The week ended with Ray and Mark taking a trip to San Jose for a big school sporting event that lasted from Friday morning to Saturday evening. Ray got the day off of school and went with nearly 40 other school athletes ranging from 7th grade to 12th grade. They represented our students who play basketball, soccer, and volleyball. Mark has been volunteering as the boys’ assistant basketball coach (or assistant TO the Basketball Coach!) so he went as an additional chaperone. Ray played in a basketball game and a soccer match; unfortunately they lost both, but it was a great experience at some schools with NICE facilities!
Ray and his basketball coach are twinning! Mr. Ramsey is also Ray’s U.S. History teacher. This picture was taken after a long night in the hotel with limited sleep-both look tired!
The kids also had a chance to go to the mall-we have not seen a mall for 4 months now. It was huge! It had three floors with 3 food courts. The kids had dinner and lunch here. The only set-back was that it was VERY expensive. A t-shirt at Converse set Ray back $32, which would have likely been more like $20 in the states.
Hanging out with Mom…
Because Mark and Ray were gone, John and I got to spend some time together. We spent a nice sunset at the beach on Friday night and then walked down to Playa Conchal, one of Costa Rica’s most famous beaches, on Saturday.
John and I also got to do some grocery shopping and made a visit our new Maxi Pali store. Maxi Pali is a division of Walmart that is in Central America (and maybe more countries?). By Costa Rican standards, it is pretty nice and has quite a bit of things we need!
Other interesting notes:
- This is one way we communicate here! We use WhatsApp to text and call friends for free (as long as we have WiFi), and if not, we use Kolbi. Kolbi is a card that you insert in your phone and you put money on the card to call and text locally and internationally. We have spent approximately $80 on phone use since we have been here-quite a deal! Other than that, we pay about $50 a month to have WiFi in our house.
- We keep finding more “friends” at our house! This scorpian got himself trapped in a plastic pitcher we had outdoors. After we took a picture, John freed him. A scorpian sting from these scorpians here will not kill you; it feels like a really bad bee sting. This one pictured is about 2 inches long.
Until next week, Pura Vida!
The Beilmans
Beilman's Trip to Costa Rica 
Enjoyed your blog again honey. Nice job! Sounds as though you had a good week & a busy weekend. Ray looks good but tired from all of the games. Love the pictures of Johnny. He’s always in a swimsuit and/or by the ocean or pool. Our little aqua man! See you in about 3 weeks! Love you, Nana & Papa xox
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