time marches on

A glitch in the matrix has our blog stuck in July, midway through our Colombia trip. This tends to happen when we have a lot of travel tales and wildlife photos to share and not nearly enough time to process, organize, and publish it all. The Colombia travelogue is likely to unspool for quite some time yet, but in the meantime life also continues apace. The kids returned to Costa Rica after spending five glorious weeks in the States with their grandparents and cousins, a new school year kicked off, and we’ve eased back into our San Jose routines after a fun but all-too-short summer break.

slice of freedom

American holidays are a weird experience when one is living overseas. Especially if the holiday in question is a big deal back home, like the Fourth of July. Especially, when it falls on a random Tuesday and flies completely under the radar in one’s host country. No fireworks, flags, or other Americana festooning the streets. No family cookouts or parades. Just a day off in the middle of a busy stretch of work.

filling in the blanks

After spending 18 months exploring off-grid and visiting many off-the-beaten-path gems, we still get excited for every opportunity to revisit some of Costa Rica’s more well-known and popular destinations, such as Monteverde, Arenal, and Tortuguero. We first visited these places nearly two decades ago, and they played a key role in helping us fall in love with this beautiful country. It’s gratifying to see that despite the tourism explosion in the intervening years, they — unlike some other well-traveled destinations — have lost none of their charm.

the company of old friends

Last year, when D played in his first Volcanic Tournament, we did not have time to prepare properly. With games starting late Friday afternoon, both of us worked a half-day before embarking on the three-hour drive to Arenal. D arrived at the tournament site half-an-hour before games began. In retrospect, he was lucky to lock down a spot at all, the pandemic depressing participation in what is normally one of the most anticipated Ultimate frisbee competitions in the region. Registration typically fills up within days; in fact, next summer’s tournament is already full.

Volcanic Tournament 2.0

The end of May heralds many things: the last days of the school year; the end of the spring migration and start of the rainy season in Costa Rica; an important American holiday; our wedding anniversary. The end of May is also when Costa Rica hosts its annual Volcanic Ultimate Frisbee tournament. There was just a fledgling Ultimate scene when D first lived in San Jose some twenty years ago. There were no Volcanic tournaments then; in the intervening years, the event has blossomed into one of the region’s most important — and most fun — sporting events, with players from multiple countries joining the locals for several days of spirited competition.

bicentennial beats

This year marks a bicentennial of sorts for San Jose, though one could be forgiven for sleeping through the occasion considering the city also celebrated a bicentennial ten years ago. Established in the early 18th century, San Jose was not founded by formal degree and lacked a city government for the better part of its first century of existence. In 1813, San Jose was formally established as a city, but the momentous occasion was short-lived. Upon learning of this development, the Spanish monarch annulled the proceedings the very next year, and it took another six years for the city title to be restored. Three years later — and this is the occasion celebrated during the 2023 bicentennial — San Jose became Costa Rica’s capital, one of the youngest capital cities in Latin America by year of conception.

November notes

After Costa Rica barely edged New Zealand in a June play-in game, a low-grade World Cup fever set in as our tiny, wonderful host country counted down to November. Days before the tournament kicked off, the presidency released an executive order allowing public sector workers to take off two hours to watch each of the team’s first two games. Our kids similarly received authorization to wear the national team’s colors instead of their school uniforms, and both kids watched Costa Rica’s first match in school in lieu of having classes. Of course, Costa Rica faced long odds even before it was seeded in a group with soccer powerhouses Germany and Spain. After ending the day on the wrong side of a 7-0 drubbing in its opening match against Spain today, Costa Rica will need to do a heck of a lot better in its next game to stand a chance of playing meaningful soccer in the final group game (smart move from the presidency to only authorize time off for the first two matches).

storming the castle

“Keep straight at the Fet Lovers Sex Shop,” GoogleMaps advised unnecessarily, drawing attention to a non-landmark that has become etched in D’s mind thanks to his repeated trips to the Castillo Country Club in Heredia for last week’s invitational hockey tournament.

flurry of activity

A flurry of Halloween activity marked the end of an eventful week and a half following D’s return from South Asia. There was Embassy-organized trunk-or-treating on Saturday, trick-or-treating in our neighborhood on Sunday, and another round of candy gathering with friends in their neighborhood on Halloween proper. S made it out to a Halloween party with friends and coworkers while D watched the kids, and even D, who is not the biggest fan of this holiday, didn’t make it through the weekend without dressing up, which was a must for the costumed frisbee game his Ultimate community organized Halloween night. We also snuck in a birding trip without the kids the previous weekend to mark D’s fortieth and celebrated the milestone birthday with a proper party at our house before the Halloween madness set in.

rollercoaster of love

Parenthood is a rollercoaster of emotional contradictions….or, perhaps, contradictory emotions. The same minor developments can bring simultaneous joy, pride, sadness, and heartache. You watch your kids grow and master life in front of your very eyes and your heart swells with happiness, but at the same time you can’t help missing their sweet, awkward baby moments, whose loss feels profound and irrevocable once they are gone. You commit every precious moment to memory, convinced that they will be etched in indelible ink in your mind, and then realize a few years down the road that you were operating in a sleep-deprived fog and hardly remember a single thing. And, in fact, those sweet baby moments came amid the chaos of stress, worry, and frustration that are part and parcel of parenting young children even for the most well-adjusted among us.