The eve of our next adventure...
Here we sit, in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, on the eve of our next adventure. If you have followed my blog, you will recall that we faced a challenging decision last fall between staying in Busan or moving on. We examined the love that we had for Korea and our previous school and the relationships that we cultivated with colleagues, students, and parents. We calculated the phenomenal healthcare and benefits compared to the impact of our being distanced so greatly from our loved ones. Living internationally with a family is not easy because the experience can be so very different for each person involved. While one flourishes, another may falter. We found ourselves in our second year, knitted into an expat culture of international families, strong friendships, and a comfortable lifestyle. Yet, we realized too that Busan was only the beginning of our adventure and of our greater purpose: to explore the world (especially Latin America), to immerse Rosa in language (especially Spanish), and to find a place that we all feel to be "home," meaning that both Brian and I could both work and feel fulfilled mentally, socio-emotionally, and economically. Thus, despite all of the positive aspects, we chose to move on. So, here we sit, in Dallas, awaiting to board the plane which will take us to Costa Rica.
Contemplating Happiness…
Last night I was asked, if the meaning of life is the pursuit of happiness, what does happiness mean to me? To me happiness is that my husband is happy and content in his job, that my family is healthy, that my daughter is learning and growing in positive ways, that I am challenged both mentally and physically, that we are nourished by delicious food, and finally—realizing this just today—that I have the ability to clean myself before bed…be it in a bath, shower, river, or lake. When I posed the same question to my daughter, she replied that happiness is music, sweets, art, swimming, being around animals, reading, Christmas with family, and that she can be warmed up after a cold activity…dried by the sun after an ocean swim, drinking cocoa by a warm fire after playing in the snow, taking a hot shower after a dip in a cold pool. The question of happiness arose as a result of an ongoing strike that is currently consuming the entirety of Costa Rica. Schools have shut down, hospital cleaning crews are refusing to work, the transport of food and fuel has all but stopped, public transportation has been interrupted. While some view the strike as a hindrance and others see it as a necessity, people across the country are uniting in solidarity. They are standing up against the proposed fiscal plan that would create a single tax bracket for all, not taking into account the wealth of the tax payer. People are outraged by a small few who have accumulated the vast majority of the wealth. They are infuriated that through the proposed plan, even the poorest of the working class will pay to finance the luxurious retirement pensions of the rich. No matter how the strike is viewed, the pure truth is that it is powerful and the government has no other choice but to negotiate. Imagine what we could do in the United States if we all stopped bickering and instead united as an entire nation against the unjust and imbalanced distribution of wealth.
Next stop: Costa Rica…
Let’s turn the hands of time back slightly. For those of you who do not know, the route we have chosen has, for a time, veered us slightly off course of international teaching. After spending 6 wonderful weeks working at a friend’s summer camp in Minnesota and 6 more weeks in Colorado renovating an RV from the early 90s, visiting with family, and catching up with friends, we have embarked on a semester-long journey to come to know one single Latin American community. In order to give us the freedom we need to live and work in a remote location—La Finca Solantis in Santa María de Dota, Costa Rica—we are homeschooling Rosa during this first half of 3rd Grade. Thus, I have become a homeroom teacher with my child as my muse, which is a totally new way of life for all of us. In November we will travel to La Cuidad de Panamá, Panamá for my 36th birthday and to attend an international school job fair geared toward Latin America.
Yes...I realize these pix are sideways...I cannot seem to find one with the Tao of Tech in this place...Finding FLOW in a new community…
Although we have been in Costa Rica for only three weeks, I have had neither cell service nor internet until now. Last night we ceremoniously navigated the Kolbï website in order to purchase a cell service plan. Unfortunately, only Brian’s phone is presently connected; so, if you need to contact me, you can do so through him. To make it more complex, the farm, which is to be our home until the end of December, is situated atop the steepest mountain that you can imagine. We had to pay a 4x4 taxi $15 USD to bring us here with our luggage. The nature reserve where the farm is located boasts its own micro-climate (El Congo), is home to pumas, houses innumerable cafetales (coffee plantations) which form a cooperative providing award-winning Tarrazú coffee to the world, and rises high above the small town of Santa María de Dota. The location of the farm is so remote that going to town is something that we will do as little as possible (as it is a 10 mile round trip journey on foot).
What follows is my effort to paint you a picture of our daily life on the farm. There are two men that permanently live here: "Juven" Juventino and Marvin. Juven, which is a derivative of the Spanish word for youth, is a 78 year old campesino. He is both tough as nails and super mellow, and he absolutely loves Rosa. She follows him around and helps him to collect eggs, feed bunnies, or just sit and watch the fog roll in. He is a master of the cookstove—making rice and beans daily and occasionally meat or other dishes—and a seasoned gardener. Every morning he awakes at 4am to take the 5 sheep and 2 goats down to a pasture on this 30 hectare property. We get up around 6am to work in the main house while Juven is gone: cleaning, starting the fire on the cook stove, cooking breakfast (eggs, potatoes, or oatmeal with some fruit or root from the farm), chopping wood, and beginning our school day. We like to do this work while Juven is absent because, while we enjoy helping, we do not want to be too much of an intrusion. Rosa works on calligraphy, Spanish, or other activities during this time. When Juven returns around 9am, we leave so he can have his space and his kitchen. We are grateful that Costa Rican homes are far from airtight because, while cooking and tending the fire, he smokes cigarettes inside. Marvin is an extremely kind, hard-working, and generous man in his mid-fifties. His youngest daughter of four, Vanessa, found us lost and meandering the village on the day we arrived to help us arrange the taxi to the farm. We have since been to Marvin’s home and met his wife, another daughter, the boyfriends of both daughters, and the six-year-old daughter (Kristen) of Vanessa's boyfriend who has befriended Rosa. While Juven is the shepherd and gardener, Marvin is the main farmer and handyman. The cash crops of the farm are avocado and a fruit called granadilla. He spends most days with a weedwacker attached to his hip, walking up and down the immense steepness of the property, trying to keep the undergrowth in check. We have been grateful for Marvin's company and his way of speaking, of which I understand about 95+%. Juven, on the other hand, mumbles, has few teeth, and speaks an old country dialect that is much harder for me to decipher. However, even in a short few weeks, I am understanding so much more than when we first arrived. Where at first I was hesitant o ask questions because I did not understand the answers, I can now hold longer conversations with Juven while translating for Brian. I am learning to stand close, read his face, ask many questions, and repeat what he says to me to check for understanding. After we leave the house in the morning, we work for about 2-3 hours or so before lunch. I am helping Juven with the weeding, planting, and care of an enormous greenhouse which produces enough for the farm to be fairly self sufficient. Brian has begun fixing small engines, broken water heaters, cleaning stove pipes, repairing creaking doors, and is working to bring life back to an old motorcycle that the original farm owner used to drive. Rosa's main jobs are to collect the eggs, feed the bunnies, herd the cats, and she is also helping a bit in the garden. This past weekend, we also began to work in the small house in which we were supposed to live. However, it has been abandoned for some time and its location on the property means that it does not get much sun, providing the perfect breeding grounds for mildew, mold, and moss. Thus, we have decided that while we will work to clean la casita, we would prefer not live there. As of now, we are living in a handcrafted, artsy lodge which they call las cabinas and is situated just down from the main house. We have cleaned this entire building (and all rooms therein) plus the entire main house, minus the living quarters. We initially set-up a classroom in las cabinas, but we have now moved it to the main house to provide us with more space. We are finding our rhythm with working, school happening throughout the day, living off the land, and this slow-paced, rustic lifestyle: boiling water to do laundry, harvesting what we eat, cooking over a fire, taking time to visit neighbors, etc. One of the most beautiful and rewarding parts of being here has been the absolute disconnect from technology. We are talking so much, playing board games, working through our communication ruts, and enjoying one another in a way we never before have. To conclude this post, I would like to present you with Rosa’s first big project. Over the course of the past 3 weeks, we have been reading books, collecting facts, experiencing this new lifestyle, using our hands, forming opinions, and taking many photographs. Rosa then drafted her first 3-paged essay and worked very hard to create the following video. She greatly hopes that you will enjoy watching it as much as she enjoyed creating it. If you have the time, please leave her a reaction or comment below this blog post. (DUE to copyright laws on YouTube for songs that we used, the video has been banned. I will republish on Vimeo as soon as I am able...Thank you for your patience). We love and miss you all. Give hugs all around, share this post, and seriously consider coming to visit if you have the time. We would love to share this experience with you, and the farm can always use a few more hands. Pura Vida -Sarita |
AuthorHi, I'm Sarah, or Sarita as called by many. In an effort to cultivate multicultural empathy and deep respect in our daughter (Rosa), my husband (Brian) and I sold everything in order to embarked on a journey through life. Archives
November 2018
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