Wanderings.

Ericka asked me to come play with her in this cool place in Tomball, called Main Street Crossing. Live music happens on Fridays and we were the live music on 12/23/2005 that night.

Main Street Crossing
111 W Main St
Tomball, TX 77375
(281) 290-0431

Ericka wrote about the experience in her 12/24/2005 post. Playing with Ericka is easy. She likes to just be in the moment, so it wasn’t an issue for us to practice for 30 minutes – 1 hour before the concert for the first time ever. Heh. Ericka’s songs are real and from the heart. I think we played about 7 or 8 songs. I hope Ericka has them written down somewhere. If not I’d sure like to post them somewhere with the chords and stuff so other people can play her material&copy.

I got to Talk with Mike Hon and Dennis for a while ( I hope his name is Dennis. Ericka please tell me if I’m wrong!!. He is in the picture to the left between me and Mike. He’s fun. He played my guitar for a while too.

I got to play Guitar, Flute, Tuba and harmonica on Ericka’s songs and she really liked the flute on one of the songs. It actually made a good harmony with her voice.

Ericka’s Mom and Dad, and sister Stephanie, and her child were there. Stephanie’s daughter was funny when she got tired. She made all kinds of faces at us. She was pleasent throughout though.

I got up on a surfboard today for the first time with Adriana A.. Gustavo Castillo taught us. He was on the national Costa Rican team here. Rodolfo, Adriana C., and Federico came later. We had already been out for about 3 hours, so there wasn’t enough time for him to get a picture of us actually up on the boards.

It feels really good to catch a wave.

After we turned in the boards, Adriana and I went back to the beach house. She showered, and I got back in the water. She didnt’ call her mom yesterday to tell her about the surfing lesson because she thought Mom would freak out, so she talked to her mom on the way back:

“Mom, I took a surfing lesson.”
“you did WHAT?!! its so dangerous!! you could be killed, etc……How was it?”
“It was fun”

I love being out in the ocean swimming.

Rodolfo, Adriana, Federico and I went to the beach at Jacó, crossing a hilly/mountainous area. Costa Rica has these dramatic differences in terrain in only a short distance from San José to the Pacific Ocean.

The place where we stayed was very local. Not at all like the resorts or higher end hotels. There was no hot water. From today (Wednesday), through Saturday would cost us about $60, but since the landlady had made a mistake about the price when she talked to Rodolfo a couple of weeks ago, we ended up paying something like $30. Split that 4 ways, and it was about $7-$8. A very good value, I’d say.

This partial panorama shows the place we stayed on the left with the white gate, and the pretty beach.

Last night after the rest of the friends left, Federico, Nayurive, Rodolfo and I watched the anime series, Evangelion (official Japaneese site with the storyline and pictures) until 5 the next morning, then got up and watched the remaining 3 episodes. It was very Japaneese, and kind of Zen like in some of the philosophy behind the story.

Now I can understand the references Rodolfo makes to the series. Its good to have another reference point, even if the website does make me want to eat lychee

We set out to find a coffee coop a little ways from San José.

We went to the Beneficio Libertad (Cooperativa de Caficultores de Heredia) today and talked to Francisco Gamboa H. Actually Federico got us there, and Rodolfo and Federico did the talking. He was kind enough to let us have several bags of the green coffee to sample.

Their market isn’t green coffee. They grow it, process it (wet and dry), roast it there and sell it. Also the coop supports sustainable coffee, which is important.

I saw coffee plants for the first time up close and got to eat the berries. Federico pointed out that the red berries were the ripe ones. I remembered that from my reading. What I didn’t know was that they would be sweet. They were actually fresh. After eating a few of the cherries and chewing on the beans, I can see why the Arabs must have enjoyed it and decided to invent this fantastic beverage in the 700s-800s. Even the caffeine in the fruit itself was noticable. It didn’t make me too jittery though.

We saw PerroZompopo tonight. . We really had a fun time relaxing, talking and just listening to the music.