How It´s Gonna Be...

On the first full day in my home of the next two years, I believe I passed a majority of the time sitting. Now before you start thinking I was bored, let´s process a bit. Costa Rican culture calls for the following situation: a group of people sit around, whether inside at cafecito, outside in the most random grouping of chairs, on benches at the pulpería, or what have you. After all necessary salutations and inquiries about family, everyone simply sits for some indefinite length of time. Then someone makes a comment, "¡Qué calor!" (And he means, it´s HOT!) Another person responds, "Sí, ¿verdad?!" (Meaning, it´s SUPER HOT!) A long pause follows. Later, I discover that the heat was extreme enough that my soap melted!
So my town boasts a plaza (soccer field),

half a salón comunal (funds are slow to come and slower to produce anything),

a pulpería, a health center (which the doctor visits twice a month),

a school with 20 kids (there is also a kinder with 6 kids),

a church (of course, it would not be a true community without the Catholic church),

and the PanAmerican Wood Company (which exports teca, a type of wood). Everything but the factory lies not more than 100 meters apart, in what my family jokingly refers to as “Downtown Jabillo.”
Inhabitants of my new house include: the parents Don Luis and Doña Luz (Luz is really tall compared to most women down here and Luis is chiquitito – it’s funny to see them together because she towers over him!), Juan, who’s 20 and works at the factory, Cristina, 17, who just quit high school, and Kayna, 8, who is utterly adorable (she finds everything I do fascinating, it’s sort of like having a shadow). Other residents are the two parakeets and two parrots, two turtles, numerous chickens and roosters, and congos, or howler monkeys that hang out in the trees outside. Though none of these animals technically live IN the house, you would never know for all the sound they make! (A picture of the loud parrots is displayed for your viewing pleasure.)
Other observations on my trip:

• Ticos eat rice & beans. (It's the staple diet and you cannot claim to have eaten a meal unless it contained the comida típica.) So do dogs, cats, chickens, parrots, etc...
• Insects are only cause for alarm if they flap & flutter in your face - while you're trying to sleep. All other territory is considered neutral. Bugs are expected, but spiders are even welcome as they eat the bugs. These insects likely thrive on rice and beans as well... consider it a local evolutionary adaptation.
• If you don't say "¡Qué calor!" at least 10 times an hour, it can't possibly be hot outside.
• If you haven't 1) picked it off a tree, 2) smothered it with sugar, or 3) drowned it in manteca (like butter, but worse for you), then it's probably not edible.