see as i saw

"Cleaning" the beaters (as we've always dubbed it in my home) never gets old, no matter what age I am. You better believe that I not only licked these clean, but also scraped the bowl.  Today is my Grandma's 19th birthday, since she's a leap day baby, and my Mom was in charge of the cake.  She was going to do the standard boxed mix, but I decided that we should delve into the array for food recipe links I've been saving.  One, because they all sound delicious, and two, because I can taste the results without investing in the goods :)

I must say, I chose a winner.  Snickerdoodle cake with brown sugar buttercream frosting, both made from scratch.  Quite frankly, I feel confident that I could make this one on my own.  The only problem would be having enough self-control to not indulge myself in spoonfuls of cake batter and frosting straight out of the bowl.  I have to wait until that whole ritualistic singing of Happy Birthday before I'm allowed to taste the finished product, but I feel as though the raw goods already sold me on being a believer.

The pier at Grand Haven would likely qualify as an iconic image of my childhood.  I couldn't begin to count the number of summer hours spent on this shore, and a few winter hours for good measure.  It's one of the many facets of my home state that I haven't found a comparable match for in or near Chicago. I'm not sure if it's because they don't exist or I haven't searched hard enough (maybe far enough?).  All I know is that those Pure Michigan tourism commercials narrated by Tim Allen are capable of stopping me in my tracks, inciting a slight sense of melancholy and a strong urge to jump in my car.  As much as I love my international jaunts, my current state of unemployment has me thinking about spending a little quality time with my Michigan this summer.

This morning's meandering brought me down North Wells in search of a Fat Tuesday paczek (the proper singular form of packzi).  The authentic Polish variety are more difficult to find in Chicago than a native Michiganian is accustomed to, so I was forced into patronizing a "European" bakery.  Needless to say, the price was seriously inflated.  Oh well, at least I found myself a calorie bomb.  Many of my further flung friends and acquaintances are out of luck when it comes to this Polish tradition.

In taking, yet again, a route that I've been down many times before, I noticed something new.  It's difficult to believe that this bright red door never caught my eye before - not only for its color, but because it clearly doesn't blend in with the typical aesthetic of Old Town homes.

During the few days that I've been back in the Midwest, I've been struggling a little more for photographic inspiration.  The outdoors is a little drab in this snowless February state.  This punch of color did the trick for today though.

At least Chicago is still offering me a bit of sunshine and moderate temperatures.  That made today's midday stroll down Broadway St. possible.  Along the way, Monique and I ducked into the Coffee & Tea Exchange to check it out.  It's one of those neighborhood places that you've always walked by, but never taken two seconds to patronize.  It turned out to be quite an interesting gem.

They have these barrels of whole bean coffee from various international locales (Costa Rica!).  The whole vibe is very natural and artisanal.  Besides the barrels, the back of the store features floor to ceiling shelves lined with glass jars full of various spices, each one hand-labeled.

This is only one of many local businesses that I've never visited over the course of three years in the city.  Why not?  Routine keeps you from experiencing interesting new places where you could potentially meet new people and learn things.

As I reacquaint myself with life in the Windy City, and consider the fact that I'm roaming free and unemployed for the time being, I've been thinking about the fact that there's so many basic things in Chicago that I've never seen or done.  When I arrived here three years ago, I moved into my apartment only two short days before starting my job.  Over time, I settled into my own neighborhood and certain routines.

So, this photo signifies my declared attempt to travel outside of my bubble, as well as take in a few of those iconic Chicago sights frequently disdained by residents for their "touristy" appeal.  I saw there were some free days this week at Shedd Aquarium.  Perhaps you'll be graced with a photo of aquatic life in the days to come.

What a difference a day makes.  I went for a walk on the beach this morning, but it was an unequivocal leap from the standard to which I became accustomed.  I substituted my bathing suit for full winter attire.  The sound of ocean swells and reggae tunes was replaced by the traffic on Lake Shore Drive. I didn't venture to tread barefoot on the shoreline, because I wasn't up for frostbite on my first day home.

In the end, I still readily admit that my well of love for Lake Michigan runs deep.  It's probably just going to take a little while, and some warmer weather, to regain a bit of that luster in my eyes.  Even though winter weather can be a deterrent to exploration, I want to use some of this unfettered time in my life to venture outside of the bubble that has defined my years in Chicago.  There are assuredly areas of inspiration I've never tapped in this city.

Accepting that tomorrow is my last full day in Sámara is kind of rough.  If only there was a way to merge my two completely disparate worlds.  It did get me to thinking about some things that haven't been a part of my life for nearly a month, but seemed integral to daily life in Chicago.

- Jeans: This might not sound that strange, but it will be odd to go from a daily outfit consisting of a swimsuit and flimsy cotton cover up to all of that heavy denim.
- Credit card: Costa Rica is pretty heavily cash-based.  I've been living on bills and coins for a month...even for my lodging.  Those were heavy ATM withdrawals.
- Hair dryer/flat iron: I don't miss these, but dry hair is a necessary evil in Chicago winters.
- Full-length mirror: Focus on appearance has been pretty much negligible for the past month.
- iPod & DVR: I was practically able to add TV to that list, but I've watched a few shows before bed in this last place.  Not using my iPod surprised me at first, but the sounds of the waves and the reggae music piping in from the Gusto Beach bar are a perfect background.
- Driving: Maybe not that odd for most Chicagoans, but I usually get behind the wheel at least once in a week.
- Gloomy weather: I've literally seen the sun every day for four weeks.  This is a streak I'd prefer to keep going.
- Meat: Somehow, during my first week here, I accidentally lived as a vegetarian.  After that, I thought I'd challenge myself to keep it going...and I did.  There's a good chance that I'll hunt down a cheeseburger pretty quickly upon returning to the U.S. though.

It has definitely been an interesting change of pace and routine.  There are a few things I won't miss: daily full-body sunscreen application, omnipresent sand (not just at the beach), and bugs everywhere - ants crawling on my towel and my body, bugs in my shower and my bed, on the floors and the walls.  On the other hand, I won't begin to enumerate the things that I will miss.

Besides seeing all of the people that I love, I'm starting to notice other cravings for home.  Many of them are food-related, like french fries, iced mochas, and Subway (for whatever reason).  More than anything, I can't wait to luxuriate in the comfort of my own bed and pillows.  I may not move for an entire day.

Mondays are always a little slow on tourist traffic in Sámara (oddly, I've been here long enough to observe assert that fact).  So, a couple of the guys at Tico's Surf School occupied themselves by standing a ladder against a palm tree and climbing into it.  Sandro manned the machete and started knocking down clusters of pipas (a.k.a. coconuts).  Pablo rounded them up, then they set to work hacking off the tops of the pipas and delivering them to the beach.  Poke a straw in it and you have yourself a gratis, natural-made, tropical drink: coconut water.  It was sweet, but mild.  Mostly, it felt like a fitting addition to my trip, as it comes to a close.  Later, Christian was cracking open a pipa to get the actual edible coconut out and offered me half.  There's no way I have a desire to eat store-bought coconut again.

It's the little things about this odyssey that have become so dear to me and will be missed the most.  *sigh*

As late afternoon drifted toward dusk, I sat on the sand gazing at the ocean.  The waves have been rather large late in the day, thanks to the recent full moon, so the local Tico surfers have been out in full force.  Yesterday and today I found myself passing two plus hours just watching, completely content to stop and stare.  The ambiance of the sunset and the bongos helped, of course.

As an aside from this, I've been thinking about how I need to find something in Chicago that can set my mind in this same tranquil groove.  There will be no beaches, bongos or surfers to be found.  There has to be some place or activity that can help draw me into this happy bubble of peace.  (The answer is not yoga.)  It would be a shame for all of this zen-like time to be reverted in the blink of an eye.

As my remaining time here trickles away, I find myself even more energized to wake up early (as in, sunrise) and start experiencing the day.  Then I also linger a bit later at the end of my beach day, waiting for the sunset to finish its full show.  Today's tide had some intense waves, so the local Ticos were out doing some real surfing (as opposed to us daytime amateurs).  It was an entertaining show for at least two hours.  So, we had a surf show and sunset, plus the bar next to us was putting on a little live entertainment with bongos and an acoustic guitar.  It was so easy to zone out and feel the utmost of tranquility seep into your body.  I've realized that I need to find a place or experience like that in Chicago.

The bench in the picture belongs to one of the four surf schools and a true statement down here.  After three days of getting on a board, I can see why they feel that way.  Clearly I'm about as beginner as they come, but the progress I've made is evident.  It also becomes more fun as you improve, since you don't get tanked my every wave you try to ride.  Too bad there will be no applicable use for these surf skills when I get back.  I wonder if it's like "riding a bike" and I'll be a few steps ahead of the curve when/if I try it again some day?

If you follow the road past the Palí supermarket, you're on your way toward Playa Nosara and also heading out of the area frequented by tourists.  This will lead you to the area where a lot of the local Ticos live.  You will also find this open field, a line of palms, and an amazing sunrise view.

It seems that after three years, my body is pre-tuned to wake up by 6:30am.  While that may have seemed like a chore when the prospect of work and/or cold weather awaited me, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea in this beach paradise.  I enjoy the quiet of the town in the early dawn hours, much like I enjoy the early dusk hours when everyone vacates the beach.  There's an innate sense of peace and tranquility that encapsulates you.

This cabina is tucked away in its own little foliage-laden paradise.  This is the view above the front gate. Those pink flowers and palm fronds continue down each side of the gate, getting more dense.  Once you enter the complex, the cabinas are connected by winding, red foot paths.  Mine is in the most remote corner and requires crossing a little bridge spanning the jacuzzi.  Along the paths you see more tropical plants.  It's a beautiful way to enter and exit your abode.

I managed to get myself back onto a surfboard today, although the foot injury is still nagging me a bit.  The good news is that I was doing better at catching waves initially.  There were even moments when I could correctly calculate which wave to catch and when to go.  On the flip side, quite a few waves owned me.  As the afternoon wore on, the waves got bigger and the breaks more unpredictable.  That's when I admitted defeat and headed in.  Being out on the water for so long actually set me up with the first sunburn I've had since arriving.  It's not all that bad, but my face is definitely a stage beyond sun-kissed.  Time to rock the baseball cap tomorrow and keep it shaded.

It smells like bonfire and sounds like reggae as I write tonight.  My new (temporary) home has a front porch that allows me to continue relishing the outdoors after dark.  I'm taking in as much of it as I can before returning to the winter season.

I can hardly believe that I have only about a week left of this venture.  It just hit me today that I'm nearing the end.  I'm partially ready; there are times during the day where my body and mind actually feel spurred to action of some sort.  There's also the excitement of reunion with those who know and love me.  On the other hand, I've been here long enough that I'm starting to settle into some real life patterns and bonds.  I can nearly see myself finding a job and sticking around.

Those are the decisions I'll be setting before myself when I head back to the Windy City next Thursday.  At least I know that I'm relaxed and in a positive frame of mind to face those life decisions now.

In the Midwest, I have a daily yearning for sunshine.  Probably because I know that's a stiff order that will never be filled.  Here in Sámara, during high season at least, I almost pray for some clouds.  The ninety degree temps have you feeling grateful for a little shady cover.  Also, the clouds here make the sky more interesting.  Especially when you spend a large portion of your day staring at it.

These parallel clouds intrigued me.  I did an extremely brief Google search in a hunt for their name, but didn't dig past results for "wave clouds".  If you happen to be an expert in this field, meteorology or Googling actually, let me know what they're called.

My brokedown apartment needs to be vacated tomorrow, since someone is ballsy enough to be buying it.  That means I get to move, one more time.  I'm upgrading for my last nine nights.  A private cabina, a bit closer to the beach, with a patio and AC.  The unit itself is smaller, but so light and clean.  I'm looking forward to the peace and absence of fear about what will falter next!

In honor of the Puppy Bowl that I will not be able to watch, I bring you this little dude.  I don't know his name, but he's a regular on the beach where I park myself. Today his tongue paid my face a visit while I was stretched out on my towel, engrossed in the last ten pages of my book.  Never saw it coming.  If he didn't belong to someone, I'd try to bring him home.  Although, I doubt that would go over with customs.

Sadly there was no opportunity in my day for surfing, seeing as my foot was swollen and painful - the the extent that a limp was a bit of a struggle even.  After some icing, motrin, and sitting on my rear end all day, the pain is abating.  I foresee another stab at surfing tomorrow or Tuesday.  I'm off to find the Super Bowl!  It may be en Español and without all of the commercials.  Thankfully, the internet will accrue all of those for me AND then I can skip the pointless ones :)

Last night I experienced my first rain shower in Sámara.  It couldn't have lasted more than fifteen minutes and the intensity was only enough to create a sooting pitter patter on my tile roof.

Then, late this afternoon, we had our first flash shower.  The sun doesn't even disappear for this quick of a rain cloud.  The best part is that smell of summer rain; the fresh cool drops hitting the hot earth.

After the rain, I wandered to the beach for another night of sunset gaping.  There was a haze over the shoreline that made for an interesting perspective as you looked down the beach.

Tomorrow at 11:00am I scheduled a surf lesson.  We'll see if the years of gymnastics in my youth have any bearing on helping me balance upon a surf board while the ocean strives to toss me.

If only this photo did justice to what the sky really looked like.  Unfortunately, my Android is not a DSLR and the nuances of texture and depth are lost on it...especially at night.  So, a exercise in color will have to suffice.  There were so many permutations of beautiful that I couldn't possibly capture them all.  The colors and cloud formations were different over the jut of land than they were over the Pacific.  The hues and contrasts also continually shifted with the movement of the clouds and sun.  It was definitely a day that I found myself plenty satisfied with cloudy weather, all in the name of this hour in awe.

Unfortunately, the sunset was so mesmerizing that I left to late to get to the supermarket.  Thus, my dinner consists of the last of my spaghetti noodles with butter and salt.  It could be worse; I'll consider it a small price to pay.

All of my energy was expended on floods and bees, so this picture will have to whet your visual appetite for the night.  Hoping to be back with renewed inspiration tomorrow!

I'll post my normal photo later, but for now I have a saga...and it only started ten hours ago.  As I was preparing to go to bed, it would seem that the bathroom sink had other plans.  The water supply line must've been rusted where it met the bottom of the knob for the cold water.  Before I knew what was happening, water was spraying fast and hard.  I reached for the shut-off valve, only to find that it refused to shut off all the way.  The bathroom in this apartment is raised up a step and the water began to slosh over into the living area, which is made of wood plank floors.  The problem is that those wood planks have small cracks between them and make up the ceiling of the unit below me.  This means that the water began leaking into their unit immediately, directly onto their bed.

I was thinking clearly enough to set a dish under the leak.  Unfortunately the area was narrow and awkward, the dish was shallow, and the leak was not a slow drip.  Of course I don't have a phone here, so I run downstairs (not yet knowing they have water leaking) and interrupt their domestic dispute with my panic.  They're yelling at each other, their baby is crying, water is seeping into their bed.  She starts trying to call the property manager.  I run back upstairs to empty the dish.  I scout around and find a one-liter plastic carafe; at least now I only have to empty that every three minutes.

The property manager informs us that she is a half hour away and doesn't really know how she could help here anyways.  She was going to try to put a call in to the foreman to learn where the main shut-off valve is located.  Her usual plumber was in San José for the day and she'd try to contact another plumber she knew of.  Since it wasn't my phone, I never did learn if she called back with any updates.  At that point, I decided that it was up to me to decide if I was going to stay up all night emptying a carafe or make something more self-sufficient.

At first I just grabbed the large trash can out of the kitchen and bent the water supply line so it dripped into that.  I figured I could just wake up every few hours and empty it.  Then I had another idea.  There were some large, green plastic bags in the kitchen.  I cut down both sides of it to make it longer and created a chute that would direct from the water line to the shower.  For whatever reason, maybe because I'm my father's daughter, I brought a few feet of duct tape with me.  Without that, none of this would've been possible.  I duct taped one end of the bag to the sink pedestal, added a couple more pieces to create a true chute shape with the bag, then secured the other end of the bag to the dust pan that was propped up in the shower.  This made the chute more stable and prevented puddles from collecting and ruining my masterpiece.

I stayed awake for about an hour to make sure nothing was breaking or leaking.  It all seemed fine, but I set my alarm for 2:00am to check it again.  Still looking good; I was feeling sort of proud of my ingenuity.  I left the light on in the bathroom so that I could just wake up throughout the night (or morning) and glance to make sure all was well.  Apparently that was a BIG mistake.  This time I fell asleep for a few hours, probably waking up again around 5:00am.  I saw some bugs on the bathroom floor and heard buzzing.  I was rather groggy and didn't want to deal with it, so I turned the light off and got back into bed.  Within fifteen minutes, I realized some other things.  The motion detector light on my porch was on.  That's weird at 5:00am; I wondered what had set it off.  I then noticed at least a dozen of these bugs in the little quadrilateral of light above my front door...and on the wall opposite the light...and along the front window curtains.

That's when I started to have a bit of a panic and felt like I should do something.  I looked in the bathroom for real this time, realizing that there had to be at least a hundred bees in there.  Some dead, some flailing, some very much alive.  I had nowhere else to go and no one to track down at 5:30am.  No one was going to solve this but me.  Although I had no particular method in mind to start, I knew they had to die.  I started by turning off the porch light, so that crew would disappear.  Then I also opened the door for anyone who wanted to escape alive.  The light fixture in the bathroom is covered, but in the main room there are bare bulbs.  I turned on the lights and watched the able-bodied flee the bathroom.  This was neither pretty nor calm.  As they fell to the ground, I'd finish them off with a flip flop and sweep them into a pile.  Yes, I had PILES of bees.

At one point, I realized that the lights were just getting them into a frenzy and they were calmer in the dark.  So I turned off the lights, even though it was still moderately dark outside, and went to work with a mini Mag-Lite.  They were everywhere: walls, curtains, futon, bed, desk, windows, counters.  Every time I turned around there were more.  Once I finally eradicated most of the stronger bees, I went back to the bathroom.  I finished off the flailing ones covering the floor and shower and flushed those who were unfortunate enough to land in the toilet.  Mind you, I had to work around my flood prevention contraption while doing this.

All of this bee exterminating took me about two hours.  After the initial panic, I stayed mostly calm and business-like.  It was only when two of them buzzed and got stuck in my hair that I was shaking and flipping out.  I had no idea where they were, but I knew that I made to move my hair around to release them.  Those were the only two stings that I received...and probably the only two moments that I wanted my mommy :)

Now, two hours later, there are very few remaining.  A couple live ones are too high up on the walls for me to reach.  Somehow dead ones occasionally appear inert on the floor.  The lesson here, apparently, is that you shouldn't leave lights on at night because the walls are not so solidly aligned.  The plumber just showed up, so let's hope all of my problems are alleviated before noon and I can return to the beach...for a nap.