“Ihr Lieben Goldigen” this has been my greeting for my far-away family for most of those decades I’ve lived abroad. It was the header in uncountable letters to my parents, those real, pre-internet letters, written on crinkly onionskin stationary to reduce the cost of overseas postage. This very personal address is composed of “My Dears” and an invented word meaning, if only in my own mind, “Precious Ones”. The key here is my capitalisation of both Lieben and Goldigen, which has no basis in proper grammar. Ihr Lieben is an equivalent of the generic address “Dear family”, but it’s those Precious Ones that won’t fit. The adverb “goldig” means adorable in the sense of liebenswert, worthy-of-love. But it’s most commonly used to gush over a puppy, so it’s really more the analogue of cute. Die Goldigen simply is the plural nominative form of a nonexisting German noun.

My point being, you ask? To clarify that this expression is my copyright. Besides, I can muse any whichaway in my own blog.

During our time in Costa Rica this year, we have been so preoccupied with home reconstruction and insurance dealings, it completely absorbed our attention and blocked out everything else. We’ve hardly seen any friends, barely participated in any activities, nor did I take more than the occasional snapshot. Unreal!

Meanwhile, the country is burdened by the consequences of a double el Niño year, extending drought conditions in many regions, while bringing serious flooding to the Caribbean coast. It’s warmer and more humid in our mountains, turning the ongoing cleaning and sorting of our still disorganized household into an unpleasantly sweaty chore.

But the critters and the landscape are as gorgeous and as captivating as ever.

And the Ticos are as kind to us as they have always been and we can see the light at the end of the construction tunnel. Let’s hope the Central American weather situation will also continue to normalise toward the end of the rainy season, so that we can all smile into the future as pink and shiny as this newly emerged cicada.