Today, Saturday, January 24, was a good day. Awake at 5, up at 6:30 and over to the organic market by 7:30. there, I met a Tica/American. She'd gone to school in the States and has excellent English. The market was not yet set up so we chatted with the meat producers, a couple that sounded Italian, German and a little something else. Silvia (said "Silbvia") shared some good, Costa Rican recipes, and tips on cooking their rice, peppers and beans. I will be trying them out later this week.
After buying the vegetables from Albin, the organic vegetable farmer, I made my way over to the hand made crafts. there are only a few booths at this market, but every one of them has wonderful things. The shells, stones, silver work, beaded jewelry all is splendid. There are a couple of people who sounded interested when I talked about a fair trade portion of my web site. I collected one name and promised to meet the other gal at the grocery store on Monday before we go to La Escualita.
There was a wonderful surfer-dude singing and playing the harmonica. I stood at the booth beside his stump (really) and chatted with the fellow from the grocery store (this is a small town). He was a blast.
My appointment with Kim to do a soil test at the school was at 10 so I begrudgingly left the music and wonderful market to haul my very heavy load to the house. I bought 2 chickens, 2 packs of bacon ends for beans, beets, lettuce, oranges, onions, cilantro, and peppers. There wasn't enough room in my pack for the eggs so I had the open carton of 15 balanced on one hand and the other trying to reduce the weight of the pack on my shoulder and back. On impulse I took a page out of Uncle Bob's book and stuck my thumb out. Normally, I wouldn't do this, but a golf cart was putting by. I felt I could be pretty safe in a golf cart. The young Tico stopped and was kind enough to haul me and my groceries down the hill to within a few steps of the house. GRIN.
Tonight, we feast on fresh chicken, potatoes, beets, carrots and onion. The oven is slow, and we're all waiting patiently for the chicken to cook. It's 8 pm.
In the mean time, I want to tell a couple of stories. The first is what I taught myself to say to impress Javier, who teases me about not learning spanish fast enough, and Manuel, who patiently teaches me something every time I go to the office. Two days ago I learned how to say como si dice "how do you say...." . Yesterday it was yo intentar " I try" (I am most likely spelling everything wrong, but at least people understand me when I say these things). This evening, Manuel was getting into the golf cart, just outside our house so I stopped him to tell him "Manuel, si va a Canada, no comer nieve amarilla" It's choppy, and needed some correcting, but he understood the sentence. I had to tell him why not, tho. (If you want to figure it out, try googling the last 4 words).
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