Life on the Farm!

We have had a good two weeks on the farm. Coffee season is coming to an end as we enter the dry season, which has shifted our roles on the farm a bit. We spent this past week building a stone/cement wheelchair ramp and patio at Sue's house, pulling more weeds than you can imagine, and planting new crops in Farmer Frank's garden.

Stone/cement project: Paul and I are not exactly what you would call "handy", but we are learning fast. We were put to work with their local garden guy, Christian. We thought we were lucky to be able to practice our Spanish since opportunities are limited on the farm. Well, we ended up not doing much talking and instead following Christian's lead and trying to look like we knew what we were doing. It was similar to a team-building experience, completing a task with no language whatsoever. We collected stones and sand from the river, mixed cement, and quickly set it while I tried to give it finishing touches with pretty stones on the surface, which the boys cared less about.

Pulling weeds: Neither of us get too excited when this is the activity of the day. Farmer Frank isn't the most organized man and you can hardly tell what is a garden vs. overgrown land. Since the farm is organic, herbicides are not allowed, which apparently makes weed control difficult. We helped Frank make his natural herbicide, which he admitted he drank (although it isn't recommended for humans) and it remarkably helped his memory but had the opposite effect on his bowels. Needless to say, we didn't drink any.

Planting crops: We had finished preparing a bed by turning and adding nutrients to the soil when Farmer Frank asked us to plant garlic, onion, and tomato plants. He taught us the handy phrase "what cooks well together - grows well together." Anyway, prior to handing us our first crop, he asked us if we had ever heard the theory that plants are concious beings. He told us about studies where the plants reacted to people's thoughts. He was telling us this theory because he wanted us to have "happy thoughts" while planting, so his crops grew well. I couldn't look at Paul because I knew I would crack up and I didn't want to hurt Farmer Frank's feelings. We eventually told him we didn't quite believe that theory (he claims he doesn't either completely) but that yes, we had positive thoughts about the crops as we planted. I hope mine grow as well as Paul's, because I honestly was thinking how ridiculous the theory was while I was planting! I hope I'm not caught when the garlic dies and onion grows wild!

Our life at the farm has been very simple and peaceful. We nap almost everyday and are asleep by 8:30 most nights. Paul reminds me of my nephews (they have an excuse because they're children) daily as he pees freely from the cabin porch instead of using our private bathroom around the corner. He says he's a man and wants to urinate outside as much as possible. I don't exactly get it, but whatever!

We have two more weeks of farm life before heading to Granada, Nicaragua on Dec. 13th. We will be volunteering for La Esperanza, which will give us the opportunity to work with children and improve our Spanish! We'll be living with other volunteers in a house. We can't wait!

Enjoy our pictures:

Nina with "Vita" who keeps reminding us of Paul's dog, "Sister." I think we call her "Sister" more than "Vita."
Paul making fresh squeezed orange juice with oranges right off the tree!:
Nina boiled a pot of hot water in order to shave and just to remember what hot water felt like:Nina writing never-ending wedding thank-you notes:
Paul enjoying a cheeseburger on Thanksgiving day:Nina enjoying a chocolate milk shake on Thanksgiving day. We were surprised to see how much Nina resembled the framed photo of her Uncle David, which is in Nina's parents' basement:
We have to cross this stream to and from our walk to the nearest town. The difficulty in the dark combined with Nina's clumsiness is always a disaster waiting to happen:A huge, stupid bug (you can't see its wingspan) who landed and was stuck on its back:
Paul sneaking the trash from our cabin to town. We were lectured at the beginning of our stay on the farm to limit the amount of trash we make. We truly are trying, but occasionally sneak a bag of trash out before we're caught:
Paul and Nina drinking a cup of coffee before beginning a hard day's work. If you can't tell, we wear the same work clothes almost daily:Thanks again for following our blog. We'll be in touch.

Love,
Nina and Paul

The Java Jive!

Hola Familia y Amigos!

It's been a very eventful week! We have been away from internet for most of it, so we're excited to finally have a chance to share stories and pictures!

Last week we finished up our Spanish classes and said goodbye to our wonderful host family. We cooked Elaine Klein's famous chili, which most of them had never heard of, but they all really enjoyed. It was a nice way to end our stay with them, gorging ourselves on delicious food and exchanging pleasantries that we only half understood.

On Sunday at about 5:00 AM we left Tamarindo and the pacific coast and headed for San Isidro del General. The route by bus is rather tricky, which, combined with the fact that we are traveling with nearly everything we own, meant that renting a car made the most sense. Of course, it also meant that we had to brave insane Costa Rican drivers as well as an entire country devoid of road signs. Fortunately, most of the drive went pretty well, with the exception of a particularly stressful two hours when we were lost in San Jose. Between our sub par Budget Rental Car map and the fact that not a single road in the city is marked, it's a wonder we ever found our way out. However, we made it to San Isidro before dark, where we met up with Frank in a small bar and began the next chapter of our adventure.

For those of you that may not know, we decided to head to San Isidro to work on an organic coffee farm. We found the opportunity through an organization called WWOOF (shout out to Peter Richards for putting us onto it!), which I think stands for World Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming. The organization matches local farmers with people looking for free (or cheap) places to stay and work. Frank and Sue are from Canada, but have been here in Costa Rica for the past 14 years living a very simply, off-the-grid life. They were looking for a couple willing to work by day and live for free on their property. We were a good fit.

When we got to the farm Sunday night, Frank showed us around the place and introduced us to our home for the next while. Our cabin was the first structure they built after purchasing the property. It's one large room with a separate small structure for a bathroom outside. However, it does have electricity, running water, and a fulling functional kitchen, so I suppose we're not entirely roughing it. Still, we do have a fair number of bugs, as well as nightly visitors in the form of rodents, lizards, and large cane toads.

We work in the morning from 6:45 to about 12:00, although most days it's been a bit later than that. We've had various jobs, but the main one has been processing coffee. We did a little bit of picking the first day, but we're not nearly as fast as the two local guys who Frank hires for 10 bucks a day, so our main job has been to do everything that comes after the picking. The coffee goes through multiple steps that are way too boring to relate here, but it mainly has to do with extracting the beans from their shells, washing off sugars, and picking out beans that are not ready or have been infested by bugs. It's tedious work, but we have both found it strangely satisfying. Four days ago we didn't have the slightest idea about what goes into a cup of coffee, and we will certainly never look at one the same way again. Appreciate every sip you take and think of us!

Our afternoons are pretty laid back. After work we fix lunch, read, nap, and try to figure out how to get a hot shower. Frank has a coiled hose system on the roof which uses the sun to heat water. However, between a lack of sun and our general ineptitude, we can't get it to work right. There was no hot water in Tamarindo either, so it's been about a month since our last hot shower. In the evenings we cook dinner, read, and occasionally watch DVDs (borrowed from Frank) on our laptop . Because the sun goes down at 5:00, we're asleep nice and early, ready for the next day of coffee processing.

We're planning to stay here for the next few months to help Frank and Sue through the holidays. Upon our arrival, we were very sad to learn that Sue is terminally ill with breast cancer that has since spread to her ribs and brain. They don't know how much longer she has to live, and her kids and grandkids are all coming down from Canada in December. We will look after the farm while they all travel, assuming she is feeling up to it at that point.

Other than that, not a whole lot to report! The pace of our life has shifted dramatically from what we were up to back in surf city, but we are enjoying it a lot. The only thing we don't like so much is how out of touch we are with everyone, so thanks again to you all for taking the time to read! We promise that we'll make our way into town every now and then to get some internet and stay in touch!

Ok, without further ado, some pictures of the last week:

Scarfing chili with our host family:

Playa Conchal, near Tamarindo:
In a cloud going over Cerro De Muerte, or the hill of death (0ver 10,000 ft!) on our drive south:

Nina fixing a plumbing problem in our bathroom on our first day of work at the farm:
Our cabin:
Our kitchen:

Washer for our clothes:

Nina sorting recently picked coffee:
Frank in the drying room, looking at some coffee:
Paul in the drying room, examining a coffee grain:
Nina with a basket full of recently processed coffee grains:

Paul working the machine that separates the coffee beans from the shell:
We love you and miss you! Thanks for checking the blog!

Nina and Paul

No pipa para nosotros

We have had a great two weeks of classes and look forward to our last week ahead. We both have learned an incredible amount of spanish which makes me think I probably could have learned a lot more in high school language classes if I had only payed attention. Oh well, that was French and wouldn't have helped me now anyway.

Over these two weeks, we have had fun hanging out with the other students and enjoying Tamarindo. It is a very small surf town, so we pretty much saw it all in the first two days. We haven't surfed much this past week because we had our classes from 1-5 in the afternoon, which cramped our lounging on the beach lifestyle. We hope to return to the surfboards this week since our classes will return to the 8-12 hours.

The biggest events during the last two weeks have been Halloween and the election, as you all know. Nobody celebrates Halloween in Costa Rica, and the teachers and other students find it very amusing that we have children dress up in costumes and knock on strangers' doors for candy. Since we are in a touristy town, the local bars tried to celebrate Halloween but it appears they didn't quite understand the holiday and instead got it confused with Mardi Gras. We walked into the first bar and were handed Mardi Gras masks and beads. Oh well, I guess the effort was there!

Here we are on Halloween night:


Later in the week, we had the wonderful election. I know there is a mixed crowd following this blog, so we won't gloat but we had a good night. We went to the only bar in town that had American channels and watched the results with one other American student and several Europeans, who were just as interested. We sat down at a table and the TV was on mute, but was at least showing the results. We asked the waiter if he could turn up the TV, but he said no because the band needed to play. We were a little nervous we were going to miss the whole thing but as soon as the band began to play, I think they realized everybody's backs were to them and focused on the TV behind the bar. Needless to say, the band quit early and the volume on the TV was turned up. Anyway, here are some pictures from election night:

Jamey (an American) and two Europeans watching the results:Our english tv:
Nina and Jamey watching the election:
Our host family continues to be interesting. Luckily we can now speak a little bit better with them but some things continue to be lost in translation. One morning, Roni (the shirtless father who struts around in "tighty-whities") asked us if we would like "agua de pipa". We explained we didn't know what that was but we were up for the experience. Roni seemed excited and walked on back behind the house, grabbed a large green fruit from a tree, and chopped it right in half. He held two large glasses underneath and they quickly filled with what looked like water. Our house mom, Lucia, is very used to hosting foreign students and always reassures us we don't need to eat or drink anything we don't like. We took our first sips of the "agua de pipa" as they stared at us. Paul enjoyed it but I found it disgusting so I told Paul he could drink mine, too. Next, they let us eat some of the insides of the fruit which looked very similar to coconut . Again, Paul enjoyed it while I tried to disguise my grossed out facial expression. Afterwards while we were still at the table enjoying our breakfast, Lucia told us in Spanish that when people eat or drink too much pipa, they get ______. We understood everything but that last word. We looked at each other and repeated it and realized we both didn't understand that word. We told Lucia we didn't understand and she and Roni were shocked we didn't know that word. So, Lucia begins to act it out. She was telling us as she began to squat, "you know in the bathroom" and she began to make unpleasant sounds from her mouth and motioned stuff coming from her rear. We both immediately laughed and said "diarrhea!" which we felt stupid for not understanding the exact same word, just pronounced differently in Spanish. We were quite disgusted with the charades episode while we were sipping our coffee and finishing our breakfast. Needless to say, Paul was worried the rest of the day since he ate and drank two servings!

Roni serving us Pipa:
Paul after trying the Pipa...he looks like he could already be feeling it:

Here are some shots of our house. I feel like I am roughing it with cold showers and ants all over our bed, but Paul's idea of roughing it has greatly changed since hiking the trail. I'm apparently just high maintenance. It really isn't bad and we are enjoying our time there greatly.

From the front door to the back door (These doors are always open to help circulate the air):

The living room:
Our bedroom:

Cooking soup over an open fire:Paul in our bedroom:


Nina playing with the dog, Toti:
This last shot of the dog reminds me of last night. Paul and I were walking in town after dinner with leftover pizza in our hands. Out of nowhere, two large dogs came charging at us growling and barking. Paul just started taking off running and dropped the pizza. I immediately had a flash back to being in the travel clinic getting necessary shots for when we thought we were going to Bolivia and kindly turning down the rabies shot, saying we wouldn't be around any dogs. Anyway, after growing up with big dogs who love chasing a running object, I yelled to Paul to stop running and sure enough, the dogs left us alone. Paul said running is the logical, instinctive thing to do in that situation, so I think we'll continue to be chased. There seems to be lots of wandering dogs around here.

Anyway, that is a long enough post. Thanks again for following our adventures. We plan on cooking my mom's famous chili for the family this week, so we'll let you know how that and the rest of our last week here goes.

Adios,
Nina and Paul