Tidbits

Yesterday morning, Todd got up to go for a run around 6:30.  Shortly after 7:00 he woke me up with a box of muffins in hand for breakfast.  Today, I ran the same route and came home with a bag of chocolate chips cookies.  The source of these baked goods?  El Castillo restaurant and bakery in Surfside, a small community about 3 kilometers from our place.  It’s a great morning run and the bakery is a such a nice landmark, it takes about 15 minutes to get there and they have treats and cold bottled water, the perfect midpoint!

Apart from running we’ve been keeping busy with morning swims, afternoon classes, and some cooking adventures every night.  Our biggest cooking blunder so far was trying to cook black beans.  Little did we know that just boiling black beans wasn’t enough.  After about an hour of boiling we figured we were doing something wrong so Todd took his iPhone out to the parking lot to Google it.  Turns out black beans have to be soaked for hours before boiling them, which then takes another hour or two.  Oops.  Fortunately we had already prepared the vegetables we bought in Nicoya and salvaged dinner with a little rice and fried plantains.  The plantains were great and last night we had delicious (pre-soaked) black beans.

The weather has been great the last few days and we’ve finally had a good shot at working on our tans.  Oh, and Todd shaved his beard…and temporarily left a moustache behind.  It lasted only about five minutes but that was the best five-minute moustache I’ve ever seen.  I promise to post pictures.

We’re in the process of planning a weekend getaway to Nicaragua and we’re really excited about that.  Also, we’ll fill you in on the reinado that happened Sunday night very soon.  Until then, we’re having a great time and really appreciate all of your thoughts and support!