Mi Casa

¡Hola amigos!

After our weekend hiking the volcano named Volcán Poás, we went to the town of Turrialba to move into the house where we will be living while we are in Costa Rica. Here's a map of Costa Rica that shows our route from the volcano to our town:

That was a long drive through more mountains, but now we are here and enjoying our house. Here's what it looks like from the outside:

Mi casa es morada.

(Hint: Click on the blue "play" button above to hear me say the Spanish sentence. Then click on it again to say it with me! There will be more of these as you keep reading.)

Most houses in Costa Rica are smaller than they are in the United States. Most of the houses in small towns are only one story, which means they don't have an upstairs or a basement. 

Also, houses here have a strong front gate and bars on the windows. Costa Rican people keep their gates locked but their doors and windows open, which lets them call out a nice, loud ¡hola! to say hello to friends as they walk by.

When you walk through the front door, you can see that most of our house is an open space. In the living room there is a stone wall that holds many beautiful plants beneath a skylight. In our house the living room and dining room are the same:

Mi sala es azul.

Behind the stone wall is the kitchen. You can see that the plants grow over both sides of the wall. The vines are so big that they touch the top of the refrigerator!

Mi cocina es azul.

The back door of the house is in the kitchen. Instead of a back yard with grass, we have a patio with white tiles. The patio is surrounded by a wall and many garden plants. Part of the patio is under a wooden roof, so we can still sit outside when it rains:

Mi patio es verde.

My bedroom is near the back of the house and has a nice window to the patio. Sometimes small geckos climb onto my windowsill and make a chirping sound. They are very fast and don't like their picture taken, but I will keep trying.

Mi cuarto es rosado.

The small door in my bedroom leads to the bathroom. It is small, and has a shelf instead of cabinets. There is also a shower with hot water, but it's not in the picture:  

Mi baño es verde.

My son and daughter are sharing a room together. They each have their own bed, but take turns sitting at the desk to their homework:

El cuarto pequeño es amarillo.

There are no carpets in our house. We have tile floors instead. In the summer, it rains here at least a little almost every day, and it's much easier to keep a tile floor clean from mud. We also have a television in the living room, and there are lots of shows in English and in Spanish. My kids like the Disney channel the best, because they can learn the Spanish words to the movies they already know by heart.

If you are interested in watching a short video about my house here in Costa Rica, you can click HERE to go to my website for grades 3 and 4. In that video I use many Spanish words that you haven't learned yet, but feel free to give it a try! There's also a coloring page at that link that you might like.