Pura Vida in Costa Rica!

“Lizzy, no, sweetie. Don’t eat the butterflies.”

We arrived in Costa Rica nearly a week ago. Eight pieces of luggage, two dogs and two adventurous spirits. For the last five months Evan and I have been working towards this move. Finally, it is here.

Our pups, Lizzy and Quito, made the trip with the expected amount of stress. Now that they are off the plane and safely on the ground they are happy to smell the tropical soil and chase the mariposas (butterflies).

Evan and I are ecstatic and humbled to have made this dream a reality. He is now heading up the Latin American micro-finance projects for Whole Planet Foundation. After 2.5 years in Ecuador in the Peace Corps, integrating with the Costa Rican culture is as natural as breathing for him. Over and over again I hear the locals say to him, “You speak Spanish very well! Very natural. Where are you from?”

I, on the other hand, studied French for ten years. So at this point no hablo espanol. Luckily there are many similarities between french and spanish so I trust the language will come quickly.

We’ve made friends with a local Costa Rican couple, Fehdra and John. Evan calls them our “Costa Rican twins”. Fehdra, the woman, is a yoga teacher and John, the man, is a mountain bike fanatic. Yep, twinsies.

Though Fehdra doesn’t speak much english and I speak hardly any Spanish, we understand each other loud and clear when it comes to our love of yoga. During a recent dinner, she and I dominated the conversation with our enthusiasm for the practice of yoga. Yoga, like math, is a universal language.

As they say in Costa Rica, Pura Vida! (Pure Living! Pure Life!)