TeamDuggan

La Feria

Saturday is the farmers’ market known in Spanish as, “la feria” .  On the ½ mile walk there, one sees unusual sights(Brian has the camera in Peru or I’d post a pic here)….a soda(small restaurant often run by a housewife out of her driveway/front of house), a bakery with piping hot baguettes(and other fresh baked but not warm rolls, breads, cookies), a veggie stand, a fruit store, a mini-super(think AM/PM or 7-Eleven but not overpriced), a diaper store(yes, for adults and infants), and a couple carts selling fresh fruit drinks(orange, kolita (bubble gum with fruit floating in it), mixed fruit, tamarindo, and limeade. On the edge of the small, local market here in Tres Rios, trailers selling meats or seafood sit a few meters(remember the metric system—they use it here!) before long rows of fresh veggies and fruits. Often vendors sell only green veggies or strawberries or you name it. Quite an experience…if ya’ll come visit, we’ll take you!

Much of what we read has little to do with our lives and offers an escape from reality. Our family recently received the book One Month To Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life.  The book’s thesis is that in daily life we put off many things due to lack of time, energy, resources, or mere excuses. All of us have the same quantity of time to spend each twenty-four hours. What can we do to make it count for the kingdom, most specifically in the lives of our families and others?

Case in point, applying to graduate school while raising four children was a choice motivated first by a passion for the lives of women and children (instilled by God and three different nurse-midwives whose paths crossed mine in my 20’s and 30’s); secondly, to cultivate my intellect; and thirdly, by a desire to use that passion to assist women in my own family and women and children in need.

I daresay that making the choice to leave a comfortable, idyllic American lifestyle was another turning point for our family and in doing so, we began living out what the book above calls a no-regrets life. Believe me, we have not arrived but are on a journey and hope that a small portion of such living will be learned by our children and their children as they develop, not in middle age.

· It is a solo sport, except during races etc, and even then you are competing against one’s own personal best

· It takes place OUTDOORS, a breeze or light sprinkle may even be felt

· Cadence is involved, but not to a Latin beat

But when Keri wanted to go with me to Zumba, it made it somehow more palatable…

Zumba is intense- and when done in a hot, non-air conditioned Costa Rican gym(think the smallest exercise venue in any Charlotte area YMCA) you are sure to burn enough calories to earn a taxi ride home from the middle of town-especially when your 17 year old insists! We’re gonna try a different class at another gym this week!