Father's Day & Our New Car

Last Friday, Claire's school held a special Father's Day celebration for all the papis. They brought in a speaker who talked about the importance of fathers in the lives of young children. She spoke for 40 minutes in Spanish (98% of the families are Costa Rican), and spoke very rapidly so Graham said he got the gist but missed a lot of details. He felt like he understood a lot more than he would have six weeks ago, though.

Then the kids gave a little presentation - Claire's class sang "Les Trois Petits Cochons," the song she's been singing for us at home (see video here). Most of the kids just yelled the song, and four played the parts of the wolf and pigs. It was all very cute - Graham took a video of it for me because mothers weren't allowed.

Afterwards, Claire got to share a snack with Daddy - banana muffins (she ate FOUR) and watermelon - yummy!

Then she gave him a gift in a bag she made for him. (Note the pride.)

Close-up of the gift bag - inside was a little toiletries bag with "I [heart] my Dad" and the Yimboré logo. Very sweet. Mother's Day in Costa Rica is August 15, which will actually be Claire's last day of school at Yimboré. I'm hoping the moms get a similar show... =)

In other news, we finally bought a car! There are a lot of legal logistics to buying a car here, so we used a locator company. We told them what we wanted and what we wanted to pay, they found the car, did a full inspection (including a compression test on the engine), negotiated the deal, and handled all the legal paperwork including insurance. The company is owned by an American expat, and she partners with her Costa Rican husband, who owns a car shop, to perform the inspection and make any necessary repairs. It made the transaction so much better than if we had tried to handle it on our own...

So...we now own a 1999 Toyota RAV4 (and yes, with import taxes it cost twice what it would have in the U.S.), so we no longer have to take buses and taxis to school. We actually miss walking and will have to find another outlet for exercise, but our first visitors arrive this weekend and we're driving to Manuel Antionio so it's nice not to have to rent a car.

We went back to our private lessons last week because we had Claire's admissions exam for the American International School on Thursday and the Father's Day celebration on Friday that conflicted with class. Claire passed her exam and starts August 16th. She's VERY excited...

Happy dancing girl. "Mommy, take a picture!"

This week we're back at Intercultura and actually have classmates for the first time! There are six of us - the other four are college students from the U.S. and are very nice. We're at the Intermediate level now - not sure if it's Intermediate 1 or 2, but it's exciting to have progressed that far already. With visitors next week and Claire's "winter vacation" at school during the first two weeks in July it will be three weeks with zero Spanish instruction, so hopefully we can keep it up.

The Spanish summary (more tenses all the time!):

El viernes pasado, la escuela de Claire tuvo una celebración para el día del padre. Había una lectura, un regalo para Graham, y los niños cantaron y actuaron. Yo espero que ellos van a tener una celebración para las madres en agosto también.

Finalmente, ¡nosotros compramos un carro! Nosotros usábamos una compañía que nos ayudamos, porque hay muchos detalles legales para comprar un carro en Costa Rica. Nosotros tenemos un 1999 Toyota RAV4 y vamos a viajar a Manuel Antonio con visitantes este fin de semana.

La pasada semana, nosotros regresamos a LisaTec, y este semana nosotros estamos estudiando en Intercultura otra vez. Nosotros tenemos cuatro otras personas en nuestra clase, y estamos al nivel intermedio. Nosotros esperamos recordar nuestra español porque vamos a tener tres semanas con no clases.