#ticolife

The local elementary school in our small, mountain neighborhood, hosted a carnival to bring the community together and to raise money for the students. Fit with a DJ, a soccer tournament, and a kitchen bustling with cooks, it was a great turnout of about 50 or 60 people. 

The school is across the street from our house so we could smell the aromas of Costa Rican comfort food right from our front door. I knew exactly how I was going to contribute to supporting the kids!

Chorreadas

Simply put, a Chorreada is a corn-based pancake that is slightly sweet and salty. It's cooked to a golden crisp, leaving the ridges of the pancake crispy and irresistible. If you want to take it to the limit, add a generous dollop of a mild sour cream and you have a perfect combination of salty-sweet-refreshing comfort cakes.

Empanadas

I think that almost anyone reading this post has probably encountered an empanada at least once in their life. This simple masa pocket stuffed with cheese and fried in oil is a classic Costa Rican comfort food. Incredibly easy and cheap to make, you can feed huge groups of people with a bag of masa (just add some water) and a quick filling like a tangy cheese or shredded meat. I love the simplicity of a freshly fried cheese empanada doused in hot sauce.

Piña de Tamal

In Costa Rica, a 'piña' of something means two. So a Piña de Tamal is two tamales, as you can see here, snuggly wrapped in their banana leaves, and tied together with care. Tamales are most popular during Christmas, so it's a rare treat to get to eat them outside of the holiday season. This humble yet hardy comfort food is usually filled with vegetables and a small piece of meat. It's a sin not to top your tamales off with Salsa Lizano, Costa Rica's spicy, herby table sauce.

Gallos de Salchichón

Gallos are Costa Rican tacos! Everyone loves tacos, right?? These snacks have only a few simple ingredients-- freshly made corn tortilla, shredded cabbage (sometimes with tomato) and a portion of sausage. The best way to serve these gallos is fresh off the grill. Pink sauce optional. 🤭

My husband and I are **those** kind of people who believe that we need to constantly strive to live life fully, cultivating diverse relationships, prioritizing  global adventures, and opening our selves and our children deeply formative experiences. Phew! That is exhausting just to imagine, right? Well.... up until this point in our life, it has never been so exhausting to do.

Now we are in rural Costa Rica with 3 small children, all of whom have unique needs and personalities and expectations. The culture and way of life here is beautiful and in many ways, we fit right in. But it is hard to manage all the nuances of parenting 3 children under 4 1/2 and making sure that we experience all WE (as individuals) hope to experience and help THEM (as individuals) experience all we hope they experience and find ways to do things for the whole family. Then add all the things that parents have to think about when visiting the developing world with children. It is not impossible to do well and we are learning from the things we did well to prepare for this trip as well as the ways we did not prepare well. And we hope to help others through our learning. 

I will say that It is BEAUTIFUL to see our kids experiencing life in the developing world. It is beautiful to see the ease with which they hop on buses, interact with locals, and find ways to use their imaginations in play time and their curiosities about life here and there and everywhere. It is also beautiful to see their excitement about learning and speaking Spanish. However, it is immensely challenging to help them all navigate the unique ways in which this experience is difficult for them individually because they are so different.  It is an invaluable experience for us as parents to observe our kids in this context and learn more about their unique persons very early in their development to know how to better parent them when we return home and into their futures. 

In life, it is so easy to want to just find a one-size fits all rhythm that fits the best interests of the whole family, makes life easy, and go with it. But... we KNOW.... that one size never fits all and the more we (as a larger society) try to force that philosophy on our selves, our children, our family life, and each other (as neighbors and friends), the more unhappy, disconnected, and unfulfilled we will be as a whole, the more we judge one another, AND the less meaning we contribute to the larger global-human narrative - a narrative that is rooted in the many amazing histories of life and civilization, continually storied in the present, and moving us into the future.

What we want more than anything as parents, and what we believe is the key to "raising peacenerds," is making sure that each of our children is engaged (from as early as possible) on a personal journey to "true self" within a social constructivist/hermeneutic/advocacy/participatory worldview. Yes, I just went from mom blogger to nerd blogger but really it is simple.

** We want our kids to know they are unique individuals AND individually integral to the family, to their community contexts, and to the world (as individuals and as members of various social collectives). 

** We want each one to become who she/he is created to be and we want to support that without (much) fail.

** We want them to understand that this world is socially constructed, that we participate in its construction through interpretation and interaction, that we are all connected to one another, and that nothing is more valuable than human life and freedom - and that means EVERY human life.

** We want them to be truly happy, truly fulfilled, and truly able and ready to contribute to the world whenever they want to. 

** We also want them to be deeply spiritual and faithful and to understand the wide range of religious and spiritual traditions in the world and why we choose the one we adhere to and how should play out in our relationships with "others" who believe and practice faith differently from us. 

** We want our children to be raised in community both locally and globally, to have family in their lives everywhere they are and everywhere they go. 

** We want to make our mark on the world together as family. 

No biggie, right???!!!?!?