We are so lucky to have a good friend, Pat, who is fluent in Costa Rican Spanish. Otherwise, we might have to hire a translation service to conduct some daily business.

Dinia is our lawn care guy’s wife – and like all good marriages – apparently in charge of the finances.

She came calling today wanting to be paid for last month’s service. Fair enough. Between her writing and our limited Spanish we could figure out that the bill was from December 8 to January 8.

Easy-peasy.

But we wanted to retain Mario and his mow-boys for a long term deal. We wanted a contract for his services.

Since Dinia and Pat are very good friends, it only made sense to bother Pat to do a little interpreting. When Mark showed Dinia the phone and said “Patricia” she got tickled.

After Pat and Dinia chatted for a little, Pat got Mark on the phone and said if we wanted a contract, that Dinia and Mario’s son Myron would call to firm up the details.

Myron speaks English. He is Mario’s translation service. 

We’re trying with our Spanish, we really are. Both Mark and I find ourselves understanding more Spanish everyday. For example, Dinia explained that her son broke his arm.

Not only did we understand that… we understood that he broke it when he was riding his bicycle near the Multiplaza in San Jose and he crashed because he was on the phone when he hit some speed bumps.

Mark has decided that he needs to work on his Spanish verbs.

I need work on nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs… but I’ve made a lot of progress on numbers because I like to shop.

So far, no need for a translation service to help with my shopping.