March 22 - Saturday. I hear the coffee grinder and the music start up at 7 am but we tried to lie around another hour. Breakfast is cooked and served outdoors and coffee beans are ground fresh for every pot. Seems strange to cook and eat everything outside but it is nice. I think I would like to do this at home. John fixed fried eggs and gallo (pronounced guy-yo) pinto, a mixture of rice and black beans, and
square white thin-sliced bread toasted. The weather is beautiful, not hot, very spring-like. Yes, I could get used to this.
We decide we don't want to stay around San Jose for 5 days and told the owner who arranged our rental car that we would like to get it on Monday instead of Wednesday. Though we will be here 17 days, we planned to rent a car only for the middle week. He told us that this was 'Semana Santa' and it would be very difficult to change our plans now. There were vehicles available we found out later, but we decided to stay with our previous reservation even though we are ready to get out of town after we see the Diller's and other Vargas family members on Sunday.
Orietta picked us up soon after breakfast, bless her heart, and took us to her house. She drove through downtown San Jose—the only way to get there—there's no 'outerbelt'. Driving doesn't seem too wild to me, not as bad maybe as Dean thought. Most street surfaces are in such poor condition that common sense causes you to drive slow. Of course there are always those without any. It's actually about equivalent to how it used to be driving in Cleveland, Ohio (both in street conditions and those with lack of common sense). San Jose, at least the main drag we saw is not pretty; there are no window boxes or flower pots, or hanging flower baskets. And lots of exhaust fumes.
Orietta and her husband Hugo and their children have a lovely home in Guadalupe to the east of San Jose, not quite suburban, but much quieter. They are a young couple with a son and daughter around Jonathan's
age and are Vargas family members. Their house is new with cool marble tile floors. The houses are connected to each other with a shared concrete block wall and have a carport at the front and that is tiled also. It doubles as an outside play area. She had fresh mangoes, watermelon, and cantaloupe for us.
While Orietta has studied and speaks English, the rest of her family does not. But Jonathan fell right in and he and Hugito played Nintendo even though they do not speak each others language. We walked to a playground a few blocks away where there are lots of kids playing soccer (they call it 'futbol'). All the kids play soccer here all the time, and they look pretty good. Jonathan was invited to join in.
I can plainly see the mountains to the north. Clouds are forming and bumping into the tops creating a Smoky Mountain-like haze. In the late afternoon, lights appear all through the foothills and I try to imagine what it would be like to be up there looking down here—I really want to go there! We are enjoying this walk through a very typical, local neighborhood, getting a feel for the country and people. It's the main reason we came.
We walked another ˝ dozen blocks to Orietta's father's house. There's an indoor fountain - waterfall, kind of atrium-style. He has a lemon tree in his back yard! Jonathan climbed a ladder to pick a few and Orietta made them into fresh lemonade for him. It was a special treat and he was really impressed with how much sugar she put in it! Her father, a widower, is a very kind, warm man who loves the Lord.It's getting dark by the time we start to walk back to Orietta's house. It's been a very pleasant day getting to know these kind people a little better.
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