Day three. Helped ourselves to a new beach outlet by the farmers market, I got lost and found on a long run and we are learning the get-around and short cuts of our neighborhood. Card games, books, bracelet weaving and whittling replace the discontent of adaptation. Less aching for video games, more sparks from the imagination. Homesickness coincides with this, but at least their brains are rebooting.
Small things like: Far Side jokes instead of movie quotes
Being able to open the screen door that was, three days ago, impossibly hard
Enduring cut feet, waves in the face, jumping from heights into a pool. Noticing bugs, birds, butterflies and animals, and really loving it.
Building nations in the sand instead of staring off into space, without a clue of what to do in the sand
These things matter even if they pass.
Day three we retire from our morning at the beach, to swim in the house pool. Today, the boys meet friends. Tenants from the rooms across the way, and our host's ten year old son joined in the pool. Blasts of cannonballs erupted with three languages spoken: Spanish, French and English. Key moment. Play is just so sweet, primal and good. The boybeasts played hard and learned fast; at least how to communicate in play (awesome, awesome name for a watermelon roll into the pool: salida bombe!). I met the French family staying in the other apartment, who were in the middle of traveling the entire country. 'Smart traveling,' they call it, which I love. Guillemette looks like Ingrid Bergman, spoke all of the languages and was immediately warm and friendly. Her husband Sylvain is an engineer at Proctor and Gamble, and they both care deeply about the world we are leaving to our children, physically as well as culturally, morally and socially. Hence the smart traveling. They have two gorgeous children (Elliot is six and Clementine is three? Or maybe a fearless four). Common ground in parenting philosophies, circled conversation to money and travel, but mostly we talked about how best to nurture and educate our kids. How real experience, throughout the beauties of our real world is the stuff of foundation; impressionable and mind growing. Guillemette contacted a family travel journal in France about their expedition to Costa Rica, and the magazine asked her to submit an article. Our host was excited for the potential international attention such an article might attract, to her organization (education and activism to fight the misuse of Costa Rica's natural resources). She invited Guillemette to join a daily sit-in, at an old farm. This farm and community have battled the government over drilling and transporting local water from their land to the resorts on the coast. After discussing the similarities and differences in the UK's approach to natural conservation, to that of the United States, and then against this story in Costa Rica, we thought we might be able to help each other learn a little, educate a little and keep the conversation going internationally- through the interwebs. She suggested the boys and I join Marie-Cecile at the farm tomorrow to photograph. Marie, as if clairvoyant, invited us to come along, and then to attend a festival in town after the farm ("real Costa Rica" she said). I liked this a lot. The boys loved playing with the kids, and I was starting to feel like I might make sense of all this senseless relaxation.
The beginning of the great poo nations
Reading the waves
Uno, Dos, Bombe!