OnBlueUnderCanvas

Say you need to get around a car that’s stopped in the street. You would think it’s in one’s best interest to walk behind the car instead of around the front of it, right?

Not so when it’s a manual car on a hill.

Lately I’ve been teaching Natalia some American sayings and idioms. I’ll absentmindedly use one in my speech and realize from her blank stare that I’ve got some explainin’ to do.

Here’s the list:

* Doesn’t make a hill of beans difference.
* running out of [books to read]
* Kill ‘em with kindness.
* … and all that jazz.
* I plead the fifth.
* Spill the beans!
* throwing daggers
* Cry me a river.
* “talking smack”
* “duly noted”
* We’re in it for the long haul.

This afternoon, Natalia and I stopped at Pasoca (the corner “has-it-all” store) on the way home to buy some fruit. Here’s what we bought:

1 pineapple / pina
1 mango / manga
1/2 cantelope / melon
1 watermelon / sandia
1 papaya / papaya
8 bananas / banano
10 oranges / naranja

All of this cost 2750 colones. In American dollars, this converts to less than $4.50, total! In Chicago, to buy the pineapple alone would cost you $3.00 on sale. I want to move to Costa Rica just for the fruit.

My parents just came back from a trip to the Bahamas. My dad has informed me that while there my mom took 1200 photos. 1200!! (And 30 videos.) So I did some quick math and figured out that if her average sleep was 8 hours/night, and the trip was 2 weeks long, my mom would have taken roughly one photo every 10 minutes that she was awake.

That camera was crazy-glued to her hand.