Picking Up Our Car, Going to the Big City

Our Sixth Week

We will be driving to San Jose on Monday morning to pick up our car, the Honda CRV we shipped from Michigan. We will stay in the area so we can meet with our attorney on Tuesday and do some shopping for things we can't find here in the southern region. One of the funniest things John wants to find are wooden clothes pins. All we can find are little plastic ones, made here in Costa Rica. It is rather odd when you hear two men discussing the clothes pins on the line. One of our part-time neighbors had wooden clothes pins on his clothesline and when John spotted them, he immediately asked Shannon where he got them...Walgreens in Texas, his home state. There they sit so proudly on his clothesline and every time we drive by, I want to snatch them off the line!!

We feel at times we have gone back to living in the 60s. Here in the southern region towns and stores resemble the 60s. Public bathrooms remind me of traveling when I was a little girl. Gas stations pump your gas. Costa Ricans make do with much less, much like it was in the 60s. No Fast Food Chains in the southern area. (One McDonalds 1 hour away) And we don't mind a bit that things are less here; it fits us well.

Serenity is Growing

Currently there are three houses. We rent one, Aldemar lives in another and the Octagon house will soon be occupied. We have another woman coming this week!! Currently I am the only woman around here so I am anxious to have her here. With all the men that work here, employed by Serenity and also the construction sites, I am greatly out numbered. The new woman's name is Diane! Imagine the confusion that will arise with that! “Oh, you're Diane? I saw John with a different woman just yesterday!”

We have three more houses under construction and a fourth to start in the near future. It won't be long before we have a neighborhood!

Our Basement and Foundation

Old Farmer's Fence Post in our yard

Epiphytes grow in trees and posts every where

 

Blossoms from a Water Apple Tree in our Yard.

It is over 45 feet tall, a beautiful tree.

 

One of our construction site workers

rides his horse to work.

 

 

 

His horse at our job site

 

Aldemar picked these bananas this week. That’s a LOT of bananas!!

  Good thing John now likes bananas, never liked them in Michigan.

 

And finally (didn't want you think we live everyday in paradise)...this spider dropped on John's head when we came in the laundry room door one night!!  That is a piece of paper to get size reference.  Glad it was him and not me!! 

Notes from San Jose
Tonight we are in a hotel room, have to stay the night here to take care of business tomorrow.  Picked up our car today, it came in prefect condition.  John knows how to pack a container right!!!

San Jose has all the modern stores and conveniences.  Actually we are in a suburb, called Santa Anna.  Even though you can find most things you want and need here, we will give them up to have the beauty and peacefulness of the southern zone.  TOO MUCH TRAFFIC HERE!!!
We are not city people and it drives us nuts!  So we will go back to lots of jungle vegetation and 60s towns because that is what drew us here.  I love to sit at our property (on weekends when the workers aren't around) as the sun is going down and watch the mountains and scenery turn to dusk.  I listen to the birds, hear the cows mooing on the next mountain over and watch them head in for the night, we heard owls last night, sometimes a howler monkey will call out and just enjoy the serenity of our new home site.