my first post--from Costa Rica

It's Saturday, I'm a bit bored because I've been fighting off a bug so I thought I would start a blog. Surely with so many blogs in the world, that's a common reason?

I don't feel so bad, I just don't feel so great. I've been amusing myself with low energy pursuits like knitting, emailing friends and baking bread. Background info--I'm in Costa Rica for the dry season (January to May).

Thankfully, our neighbor who often makes weekends miserable due to his car alarm that goes off very frequently has either turned it off or has gone somewhere. Isn't it odd that the car alarm never goes off at night? What possible theft deterrent is there to an alarm that goes off a couple of dozen times a day? Someday maybe we will have to track down the offending car and complain. Costa Ricans are incredibly tolerant, but could it be that someone else complained and the owner has decided to turn it off permanently? Unlikely.
It's a lovely sunny day and Russ is out on the balcony trying to take photos of the birds coming to the feeder or the trees. A white-eared ground sparrow was spotted for the first time for our house list. The motmot has been singing and came to our tree but didn't come in for any banana at the feeder. Clouds are rolling over the mountain. Somewhere up higher, the cloud forest is living up to its name.



It's Semana Santa and here's what I bought at the mini-super. It's a traditional food for Semana Santa called tamal mudo and is a roll of steamed massa harina around black bean paste and sliced hard boiled eggs. A neighbor made them for sale at the super. I have to admit I didn't find it all that exciting plain, but it was better with a tomato sauce and cheese on top. Mudos a la gringa.

Updates: I found out the alarm is at the nearby office of a very big company that has zip-lines. I went and talked to the head guy and he promised to have a technician come and try to correct the problem. I don't think having motion sensors in an area that is open to the outside is ever going to work well but I'll give them some time before I complain. It being the first visit, I tried to be extremely nice and friendly.

The woman who makes the tamales mudos turns out to be famous in the area for making these. Her husband told me that people place orders in advance and she made 40 of them! Yikes, that's a lot of massa harina; each one is big enough to serve a family of 6 or 8. Jorge said that he made a wood fire to steam them because it would take a lot of gas to steam all of those for 2 hours. The hardest part was to find banana leaves that were large enough. The banana leaves tend to rip in the the strong trade winds we often get here.