We arrived well!

2 January 2014
Took forever to pack for 7 months.  I've always prided myself on being a "good packer", shoving the minimal amount of stuff to keep you comfortable and prepared, but this event is a new one. What do you bring? Do we live like we are on vacation for 7 months washing the same few things until they are threadbare? Can we easily buy the next sizes of kids' clothes? Which shoes? Is it worth it to pay for extra bags?  Which toys & games? I know we're not going to the middle of nowhere, but we're gone long enough for some things, and not long enough for others.

3 January 2014
Drove through a snowstorm to Indianapolis.
I wondered if we should take our winter coats after all, simply to make it to the airport.
The plane was delayed about an hour because there was too much ice for the tug to get the plane away from the gate, but everything was delayed into Atlanta, so we connected to San Jose fine. The kids had to sit by themselves, but they did well.

We were able to get all of our bags into the rental car and finally got out of San Jose around 4pm. The kids were starving and we realized we had no colones to stop at a soda and have dinner, so we "treated"??? the kids to McDonalds for dinner before we left the city altogether.

We drove through Cartago, and can't wait to go again. The christmas lights were amazing, and we could spend a week just visiting all of the churches there.

Had an uneventful windy drive up the mountains to Turrialba. We all looked with big eyes at the nearest town to our new home. It's a bit ironic that we chose Turrialba. There is an agricultural focus, has an international research component, the University of Costa Rica has a campus, and it's about the same size as C-U.

I didn't read the map/gps very well to Sitio Mata, and it took us an extra 30 minutes to find our house in the dark (turns out the road we needed to take isn't on the gps!). Our landlord, Jose, showed us around. Despite the fatigue of traveling and finally reaching the destination, it is pretty amazing.