Pura Vida!

Boy Howdy, am i glad to get online!! i've been in COSTA RICA for an entire week and have been dying to blog since the minute we got here! We've done soooo much already, i've either been too tired to write or i haven't had access to the computer....where do i even begin?

how about with Feliz Navidad?! I hope everyone has had smiles during their holiday time. It is amazing to me that 2008 is right around the corner. By the time i get back to Texas, it will be next year. So long, 2007.

There is no better place i'd rather be to wrap up this year. A few days ago, i was lying on the beach in Flamingo. The sun was warm, the sand was soft and I was listening to the loud, powerful-yet calming- waves, thinking about what an emotional rollercoaster this year has been. I've never contemplated life so often, nor have i appreciated it to this extent.

The beauty of Costa Rica is that this place is teeming with LIFE itself! Everywhere you look, the plants are thriving, climbing, reaching, exploding! They are so happy to be here and be green...or red, pink, yellow, orange, purple.... The colors are so vibrant; so plentiful! If the colors aren't living in the plants, they are flying by on the feathers of birds, lounging around with the lizards or swimming along with the fish....or creepy-crawling with the sparkley, shiny bugs and snakes. COLOR is alive everywhere.

On our road-trip from San Jose to Flamengo, on the Pacific side, I noticed a curious type of fencing. Mile after mile, i saw barbed wire fencing made with trees as posts. Trees, all neatly lined up along people's properties. It was intriguing because i wondered how, or why, you would use trees to make fences; did the trees happen to be there already? Or maybe people weren't in a hurry for their property to be marked...and could wait for the trees to grow for their fence?! NO--that didn't make sense! What was the deal? I found out they are called Living Fences and actually start out as usual fences do, with regular wooden posts put into the ground. Then, since this is Costa Rica, land of the Mighty Nature, the posts root and begin to sprout branches. Voila! Its a tree again. No man is going to tell Nature what to do here, No Sir!

I've seen familiar plants around here, things we have in Texas. Except its like these plants are on steroids. Of course, they have Christmas poinsettias--as TREES! There are orchids and bromeliads just growing wild in the trees. Plants that cost a ton in our nurseries, like the Sego palm and citrus trees, are everywhere. In fact, where we are staying, there are grapefruits aplenty on the property.

We interrupt this blog for an ADD side-track-note:

Ah--where we are staying...this will have to be an entirely different blog.

Maybe i should also save my Bird Nerd reporting for another blog too. I'm like a crazed cat with ADD, stalking the windows and interrupting any conversation or thought to catch a glimpse out the window. This behaviour is only reinforced by the colorful rewards flitting by to welcome me on a regular basis. (sigh!)

I was afraid this would happen once i finally got my hands on the computer; i'm overwhelmed with what to write, not sure where to begin....this will take awhile, to be sure. I'm going to need lotsa pictures to keep track. Luckily, i've taken a ton. My apologies in advance to my Nacogdoches friends, as this is probably all i'll talk about for months.

I'll wrap this one up with a Costa Rican phrase, Pura Vida. It is said in response to "How are you doing?" and means Pure Life, as far as i understand (which isn't much, let me tell you). Or is it Viva Life? I thought at first it meant something along the lines of "living life to the fullest" or a Carpe Diem sort of thing...that's when i first heard it a few years ago. "Pura Vida!" I'd say, glad to know something I could actually pronounce. Now that i'm finally here, with my newfound appreciation of LIFE, it has a deeper meaning for me.

When i was laying on the beach a few days ago, I was looking around at the jungle and mountains that Rule here. There is alot of new construction going on there, but vines and plants keep creeping back into the concreted areas. You can't stop Life/Nature here: Its Pura Vida and its not going away. It may be interrupted, cut down and altered (to be used as a fence post or cleared out to build a condo) but its going to creep back somehow and be strong and beautiful. We can learn so much from Nature.