Festival of Tamales

    Yes. It is just as it sounds. Yesterday we celebrated the tamale as we took part in a local Festival of Tamales. There were over 70,000 thousand tamales made for this event. Mamí, Papí, and Diana (our Tico sister) took us way up in the mountains for this festival. Papí loves tamales and has really looked forward to this for weeks. There were clowns and what they call masquerades, men on stilts with large heads on their bodies. Here are a few pictures, because I cannot do it justice by trying to explain it.

There were all these "characters" floating about the crowd. We saw the mario brothers, dracula, pirates, donald duck, clowns and many more

The faces were made of plaster and then painted

Mamí loved to grab all the intersting looking masquerades to have our picture made with them. It is funny to look at the pictures because you can see the face of the little boys who are carrying the masquerades.

 Nathan and Papí also found a "character" to have their picture made with!

There was also dancing in the streets

 In the center of all the towns is a Catholic church. This festival was positioned around the church

After watching the parade and the dancing, we of course took time to eat the tamales. When I lived in Belize after college, I had some "not so good tamales," so I was not so excited at first to try these. Papí was right though, these tamales were delicious! Nathan ate several!

 Nathan with Mamí

    We had a great day with the family. It was really kind of them to invite us. We continue to be blessed by our relationship with them.

    We cannot believe that it is November and we have lived in Costa Rica over two months. At times it feels like years, and other times it feels like it is flying by. Thank you for your continued prayers, which have sustained us.