soccer

The small village of Colonia Libertad, a short distance down the road from La Anita Rain Forest Ranch, contains a small Catholic Church where I watched an early afternoon Christmas Eve ceremony and held a toddler dressed in her Christmas finery. Meanwhile a short distance away my grandson, other tourist children, and locals played soccer in this field.

It alternated between dark and rainy and periods when the clouds zoomed away and everything lightened up a bit. When the game ended, everyone was a muddy mess.

The village contains the small church, this soccer field, a school–in green on the left, and a recycling center.

They recycle nearly everything. You can see the sign for plastic above. I could hardly believe it. Here I am in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica and they recycle; yet where I live in the Panhandle of Texas, recycling remains extremely limited.

Several of us walked down the road from the soccer field and found the neighborhood bar. A local couple joined us.

To the right, behind the bar, a stream ran rapidly along. The local couple happily posed.

Besides these buildings and the soccer field, we visited a shop where local women make and sell necklaces, bracelets, and earrings to supplement their less than lavish income. Many of the people in the town work for La Anita Rain Forest Ranch.

My goal recently has been to learn to use my iPAD as much as possible before heading to Ethiopia a week from today. At this time next week, I will be on a 14 hours and 45 minutes flight to Dubai on Emirate Airlines. That gives me about six days to keep learning. With the help of my more computer literate friends, today I learned how to download photos from my iPAD to my iMAC and to connect my iPAD to iCloud. In the midst of all this, guys are working on my house roof because when it rains just the right direction with the wind blowing, it leaks in particular places, depending on the direction of the wind and rain. Here is a photo of them up high in the sky working.

Yesterday, I decided to play with my iPAD camera so I can take some good photos as we wander around Dubai and Ethiopia and post them for all of you to see. I am reading the 2012 Man Booker winner, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. Henry VIII is not someone I would want to like me. Once he was done with one wife, he had her executed or divorced. The only exceptions are Jane Seymour, who died two weeks after giving birth, and his last wife, who outlived him. I read while on my patio. The evening view struck me as very photographable so I took several.

The view from where I sat reading.

The sunset from the edge of the patio–two views.

Of course I knew about Henry VIII more or less, but wow, he and Cromwell….This book is sufficiently fascinating that I may download (the next thing I am going to learn to do) Wolf Hall, the book that you are supposed to read before you read Bring Up the Bodies, onto my iPAD so I can have something to read on that long, long flight. People who have flown Emirates tell me there will be about 60 movies available, but I may have to see that. Really?!

Yesterday, I also took my grandson to his soccer lesson at the WTAMU soccer field. It has rained so much here that once when I thought I was just walking through grass, I ended up wading in the water.