“I can see clearly now the rain is gone......."

When we wrote our last entry we could say that we were in a less than happy state. We are fortunate enough to say as Sam Cook’s song plays out, “there is that rainbow we’ve been praying for”. First of all, we are traveling to our new site this Friday, the 24th. But that isn’t the call for the entire rainbow. As I said before we are here to go wherever the Peace Corps deems necessary. With that said the last few weeks have been pretty stressful with not knowing exactly where we are going, starting anew and most of the stress has to do with breaking the news to a community that we are leaving and still live here for 3+ weeks. We thought we would leave here on a bad note because we are leaving to a new community, but the last few days here have been quite the opposite. Like with any tight knit large family the integration of an outsider is quite a process, and when you do finally begin to integrate as that outsider you are super happy :) This how we feel today, super happy. Literally so happy we skipped home. Let me be clear we have no complaints whatsoever about the treatment we received from our host family; they have been friendly, helpful and good to us. But we always felt, well on the outside of things. Like I mentioned above totally natural during integration process. So in lieu of our recent announcement of our departure we have been invited to a birthday party for our host mom, lunch and breakfast at host moms and breakfast at our host sisters. Yay!!! We feel that we have taken one very important step in the right direction .And feeling this new sense of comfort with them brings much joy to our heart, especially since we did not want to leave the island on bad or uncomfortable terms with our family or want them to think the move had anything to do with them. Being away from home makes us realize how much we really are family people; we love to hang out with our family and talk for endless hours, go to movies with them and basically are with them any chance we get. So it comes as no surprise that when we came here we just wanted that, but we forgot that this is a process. And now that we have taken one step closer towards this we feel super happy. We now have a new set of friends in Costa Rica, and this rocks! We are glad to end our time here in Tortuguero having accomplished one very important job task befriending host country nationals. We are excited for the move and have been informed by Peace Corps we will be going to Barbacoas de Santiago de Puriscal. Before physically leaving Tortuguero I wanted to share some funny anecdotes with you all that happened to Tony and I here in Tortuguero, I believe that laughter and happiness have super healing powers and can think of no better way to end this chapter in our life.

*While we were living in the cabinas host nephew Little J would come to our room in the morning and at our closed curtain window would say:
Little J: “Cuerpo de Paz, despiertense. Cuerpo de Paz yo los puedo ver”
Translation
Little J: “Peace Corps wake up, Peace Corps I can see you”

* While we were showing our wedding pictures to our host nephew he said
Little J: “ Y porque no me invitaron a mi? Yo hubiera ido y les hubiera regalado el regalo mas grande”
Patty: “Es que no lo conocíamos todavía”
Little J: “Pero yo soy su amigo Cuerpo de Paz porque no me invitaron?”
Translation
Little J: “Why didn’t you invite me to the wedding? I would have gone and given you the biggest present”
Patty: “We hadn’t met you yet.”
Little J: “But I am your friend Peace Corps why didn’t you invite me”

*During Patty’s visit to the CEN (village daycare) our host nephew Joshua who attends the daycare center runs up to Patty as she arrives and calls out to the other children:
Little J: “Acérquense guilas!! Que llegó el Cuerpo de Paz y se las voy a presentar”
Translation
Little J: “Come here little kids!!! The Peace Corps is here and I am going to introduce her to you.”

*At the village elementary school Patty played an alliteration game with the 3rd graders. The students had to say their name and say a word that started with the letter of their name. Patty went first to do an example for the children and she said
Patty: “Patty Pinguina”
Translation
Patty: “Patty Penguin”
From that day on when Patty sees any of those children around town they yell:
“Patty Pinguina!!!” and to identify themselves say “Soy yo Elizabeth Elefante!”
Translation
“Patty Penguin!!” and to identify themselves say “It’s me Elizabeth Elephant!”

The pictures we included this time are of baby sea turtles!!! Yes we were very fortunate to see them and it was an experience we will never forget!! They are amazing!!! Enjoy!!!