musical education, pt. 2

Munchkin entered first grade at the height of the pandemic. Facing school closures and restrictive social bubbles, we homeschooled him for part of the year. Being the one to teach our little man to read and make sense of arithmetic remains one of D’s most rewarding parental memories. We never formally “game-schooled” — there is a movement that incorporates strategy games into homespun learning curricula — but we did (and still do) play a ton of board games with Munchkin, helping him develop logic and strategic thinking skills through gameplay. Had he been a little older, we may well have incorporated a song-based module into his curriculum as well. The little man is now approaching the end of fourth grade, and D’s music class is very much in session.

too soon!

Our Costa Rica countdown clock is ticking down rapidly — we’re down to just under two months. Naturally, we’re trying to pack in as much as we can even as we focus on packing up and preparing for our next transition. This means there is frequently entirely too much going on and no time at all to process any of it, much less write about it.

mega Tuesday

Much like Walter Sobchak, for whom a bowling alley offered refuge in times of stress, D has found a similar escape in Costa Rica’s abundant natural hotspots. Work getting you down? Adulting responsibilities are piling up? Life feeling too complicated? F#%! it, dude, let’s go birding! Nothing like some quality green therapy to help bring down one’s stress level. D had planned to take advantage of a local holiday this week to check out a couple of new-to-him hotspots with his regular birding buddy. When his friend bailed due to a last-minute work conflict, D headed out on a solo outing instead.

final chapters

If our Semana Santa trip represented the opening lines of the closing chapter to our San Jose assignment, D penned a couple more paragraphs last weekend at the Finca Fest — Costa Rica’s annual celebration of local ska, punk, and reggae talent.

child’s play

Our Semana Santa trip to Monteverde with visiting friends marks the last time for the foreseeable future we’ll set foot in what is undeniably one of Costa Rica’s most magical places. As Monteverde is also among the country’s top birding hotspots, D felt tempted to spend our entire three-day stay deep in the woods. Had this trip taken place earlier in our Costa Rica assignment, he might well have done just that, visitors be damned. After more than two years of dedicated birding all over the country, however, the potential returns did not justify such an extreme approach.

Costa Rican sunset

Semana Santa fell early this year, and while it did not coincide with spring break for DC schools, the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia opted for vacation schedules that overlapped with the Easter holidays. This enabled friends from our Kigali days to come travel with us for a week — a trip that definitively marks the beginning of the end of our Costa Rica tour.

the tapestry of our lives

Whenever yet another international move approaches, an urge to wax nostalgic takes over. Every get-together and outing, every beer shared with local friends serves as a poignant reminder that these simple joys will soon be in our rearview, even as new adventures and friendships in the next country we’ll call home await around the corner. We are now well inside our 100-day countdown to departure from Costa Rica — less than three months until we set foot on U.S. soil ever so briefly before packing our bags again for our onward assignment. The advance nostalgia is coming on strong and fast.

a deeper look

Over the years, D’s ongoing search for new birds has provided numerous other benefits, some expected and others much less so. Birding has been a means to practice wildlife photography and an escape from pandemic-era lockdowns; an excuse to travel extensively around our host countries and a way to meet people and cement friendships; a reason to spend more time in nature and improve our health, as well as a therapeutic break from our hectic work and lifestyle. Every once in a while, it also provides a window into local culture and serves as a bridge to greater understanding.

double digits

Munchkin considered a couple of options to mark his double digits, including a VR experience with his closest friends, before opting to reprise last year’s festivities with another pool party in our condominium. The gifts he received reflected well his current interests — both new ones and those acquired long ago: anime and manga, sports and board games, and plenty of books. Observing the utter chaos in the pool felt like watching a rerun. Looking at our growing son, now a year older and wiser, we see many of the same tendencies and characteristics that defined him as a nine-year-old. We see important changes too as he continues to approach what he already told us will be his “sassy teenage years.”

tanager top ten

We were roadtripping through California, on home leave after our first overseas posting to Nairobi, when we caught sight of our very first tanager. A splash of bright color, a flutter of wings, and the bird settled high in a pine tree. Our assignment to Kenya had sparked D’s interest in birding, but we were still complete neophytes back then. There are no tanagers in Africa. That splash of color proved a preview to the joys that awaited us when set out to bird the American tropics.