Feliz Día
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Dear Raphel ,
Happy 26th birthday!
I hope you had a feliz día , even though I made you get out of the water for your “surprise cake party.” I hope you forgive me.
Sincerely, and with LOTS of love,
Haley
Posts Tagged ‘lifestyle’
Fútbol
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Go, Raphel, Go!
It’s almost 10 pm on a Monday night. Eyelids are getting too heavy to look at the fluorescent computer screen much longer. Way past my bedtime, especially on a school night (notice fragmented sentences). Nevertheless, my lemongrass ginger tea and I are still perched on the living room couch finding humor in close-up pictures of Raphel playing soccer from last weekend. At the moment she is walking around the house in a tired haze too. Our conversation just went something like this:
Haley: Raphel, I’m putting a picture of you in the blog
Raphel: Blog? Oh, yeah, okay
Haley: Do you have any insightful quotes to include about your game?
Raphel: uuuhmm, “ECC teachers’ community involvement transcends the classroom.” (Then walks off to her room)
Haley: Wow, eloquent, well said. I think I should not be trying to do something requiring brain cells at this time of night. I’m losing it.
Run like the wind Raphel! Transcend the classroom! I am your biggest fan.
Anyway, too bad they lost… and good thing the waves were breaking on the other side of the soccer field (they only THOUGHT we were diligently watching the game!).
Baby shower in Costa Rica
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Top 5 reasons why teachers shouldn’t throw baby showers in Costa Rica:
1) Not our area of expertise: we are teachers for a reason, right? This career path doesn’t cover party planning and baby shower throwing. Thank God for Google.
2) We live in Pavones, an isolated beach town with one and a half super markets (those who have been here know what that means), no shopping whatsoever, and a rickety old school bus that provides precarious transportation to the nearest town, the border of Panama. Ah yes, Beautiful Paso Canoas, how I love thee. The foul, cesspool of a border crossing where one can buy virtually any Chinese-imported piece of junk for a low, “duty-free” price (I don’t even know what that means). Now we know not to shop for baby showers on a Wednesday, though, because out of all days, that is the day the one party store is closed. Bummer.
3) Considering the amount of investigation we conducted, it seems that the Costa Rican culture doesn’t have any baby shower traditions. The only thing we could find is that it’s called a “Té,” which means “Tea” in English. So what, are we supposed to have a tea party at one of these? How about sangria instead?
4) Let’s just say our salaries don’t cover a whole lot after rent, the phone bill, and our monthly ration of rice and beans… okay, I admit that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But seriously, Mom, Dad- you’re teachers, you know what I mean!
5) One should not turn a nice party for a pregnant friend into a chance to recruit new students from out of town. Oops.
All jokes aside, it was a good party with lots of laughs and great food. Killer pink cupcakes, might I add, in honor of our dear friends Katie and Daniel who are going to have a girl names Pheonix in a few months. Congratulations, we love you guys!
Now we can say we’ve successfully pulled of a bilingual and multicultural baby shower. Add that to ECC’s resume!
Figuring out how to explain the next baby shower game in two languages
Mama- to- be, Katie, shoveling cotton balls into a bowl with a blindfold on. Apparently this type of humor is cross-cultural.