october 28

Breakfast was great: oatmeal (which is really expensive, at least at the supermarket here) with the other half of the pineapple I didn’t eat last night, plus sugar. In the morning we started to clean the signs around the gardens but it started to rain so we spent an house cleaning up the plants in the butterfly habitats. This is literally cleaning up plants, like when a dead leaf falls onto one or something. Plus, we have to gather up dead butterflies and parts of wings. There aren’t too many of these, but they accumulate if no one gathers them, and customers generally don’t want to see that. Or at least, they don’t want to see very many of them. When the rain stopped we went back to cleaning signs, but I got called to give tours almost immediately. The first was to 2 men from USA, the second to a family with two infant twins. I’m not sure why people would want to come to Costa Rica on vacation (they were also from the US) with infants, since there’s a lot of very active things to do here that aren’t suitable for a baby. It seems like a vacation in Hawaii at a resort where you can lounge on the beach makes more sense, but I’m glad they came nonetheless. The kids were really cute. After a cucumber sandwich we finished the last of the signs, then bagged more dirt. Our goal for this afternoon is to get more veggies from the veggie truck. We’ve been eating primarily rice and beans, and we’re craving more vegetables and fruit. He was later than last week; he didn’t arrive until 5:30pm, when we had just about given up hope. Grant spent a good 30 minutes buying all kinds of produce from him. We spent about $20 on veggies and fruit, but we wont need to buy much produce for the rest of the week. Kendra and Leche, and Delvin came out also to buy food after us, and Grant hung around to watch how they did it while I made another chocolate cake. Grant ended up making friends with the veggie guys, and came inside with a free half of a watermelon. Melon here is really expensive, so it was a nice treat. We shared with the other three in our house. We also made pineapple rice with the rinds from yesterday’s pineapple:

Rinds from one pineapple

Some rice

Water to got with the amount of rice you’re cooking

Throw in a crock pot and cook overnight on low.