Week 3: Fishing and Field trips

This week Mark decided it was time to buy a fishing pole and try his luck at fishing in the Pacific.  After a few unsuccessful tries (where he claimed there were no fish in this ocean) he finally caught his first fish today!  We are not sure exactly what it is (maybe a Needle fish?), but it gave Mark a good fight.  Big teeth too!  Unfortunately, it did not look like a type of fish you would want to eat.

More fishing opportunities…

Ray’s first field trip!

Ray had his first field trip on Wednesday which was going with his 8th grade class on a sailboat excusion for the morning.  It sounds like he had a blast!  The kids were able to swim, snokel, hang out, have a free lunch and drinks (including virgin pina coladas)!  They also got to see the dolphins which would swim right next to the boat.  In addition, they were allowed to swim from the sailboat to a secluded beach which was about 200 feet away.  They let the kids swim there alone as long as they had a little swimming “noodle” with them.  Unbelievable!  I can’t even imagine kids in U.S. schools having this much freedom.  John gets to take this same trip next Wednesday and Mark gets to go along for free as a parent chaperone (they had room for 12 chaperones!).  Needless to say, they are both looking forward to it.

Our medical clinic…

Of course, both of the boys have already had to go to the doctor-and both for the same thing!  After swimming so much, John tends to get an ear infection or “swimmer’s ear” (apparently Ray does now too).  Of course, I forgot his ear drops at home.  We were pleasantly surprised to find a nice clinic about 5 minutes from our house.  It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (good!) and has “normal” business hours from 8:00-5:00 seven days a week.  If you come within the normal business hours you pay $50 for the visit.  Any “follow up” visit for the same ailment/issue is free after that.  We still have our health care insurance from the states through the end of the month, but I am not sure if they will reimburse us or not.  Even if they don’t,  we are pretty pleased with the minimal cost and the medication was also very reasonable ($40 for 3 different scripts).  Our biggest concern is going back to the U.S. in the summer and not having health insurance while there (about 2 months).  How sad is that? Right before we came here Ray had to go to Urgent Care; WITH insurance that cost us $75 copay just to get in the door!

Other interesting things to note…

• Costa Rica uses Colones for their monetary system.  $1.00 is roughly 500 colones, so everything is listed in the thousands.  For example, a meal costs 2,500 Colones or about $5.
• The sun rises at 5:30 every morning and sets by 6:00 p.m. every evening.  So, it gets dark EARLY.  This never changes throughout the year.
• People even sell food out of the backs of their cars (although this is frowned upon by the police!) This woman pictured below is quite popular!

Until next week, hasta luego!

Janet, Mark, Ray and John