My Mum, Lorraine, walks 5 kms every morning when she's back home. I've been joining her while she's been here and we've been walking about 3.5 kms, but up and down hills, on dirt roads, so I'm sure it must equal her 5 kms. And, she does stretching exercises, too! She's quite the example of healthy living. Here she is, resting after her session this morning. Looking good, Mum!
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We have several lemon and orange trees on our property. This one is near the guesthouse and it is producing many fruits. The tree is so colourful. I just love it. It's so easy and tempting to reach up and pick an orange and peel it right then and there and gobble it up. Some of our Costa Rican friends do, actually.. I tried a slice of orange and my mouth instantly puckered up with that involuntary head shake one experiences at the sourness. I might as well have bitten into a lemon! They sure are beautiful to look at, and they make a lovely drink (with enough honey or sugar), but you have to have a stronger constitution than me to swallow them whole. We've asked whether we can grow 'real' oranges this far up the mountain, but most people seem to think the sweet ones we're looking for only grow in lower elevation. Such a shame.... oh well, we'll just have to make delicious marmalade. Kevin is exceptional at finding me 4-leaf clovers. Kind of freakishly so. Well the other day, Kevin found a strange, but magical little patch of 4-leaf clovers... I'm talking like 100... okay, more like 6 or 7. Then this 5-leaf clover! And it was beside another 5-leaf clover! Next, he'll be finding unicorns and leprechauns. Okay, maybe it's not as awesome as the Guinness World's Record of 56 stems found by Shigeo Obara of Japan in 2009, but still awesome in our little world. I was pretty impressed. Well, the day has finally come. We've been in Costa Rica for four months and we've been working towards this day... the day we welcome our first guests to our B&B. It dawned on me that it was crazy for me to try to teach my English class tonight. I called Clara and asked her to please let Nacho and Paola know that the class would be cancelled and I emailed Seidy and asked her if she could let the rest of the students know. She said she would and wished us good luck today.
I got into a zone and mum was a huge help. We washed all the sheets and mum ironed them. She also cleaned the bathroom, shower and kitchen, dusted and vacuumed. We made the beds, prepared a fruit basket, cut some fresh flowers and placed them in a vase. All the while, I was baking fresh bread. I filled a container with tea bags, another container with fresh coffee, and one with sugar and placed them on the counter in the guesthouse kitchen. Then, I picked some fresh lemons from our tree, and cut some rosemary from the garden. While Kevin and mum were outside catching fish, I started to prep the vegetables for dinner. Our guests were running late and we had to make sure we caught the fish before the sun went down. Our guests had requested a Trout dinner and hamburgers for their two young sons. At about 4 o'clock, the phone rang. Our guests had driven down the right road, but turned back thinking they had gone too far. I told them to wait at La Trinidad junction and I would drive up and meet them there to guide them back. They are a lovely couple with two fun kids. We served them Rainbow Trout stuffed with lemons, rosemary, onions, olive oil, salt and pepper all wrapped in tin foil and cooked on the bbq. We served it with lettuce from the garden topped with tomatoes, green and red peppers and a homemade vinaigrette as well as potatoes and carrots with melted butter, salt and pepper. The kids had their burgers, as requested. I squeezed some fresh lemons and made lemonade. And for dessert, some banana bread. About an hour later, I went down to retrieve the tray of dirty dishes and replaced it with their morning tray, which consisted of fresh laid eggs, homemade bread and marmalade, blackberry jelly, freshly churned butter and delicious organic apple cider. They are very gracious people, and they seemed to have enjoyed their meal, which makes me very happy (and relieved). I brought down the animated movie 'Cars' for the kids to watch, so I know they're happy. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully they'll stay and relax for a little while. It was a good day for us. Although a little stressful, as we wanted everything to be as perfect as possible, we had lots of fun, too. Working for yourself really is a satisfying feeling. What a great experience! Now, here's hoping we get many more bookings! We have a couple with their two children arriving tomorrow, so we had a lot of things to do. But first, I found out that our second English teacher volunteer wrote back to tell us that she was unable to join our team afterall. So I spent most of the morning writing to more candidates, desperately trying to find a replacement on such short notice. Then, I took Mum on the ATV and went to let everyone know that I had to cancel the Kids English Summer Camp tomorrow. I teach the adults tomorrow as well, and with all the preparations needed, I just wouldn't have enough time. When we stopped at Cindy's, I introduced Mum and we had a nice chat. When I told Cindy about our guests coming, she mentioned that maybe they could provide a tour of their orchards. I love that idea! We decided that we should definitely talk about a partnership in business. We could help each other out.
After lunch, Mum and I drove to San Marcos to pick up some fruits and vegetables, and a few more odds and ends. Meanwhile, Kevin was busy building a fence near the guesthouse. Currently, there is a deck that wraps around the guest house, but it's not very safe, it doesn't have a railing and we don't want anyone walking on it. And since there will be young children staying here tomorrow, we really wanted to make sure there was a physical barrier to prevent people from wandering onto it. Kevin painted it the same green as the rest of the trim, which looks really good. Well, I think it does anyway. Everything is coming together. I'm a little nervous, but really excited, too. We now have 3 bookings for January and we're getting a lot of inquiries. This B&B business might work out afterall. Let's hope so! This morning, my mum and I went for a walk at 7:30 am. We walked about 2 kms on our dirt, rocky roads, up and down hills. Mum usually walks 5 kms every morning back home, but on very flat roads. Today was a different kind of workout though so we took it easy. Then we spent about an hour on the terrace, in the hot sun, doing breathing and stretching exercises. I love stretching, I always feel so good afterwards. I miss it, so maybe if I do it with my mum daily for a month, I'll develop the habit. It was a gorgeous day and the intense sun was hot. Yes, you guessed it... I really soaked up the rays and got burnt. Oh well, I could use a little colour. Then, later, we went to Martin's restaurant for lunch. Mum caught her first fish... ever! And she caught it in 3 minutes flat! Next time, I'll try to remember to bring my camera!
In Costa Rica, when men meet each other, whether they are good friends or strangers, whether in the bank, the supermarket, or on the street... whether they just saw each other an hour ago, to say hello and again to say goodbye, they always shake hands. This is the custom. Lots of hand-shaking. Men, certainly the older generation, generally don't shake women's hands. It's considered polite to shake another man's hand, but considered a sign of respect not to shake a woman's hand. I'm not sure I quite believe that theory, as those men don't even acknowledge the women (how can that be a sign of respect?) but that's what we've been told (I think we were told that so I wouldn't be insulted). The younger generation are more apt to shake both the men and the women's hands. And there's a lot of hugs and kissing (well, kind of a slight cheek to cheek motion). I see Clara almost every day, and sometimes I see her in the morning at our farm, and again at the school and again later on... and every time, we hug. I don't actually know her that well, but I don't dare not reciprocate. I'm quite a naturally affectionate person to begin with, so it's not a huge stretch for me, but for people who are not the touchy-feely type, it could be a little awkward. Of course, if you don't shake hands or hug, life goes on and there's no backlash... but you make friends more easily if you give in to the Tico way.
My mother, who is .... well, older than me by a few years, (I'm 48 and she's 26 years older than me... that's all I'm going to say)... flew on her own from McAllen, Texas to Houston, Texas to Managua, Nicaragua to San Jose, Costa Rica today. My parents have travelled (and continue to travel) a great deal. They are no strangers to flying and visiting interesting places, but they always travel together and my father would be considered the 'leader' when it comes to acquiring boarding passes, finding their way around, filling out custom forms, hailing taxis, etc. And my mother would be considered the 'follower'. Not that my mother is incapable of doing these things on her own, just that certain roles have naturally developed over their 54-year marriage, as they do. Today was the first time my mum flew on her own and although she's a gutsy woman with resolute determination, not shy to ask questions and optimistic in character (always believing things will work out in a positive manner), she was feeling a little apprehensive. Kevin and I were outside the airport (this is where we wait for passengers to come out with their luggage) and we waited. We watched all the people file out of the door; men, women, children, and eventually we saw my mum rolling her two pieces of luggage. I was so relieved to see her, safe and sound and with a big smile on her face. We promptly gave her a big hug and walked to the SUV, which was parked in the multi-storey garage. We drove through San Jose as the sun was setting. It got dark very quickly. It took us over an hour to cross the city and once we reached the road up the Pan American highway, it started to rain, and the fog was thick. We'd never seen it quite this thick before. We took our time until we approached the turn off to La Trinidad. The fog had lifted by then and within 15 minutes we arrived safely home. We gave her the 5-cent tour of the guest house and then the main house. We had a drink and relaxed a bit. By 10:30 pm she was exhausted and ready for bed. Not surprising since she had been up since the wee morning hours. Tomorrow, my mum will wake up and see our property in the daylight. There will be lots to show her... we may even assign her some chores... hey, we can use all the help we can get. First chore... hmmm, cleaning out the hen house :)
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