San Pedro… school in the morning but learning all day!

I don’t consider myself a morning person, yes I wake up before the sun every morning, but  I am not bright eyed and bushy tailed, and before my first cup of coffee it is best to leave me alone. This morning I chased a very loud bird out of a tree with a Frisbee because he was singing to cheerfully. My love/hate affair with sunrise started in Maui where there isn’t twilight in the evening but in the morning when the sun comes up it is hidden behind the Volcano Haleakala and for an hour or so there is twilight.

We have now been in the same spot for a little over two weeks, we have a routine and are settling in and resting up.  Our mornings start early, from our east facing front porch we watch the sun peak over the mountains that surround the lake turning the sky different shades of pink. We sit and watch until the caffeine hits my blood and we can take the doggies for their walk.  We are trying to teach them to be street dogs, or the American equivalent.  After getting to the dirt road far enough away from too many people and crazy tuk tuk drivers we let them off leash to go explore, they are getting better at staying with us, especially after Haole (our pit bull nick named Snuggles) got chased out of a house by woman with a big stick (he now has to be put back on leash when we get to the house or he turns around and tries to go home!) And they have learned that the proper way to meet a dog on the street is to sniff his/her butt and if the other dog growls to slowly back away. Kona still doesn’t realize that chasing timid dogs is looking for problems, as they usually run around a corner where the rest of their pack is waiting, but he is getting better about it.

After our walk we head to Fritz’s school where I use the free Wi-Fi to catch up on the blog, Facebook and email, while having either a Jiamaca Rosa or Limonada or sometimes Hot Chocolate with Ginger.  When he has his break I usually leave the computer (for him to carry home) and then walk up to the Mercado to find something to cook for dinner.  I already have my favorites at the Mercado, the butcher who learned English flirting with American Ex-Pats, the old lady who sells the tomatoes on the vine not the roma ones, the woman who brings her young daughters a few days a week and has the freshest looking broccoli and zucchini. 

Fritz is done with his school by noon and spends the next hour in the hammock resting his brain, then studies for an hour or so while I read and bird watch in the comfort of our back yard.

Dinner is usually a joint affair with me cooking the side dishes and him bbq’ing whatever chicken, beef or pork I found at the Mercado.  We eat dinner by candle light so we aren’t too bombarded by bugs (another reason I love sunrise fewer bugs) and also so we can watch the Fairies.  Every night at sundown we are visited by hundreds of Fairies that flitter from bush to bush and through the grass entertaining us, ok they are lightening bugs, tiny little blinking beetles, not the fireflies I have heard stories about that you can catch and keep in a jar, they are more like Christmas lights that flash 3 or 4 times in a row and then go dark for a bit.

With dinner dishes done, we turn on the computer and watch a movie, our TV for the night, and before it is finished I am asleep and during the night one of us (to be honest usually Fritz) gets up and turns the computer off, and our routine continues the next day.