The comfort zone

Part of the joy of international travel is stretching the boundaries of experience beyond time and space to a place known as "The Comfort Zone". The comfort zone is defined as one's level of comfort in a given situation. Take for example shopping for school supplies. Normally, the teachers gives you a list of familiar items and you go to Target and get what you need. Here, we were given a list of school supplies in such excruciating detail that even our fluent Spanish speaker and self-proclaimed lover of school supply shopping was left incapacitated. Instead of twin pocket folders for each subject, we had to buy subject color-coded file folders with matching two holed clasp thingies with instruction to label and wrap each individually in plastic wrap contact paper adhesive type stuff. Whew! The upside is we now know how to say "glitter glue" in Spanish and where to buy rubber boots for "Agriculture Class". We were definitely pushed outside our comfort zones.

After art camp on Friday, we treated the kids to "Copas" sold by a street vendor in the park. These are sugary concoctions made with shaved ice and sweetened condensed milk. Mmmmm, yummy.

Last night while the soccer game blared on the TV in the background, we munched on excellent pizza at a downtown restaurant. So what's the catch? An alley, after dark in Central America? Certainly a family-friendly experience, right? But it was. We enjoyed a lovely meal and walked back home through downtown and up into our neighborhood as kids played and families watched the game together. It was a great way to experience life after dark. And a great opportunity to begin to see how we have adapted to and begun to expand our "comfort zones".