Hanging out in Puerto Viejo

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to spend some relaxation days hanging out with the locals in Puerto Viejo. It was wonderful.

I went to school and helped teach English to 3, 4 and 5 year-olds, I bathed in a river surrounded by lush green trees and plants and hillsides, I played pick-up neighborhood soccer in a muddy cow pasture (yeah, you never wanted to know what you were slipping in) with a bunch of 20 and 30-something-year-old Ticos who put me in my place, and I played a version of Scattergories with some of my best friends up there, cheating through my use of both English and Spanish vocabulary words.

I'll just say, you haven't lived unless you've played soccer in a muddy cow pasture until the sun goes down (or until you've accepted Christ, but hey, either way . . .). By the end of the game, I think the final score was 11-10 (they only count who's up and by how much they're up), we couldn't see 15 feet in front of us. You'd pass the ball into darkness, hoping that your teammate was there to score the game-winning goal. The guys I played with looked like they had just gone swimming, due to the amount of sweat that clung to their bodies. I can't say the same about me, but that's just because I don't have to put nearly as much effort forward as they do in order to play well :-)

All-in-all, it was a marvelous set of days. 2, to be exact.