My Costa Rican life as of lately..

The white board is the only way to know anything around here. It is the center of communication. If you want to know what time you have to be up tomorrow, what you'll be doing, or where you'll be going, look at the whiteboard. There's a 50% chance that the plans will be up there. If not, there is no hope. You just go with the flow. Hannah wrote this message the other day :) The fine print says, "Subject to change, along with every other plan :)" SO true. Nothing is concrete here.

It's been pretty slow (as far as groups go) around here lately. Our next group comes this Thursday, and and our last one left last Thursday. We have had a few families come stay at the Villa in the past week who are going to be coming in the fall to be full time missionaries here. We actually got to drive with one of them to kid's club on Saturday. We couldn't all fit in the van, so one of the American dad's had to drive that, while Jose drove his family in his car. Apparently women don't get their driver's licenses here, or at least they don't drive. So the only other option was to have a gringo drive. The man that drove us hadn't driven a stick-shift car since college (and he was probably in his mid 30's). At one point, I'm pretty sure every car on the road around us was honking at us. Driving here is not easy. I give him props for trying. And we survived :) So I guess he succeeded.

I've walked to MasXMenos (grocery store) every day for the past 4 days. A few days ago, Hannah and I went with Dama (we also picked up Andrea along the way) and walked down the street to the shoe repair shop so Dama could get her nephew's shoes fixed. The store ended up being closed, so on the way back we went to MasXMenos and bought chocolate :) I got to talk to Andrea in Spanish the whole time, which I love because she speaks very clearly so I can understand pretty much everything she says. And she's just an awesome person :) I took this picture of Dama and Andrea as we were walking there (the height difference made me laugh).


Sunday: Jose preached at church, and I understood the whole sermon! That was definitely exciting. Later on Sunday, Victor came over and him, Amie, Hannah, and I walked to Pops together to get ice cream! I know how to order my favorite now: "un cono regular con brownie dinamita, por favor." and it was delicious :)

Monday: The interns all went to Coronado to clean until around 2. We cleaned the bathrooms, washed out refrigerators, cleaned the windows, and other various jobs. Oh, and of course, we cleaned the floors by pouring buckets of water and bleach down and sweeping it around with a broom. I will never understand this technique. But I guess it's just how they do things here.

Today: This morning, we took all the tables out of the dining room and washed them down outside, and then we washed, dried, waxed on, and waxed off every metal chair in the dining room (I think there are about 50 of them). It took us until lunchtime. I napped after lunch, and then the Prado's came over because today is the twins' birthday. I'm starting to really enjoy birthdays around here. We get to eat cake every time! And I've got the birthday song down now :) We hung out with the girls for the rest of the evening, chatted, and played catchphrase. Around 7:30, Jeremiah, Hannah, and I walked to MasXMenos to get some groceries. It was a little scary because I've never been out past dark before with only gringos, but we made it there, got what we needed, and took a taxi back. I'm pretty sure the taxi guy ripped us off, but I didn't really want to start an argument cause he looked kind of mean.

Well, there's my update. Enjoy!