Costa Rica 23

I am beginning my fourth, and final, week in Monteverde.  I am already feeling the call of home, and am making plans for my exit as well as thinking of ideas of how I am going to live once I am back.  I expect things are going to be much the same as always back in Vancouver, but there are going to be changes as well.  I am not sure what kind of changes, but these times away on extended vacation every year, for me, always presage some kinds of changes that end up manifesting as the months roll on.  I like to think of these times away s a kind of preparation time for the coming changes.  I am hoping to avert disaster this time.  Last year, when I returned from vacation I came home to an infestation of bedbugs, as well as coping with additional and unexpected job stress and the ending of a couple of friendships.  The year before, I was in hospital a month later.  This year?  Who only knows, but you can bet that I´m going to be very careful for the first couple of months I´m back.

It surprises me how much I love my city, Vancouver.  This has been dawning on me as I tell different people where I am from and I really say it with pride, that I am from Vancouver.  This might seem kind of odd to some of you who have often heard me refer to my city as a dumb blonde, or as a gigantic laundromat for the dirt money of foreign investors.  But this is why I badmouth my city.  Because I love it.  And really, who among us doesn´t sometimes complain the most bitterly about the ones we love the most?  It´s like my own mother when she used to tell me that I´m so smart that I´m stupid.  She wouldn´t have told me that if she didn´t care enough.

It´s been so far an enjoyable day.  This morning during breakfast, as I was working on a drawing, one of the other guests became interested in what I was doing and an enjoyable conversation in Spanglish followed.  She is American and speaks Spanish at intermediate level.  She is a social worker in Oregon and works especially with clients with mental health challenges who are on low incomes, so we had quite an interesting conversation about our professional lives.  Even though my Spanish is usually fluent and advanced, this afternoon, since returning, I seem to be tripping over my tongue a bit, but this sometimes happens.  Here´s an image of the hummingbird I just finished today.  It´s called a Velvet Purple Coronet and they live in Colombia and Ecuador



Isn´t he pretty?

I walked over to Cafe Cabure and blew a small wad on overpriced coffee and brownie with ice cream where I pleasantly wasted another couple of hours with my art.  This is the place with the balcony with the view of the forest.  After scrimping and saving the past three weeks, I´m loosening the purse strings to enjoy myself a little more.  Then I walked around a couple of miles on some sidestreets...

THIS JUST IN:

One of the owners of the bed and breakfast just brought over to me her granddaughter, whom I think is four or five years old, to show me her latest drawing.  The kid is incredibly talented and her concept of colour and composition are very advanced for her age, so I was encouraging her to keep doing art and she was just beaming.  And suddenly, my Spanish has improved again!

While I was wandering the sidestreets I encountered a friendly looking potbellied pig that was wandering around like a stray dog.  She had quite an amusing grunt.  I almost petted her, but didn´t know if she would welcome being touched, besides which, how would any of you like it if a complete stranger walked over and started patting you on the head and maybe elsewhere?  That´s right, you´d probably call the cops.

I found another cafe to sit in with my current drawing and a fabulous view of the distant Nicoya Peninsula.  One of the owners (I think) came over to look at my art.  Then I walked over to a fairly pricy Italian restaurant for salad and pasta with pesto.  There goes another fifteen bucks, but totally worth it, and really not expensive at all by Vancouver, or Monteverde, standards.  I sat by a huge lookout window with my pasta, enjoying the forest and the dazzling splendour of the sunlight filtering through the leaves.  It was as though there was a conversation occurring between the trees, the sun and the wind and I was privileged to eavesdrop.