I have today’s adventures mapped out…

• Banco at 10:20
• Return fan and get a bigger one at Mundo Magico at 10:30
• Go to farmacia for cranberry tablets at 10:45 and get my arm looked at to see if they can identify the anomaly as benign or malignant and give me something for it, or refer me to a dermatologist
• Get a notebook and three ring binder at DIMI 10:50
• Shop at Mercado Municipal for a few food items (mixed nuts, hongos, mamon, lechuga, dog treats for Alice and Tio, who I’ll be dog-sitting again in a couple weeks) 11:05-11:45
• Lunch at Grecia Football Club. Marianela may join Jon, Francisco, Clarkie, Dale and me if she doesn’t have a driving appointment then. And yes, I will get a selfie with Marianela, the driver I “adopted” forever and ever amen, today!
• Give Jon back his book and a couple pairs of men’s swim trunks I bought years ago after my chest masculization surgery and shrunk out of. (I used the swim trunks as walking shorts perhaps twice.  They’re nearly brand new!)
• Home again, home again…

 

Yes, I can get all the shopping done between 10:20 and 11:50 because every store is within short walking distances from each other. And the lines on Friday are usually short where I go. Even the ATM at Banco Nacional has a short  line.

 

I’ve already walked 1035 steps this morning, so I should reach 7K by day’s end. I walked 7K yesterday, too.

 

Slept 8.5 hours last night. I think that’s a record!

 

I don’t need much sleep these days, so whenever I get seven or eight hours in one fell swoop, it’s always a surprise.

 

HAIRCUT AND COLOR PENDING

 

I really do need to get my hair cut sometime next week,  even if I don’t color it between now and then, but I probably will.  I’m just a little concerned that my hair will turn out looking colored instead of natural, because the color options down here are so limited if I want to stay with red/auburn, and I do. I tried brown once and it was okay, but my complexion definitely screams “redhead!”, so it didn’t look natural on me.

 

I also want to color my hair while someone with a vehicle is nearby. The color treatments all say that allergic reactions can happen at any time.

 

I’ve never worried about that before because I always had a vehicle in my garage in case a hair coloring went south, but NOW the warnings seem more urgent than ever before, because I’m vehicle-less and Marianela is rarely just minutes away.

 

I’ve never had an allergic reaction to hair color before, but ya just never know, the instructions remind me, and I’m in a new, more humid climate and closer to the equator (and greater sun/UV exposure) than ever before, and … well, you can tell I’ve bullyragged the possibility of a bad reaction to a point where there’s a little apprehension involved!  So I’ve been putting it off.  Simple and silly as that. And you can be sure that as soon as I bite the bullet and  do it for the first time here in Costa Rica and nothing adverse happens, I will never worry about it again, of course, even if I should!

 

Hey, I got nothing else to worry about down here (thankfully!), so my amygdala had to come up with something, didn’t it?  It has NO intention of dying of atrophy! LOL!

What else?

 

I finished The Advenures of Huckleberry Finn yesterday,  and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer three days before that, so now I can start on another book. I love Twain so, it might be another of his classics, but I don’t want to get into a rut, so I’ll probably intersperse his books with other authors’ brainchildren…

 

SPANISH LESSONS CONTINUE

 

I also studied more in MADRIGAL’S MAGIC KEY TO SPANISH.  I’m very close to the end of that book, but will go back and write some more sentences in the different tenses to put them firmly in mind.

 

Last night I put on a YouTube video to learn Spanish while sleeping, but soon realized that I’m well beyond common words and phrases, so I need to find more advanced lessons that I can put on to actually learn words and phrases that aren’t already committed to memory.

 

It felt GOOD to know I’m at a point where I can say, “Enough of this; let’s move on, fer heaven’s sake!”  That certainly feels like forward progress/accomplishment!

 

It’s after 9 now (suddenly — I lose all track of time when writing) so it’s time to get ready to meet Marianela so we can head to town shortly so my above adventures can begin,  More later, likely.

 

UPDATE

 

Before we left my driveway, I made sure to get selfies with Marianela because, knowing me, I would have forgotten to get them again if I hadn’t taken them right away.

 

Look at that face!

 

You can tell what a sweetheart she is just by looking at her, can’t you? She is originally from Venezuela.  She has been here in Costa Rica for eleven years.  I learned this about her when Dale asked her how long she has been here. I assumed forever/since birth since she’s fluent. Yeah, that was dumb. Everybody who’s native and south of the U.S. border speaks Spanish. Hence the term Latin America! A lot more people in the Americas speak Spanish than speak English, by a long shot!!!

I had to crop the above photo because I didn’t take the phone strap from around my neck.  Marianela noticed that and straightened me out so there would be no distraction in the second one. HAH!

Here’s what the uncropped image looks like — as though I’m trying to string myself up! HAH!!!

(I told ya I was a newbie when it comes to this “selfie” business! LOL!) 

 

Here’s the best one, thanks to Marianela’s eagle eye:

Marianela dropped me off at the bank and then went back to driving others around (she’s a working woman, you know) while I went everywhere I told you (above) that I was going to go.

 

I first stopped at DIMI to get more lined paper and another three-ring binder since I’ve already filled the one I bought a few weeks ago to keep my Spanish exercises corraled.

 

Next I went to the Central Pharmacy to get cranberry tablets and to show them my arm. They got me a cream for it that should take care of it. Later, at lunch, I showed the spot to retired enfermero (nurse) Jon. He said the cream I got at the pharmacy should take care of it. If it doesn’t, I will have the nurse at the Sanchez lab take a look the next time I go for blood work.

 

After that I walked a quarter block to Mundo Magico to see if I could exchange the extremely anemic fan that I bought last week for a better/stronger one. Jon told me later that here in Costa Rica exchanges are almost never allowed, so I was darned lucky.  I kept the original box and the receipt, so that’s probably what saved me. And I’ve spent quite a lot of money there, too, so they recognized me and know I’m not usually a pill.

 

It took a while — they had to get special permission — but they did it with a smile and even threw in a Christmas ornament. How cool is that?  It didn’t cost me a dime more.

 

After that I hopped across the street to Mercado Municipal to get the nuts and other food I wanted, plus the dog treats.

 

By then it was time to head to a restaurant that I hadn’t been to before.  I wanted to get a jump on finding it, and good thing I did because the doors were wide open and weren’t facing the street, so what I saw first was this:

 

Since it seemed to be in about the right location, I walked across the street

to the place and looked at the other side of the doors and saw this:

 

Still not 100% sure I was at the right place, I peered in and saw people sitting at tables and a bar-like area, so I walked in and inquired.

 

Sure enough, I was in the right place so I texted Marianela and told her I had found the place and was there, so she could head over if she wanted to. I also sent her the pictures that I just showed you so she would know what to look for.  She found it right away.

 

Not long after we greeted each other, she sat down to look at the menu. Minutes later our party walked in, sans Jon  We hugged all around and made introductions. Jon came in after everyone else because he had to find a place to part the vehicle he brought them in.

 

We could smell smoke in there, although it’s a non-smoking place. Someone outside must have been smoking. Clarkie mentioned that he has asthma and the smoke was threatening to get him. I remembered that I had a new fan in my cart so I pulled it out so he could see if that would help. It did, thankfully, so that potentially dangerous challenge was averted.

 

Half of the people at the table were fluent Spanish speakers, so they sat close together.  Jon sat between Marianela and Francisco.  I sat next to Marianela. Clarkie and Dale sat next to each other on the other side of the table.

 

We had a truly wonderful time but — once again — I didn’t think to memorialize/capture the luncheon by taking pictures. I’m always too engaged listening and responding or commenting to think of stuff like that.

 

Clarkie aaked me how my Spanish lessons are coming along. I responded, “Pretty well! I’ve graduated beyond the basics, for sure.”

 

I’m getting into tenses and direct and indirect objects and all manner of other sentence structure concerns.  I’m beginning to  dream and think in Spanish. I write my shopping lists in Spanish.

 

Jon gave me a really cool cookbook written by an immigrant who moved here and had to find out where to get the ingredients she was so used to using at home. I’m not much of a cook, but everything food related that you can imagine (including utensils!) is written in both English and Spanish, so I’m becoming familiar with their Spanish names.

 

After we parted ways with the others, Marianela told me she won’t have her vehicle next Friday, so I will need to find another way in if I want, or have to, go.  I don’t really NEED to go next week, but I do enjoy getting together with my friends, so I’ll play it by ear. Maybe that’s the day I’ll decide to take the bus in.

 

When I got home Jon sent me a message inviting me to go with him to help the teacher who is teaching English to Francisco and a whole classroom of Ticos who want to become more fluent in English. The third week of November (what would be Thanksgiving Week in the U.S.) they will be having classes and he asked if I’d like to volunteer to chat with the students during a couple sessions.  I said, “Sure!”

 

So we’ll be doing that. It should be  a lot of fun. He says he’ll come get me and bring me home, but I may be able to ride the bus almost to Grecia and save him one way of what would otherwise be a two-way trip. And the classes are in Sarchi’, which isn’t very far away. If there are any breaks in the lessons, I will take a walk and see if I can find a Sarchi’ souvenir that I can’t live without…