33 posts tagged “san jose”

We've been driving around a bit at night since we moved to Carla's house.  Petra has found it difficult to settle into a sleep routine in yet another new place so we've needed to drive her to sleep.  Before we packed up in Costa Rica, she went to bed between 8 and 9 most nights and got up around 8.  After the movers took away our stuff, the routine went all to buggery (as they(we?) say here in NZ).  Petra's a mellow, placid, amenable baby, who never seems to get really cranky no matter how tired she might be, but she's an accomplished resister of sleep.  She stays up and up until I feel about ready to fall over without ever showing much in the way of ill-effects.  It's impressive and rather daunting. 

We had periods in San Jose when we needed to drive Petra around as well.  We developed a regular route - along the old main road to Multiplaza and back home via the pista.  However, being on the road there late at night is not entirely safe.  We kept our doors locked and when we had to stop at red lights we watched for people behaving suspiciously because carjacking is a definite possibility.  In fact, after 10 at night, you can drive through red lights if there's no oncoming traffic so that you're not a target for thieves.  And Costa Rican driving is hazardous to your health at any time of the day, but especially on Friday and Saturday nights when everyone's been out drinking.  People drive drunk without compunction.

We haven't devised a route here yet, I've just been pootling around aimlessly showing Travis new areas of town.  We drove along the main street the other night, past bars and restaurants full of festive end-of-year students, and past groups of meandering pedestrians.  I noticed myself looking for the central locking in our rental car and being disconcerted when I didn't find it and had to leave the doors unlocked.  I've also noticed that I avoid the darker streets in our travels.  I didn't even realise that I was on heightened alert in Costa Rica, but I must have been, and I've brought that extra alertness with me.  

Something was said about safety in Costa Rica at our little party yesterday and Travis said that he feels a bit vulnerable being out at night in an unlocked car.  So it's not just me.  We're both still jumpy after our time in San Jose.  The Dunedinites were all very surprised.  Carjacking's just not a consideration here and it would never occur to anyone to feel unsafe.  I didn't think it would ever occur to me either, but it seems that I've got some newly-acquired wariness to shake off.

We've driven down Avenida 10 to the hospital and back home along Avenida 8 so many times that we've worn a groove.  I took a couple of pictures of the buildings, people, and streets on our way home yesterday.

Travis's suggested caption for this one - "Want a screw?"  You can get any kind of screw you can think of and probably a few you can't from this hardware store (ferreteria).

This is a hole in the wall takeaway place which sells ice cream and cigarettes and tipico food (rice and beans, and pastries). These two are typical San Jose streetscapes. San Jose's not a pretty city.  It's a low-slung, dilapidated, concrete and corrugated iron kind of place with only occasional spots of glamour and whimsy.  But it has its own idiosyncratic appeal - it's lively, teeming with people, and full of fascinating quirks.

Costa Rica gained independence from Spain in 15 September 1821.  The holiday's on Monday.  Petra will be ten months old on the same day. 

Independence Day is a big deal here.  Shops and buildings have been decorated for weeks with flags and red, white, and blue streamers and decorations.  Vendors are selling flags and crepe paper bird cages on the side of the pista.  And people have flags waving from their cars and houses.  Travis risked life and limb this afternoon to rush across the road to buy a small cloth flag for Petra.  I want some reminders of Costa Rica for her.  She's a Tica and will remain so, even when we're away from here.  Any time someone asks for her place of birth she'll get to say San Jose, Costa Rica.

We went to the pediatrician yesterday for Petra's ten-month check up.  I took the chance to take some photos of the hospital and surrounds to add to our collection.

I would have taken the pediatrician's photo as well, but Petra decided that she was totally opposed to having him anywhere near her and screamed for the whole visit.  Not an auspicious time for photos.  Although I did take one of her outside the hospital and still showing her displeasure.

The movers came in today to pack our stuff and put it in a container for shipping to New Zealand.

We began at the crack of dawn, or 7:30ish anyway, and were done by late morning.  Costa Ricans are systematically, chronically late for everything, all of them, it's a national characteristic.  Except when they tell you they'll be round early in the morning.  If they say 9am, they'll arrive at 8, if they arrange to meet you at 8, they'll appear just after 7.  And so it was this morning.  "We'll be there at 8," the agent told me and four men in a truck arrived at 7:20am and began dismantling our house with startling speed and efficiency.  We had to move quickly to keep up with them.  I nearly lost my favourite carry-on bag to a box and I did lose the books I planned to take for the travel day.  They were whisked off the shelf and into a box before I remembered that I hadn't put them aside.  Oh well, Atonement will have to wait for another day. 

The movers were so efficient that by just after 9 everything was boxed, labelled and piled downstairs by the door.  They even dismantled the dining room table and wrapped each piece individually.  Unpacking will be like a giant game of pass the parcel.

The truck carrying the container was late because its arrival time was outside the magic early hour.  It was supposed to arrive at 11 but rolled in around 11:30.  Our cul de sac was too small for the truck to turn and back into our driveway, so it had to stay on the street.  The poor moving men had to carry everything out to the truck.  Just as well that we aren't shipping anything particularly heavy.

And, as well as being too big for the street, the truck was too tall for the power lines festooning our street.  It dragged one loose as it drove by.  Oops.  If the people across the street lost power, they won't be loving T A Mudanza right about now.  The power supply is chancy enough here without trucks knocking down the lines.

We have a whole container to ourselves because there aren't exactly queues of people moving stuff from Costa Rica to Dunedin, New Zealand.  Our stuff barely took up a third of the container - it looked a little pathetic in all the space.  The movers packed it all in and fixed it in place by building a brace using a huge sheet of cardboard and some lengths of wood.

Once they had the container loaded we had to go outside to sign papers and watch them lock the doors and attach an orange seal.  If all goes well, we'll break that seal in Dunedin in about 6 weeks time.

It was all most impressive.  I've never given my possessions to movers before - I carry them myself or leave them in storage - and when it came to it this morning, I wasn't happy about sending everything off into the wilds without me.  I fear that I'll never see Petra's baby clothes and my books again.  But the movers' professionalism and efficiency went some way to easing my worries.

And I'm hiding in the office, away from the huge old roach that crawled off into a corner of the lounge.  Travis tried to catch it, but it's fast as well as huge.  It shot off under the tv stand before he even got close.  Now it's who knows where out there.

Ah, the joys of the tropics.  It's raining hard at the moment and the bugs swarm in through the cracks and gaps in our decidedly non-airtight walls looking for shelter. 

I'm going to pretend I never saw it and slink back out to my chair....

Life has been a tad harried at my place this week.  Travis is in South Africa (his company has taken an unaccountable dislike to our wedding anniversary - Travis has travelled for work twice since we got married, both times he's been away for our anniversary.  We haven't spent one together yet).  I'm still feeling crappy because of the mastitis.  Poor Petra's teething, so she's miserable and wants to be held a lot.  She's also decided that naps are for wusses and only babies go to bed before 10pm.  I'm having trouble finding the time to eat, drink, or sit down alone for a moment.  Anyone who has to be a single mum all the time has my sincere admiration - three days of it and I'm knackered. 

And on top of all that, we've had all kinds of people coming and going. 

Karla's mechanic came for our car on Tuesday night and gave it back last night, so I was carless yesterday.  He was supposed to pick it up on Tuesday morning but I didn't hear him knock or ring so I missed him.  I gave the keys and the parts the mechanic needed to the guard so that he and the mechanic could arrange things without me needing to answer the door.  It worked; the car vanished on Tuesday evening.  It reappeared last night - I only found it when I opened the door to the garage "just in case".  The mechanic came and went three times, twice with the car, and I didn't hear him at all.  I'm obviously not the most observant person in the world. 

Petra and I went driving this morning to test the repairs.  So far at least the car seems healthier - it's changing gear smoothly and not sticking in first gear the way it was.

Karla herself came by on Tuesday to play with Petra.  Petra had a fine old time clapping hands with Karla and riding on her shoulders.  I snuck off for a shower while they played - and it was about the best shower ever!

Our friend Diana, Spanish teacher and Real Estate Agent extraordinaire, has been by twice to show people our furniture and give me the first actual money we've received for any of our stuff, which was very exciting.  We have lots of verbal sale agreements, but no money or possessions had changed hands until yesterday.  Nothing seems quite real, therefore, and we worry about being left with stuff we don't want and can't ship.

And this morning the maid is here, testing the limits of my Spanish by offering to take off my hands anything I might care to give her.  As far as I could tell, she wasn't offering to buy, just to take away (llevar kept cropping up in the conversation).  Costa Ricans seem to have a keen eye for a bargain.  And of course we look rich enough in local terms (even though we're just ordinary old middle-class types in Canada or New Zealand) that they think we've probably got stuff and to spare.

Sitting in my armchair feeding Petra with a warm, tropical, tree-scented breeze blowing across me.  It was a beautiful day today - hot, not too humid, and even a little sunny - the kind of day you hope for in Dunedin and very rarely get.

I never wear a long-sleeved top here.  It's shorts and t-shirt weather every day.  Anywhere else will seem chilly and unpredictable in comparison.

It's pouring hard at the tennis club across the street.  On my side of the road, it's not raining at all.  Very weird!

We had such a wonderful time in Canada that it has really thrown into relief the difficulties of living here in San Jose. 
I've enjoyed my time here, but it's time to go.  Things that didn't bother me before, like the damp, the omnipresent bugs, and the language barrier are now annoying me.  And few weeks spent with friends and family makes our current isolation here and the fact that San Jose is not conducive to our lifestyle (no outdoor activities for Travis, no bookshops and libraries for me, no nice walkable neighbourhoods for either of us) much more apparent.

Until now I haven't minded this year's lack of company because Travis and I have been very busy getting to know Petra and getting to know ourselves as parents.  But Petra's bigger now and we're all ready to go back out into the world, or in Petra's case go into the world for the first time.  I want Petra to have lots of new experiences and know lots of people.  So we need to be where our people are. 

I'm also keen to have a real settled home base and to stop living like a student with temporary belongings in temporary homes.

We've decided to move to New Zealand, to Dunedin where most of my family are.  I'm a bit trepidatious about it because I've been away for nearly ten years and a whole lot will have changed in that time.  And of course some things, some of the reasons why I left in the first place, won't have changed.  But mostly I'm excited.  I imagine houses, gardens, cats, small children running around - a whole domestic idyll - and New Zealand's a great place for that.

Now that we've committed to leaving, I want to go right now, but Travis wants to leave his job in good order and we have to get rid of our car and furniture and work out how to ship what we want to keep.  We also have to go back to Vancouver to deal with the storage locker full of stuff we have there.  We left a lot behind when we moved because we weren't sure how long our stay here would last.  At the moment, therefore, we're planning to leave here mid September, spend some time in Vancouver and maybe Saskatoon, and be in Dunedin by mid October.

Travis will be able to continue working at his current job remotely from Dunedin.  He'll just have to be up at odd hours skyping his colleagues in South Africa and Costa Rica.  That's a relief because Dunedin, with its population of 120,000ish, is not a hotbed of high-tech jobs.  It's a university town, not a corporate centre.

After yesterday's paean to the quiet life, things got a bit noisier here this morning.  Someone started hammering on the steel of the tennis club fence at around 8 (mercifully late by Costa Rican standards), making a variety of hollow booms and boings as he worked.  And someone else got his or her weed whacker out to beat a nearby garden into submission.

The weed whacker woke me from a nap I didn't intend to take.  I'm not sleeping quite as well at night now, but if I lean back and put my feet up during the day, I slip seamlessly into sleep and wake up an hour later wondering what happened.  Since I need to put my feet up regularly to keep the edema at bay, these unexpected naps are getting more frequent.  I slept a lot during the day in the first trimester - it seemed the only way to deal with the nausea - but not much in the second trimester.  Now that I'm in the last stretch I'm sleepy again.

Thankfully, my brain works better now despite my sleepiness.  It was just off for the first few months of the pregnancy, taking a vacation somewhere warm and soporific.  I could barely remember my own name, much less things like birthdays or phone numbers.  I couldn't even talk or write fluently because I'd discover, half-way through a sentence, that the word I wanted had drifted away.  Most disconcerting.  But my brain moved back in a few weeks ago and I was very glad to get reacquainted with it.  I'm still not exactly brilliant, but at least I know what my name is and can write a semi-coherent sentence again.