Moving Along

For future notice, I have already lost track of what I shared and what I have not so apologies for any repeating! Hopefully I don´t leave much out either. Dinner last night was a very late but yummy squash curry made by Isaac (Seattle.) As it was his first time cooking with squash it took longer than he expected so he was quite frustrated by the time we ate, but we all ate with relish! After dinner Claire and Roman and I cleaned up the entire kitchen. I cleaned off and organized the shelves while roman did dishes and Claire removed everything from the counters and wiped everything down. We threw away old things, found new things, organized things that we use daily. The kitchen is 100% better now! It had become quite a mess through the last transition of people so i was very relieved to have some help getting it to a better starting point. As I said to Isaac today, now the dirt and grime will be our own instead of from strangers! Today I got up and started my day by walking our resident pitbull Sam. He is quite intimidating and has a scary bark but is very much a sweetheart. He lives locked in his own little yard separate from the other 3 dogs. I assume bc of his size and bc he is not fixed :( He is very happy to be out on a chain smelling the property however so I may start most days like this now. The only downfall is he smells rather like a dog...so when you pet him that is transferred. Breakfast was an independent deal this morning so I fried myself and egg and some toast and had some of the smoothie overflow from Romans creation. I went out to the garden to start weeding and edging a row of squash and not long after Robert (owner) came out and reminded us that it was market day if we wanted to go to town. Of course I did and so we got our things together and piled into the car and drove up to the main part of town. there is a big open market under a central roof with lots of stands selling everything from fruits and veggies to cheese, baked goods to pet fish (i thought that one was a bit weird myself.) We picked up some things that we dont grow for ourselves and then walked to the supermarket for the few things that were not available locally. We then met up with the rest of the group at a smoothie place called Organica that is run by a local woman who is a friend of the farm. We occasionally give her fruit that she needs, and I guess WWOOFers frequent her little shop whenever they feel that they have a little money to spend. She is rather young, and very friendly but all of the things she sells (other than the drinks) were too expensive. It is a really nice little shop though as you can see in the pictures. I am so disappointed that I have retained little to NO spanish from my studies over the years. I was basically no help at the market because the few numbers I know are no good when dealing with the colon (550 colones = $1) so I just helped pick out produce and let the 2 who had good spanish do the money handling. I am hoping to study a bit before the next outing but we will see... it is hard bc everyone on the farm speaks english (some french but that is even more hopeless for me.) So that is one bad part to this place, not the spanish exposure I was hoping for. But if I wish to go anywhere on weekend trips it will be an adventure! Post-market we had a delicious lunch that Clarie made while we were gone and then I helped Yung paint some more of his house frame. That project will be interesting to see pan out. Giant metal frame to house Charlie on the back of the property but not sure how we are going to move it or why the metal frame must be painted...Anyhow after that I went back out and finished working on the squash bed until dinnertime. Took a glorious shower before dinner and we ended up building a bonfire and eating out there so that was nice! Hung out chatting and making music until the fire died so all in all a pretty good day :)Also I spoke to my cousin Greg who lives near San Jose and he has weekends off so we will hopefully be meeting somewhere to hike, or drink, or sunbathe or something soon!