And as I'm sure you can guess from the subject line, my food caught fire. Twice.

The sad part is, we just scraped the ashes off the food and ate the quesadillas anyway. I couldn't bring myself to throw away that much melted cheese.

Lately I have found myself wondering what Miss Manners would say about certain situations. For example, last night Mark and I were at a play. In the row behind us, some teenage kid - no doubt dragged there by insistent parents - was texting or playing games on his cell phone for the entirety of the show. At one point he actually dropped the phone and it made a clatter. The texting didn't bother me per se, other than the minor distraction of a faint bluish glow seen out of the corner of my eye. But the fact of it bugged me. Where were this kid's parents? Why weren't they reprimanding him? Who thinks it's appropriate to go to a play and do this?

In the end though, I realized that my indignance at the matter was only affecting me. I was the one who was sitting there irritated, letting this minor situation detract from what was an excellent play. He was happy as a clam, ignorant of everything around him.

I'm not sure how to reconcile the feelings though. When people break tacit (or explicit) social contracts, I get frustrated. We're in shared space here, and people need to learn to respect that space! And yet, telling someone "you're being rude" is hardly polite in and of itself. It makes me feel like a nag and a stickler that I even care. And yet I feel that these social contracts are important. I don't care what people do behind closed doors that doesn't affect me.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I need to either politely say something to someone or let it roll off my back. I don't want to let some 15 year old get under my skin. Life is too short!

I just finished Amy and Isabelle, by Elizabeth Strout, for one of my book groups. Strout is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. The book started out a bit slowly but by the end I kept looking at the shrinking number of remaining pages with sadness.

Like some of my other favorite authors, Strout writes about the tiny little lives of everday people. I love her characters. I love that they're frail and human and not at all cliched. There are no bad guys and good guys - just people who contain both. And her writing is beautiful. It has that natural quality where nothing feels forced. Every sentence just seems exactly so, and that it couldn't have sounded right any other way.

I'm happy to find another author I'm excited about, and whose books I haven't read all of already!

Date:	2009-01-21 14:50
Subject:	after-ball party
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

Well Mark and I aren't really connected to the national political scene in DC, so we didn't even bother trying to get tickets to any of the official inaugural balls. However, we did snag some tickets to an after-ball party which I happily attended because they were serving dessert AND breakfast at the same time. It was at the Georgetown Club in DC which is an absolutely beautiful building, and much bigger than it looks from the outside.

We had fun. I made Mark dance for one song, we ate lots of good food, and we ended up talking to a really nice couple from Detroit for a while. During our chat, someone came to sit down at the next table over and the guy we were talking to said "Hey Star how are you doing? It was great seeing you last night blah blah." I just zoned out because I didn't know the person. Except, I did know the person. It was Star Jones, maybe best known for her time on The View. It just took me a full minute to realize who she was.

And I know this is strange to say but I was kind of surprised she was human. It's like, you see these people all over the internet and magazines and you forget that they're real people. She looked EXACTLY like she does on TV. I was surprised that she didn't look any different.

Anyway, we don't get too many celebrities around here and if we do I certainly never hobnob with them so I was entertained by the experience.

This morning Mark and I headed downtown at about 6:40 to join in the inauguration madness. Our plan was simple. Get into the parade route. From there, walk to Fogo de Chao where our fundraiser luncheon was. Watch the entire procession in a warm place with all-you-can-eat food and clean restrooms. After lunch, watch a bit of the parade, since the restaurant was literally on the parade route. Return home. Oh, the best laid plans! Here's what actually went down...

We started off our day with my co-worker Winifred and her friend Val who were down visiting from New Jersey. They were traveling downtown with us but then heading off towards a special area for actual ticket holders!

Happily, we live about 40 yards from a bus stop that was on a "power bus route" for getting people downtown for the inauguration. This was great news as it made travel exceptionally easy. We hopped on the first bus we saw, which surprised me. I had sort of expected to have full buses pass us by before we were able to get on one. In any case were off to a good start!

Once downtown, Mark and I split off from Winifred and Val and we made our way towards one of the many security checkpoints. On the way in, we saw tons of Obama pariphrenalia for sale, everything from calendars to full sweat suits. One vendor was selling something called "O-BAM-AHH Energy Stix", which they were advertising from the back of a decked out Hummer. I thought that was a pretty bad choice of vehicle to be peddling anything related to "energy" from. They were not doing a brisk business.

We also saw lots of protests and signs for various causes. Most notable were people advocating shutting Gitmo down. They were dressed in orange jumpsuits with black masks completely covering their faces. I think that was a good idea for them since it was very cold out. The temps were in the 20s at that point but the wind knocked them down into the teens. Having a full face mask would have been great. Anyway, it struck me as a bit odd that these folks were down there advocating for something that Obama has very explicitly stated that he wants to do. I guess maybe they just wanted to make extra sure?

After a few blocks we reached a security checkpoint and decided to try our luck there. There were a few thousand people in line already but we had expected that so we weren't too worried. The line was actually just a huge mass of people about a hundred people wide and several hundred people deep. We stood in line for a while without going anywhere and then we started to move. They were pulling a couple hundred from the line at once and letting them go into an area where they formed actual lines for screening, as opposed to one giant mass. Once that group was done they'd let more in. So when we moved, we moved quite a bit. And otherwise we just stood there.

We were in line close to 2 1/2 hours and we were in line next to various people throughout that period. People were friendly and chatty, asking where people were from etc. so that was nice. However, we were unfortunate at first because this girl standing next to me had a proclivity for bursting into song. She was not a good singer, and she hit some high notes that left me sad to be near her.

There were a few Kenyans off to our left trying to lead everyone in Kenyan songs, altered slightly to incorporate Obama. One of them sounded like "Sen ga le" but there was an occasional "Obama le" thrown in. They were smiling and waving Kenyan flags and having a great time. Further off to our left were 3 people who somehow had a microphone and a speaker who were preaching to the crowd. We're not entirely sure what they were saying because they were too far away, but there was a lot of booing so I'm going to guess they weren't talking about how much they loved Obama.

The crowd control was well done here and everyone was respectful of other people's space. There were no crazy stampedes or anything that made me feel nervous. After 2 1/2 hours we made it to the actual screening where I was treated to a very physical pat down. It made me happy to know that they were doing a good job making sure no one had anything dangerous on them.

Finally, we were inside the parade route! We immediately made our way over to the restaurant, only to find that we couldn't cross 12th street for some reason. There were no exceptions. We knew we weren't going to be able to cross Pennsylvania. But 12th street?? So there we were, one block away from our restaurant, and we were told by some secret service guy that we had to go back out and go through the security line again. This new line was just 1 street down from our original line! Ugh. So, we complied, because, well, we had no other choice.

Out we went, into a different line. At this point it was 9:45 or so. We waited in our new line for several hours. We were lucky to hear Obama's speech on a portable radio someone had brought with them. At around 1 pm we realized it was pointless to continue standing in line. We were moving so slowly we knew we wouldn't make it inside for any part of our lunch, and if we eventually did get onto the parade route, we knew we wouldn't be able to see a thing. So we just turned around and left.

We were a bit disappointed, but really, we went into it knowing something like this might happen. We walked back towards the bus loading area, and decided to stop in at Cosi for some badly needed food. They were offering an inauguration special, which meant 1/4th of their menu options at twice the normal cost! Good for them, I guess. And good for us too because we were hungry. Food plus hot chocolate fortified us for our trip home. And like our good experience at the beginning, the trip ended well, too. We hopped on the first bus we saw and headed home.

My normal put-your-hands-over-your-head-while-someone-feeds-you-water-for-10-seconds hiccup trick doesn't always work when I'm alone.

Today I tried to use a trick I saw online where you kind of drink out of the back of the glass.

The good news is it worked. The bad news is I somehow poured it through my sinuses and water started pouring out my nose.

I don't think I'll be using that technique again, despite it's efficacy.

Mark and I took our first run from our new house. It quickly turned into a run/walk when my knee started bothering me. I have a long way to go to get back into shape. We ran through our neighborhood a bit and ended up near a tennis stadium and huge park area. It was nice to be outside despite the somewhat brisk weather.

I never do too well with New Year's resolutions. I guess if something is important enough for me to change I try to do it and don't wait until January 1. But there is something psychologically different about beginning a new year. It's tempting to want to turn over a new leaf, or perhaps several new leaves. My main goal this year is to do less. I want more unstructured time. Not sure how an old house needing lots of love fits into that plan but I guess we'll see.

Anyway, off to Lowes to pick out tile, lighting, toilets and perhaps appliances.

Today was pretty normal. I even got outside to go for a 10 minute walk, the first "exercise" I've attempted since moving. I just wandered a bit through our new neighborhood, which is nicer than I thought. Our place is definitely the smallest I've seen in the area, but that's just fine with me. There are some really beautiful old homes, and a couple of embassies. There are also an inordinate number of churches in the neighborhood.

I don't think this period of normalcy is going to last long. Mark already asked me to schedule a day next week where they'll cut the electricity to the house completely. Luckily I have the special wireless card that lets me be online anywhere.

In theory I'll have a new kitchen in a couple weeks. And perhaps some insulation too. And a patched roof. And lots of new electrical wires and pipes. I'm hoping some new non-leaking toilets as well. Lots going on!

I went downstairs tonight to look at the shell of my new kitchen. It's all just wood framing and wires. I actually love it a little. It's so neat to see the guts of it and to watch it all coming together. I wish I knew how to do some of this myself.

Once the kitchen is done and we take a little break I want to tackle a smaller project that we can do ourselves. I'm thinking the laundry room might be a good place to practice.

Someone broke into my car last night and tried to steal it. They ripped off all the ignition casing. Thankfully they were unsuccessful. But we were supposed to leave for Cleveland an hour ago and now I have to wait for AAA to come tow it to my dealer. Ugh.

It's a bit crazy around here. Finally have most of the office set up, including working internet and phone! Got settled in to work at a decent hour, only to have the electrical cord leading to my office cut in the process of having a wall demolished. The wall happened to be between my bedroom and the office, which are the only two habitable rooms upstairs. Today was a loud day.

A few interesting things we've discovered as we've been going through this process:

- We found the original kitchen floor underneath about 5 layers of linoleum.

- There is no subflooring upstairs. So when you are in the demoed kitchen and look up, you actually see the planks of hardwood floors laid directly on the beams.

- The ceiling in the basement is about 1 foot higher than we thought, putting it at least 7 feet. We might not need to dig down after all!

I have been referring to this process as an adventure. I am covered with dust about 100% of the time and when I want to leave the room I have to exit through lots of plastic sheeting. Finding a random item is like going on a treasure hunt. Sometimes I catch myself complaining, but really it's not too bad.

My cats are adjusting to this well. Landon, who used to run and hide when the vacuum cleaner turned on, merely looked annoyed today as someone banged on metal hard for about 2 minutes straight to the point where my ears were ringing. Landon has also discovered what radiators are and she likes curling up as best as she can on top of them when they're warm. I tried to copy her yesterday but I didn't quite fit!

I meant to post about this a few weeks ago but life has been a bit hectic and I'm only finding time now. "Now" happens to be in La Quinta visiting my Dad and Debbie. I am catching up on some work while half-watching Oprah.

Anyway, I blogged about my Costa Rica trip on the last day of my trip, thinking that I wouldn't have anything left to say about it, since all I was doing the following day was travelling to the airport and flying back to DC.

That day turned into a 36 hour adventure, which warrants its own entry.

The day started with a 5+ hour drive from Nosara to San Jose. The distance between the two cities is probably only 150 miles, but the roads are bad for part of it, and there is also a pretty long section of 1 lane highways through hilly regions, where you end up in line behind massive trucks.

Christie accompanied me part of the way, and in Nicoya she got off at the bus depot and I continued on my way. Pretty soon after leaving her, I got pulled over by the Costa Rican police. I was travling 90 k/hr in an 80 k/hr zone. 6 miles / hour over the speed limit! The police offer didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Spanish, but we each had enough language and hand gestures between us to resolve the issue.

He asked for my passport and conveyed to me that I owed about $100. I wasn't traveling with that kind of money and I indicated that to him. He informed me that if he registered the ticket, I wasn't going to be able to leave the country without paying the fee to the bank of Costa Rica. I figured that was fine, that I could take care of it at the airport. But he said the bank in closed on Sunday. In other words, I wasn't going to be able to leave Costa Rica that day.

It's a good thing that crying is crying in any language, and I'm not ashamed to say that I burst into tears. I have NEVER gotten out of a ticket in my life by crying. I'd like to think I saved up all my karma so that someday in Costa Rica when I couldn't speak the language and I had a flight leaving in a few hours, and I was closing on a house about 48 hours later, I would get out of the ticket.

In any case, it worked. And I was appropriately paranoid for the rest of the drive. I saw 10 policemen after that, and actually watched them pull over 5 different people.

Once at the airport, everything went well. We boarded the plane a little delayed, but then after we left the gate, we just sat and sat for apparently no reason. Finally the captain announced that the president was landing at the airport and they halt all takeoffs and landings during that time for security. I'd say we were delayed about 1.5 hours.

When we landed in Miami, I had 17 minutes until my next flight left. I sprinted through the airport. I was cheering at my decision to carry on, because going through customs was an absolute breeze. Sprinting through the airport is occasionally fun. People cheered for me. It was kind of nice. I arrived at the gate, totally out of breath, and a lot of people were still there. The flight had been delayed, and they just hadn't bothered to update the screens. I had about 30 more minutes than I thought. But hey, I got a little run in which was nice.

Finally I got on the plane, the last leg of a really long day. I was exhausted and ready to be home. Poor Mark was waiting up for me to pick me up, and the delay pushed back my arrival into DC from 12 to 1 am.

We took off, and all was well. About 30 minutes into the flight, we banked. Hard. I didn't think about it too much, but the thought crossed my mind that DC is pretty much due north from Miami, so it was odd that we were turning so much. A couple minutes later the captain got on the intercom, and said something like this: "Something is wrong with the plane, and I'm not sure what it is. The cockpit is vibrating. This has never happened before. We need to turn around at head back to Miami immediately." But somehow it sounded much much scarier to hear that in the air than it looks in writing.

My heart rate immediately skyrocketed. And the lady next to me wasn't doing too well either. After the pilot's announcement, she started doing hail mary's, and rang the call button to ask the flight attendant for some wine. The attendant basically said no, and I thought that she was going to have a panic attack.

The first comedic part in all of this happened next. One of the flight attendants must have been on auto-pilot (ha ha) and she started giving the full "beverage service" speech. She was listing all the options, saying it would start in a few minutes etc. Meanwhile, the flight attendant who had been paying attention came running down the aisle, mouthing "no, no, no" and waving her hands at the woman. And during all of this, we're descending back towards Miami quite quickly. And even though it was kind of funny, it was still pretty scary.

Maybe I was overreacting, but I honestly thought I was going to die. The pilot's speech was not reassuring, and I had just accepted the fact that we might crash. A lot of thoughts went through my mind. The good news is, there were really no regrets. And I decided that for the remainder of the flight, I would spend my energy thinking about all the wonderful things I had seen and done in my lifetime because I might only have so much time left and I might as well enjoy it.

Obviously, we landed, we survived etc. People clapped. We breathed a huge collective sigh of relief. The second comedic part of this experience was that just after landing, every single person on the plane received a voicemail or text message that the flight had been cancelled. Again, I had to laugh. We all knew very well what was going on, but we appreciated the airline's commitment to keeping their passengers informed.

Once we landed we had to stay on the jetway while the ground crew examined the plane to try to determine the cause of the problems. After about 30 minutes the captain told us what happened. Apparently someone forgot to fully secure an access control panel on the plane after inspection in between flights, and it had opened during flight. The wind against the open panel flap was causing the vibration. The captain also said: "Turning around was 100% the right decision." I am not sure what that means. Does that mean we would have died if we hadn't turned around? I didn't ask.

I was so thankful to the pilot for turning us around. In fact, when I exited the plane, I asked him if he would give me a high five and but he was kind of far away so he just laughed. I would have hugged him if I could have.

After we exited the plane, we all formed a giant line to get rerouted and to get hotel vouchers etc. There were no more flights that night, so we were all competing for limited seats on flights the next day. Thanks to a good suggestion by my Mom, I had Mark book my flight through Expedia while I was in line, and the result was saving at least an hour and getting a decent flight home.

So I spent the night in Miami, and as a special bonus, I saw my friend Misha and her new baby boy the next morning before my flight. Thankfully, the flight was without incident.

I got back to my house in DC at about 3 pm on Monday. It had been a really, really long day. I don't think I'd ever been so happy to be home.

Yesterday we moved about 95% of our stuff to the new house. We had 5 other people helping us so it went smoothly and quickly. Moving is no fun but somehow yesterday wasn't that bad. We still have some miscellaneous stuff in the old house, and I also still have my desk and internet set up so I can work here while the office is getting painted.

Mark and I decided to take the cats over to the new place last night so they would have maximum time to get used to the new place before we abandon them for Thanksgiving. We're limiting their access to one room and a bathroom so that they aren't overwhelmed. Even one new room seems to be too much for them though. Either that, or they're cold. They have both burrowed themselves under our comforter so all we can see of them is two little lumps in our bed.

Now that the big move is finished, there is lots to do and to plan for. The floors upstairs have already been redone and our painter came by today to get instructions for repainting the two rooms upstairs that we'll be moving into - the office, and the master bedroom. We're going to leave the other two alone for now for the sake of cost and time. We're also going to paint some of the entry way to get rid of the amazingly ugly light turquoise blue.

The big upcoming project is the kitchen. I have selected cabinets, but not counters. We're going to try to keep the wood floor. I need to pick lights too. It's fun to think about all of this but it's slightly overwhelming as well. I am going to have to get used to eating out or ordering in all the time. My last 3 meals have been pizza!

Today is my last day in Costa Rica. I leave Nosara tomorrow at 6 am for San Jose. It´s about a 5 hour drive but I want plenty of buffer for my 3:30 flight back to DC. The trip has been a great mix of relaxation and activities. I thought of breaking up the trip into separate blog posts but in the interest of trying to be concise I´ll just post it all here.

Day 1: My trip started off with a bit of a scare. On the flight from DC to Miami, as we were heading down the runway, someone towards the back of the plane started screaming and yelled STOP. Well the pilot obviously couldn´t hear the woman screaming, so after a flight attendant rushed to the row he rushed back to the phone and told the pilot to abort takeoff. Soon the plane slowed down and we headed back to the gate.

I don´t know the details of what happened, but a man was apparently very sick. It sounded like he´d had some sort of episode. Lots of medics arrived once we got to the gate, and the man was wheeled off the plane. We were delayed about an hour but that was okay since my layover in Miami was about 3 hours. When we arrived in Miami, the flight attendants asked anyone who wasn´t in a rush to stay seated to let the other passengers make their connecting flights. So I stayed put.

Everyone eventually departed the plane and I leisurely disembarked and decided just to check to make sure my flight from Miami to San Jose was leaving on time. The flight from Miami to San Jose was listed as leaving at 12:20 which was strange because I wasn´t leaving until at least an hour after that. But there were no other flights to San Jose listed on the board so I decided to double check my itinerary. 12:20 it was, and when I looked at my watch and saw that it was 11:50 I was pretty surprised. I had given myself an extra hour to make my connection, and was sad to realize that I had moseyed on the plane when I should have been rushing to the gate. I wasn´t even in the right terminal, and I was afraid the gate would close by the time I got there. I ran through the airport, calling my aunt in between dodging people, and she said I was okay, that they were loading the plane but that I still had a couple minutes. I happily met my aunt at the gate, who was coincidentally on the same flight as me, making the meet up in San Jose very easy. All the other travel went well, and we were met by Greg and Christie at the curb in San Jose.

[Being concise is obviously out the window at this point, I realize.]

Once in the car we headed towards their friend´s house just outside of San Jose where we would stay the night before finishing the drive to Nosara the following day. Apparently it´s pretty dangerous to drive at night during parts of the trip. The home we stayed in was nice and we went out to eat a great little Italian restaurant. We all went home and went to bed.

Day 2: Okay, economy with words starts now. We finished the drive to Nosara, settled in, went grocery shopping, lay around the pool a bit, ate dinner, and went to bed. Did I mention that I woke up naturally at 6:40 AM and actually willingly got out of bed?

Day 3: Out of bed early again, this time for a yoga class at the Yoga Institute which is a well-ish-known yoga teaching center. Our class was held in "tree top studio" which was a pretty accurate description of the beautiful outdoor setting for our class. The class was 1.5 hours and pretty hard. I was exhausted by the end but it was a treat to be outdoors on a beautiful day listening to the sounds of the birds as the soundtrack to our practice.

After yoga, my aunt picked us up to take us to the rental car place. After renting the car, Christie and I decided to explore. The town of Nosara is stretched out along a main road which has a few turn offs and on a couple of those turn offs there are little stretches of shops and restaurants, surfshops, etc. With a car and automony for the first time, Christie and I decided we should do what all girls near the beach on the sunny day should do - we went to the local Internet center and checked our email. There is a little business center (where I am now) that we have used daily to check in. It´s nice because at my aunt´s house there is only dial-up which is pretty slow.

The rest of the day I don´t remember well. I´m sure it involved reading and hanging out under the big hut by the pool. The house we are staying in belongs to my aunt and her husband, who built it as a bed and breakfast. Christie and I are staying in the guest house which is a beautiful two-story stucco house with wide porches and expansive views of the ocean. Between the main house and the guest house is an outdoor kitchen with a huge hut type structure separating the kitchen from their infinity pool (pic below).



The kitchen is basically an outdoor kitchen - they can close it up at night but during the day it´s mostly open. The kitchen boasts an industrial range, a huge griddle and two (mostly unused) deep friers. It´s fully equipped and very impressive. The main house is where Suzy and Greg live and it is lovely as well. (After re-reading this it seems apparent that I have spent a lot of time recently reading realtors's descriptions of homes.)

Day 4: Christie and I decided that we basically wasted Wednesday. We hardly remembered what we did. We went to the beach and I got a little burned. I purchased a couple vases from some guys who approached us as we were lying there reading. I got to practice the little Spanish that I remember from my one class in college. That was fun.

Day 5: Another yoga class, followed by a walk through a nature preserve. We saw a lot of different plant species, the most memorable being the mangrove tree which just looks really cool. More lounging in the afternoon. We headed to bed very early in order to try to get some sleep before our 4:30 AM wakeup.

Day 6: (Let the wordiness re-begin. This time it´s worth it, promise.) When we were at the nature preserve the day before the owner of the hotel on the reserve (paradox? maybe...) mentioned that the seaturtle eggs were hatching and that we might be able to see it if we got to a specific beach very early the next morning. As I said Christie and I headed to bed very early the night before. I woke up early on my own and decided to just stay awake until we got the call from Suzy and Greg that it was time to go. After a few minutes I decided I´d better just check what time it was to see if it was worth falling asleep again before we had to go. All I can say is that my watch said that it was 10:45 PM. I laughed to myself and went back to sleep for several more hours until it was really time to go.

Getting there was an adventure in and of itself. The beach is pretty secluded and required crossing 3 streams to get there. And by streams I mean we drove through water so deep that water came up over the hood of my aunt and uncle´s SUV. I think I held my breath the entire time but we made it.


(The above picture was on the way back when the tide was down a good bit.)

Once on the beach we walked about 50 yards and I saw a couple tiny little turtles heading slowly towards the water. Soon my eyes adjusted and I saw hundreds of turtles across the beach, each making their own little journey. The turtles were well camouflaged with the sand, a trait that I´m sure served them well, since vultures had basically surrounded the beach.

Quick sea turtle lesson. About 45 days before, several mama turtles had walked up the shore and dug a hole, laid about 100 eggs, covered them up and then left. We were watching the baby turtles emerge from those nests. Once the first turtle hatches it starts digging towards the surface and it makes a little hole and escapes. Then another and another and the hole slowly widens to be about 4 to 6 inches. In the hole you can see turtles wriggling around and using their flippers as best they can to launch themselves onto the flat sand. We watched streams of baby turtles emerging from several nests. It was pure joy to watch.





The turtles themselves had shells about the size of silver dollars. We followed a few down to the water where they were washed away into the ocean by the waves. Apparently only 1 in 100 turtles will survive to make the journey back to shore to lay eggs.



There is lots more to say about this. Some people in our group were trying to help the turtles out who were struggling to get out of the hole and there was argument about whether or not we should be interfering. (I was trying to get everyone to leave them alone. Nature seems to be able to take care of the process to the point where creatures born in the sand know to tunnel out and book it towards shore as fast as their little flippers can carry them, all without any sort of guide.)

There was also a little cliff about 1.5 feet that some of the turtles had to navigate on their way to the water. We watched as time and time again these tiny creatures hurled themselves off this mini cliff, struggled to right themselves, and then continued on their way. The "interferers" wanted to create a ramp for them, but these little guys didn´t need a ramp. They knew what they were doing.

After a couple hours we headed home, back through the streams which were thankfully a little lower due to the tide going out a bit.

Our next activity was snorkeling. That was pretty cool. I saw some small fish and an octopus and others saw a lobster and a couple eels.

Later that afternoon we went on a hike to some waterfalls. The waterfalls cascaded down the side of a cliff, creating little pools at each level as they descended. The pool at the base was fairly large, perhaps the size of a community swimming pool. I didn´t have my bathing suit, but went in anyway in my shorts and a sports bra. We could get right under the falls and it felt like a nice massage getting pounded in the back by the falling water.

After playing around a bit in there, we decided to explore the other pools. The cliff was steep but climbable, so we set off. In this case "we" refers to me and Christie, and two friends of Suzy and Greg´s. The climb was tough and slippery. Normally I´m stubborn and like to do everything myself but every time anyone offered a steady hand I was more than happy to oblige. The trek was well worth it. The pools were cool and in almost all of them you could get directly under the falls. After a half hour or so we climbed back down and headed home.




It was a full and amazing day. Some truly one-of-a-kind experiences.

Day 7: Which is today. Good news is that I´m getting tired of typing. I took a surfing lesson this morning. The guy who taught me is named Juan Surfo. Seriously. He swears it´s his real last name. I was pretty much able to surf after 1 hour which is more of a testament to Juan than to me because he was a really good teacher.

After surfing we went back and I started to pack up. We then came back into town for lunch (I had casado which is a traditional Costa Rican dish involving meat, rice and beans, some vegetables, a salad, and plaintains (though mine was without plaintains). After lunch we browsed through some of the local shops and then headed back home for more packing.

Christie is staying in Costa Rica for a couple more weeks and she wanted to head to the business center both to book some upcoming travel, and to upload some of the photos from the trip. Christie took some amazing photos. In fact I´m just going to link to hers until I can get mine up, and I might just continue to link to hers even when mine are uploaded because she takes much better photos than I do (and I can´t blame the camera either - we have the same one)!

So to wile away the time I decided to write this post. It got really long. If you have made it this far, congrats!

There is much more to say, especially on the topic of bugs, ants and bees being the primary offenders on this trip. Or better yet, just look up army ants and you´ll get an idea.

All in all it was a great trip and though I´ll be sorry to leave tomorrow I´ll be happy to get back to DC. After all, I´m officially buying my house on Tuesday and moving next Saturday and there is a lot to do before then!

P.S. I didn´t really proof read. You know it´s bad if even the author can´t bear to reread something to look for errors. So, apologies.

Tonight we listened to the election coverage on the radio while we packed. Most of the time I don't mind not having a TV but on nights like tonight it would have been nice. I missed watching the country change colors to red and blue as the votes were tallied. It would have been nice to watch the speeches. But listening to them was pretty good too.

I'm glad the election is over. It was more than a marathon. It was one of those insane ultra-distance runs where you race for 100 miles through mountains out west. But it was an interesting election for a lot of reasons and I'm sure it will go down in the history books.

I got fairly involved in some political blogs this election season and it often got quite heated. When people would argue over whether people were just voting for Obama because he was black, or Hillary (and then Palin) because she was a woman I would always think to myself that it was neat we were even having the arguments because it represented some big "firsts" in U.S. history. No matter which way the election had gone it would have been an historic election. There might not be many times we'll be able to say that.

Outside people are still celebrating. There is non-stop noise from car horns, screaming and fireworks. It's fun to be in the city during a time like this.

I hope that Obama does a good job. He inherited the U.S. during a pretty intense time. I'll also be curious to see who he appoints to different cabinet positions, and what he tries to tackle first.

I think McCain gave a very gracious speech tonight. I hope that some of the anger that I've seen during the campaign subsides and that Obama can allay some of the fears that many Americans have about what kind of president he'll be.

Only time will tell. It will be very interesting to watch.

Date:	2008-10-29 22:45
Subject:	House
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited

So my offer was countered, and then I countered, and then they sort of countered, and I accepted. It all happened faster than I thought it would and all of a sudden I was well on my way to becoming a homeowner.

I was holding off on getting too excited until the inspection, though. I wasn't sure what he would find, and if he found something major I knew I'd have to walk away. But the inspection went beautifully.

The inspector himself was great. I walked around with him and he explained everything that he was looking for and how everything rated. He also showed me how to turn on and off the water, the boiler etc. He had an excellent manner about him and I really enjoyed learning about the house as we went through it.

So about the house. It's an old brick DC row house, partly detached. I'm on the end which is great because it means a lot of windows. I'm looking forward to getting more light than I'm accustomed to. The house sits on the south side of the street so we'll get morning light on the side, and my (future) garden will face south.

The square footage is listed as 2,200 which to me seems gigantic, almost too big. I guess it's good to have a place to grow into but I've been so used to small spaces it will feel a bit awkward to stretch out. That figure doesn't include the basement or the attic. Right now the basement will be used for storage, and the attic will probably be ignored for the foreseeable future. It has potential to be a cute little room someday, but since we already have more than enough space I'm not in a hurry to create more.

The interior of the house needs a lot of updating. It looks like the last real renovation of the house happened in the 70s. The kitchen needs to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch. The rest of it just needs paint (I hope). We will likely re-finish some of the floors but the floors that are exposed right now are actually in beautiful shape.

The bathrooms also need updating, but they aren't my top priority right now. The renovation of this place is going to have to happen over the course of a year, maybe two. I think it will be fun to put a lot of work into something to make it my own. I'm looking forward to stripping the white paint off of the original doors and moldings, and maybe exposing some of the interior brick wall. I'll see how much time and patience I have. :)

Anyway, I posted some photos, which you can find here.