The 10th of November was a pretty special day – 25 English speaking women from 8 different countries took over the trendiest restaurant in San Isidro to form the Perez Zeledon International Womens Club (the name of the municipality, bit of a mouthful until we come up with something jazzier!).

I’ve been toying with the idea for some time, inspired by three main ideas:

The first and obvious one – how to make friends when you up sticks and move to a new country to build a new life from square one. Where are the people who can share their experience, answer your hundred questions and lend an ear if the going gets tough?

The second thought stems from my background as an occupational therapist. Many of we immigrants (especially the retired) find it difficult to achieve ‘occupational balance’ in our lives.

We can keep ourselves busy running our homes and working in our gardens, but if we have escaped from the life of work, we often lack something ‘purposeful’ that adds an essential richness to the human experience.

And thirdly, many of us want to make a contribution to the local community but often don’t know how to, or we feel inhibited if we’re not yet fluent Spanish speakers.

There is a perception that Ticos lump us all together as ‘Rich Gringos’ who take and don’t give – but that’s a myth worth busting, a lot of people are already making a silent contribution in their own corner of the community.

Having tossed those ideas around with several trusted friends, we took the plunge, distributed flyers around the favourite haunts in town, and Lo and behold! We had a better response than we could have imagined. The enthusiasm over lunch was tremendous!

We agreed on a dual theme of ‘friendship and service’ and will meet again next week to agree on the basics of club organization. Its early days …. lots to think about ….for the moment, I’m thrilled – and if any WeLoveCostaRica.com reader in our area hasn’t heard about this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me through my B&B website at Casa de Los Celtas!

Meantime, John has been doing his ‘silent’ good deed – remember Cecilia, our cleaner, having a house built with a mere $15-16K? All that got spent so John has been on bended knees for a couple of weeks tiling her floors, a good job well done.

Two more even smaller homes have been built in front – this is now the view from her living area … not a pretty sight but Mum and Dad on the right have 12 children, all under 12 years of age (gulp!!) so every inch of barbed wire gets covered in the daily laundry! Cute kids though… the song Ten in the bed and the little one said ‘Roll Over’ … comes to mind!

We have some secondary woodland at the bottom of the garden but leave it to run riot during the rainy season so John can see which strong young saplings might fill the spaces. A lovely find this week – this tiny Habernaria orchid… couldn’t even have spotted it four years ago; we’re getting the ‘eye’ and such discoveries are a constant source of pleasure.

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