A few of my favorite things...

Ive only been in Costa Rica for about a week, but I have already come up with a list of my favorite things about this place.
1. The views are breath-taking.
2. Listening to the Catholic church bells while we have our afternoon coffee.
3. The air. Sometimes it even smells exactly like it would if you were to stand in the produce section in the grocery store. Completely natural and fresh.
4. It might sound crazy, but the Windex they use at the school. It smells like lavender and I love walking down the halls to my class and smelling that all the way. Good smells make you feel clean.
5. Long, unexpected conversations at the Green's house.
6. The smell of Gilda cooking food and being jealous that we arent eating it.
7. Planning our next adventure.
8. The sound of Kristen playing the piano on Sundays at the Greens. (shes phenonimal, and might give me a lesson or two!)
9. The little marker dots my kids on their noses get when I let them smell my "magic marker." Which is actually just those smelly markers that I put in my pocket everyday and they have to guess the color of my marker, and only after I make a big deal about how good it smells they can ask if they can smell it in English. I put a dot on the inside of their hand, and when they smell it, they gets dots on their noses.
10. The sound of the kids' laughter when I say something funny, and dont know its funny.
11. Crooked, special needs puppies
12. Sunny lunch breaks
13. Mangos
14. Dancing in the kitchen after a bad day.
15. NOT finding cockroaches as large as my hand.
16. Hammocks
17. The fact that Costa Ricans are resourceful. In what Ive been told, Costa Ricans have recycled buildings, so instead of the "out with the old, in with the new," they use the old one, patch it up if thats what it needs and use it. I love that about Costa Rica. There are all these pretty fantastic buildings around here, all alittle broken and patched. I dont know why I appreciate it so much, maybe its that I love really old buildings, their character is astounding, and they are almost a little hard to find in that mitten I call home.