Thursday, December 26, 2013

A Nosara Christmas

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have not goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal.
— Maxwell Maltz

I am back in Costa Rica, yet again.  I hope very much to stick it out this time.  We have plans and a purpose this time so I think I will be here awhile.

When I walked in the door on December 18, I saw a beautiful Christmas tree the boys had made of driftwood and it was covered in lights.  I also brought lights from the US to put up around our courtyard so your little place looks very festive.

We had the rental car for a few days so we went to Liberia looking for things.  Founds a few kitchen items we needed, some acrylic paint and a few other things including a little Elf on a Shelf.  We had fun over the last week or so posing Elfie for his Costa Rica Christmas pictures.  Here he is macking on a French chick who was here for a yoga retreat.   

 Jacob has been working on his masks and there was a little art show in Guiones.  I finally talked him into us going and setting up a little table.  He sold one of his masks.  Everyone LOVED his work.  He is so talented.  Remember, all of these are made with recycled materials.  The main material is recycled egg cartons, but he also has collected shoes at the mouth of the river (Boca Nosara) and used bits of pieces of shoes, hats, anything he finds at the boca. 

Here is the mask that he sold.








A couple night before Christmas, we decided to make some ornaments for the Christmas tree.  Here are a couple I made from shells. added a little glitter too.  We had a lot of fun coming up with our creative fun ornaments just using what we had available to us.

On Christmas eve we played Cards Against Humanity:  A card game for horrible people.  We didn't know how horrible we actually were until we started playing that game. It is similar to Apple to Oranges but very rude, sex ridden and downright mean at times.  However, we found it hilarious and I cannot wait to play it with some people that I know.  :)
 
A couple days before Christmas, we obviously had some kind of illusion that we were still in the US and decided to go to Super Nosara in search of a turkey for Christmas dinner..  Do you have any turkey?  Gobble, gobble  No, no turkey. Awww, darn it.  Ok, we will have chicken or something.  So Jacob and I are doing some more shopping and the woman who owns the super, came and found us and motioned us to come back to the meat area.  There was a woman from the US there.  She is married to the guy who runs a local surf shop.  They have lived here for several years, her kids were born here and she speaks really good Spanish.  The owners of the super bring out a huge frozen turkey.  The woman, Sarah, said she had a really small oven which wouldn't fit that big ole turkey and did we want to get half the turkey.  We said YES!!  We were soooo excited.  And even more so when I found out that half the turkey (approximately 12-14 pounds) was going to cost $40.00 US dollars.  Wow!  Pretty expensive turkey but it is Christmas, so yes, we want it.  Then the crazy tico owners asked us which way we wanted it cut in half.  All we US folks started laughing.  Well of course we wanted it cut the long way so we each got half a breast, a wing and a leg.   They take it into the back and wham, cut that big old frozen turkey in half with their meat cutter.  The universe, serendipity, whatever you want to call it, helped us out again. Then we find out the woman is in charge of the activity program for the children's Christmas break.  She had heard about Jacob and his art work and had wanted to talk to him about volunteering to teach some art in the program,  Jacob had already heard about them wanting him to teach but just had not connected with her yet.  So he and Sarah got to meet and talk about it. The craziness and magic of this place just does not stop happening. 
 
Finding everything for a traditional US Christmas dinner here was somewhat of a challenge but we managed to do it but I had to make my own corn syrup.  Then no pie pan so took the handle off of a fry pan and mad a pie in that.  The challenges never end here but it is also fun having your creativity and resourcefulness put to the test.  We had a woman, Maria, that is living here with her teenage daughter and no other family or close friends around.  She is from England but has Italian parents.  We had a good time hearing some about her life.  She was very talkative and interesting.  Her daughter however, did not seem real happy to be dragged out.  LOL  Maria is vegetarian.  Her daughter was VERY excited about the turkey and definitely enjoyed that.  I don't think she gets meat at home even though it is obvious, she likes it. 
 
All in all, it was a very fun Christmas here in Costa Rica this year.  Feliz Navidad.
 
 
 
 

 

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