Pura Vida

Pura Vida... a very common phrase you would hear, so integrated in the lives of Costa Ricans, it has become a flexible way to say a greeting, farewell, or even thank you... but basically, since it's a country based around tourism, you'll see the phrase on all kinds of shirts and countless types of souvenirs, etc...

The day of leaving the missionary home in Managua, Phil and I embarked on a 10 hour-long bus ride from the capital of Nicaragua, to the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose, which is basically smack in the middle of the country... We took a nice coach bus called Trans-Nica, and crossed over the border... Immediately after leaving Nicaragua, you can see a difference in how the country looks and is presented... Just from looking out of the window on the bus, there was next to no garbage on the side of the road and everything was greener. Unfortunately, even though it's the same land, it's taken care of so much better in Costa Rica.  Our goal was to meet up with a certain crew of wintery people, from the land of Long Island, who could not wait to soak in some Central American sun, at the airport there in San Jose.

I took one pic in San Jose... here it is...

This was a monumental moment for me... I always imagined getting Wendy's only when I got back to Long Island... I never thought they would have one here... so, when I saw that on the bus... I told Phil, "Yea, we're going there." To eat a JBC in Central America was an epic experience... In the words of Dan Huber, "I owned." (I wish I knew how to say that in Spanish)

Why did I take one picture of a fast food restaurant for all of San Jose?  Because San Jose is a grimy, hole of a city, inland of Costa Rica, and there was no reason to hang around there... that may sound harsh, but we were just there to get to the airport... our destination involved the Pacific Ocean...

So, who came to visit us?

The Taboadas and Chattertons.  Here we are enjoying one of many delicious meals.  We got to enjoy a week with them at Tamarindo, a very nice beach and vacation spot, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica...

We took a nice, healthy, 4 1/2 hour ride from San Jose, to Tamarindo, which was just what everyone needed after a long day of traveling, via bus or plane... to arrive at Tamarindo Beach, which looks like this:

A huge, wide open beach with pretty consistent off-shore wind.  Most of the time, the waves were nice and small, great for long boarding and paddle-boarding...

Another pic of the beach at Tamarindo... the tide would go out really far, making the beach over double the size...

The view outside the balcony of the hotel room... very nice

 The view of the hotel from the other side... You can see it way in the back there, nice and close to the beach

The town basically consisted of just restaurants, hotels, souvenir and surf shops like these... very touristy, but it was nice to be in such an accommodating place for a change...

Found this giant, over-sized bugster dead on the ground and decided to keep him

Just to give you an idea of the town... it's not really a good example... but it consists of all those shops I mentioned earlier... it's a really cool place to just walk around...in Tamarindo, you will find lots of tourists, surf bums that decided never to leave, and local Costa Ricans, profiting from all the foreigners

Finally got to surf!... after about 4 months of living in the mountains... seeing the ocean and then surfing for the two days we rented the board was such an amazing feeling...

Austin having a blast on the boogie-board

Emily enjoying her mariachi band experience, when they start playing a song for you at the dinner table

A nice group-photo of the kids at one of the many restaurants in Tamarindo...

Pic in Tamarindo... Phil, LJC, and JMD

 Chatts in Costa Rica!

Henry and Rachel and the sunset at Tamarindo

This pic was requested to be put on the blog... Here I am with Corinne... the Chatts call me their long-lost brother or twin... maybe my awesome mustache brings out the strong Chatterton qualities my face seems to portray...

We did some exploring... we went to a couple other beaches... this one was called Playa Conchal... here, there were no waves... more like a calm, bay type beach...

The Three Siblings...

Phil and Corinne

Big bro and Lil bro

Hanging from a tree at Playa Conchal... and I took the worst fall...I'll pretty much say it was an epic fall...

yes... we went on an ATV tour at Playa Conchal... that was a blast...

Here's an adorable pic... Phil and Corinne with faces covered in all the dust and dirt from the ATV rides... it could be like one of those orbit gum commercials... *ching* look at my white teeth shining through this grimy face... yea, anyway...

Playa Conchal at the end of the day... it was a nice getaway from busy Tamarindo for a couple days

The canopy tour zip-lining was fun and exciting... here's a bunch of pics from that...

Yea, zip-lining through the trees was great, especially if you've never done it before... we even got to go upside down.... Here's Henry holding his head, flying through the trees haha..."Holy craaap!" ... that was great

One of our last days at the beach... here we were at Playa Avellana... Phil set up his Nicaraguan made hammock, and if you look closely you might see someone in the tree

Lunch at Playa Avellana

A nice pic of the Taboada Family together on the last day of the vaykaysh

Here's our crew, sunset on the last day...

Costa Rica was a blast... This blog's supposed to be about Nicaragua-related things... but taking time to see some friends and family, and a week to relax, was very important and definitely a huge part of this whole Central-American experience... After 3 1/2 months in Esteli, it was refreshing to finally see the beach, and meeting friends from New York made it even better....

Ok, that's about it... thanks for tuning in...

O and by the way...

They're Offish

Managua Missionary Home

Hey,
It's been a while... we have done quite a bit in the past couple weeks... so now it's time for the breakdown...

The day right after we painted the home of Lagos, we packed up a bag and headed straight down to Managua, the capital.  Earlier in the week, Dennis Hallahan gave Jordan a call, asking us to help out with the painting of the Managua missionary home where they live.  This was gonna be our third or fourth painting job during our three and a half months time here in Nica... who would have thought we would become such a beastly paint crew...

Dennis and Michelle were assigned to Nicaragua I think 5, or 6, years ago, after being in our previous congregation of Eastport.  After that, many people came to visit them and see the country, including the Gomez family... and eventually Jordan decided to come here after some visits, to stay for nine months last year... and now, here we are, need-greating all together.  So... it was really nice spending some time with them... but during those 5 days we were there, we had a lot of work to do... so here are some pics...

Here was the core paint crew... Phil, Jordan, and I came, and these two cool guys you see here.  Andy Jordan (on the left), is an awesome brother from Sacramento, California, who is long-time friends with Dennis, and led the crew... He was visiting Nica with his wife and daughter, and was previously involved with international construction... he's basically the man... he kept the operation organized, well-thought out, and fun also.  Michelle's parents were visiting as well, and Poppy (on the right), Michelle's dad, was an integral part of the operation.  You can say he was like a silent force, that helped Andy make sure everything got done haha.  I don't even know his real name, but everyone just calls him Poppy, so that's cool... 

The whole first day was just for prep... which was probably the most work... the project consisted of painted  the entire outside areas of the missionary home, including the outside wall barrier, and the kitchen and living area.  I didn't take many pics... but here's one of Mista G blasting the wall with a power-washer, which was a huge help for the prep work...

At the missionary home, when we weren't working, we were enjoying the company of the missionaries and the visiting friends, tons of great food that was prepared each day, and morning worship.  Here is a pic after a day of work to compare mustaches... Apparently, I had the weakest stache, so I was the lowest on the progression you see here.  That's Tim, one of the missionaries living there, his stache has no comparison, so we all looked like juveniles compared to him... but lining up to take the stache pic was good stuff...

This was the last day... the dining area after the fresh coat of paint...

I didn't really take too many pics, so I just took a couple of the finished product.  Here was the dormitorio side of the missionary home after being freshly painted.

Poppy led the kitchen/living room painting crew, which we were a part of.  The kitchen looked so much brighter after we were done.  I always like people in my photos, so here's Dennis.

Group photo time: All the missionaries, except Michelle who was taking the photo, some visiting sisters who helped, Michelle's parents, and us three...after lunch on the last day of work.

Here's the crew and Dennis and Michelle, right before we left the missionary home.

So, after four full days of work, we gave the entire outside walls and kitchen/living area two coats of paint and it turned out great.  It was a great, fulfilling experience to be a part of and it was a blast to work along-side Andy and Poppy.

So, continuing on with the story... Phil and I parted ways with Jordan, who was heading back to Esteli to meet up with some family... and the two of us were headed to Costa Rica...


... to be continued...

Esteli Balcony Covers Series - Part 9: Middleman

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?zo3zpwnnx6122a5

To download the mp3... if you would like...

Well... its been a month since I've really recorded anything... finally managed to do a quick song though.  This is a first for me actually... I usually reject the idea of doing any songs from Jack Johnson, not because he's super popular or anything... but because it's kind of difficult to throw in some originality in a cover of it... So, in the end, you just end up trying to copy the man himself and his style and whatever... but... for the ninth part of the balcony covers series I decided to ditch all those ideas and just do a song that I usually would never do... I chose this one because I remember being a little dude, playing my Nintendo Gamecube, a game called Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, and this song was on the sound track... I think it's from his first album or something, and it's one of my favorites... just recorded a guitar and a voice, very simple... O and being that I finally got to go surfing last week in Costa Rica, I guess this song just seems to fit...

Enjoy...

Vigilancia

Hey again,

This isn't as exciting compared to the home transformation we did yesterday... but I haven't really talked about Vigilancia yet, and being as I  just got back from my shift, I figured I would talk about it.

There I am... don't make fun of me 'cuz I look like a waste.  Yea, I'm in my pajamas at the hall.  Our regular shift for vigilancia are Saturday nights, like overnight.  So we sleep over at the hall.  Vigilancia is a hall responsibility where you stay at the hall and make sure it is being watched over and taken care of.  If left unattended, the hall may have unwanted visitors or whatever.  So to keep the hall clean and watched over, we have this vigilancia responsibility.  Last night was just me, so I took this picture of myself at six in the morning... yea... but pretty much before I leave the hall, I set up all the chairs for the next meeting that will take place.  The overnight shift isn't the worst.

That's about it for Vigilancia... O and you didn't see my grimy mustache...

Extreme Home Makeover - Nicaragua Edition

Here in Nicaragua, we stay busy.  And yesterday was an amazing day.  It was the result of a project weeks in the making.  A poor brother in the hall, Reinaldo Lagos, desperately needed some help with his house situation.  People vandalized, graffiti-ed, and trashed his yard, and over the years hes lived there, his home looked like a disaster.  After some planning, lead by Mr. P. Taboada and Arturo Manzenares, this project came out successful.  We bought 10 gallons of terracotta red paint to do the outside of his house, to cover the graffiti and also paint the majority of the inside of his house, which was also graffiti-ed.  After help from many of the friends from the hall, it was a mission success.... anyway, have a look at the pictures and see for yourself.

Before:

Phil, Jordan, and I got to his house really early and brought over the paint and tools.  You can see the front part of Lagos' house, who's standing right there, and some of his living conditions.  His windows, well, they're covered by various scraps of cardboard.

This is the side of the house where the graffiti was the worst.

During:

We got to work right away and started preparing

This was later in the day, and a bunch more friends from the hall showed up.  Things started moving along nicely.

Jehovah's people are hard workers, so we didn't stop just with the painting.  So many people showed up, so another crew was formed for a complete clean-up of his yard, which was strewn about with trash

We had more than enough paint to do the outside walls and some of the inside as well.  Here's our Nicaraguan paint crew

Arturo and Os'mar

After:

Here's a pic of the lively home make-over crew at the end of the day, many of the other brothers and sisters left at that point

Lagos and his new clean, freshly painted wall

After painting the window bars and replacing the cardboard with painted plywood to match the outside, it gave the house a finishing touch that came out great

Such a difference, like night and day.  You could tell Lagos truly appreciated all the help from the brothers and sisters.  It was a great day to help a brother in need and reflect Jehovah's loving-kindness

Enjoy!