Honeymooners 2: (Water)Falling

Falling

The next leg of our journey was spent near the town of La Fortuna, and at the base of Arenal volcano. Now, you may question the judgment of the person who decided to build a whole town right beneath an active volcano—I certainly did. But when they’re not spewing molten rocks and drowning villagers in burning hot magma, volcanos actually make pretty good neighbors. They’re attractive, volcanic soil is great for agriculture and all of the geothermal activity means that natural hot springs abound! Not to mention if you’re going to make a virgin sacrifice, it’s way more convenient to have the volcano right next door instead of trekking through the wilderness before you can appease the gods.

While I really can’t pick a favorite part of our adventure, our time in near Arenal was definitely the most “Costa Rica-y.” We went on breathtaking hikes up mountains and through rainforests. We swam in lagoons and relaxed in hot springs in the middle of the jungle. We saw color-changing rivers, and poison dart frogs, and trees you could drive a bus under. It rained every day, but we didn't mind at all.  

I've been lucky enough to travel quite a bit in my life thus far, but up to this point I had only ever been to the  "urban jungles" of Europe and the Middle East. I love wandering the streets that are pieces of my personal patrimony, but I felt rather appropriate there in the forest. And I have a feeling that this is going to be the first of many more wild adventures.

more pictures of our trip here!

Ox carts used to be so fancy!

little did I know we were about to ford that river!

Feeling pretty cool...

Two minutes later: 1) Water has changed from blue to brown, 2) the waterfall had tripled in size, 3) the rock island from the picture above had vanished. Our guide to Premal "We wait 30-second more, and you don't make it!"

close enough to touch...

I don't mean to brag, but we hiked to a natural hot tub in the middle of a river, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RAINFOREST.

The photo on the left is from a a place where sulfur is leached into the water from a fissure in the riverbed, turning to water from green to vibrant blue midstream. So. Cool.

After three days of hiking we thought we deserved a massage....

EPIDEMIC!! Five tips that can help you avoid the flu this season

The flu has come to every town USA. Usually, this means being sick... which isn't fun. But when you're immune system is suppressed and you happen to be a transplantee, the risks are much much MUCH more severe. Thus, I've become something of an expert on avoiding germs. While I still get sick, I'm getting better at avoiding it. So here are my top five tips for avoiding the flu or stopping its spread if you happen to have or get it.

Misery and germs love nothing more than human company. So sit down with a good book. Do some journaling. Read some poetry. These beauties belong to my friend Jay Walker who's a big book collector. They're encrusted with gold, lacquer, rubies, diamonds and other crazy stuff. I love this one which is  just a bit cheaper :)

5. Be Anti Social. This is the perfect time of year to catch up on correspondence, old tv shows, blog posts, etc. Call an old friend. Try out some new recipes. Start spring cleaning early. Home is where the heart is and where you're safest from germs.

4. Stay Hydrated. When you don't have enough fluids in your system, you're more susceptible to bugs. So pour yourself a giant mug of peppermint tea (I also LOVE Good Earth Original Herbal Tea. SO good!) and then another mug, and then another mug. It's good fort he body, mind and soul.

Apple cider and mint hot chocolate. Yum!

3. Keep It Fresh! Despite common belief, there are plenty of veggies that grow in the wintertime. Citrus is in season. So is kale, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, and a lot of those super healthy leafy greens. So eat up! All of those nutrients will help your system and look at the links for some great recipes.

Not only are winter veggies incredibly high in anti oxidants, they are gorgeous and delicious!

2. Make like the Japanese, US Presidents or any number of other folks and bow. Ok. You don't have to bow. But hands are super dirty. So wave, do air kisses, try an Obama bump, do something but PLEASE don't shake hands. They are very useful, but they are absolutely filthy.

1. Speaking of hands, WASH THEM ... and try not to touch your face with them. This is probably the easiest and best way to avoid the spread of germs. Cover your coughs count dracula style. If you're traveling, don't grab for the sky mall and the pockets in front of you. Keep your hands to yourself and  wash them frequently.

Sometimes you'll still get sick. I just got back from the hospital but the good new is, it wasn't the flu and so far (crossing my fingers) everything looks like it's going to be ok. But these tips have helped me get through tons of travel, events and interactions unscathed by germs.

What are your tips for staying healthy?  

Why? Because science, that's why.

Shiloh, Mercina and I got back to New Haven today. Even though school doesn't start until Monday, I decided to start the semester off right by doing some larnin on the Youtube. If you're looking for a good time, watch this video of Richard Feynman discoursing on, among other things, how fire is recycled sunshine and trees assemble themselves from thin air. But "how is it the tree is so smaht?" Wonder no longer -- Richard Feynman will tell you.

Favorite tidbits from winter break

1. Birthday flowers 2. Christmas morning 3. NPR backup dancers 4. Shiloh reunited with his beloved pup 5. Birthday breakfast

About 5

We grew up in a crazy, huge, close-knit family in Denver, Colorado. Our mother decided to use her three ivy-league degrees to educate us at home, so our favorite classrooms were museums and the kitchen.We lived in a magical world of frog-catching, tree forts and mud, and ended up doing most everything together. But as we grew up, we began to drift apart. In 2008, our father died very unexpectedly and the glue that held us together as a family lost its stickiness.  We sisters thought this blog would be a good way to reaffirm our connection as a family. Unlike some things in our over-involved family, we actually agree that blogging is better done together.

Kimber (Monday)

I used to get annoyed when women I met at dinner parties would introduce themselves as "a mom."  But now that I'm a full-time Baby Chaser, I totally get it.  Mothering Hettie, Phin, and Willa is the most amazing, challenging, all-consuming and meaningful thing I've ever done. Of course it defines me. 

Other tidbits: I've got a couple fancy degrees and had "serious" corporate jobs in NYC and D.C. (and a less serious one in San Francisco :-); David was my first and very favorite boyfriend, but I had a few others between falling in love with him (the first time) and marrying him 8 years later;  I served a mission in Hungary for my church and also lived more briefly in Israel and France.  My hobbies include singing in the shower, renovating old row-houses in questionable neighborhoods, reminding myself over and over and over how much David loves our dogs, wishing I spent more time with my book club, arguing about politics, travelling whenever I can, eating chocolate cake and complaining my pants don't fit right.

Charity (Tuesday)

I am an artist, first and last.  I am a professional diva and a private bum.  I like to put on a good show, but in my own time, I'd prefer not to leave the house.  I am anti-social by necessity -- I had a double lung transplant -- and overly social professionally -- I'm an opera singer and public speaker.  I lived in Europe for about half of my adult life.  When I'm there, I want to be here, and when I'm here, I want to be there.  I'm getting married to the most patient man in the world and the only man I've ever been in love with.  I am a middle child and want to be an attention hog, but when I end up getting the attention, I feel guilty about it.  I stress out about my health and my family's lives.  I am always right, until I realize I'm not -- then I am right about being wrong.  I like most individuals, but I don't like people generally.  I am a liberal religious zealot.  I once got mad at Mercina for saying my favorite pastime is forcing awkward situations.  She was right.  I am a walking, talking, singing, composing contradiction (and I fully intend to keep it that way).

Liberty (Wednesday)

An article about our family once call me a "bleeding heart." It hurt my feelings--and then I realized of course being called a bleeding heart would hurt a bleeding heart's feelings. Which brings me to feelings. I have a lot of them, about a lot of things, and I get very impatient with people who's feelings do not exactly mesh with my own.  That said, as the resident heathen here at 5, I consider myself the patron saint of all those seeking to be a tiny bit naughty. The others are way more judgmental. I am a working woman. living with my delightful boyfriend (Premal) in our nation's capitol, doing the 9-5 thing while he finishes up med school. The Chesapeake basin has been my home for 8 (freaking!!!) years, split between moving to DC at 16, college in Baltimore, and now. No matter how many times I do the math on that, it blows my mind/makes me feel VERY old. 
I love cooking, The New York Times,  reading all of the labels at museums, hiking, dancing, photography, interpreting dreams, NPR, finding the perfect cappuccino, my niece and nephews, Music of all sorts, and walking home after a full day's work.

Mercina (Thursday)

Sometime between January and March of 1992 (no one knows the exact date), I was born to a young French prostitute in Avignon. Due to a hereditary deformity, I was born with webbed feet. My birth mother, unable to care for me, looked for help. After much consternation, she decided to give me away. Though they already had 7 of their own children, my new parents were thrilled by the addition of such a beautiful (if slightly amphibious) little girl. Almost as soon as we arrived in the States, a group of world-renowned surgeons went to work on my toes; 79 hours after going under the knife, I emerged - slightly shaken, but much less frog-like...Or at least that’s what my siblings led me to believe for the first 18 few years of my life. However, last year I discovered some baby pictures which make the story all but impossible to believe. Aaaannyway, I'm a full-time student, but when I'm not stressing about school, I enjoy embroidering t-shirts, listening to NPR, promoting organ donation, arranging flowers, baking, travelling, picking berries, reading Tolstoy, statue mimicry, the Economist, Latin, and tangy yogurt.  

Glorianna (Friday)

I don’t like labels, but it seems advantageous to use one in this context. So here is my label: slob. I am one of those. Not in the ‘Ew, I don’t enjoy being around that person because they’re gross!’ kind of way, but the ‘Oh! Isn’t it endearing that Five can be so happy wearing the same fleece pants for 96 uninterrupted hours?!’ way. It’s not that I have a particular attachment to a single pair of fleece pants (though I do love them), but rather that things other than changing out of my fleece pants always seem to catch my attention. Eating, taking pictures, cooking, playing the one song I know on the piano, Hulu, studying, sleeping – all of these things get in the way of peeling my fleece pants off of my body. In fact, fleece pants facilitate all of these activities quite comfortably. Thinking about it, I could do most all of the things I do and aspire to do quite excellently in fleece pants -- read, draw, write a doctoral thesis. Heck, even if I can't wear fleece pants for the rest of my life without people viewing me as the shell of a once promising human being, I'm only 17. And a 17 year old can't be a shell!

Honeymooners

I was sick over the weekend. This means different things to different people. To Charity and Yoni, it meant cancelled dinner plans for Saturday. For Mercina, it meant an incoherent birthday call punctuated by my own special brand of cough—a braying-cough, so abrasive that passersby stare at me with a mix of disgust and terror if ever one escapes me whilst in public, and I honestly don’t blame them. For Premal, it meant one more patient on his roster. And for me, it meant three days of nose-blowing, mouth-breathing, tissue-sculpture building, bad TV-watching, and self-stalking on this here blog.

“But Liberty, what does that paragraph have to do with all of these pictures where you look positively resplendent” you ask?

Well, first, “resplendent?” gosh. Thank you, you are too sweet! But to answer your question, I realized, somewhat miraculously considering my drug-induced haze, that I never posted pictures of our trip HONEYMOON to Costa Rica. So, months-late, but memories still crisp, here is the first installment of snaps from the absolutely perfect week Premal and I spent in Costa Rica.

More pictures from our trip here!

So. Much. Coffee.

SLOTH!

oh, don't mind us, we're just standing AT THE MOUTH OF A VOLCANO!

These pictures are all from our time in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. We spent an afternoon kicking around the city, and then on our second day we went on a fantastic tour where we saw a volcano, a coffee plantation, a whole bunch of waterfalls, AND A SLOTH! But the very best part of our stay in the capital city had to have been our accommodations. Premal found a place on airbnb that had great ratings, and signed us up for four nights there over the course of our trip. I will admit that I was skeptical, four nights seemed like a big gamble to place on a perfect stranger, and backing out of the arrangement would be complicated. But upon our arrival my dear husband was sweetly vindicated. The home was idyllic, and our host, Darrylle, quickly felt like an old friend.

Which, as chance would have it, is exactly what he was...

After two nights of staying up late, drinking good wine and basking in our shared world-views, Darrylle realized that he had heard some of my stories before. Twenty years ago, between moving from Southern California to Costa Rica, he spent six months in D.C.  He was there to do some soul searching, and along his way he met an “utterly charming, incredibly wise, tiny woman with a big Hungarian accent.” His friend Annette is, of course, my sweet grandmother Mimo. They quickly hit it off, and he has many fond memories of similar lengthy conversations with Mimo as well as one of her famous tours of the US Capitol building. 

It's always fun to find something that's been misplaced, but finding a lost friend is especially sweet.

Winter Wonderland in Zion's National Park

Yoni and I have done a LOT of driving this year. We just went through Zion National Park in Utah's first big snowfall. While the roads were treacherous, the scenery couldn't be beat.