Last night we had our first get-together at the casita here on the finca. Tiny house, big fun! In Key West, we loved having friends to dinner. Just didn’t do it often enough. For the Costa Rica Inaugural Fiesta, we had two families: the Bortmans and the Sheridans.

Most_of_the_bortmans
Mark, Dara, Ari, 8, and Eli, 5, Bortman are here from PA for a year, going back to the states in December. Kinda like us but for different reasons (they weren’t running way), they just packed up, rented their house, decided at the last minute to bring along the kids, and came to Costa Rica for a year. Mark and Dara had lived in Belize for a year when they were young (because now they are so old: almost
40
just barely over 35), so this is old hat to them! We see them a LOT and will miss them when they go back in December. The plan is to neuralyze ourselves so we’ll forget them to lessen the pain…

Dara_entertains
Jen, Bill and Calista, 10, Sheridan moved to Costa Rica permanently, arriving right around the same time we did. Bill is retired, they had fallen in love with Costa Rica and bought a piece o’ paradise atop a mountain about an hour from San Jose.
They are just now starting to build their house. I’m sure there’s an adventure waiting to unfold!!!

De_kids
The blogosphere brought us together. Once you blog, you search for other blogs like yours, see who’s doing what where, how they liked it, what they recommend. You start to "get to know" your fellow bloggers from reading their web diaries. Then you realize they are pretty close geographically and, heck, why not make human contact? After a few months talking pretty much only to my males, I was desperate for a female to talk to in English. So we took the plunge and set up a rendevouz* with the Bortmans. Fortunately, we hit it right off. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop talking.

A truly odd coincidence with the Bortmans: during that first meeting, breaking bread at McDonalds, we were talking about plans for the upcoming weekend… turns out we both had reservations to spend the weekend in San Ramon AT THE SAME GUESTHOUSE in a nearby cloud forest. (Imagine, if you will, the "whoooo-eeee-oooo" sound from The Twilight Zone.) This guesthouse had only three rooms and, between the Bortmans and us, we’d rented them all. Fate.

The cloud forest was, um, wet. But, the kids had a blast and it was very relaxing to be just hangin’ out. ‘Cause, you know, my life is VERY stressful.

CalistaOn the way home from San Ramon that weekend, we stopped in to meet the Sheridans who live nearby and say hi. Jen is one of those people you just KNOW you want to know. We hung out with them at their rental house for a couple of hours, then headed home. Calista is a doll – so bright-eyed and thoughtful! She is drinking it ALL in, you can just tell. We don’t get to see them often, they live so far away. But they definitely got added to the buddy list. And last night’s dining with the bloggers!

Tomorrow early, we head off to Manuel Antonio with the Bortmans for a couple of days. We don’t have to forget them yet, so we are going to have as much fun with them as we can until they head back home! It’s a four hour drive to MA, two to Jaco (HA-ko), then two more to Quepos (KA-pohs). We’ll stop in Jaco to meet Tica Macha, ‘nother blogger friend who I need to lay eyes on. Then on to the Monkey Room at La Posada and Manuel Antonio to see the actual monkeys. Photos for shore! More soon, love, S.

*Note #3: "the process of bringing two spacecraft together." Feels like that at first…

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