A Costa Rica homecoming

Last week we returned to the wonderful land of Costa Rica for a 10-day visit. David was asked to teach within the QERC semester program, and naturally, the kids and I just had to accompany him.

For a quick recap (I could write pages on our visit), here are some of the things we did and some thoughts on our return.

The red-eye flight turned out to be a bad experiment. We had 2 things going against us - we were in the very back row, so we couldn't recline and were very uncomfortable; and we were next to a family who had 3 kids under 10 years old who let those kids stay up super late playing games on their iPads without headphones and eating all sorts of snacks loudly. SO, although Henry was asleep an hour before the flight even took off, he woke up an hour into it and was so stimulated by people talking and playing that he didn't go back to sleep. When we arrived to San Jose, David and I had pulled all-nighters, Henry was going off of 2 hours of sleep, and Adele was the winner who slept the entire flight - with a whopping 5 hours of sleep.

Most was forgotten when we were picked up by Esteban, our favorite taxi driver and friend. It was a nice welcome "home."

After sleeping a while in the morning, we had a busy day of traversing San Jose. We went to the market and let the kids pick out a souvenir, then to our friend Larue's bookstore, then over to the Clínica Bíblica where Adele was born, then through the plaza where the kids chased the pigeons, long naps in the afternoon, late afternoon coffee with Larue and his wife Liesse, then dinner with our friend Brendan, a stop for ice cream and finally back to the hotel to crash.

Henry is a hoot. He not only loved chasing birds, but he yelled very excitedly "BUS!" every time one passed, and "WHOA!: very excitedly every time a motorcycle zoomed by. Needless to say he LOVED San Jose.

Friday morning was a similar pace. After a good buffet breakfast from our hotel, we went to the former 7th Street Bookstore which has now turned into Jungle Bean, a smoothie/coffee place - still owned by our friend John. After a brief chat, we headed out to see if we could visit our friends from LASP. Unfortunately, after a decent wait at the bus stop, we were informed that the bus stop had moved and we found ourselves without enough time to get to LASP and back to San Jose in time. So we ran with the pigeons yet again, randomly ran into Laure on the streets, and met up with David's host sister Sophia for lunch. Adele loved Sophia and called Princess Sophia from Disney Junior's Sofia the First.

The kids did awesome, and it was really nice to have a day and a half in San Jose. For David and me, that's where our story began. We walked through parks where we sat as students 12 years ago and had nice long talks, and we reminisced lots of old stories, and talked about people, and places we had been to.

Finally we headed back to the hotel to collect our belongings and Esteban picked us up and drove us out to the valley.

Driving into the valley is unexplainable. There is nothing like it in the world for us. Esteban stopped a few times for us to admire the view and to listen to the river flowing. Henry yelled "tree!" every time we saw a tree (we heard that a hundred times all the way down the valley) and Adele compared it to Oklahoma ("well it's sort of like Oklahoma...we have trees there too. And birds. And flowers.") I myself got a bit emotional, that's for sure. Even with a little more development, it was still the same. It's still home.

Being at QERC was incredible. We spent quite a bit of time walking around and visiting people, and it was so great that we truly felt welcomed home. And the kids did awesome. Henry often overshadows Adele a bit in normal situations with his huge outgoing personality, but in Costa Rica, she was a star. Since everyone knew her as a baby, they all wanted to hug her and kiss her and oooh and ahhh over her. And she loved it. She practiced her Spanish and became super bold about saying "hola" to people and going in for hugs. And Henry followed suit, and naturally drew his own attention with how he wouldn't sit still for 3 seconds. They loved the outdoors, loved the hummingbirds, loved the flowers, loved playing in the dirt on the soccer field, loved climbing rocks, loved visiting the animals in the neighboring farm, and loved the people.

A typical day for us consisted of mostly being outdoors. The kids loved playing at the soccer field, so we spent lots of time there - Adele getting her princesses all dirty and Henry burying his cars in the sand. They were usually so dirty by the time lunchtime rolled around - and I couldn't be happier. :)

Naturally, I had many emotional thoughts from being at QERC. It's hard to describe them, and they often changed. I would question why we left in the first place, and then remember how we felt it was our time to leave; and I would dream about how great it would be to raise our kids at QERC, and then I would remember other reasons why we appreciate being in the U.S. There are positives and negatives to everything - I wish we could have the best of both worlds and live in two places at once, because I definitely feel like my heart is split in two.

It will be interesting to see how QERC fits into our future. Maybe just going to visit, maybe David teaching in the semester program, maybe him developing summer research down there eventually...who knows. What I DO know is that I'm thrilled with the way our kids responded to being there, and I truly love that place.

It will ALWAYS be home to us.