Happy Fourth of July

I went ziplining yesterday for the Fourth of July! It was a lot of fun, but super exhausting. I think I used just about every muscle in my body, because today I'm pretty sore. Upon arriving at Fossil Land, we were greeted by two Costa Ricans and a guy dressed up in a giant chicken suit. Our guide's name was Otto, but he introduced himself to us as Captain Tula. and the only way I know how to describe him is: completely loopy. Very nice. But loopy. He had us yell "Du du matanga!" which became our chant for the rest of the trip. I think it just means, "We can do it!" We were required to repeat this multiple times at the top of our lungs at various points during the day before we could move on to the next challenge on the agenda. We had to rub mud on our faces, walk through a creek, jump over things, race up steep terrain, and do lots of other challenges to finally get to the ziplining area. The ziplines were awesome! There were 5 cables, and one of them was freestyle, so I went upside down! After ziplining, we all went to a restaurant called Fresas (Strawberries) and had some delicious food. The juice was freshly squeezed and SO good! I got guanabana, my new favorite. And Jeremiah is crazy and doesn't like fruit juice, so he very kindly ordered guanabana juice so that I could have two :) Also, I hung out with Victor (the bus driver) the whole day, so I got to practice my Spanish a LOT. I learned so many new words, and it's becoming more and more easy to hold conversations in Spanish.

Today, I spent the whole morning making beds with Andrea, so I got even more Spanish practice, which was great! Also, she made me some mate. It was delicious! It's a tea that's typical to Argentina and Paraguay. In Paraguay, they drink it with cold water, and Anna (one of the maids here) drinks it with lemonade. So that's how I tried it, and it was so good!

Now, I have time to relax and it feels wonderful. A group left this morning and the next 3 groups come on Friday. There will be two groups staying here at the Villa (45 people in all), and one group staying at Coronado. Also, I think they're all leaving next Friday, which is the day I leave. So my last week here will be crazy! I'll need a vacation by the time I leave for the states next week!

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!

Alajuelita- Poor Village

The other day, we went to Alajuelita, which is a very poor village located just outside of the city of San Jose. We picked up Pastor Efrain (at the door in the picture above) of La Mision San Felipe church located in Alajuelita and he explained to us about Costa Rican Catholicism and how engrained it is in the people. He gave us some advice on how to share with them the good news of Christ in a way that they will understand it best. The first thing we did when we got there was hand out bags of food to some members of his church in need. It was awesome to get to go into these people's homes and pray with them and share the love of Christ with them in such a tangible way. Then, we split up into four groups and went door-to-door sharing the gospel with the people of the village. We got to talk to a number of woman, and it was surprising to me how they took time out of their lives to really listen to us, and they seemed to put thought into what we had to say. It was sad to hear that a lot of them were very unsure as to where they what would happen to them after they died. But it was cool to be able to share with them about the assurance that they could have in Christ. It was definitely an exciting day, and I can't wait to go back to Alajuelita.

El Día de los Padres y Más

El Día de los Padres
Sunday was Father's Day, so Saturday at kid's club, we told all the kids to invite their papitos/abuelitos/tios/hermanos to church on Sunday for a special service. Before the service, a little girl names Genesis came up to me and handed me a picture that she drew and a Hello Kitty stuffed animal and said "Para ti." She gave me a kiss on the cheek and ran off. So precious :) The older kids sang a song called Yo quiero ser como tú and did a little skit along with it. You may have heard the English version called Just Like You by Phillips, Craig, and Dean. The younger kids sang a song called Los zapatotes de mi papá (My Dad's Big Shoes), and dressed up like their dads (picture below). Manolo preached about being a good father and disciplining/teaching your children. After the service, we had arroz con pollo (rice and chicken) at the church with everyone.


Lunes
This morning, we went to Coronado with the Oklahoma group and did yardwork/painted areas of the church that needed painting.
After eating lunch back at the Villa, we went to an orphanage to play with the kids. I met a girl named Pamela and blew bubbles with her for awhile and we chatted about random stuff. Somehow we started doing math problems, and we sat and quizzed each other for a good 20 minutes. I would give her five addition problems in English, and she would answer in Spanish. And then she would do the same for me in Spanish. Then, we took a walk and she showed me the building she lived in, and we talked about her favorite school subjects. She told me her favorite was Science, and then she started telling me all the organs in the body in English! She knew the heart, kidneys, liver, spinal cord... I was impressed. Then, she started naming off diseases in English. Measles, mumps, influenza, dengue.. and when she got to chicken pox, and said, "Como se dice chicken pox en Espanol? Pollo pox?" And she laughed really hard. :) I made a joke in Spanish! My life is complete.



Tonight, we went to go feed the homeless in the Zona Roja (Red Zone) of downtown San Jose. I've done this before, so I knew what to expect, but it amazes me every time how fast 100 bags of food is gone. We were outside of the bus for less than 3 minutes and we had given away all the food we brought. And there were still people reaching for more when we closed the bus doors and drove away. It's rather overwhelming, but it feels good to do something, even if the problems are so much bigger than we can handle.

Puerto Viejo and Kid's Club

On Thursday we left for the beach! We went to Puerto Viejo in Limon. I could write for days on our trip, but I'll try to sum it up with a few words. I'm liking lists lately, because they are quick and easy. So here's a list.

1. Puerto Viejo was a mixture of Jamaica's food, dredlocks, Bob Marley culture and Yellow Springs' hippie, peace, love, happiness culture (for those of you that go to Cedarville). The majority of the population there is Jamaicans, and the American tourists we saw were mostly college students.

2. Jose told us we'd be staying in a "resort." Never trust a Tico when it comes to vacation plans. We ended up staying at this camp-like place in the rainforest. Granted, we were close to the beach, which was awesome. But sleeping was another story. The "resort" didn't have a gate (like almost EVERY house/store/building in San Jose has, so we were a little worried right off the bat about safety. Then an alarm went off Thursday night, and none of us knew what triggered it. We found out later that a wild horse triggered the alarm because it was roaming around the property, but we didn't know that at the time. We could hear lizards clicking in our room all night, and the bugs were insane. We also heard some crazy noise that we had never heard before and we think it might have been a sloth, because there are tons of them in that area. I probably slept about 3 hours in all.

3. Troy, Ashley, Jeremiah and I got up at 4:30 to walk to the beach and see the sunrise! It was pretty awesome.

4. We were told it would be a 2-3 hour drive to Puerto Viejo from the Villa. It ended up taking us 5 hours. But we did get to drive through the mountains and the rainforest. And the air gradually got hotter and hotter as we left the valley and got closer to the coast.

5. The water in the Caribbean is so warm! I wish New Jersey was closer to the Equator.

This morning, we had kid's club at Coronado. There is a church group here from Oklahoma that came and helped. We sang songs, broke up into classes and had lessons, and then played Simon Dice (Simon Says) and Pato, Pato, Ganso (Duck, Duck, Goose). It's fun to get to know the kids better that come back each week. They're SO much fun!

Playing Simon Dice

These two brothers took such good care of their little sister

Amigos, amigos, amigos

Sorry the photo is a little blurry. But the people in it are still pretty cool :) We had a movie night a few nights ago! We walked to the convenience store down the street and got some popcorn, candy, and soda and then came back and watched Pride and Prejudice. It was a fun night!

Even though we haven't had groups at all this week, it's been really awesome having a chance to get to know the people that work at the Villa better, and also the interns and the missionaries. Los amigos son fantasticos :)

Today is Adolfo's birthday! We're going to have cake later to celebrate :) I can't wait. And yesterday was Jose and Gaby's Anniversary so we get two cake days in a row!

Tomorrow morning, we leave for the beach! Manolo and his wife and baby are coming with us, as well as a few more of his relatives I believe. It will be nice to relax before the next group gets here Friday. After this week, we'll have at least one group a week until I head back home.

This morning, Bethany, Jeremiah, Hannah, and I took a bus to Coronado and walked around town to some kids' houses that haven't been to kids club in awhile to invite them to come back. We ended up visiting Joanna, a woman from church and talked with her for an hour or so. She told us about her grandfather and health problems that he was having and how it was affecting the family. She's pregnant with her fourth child and she's only 26 years old. So, it's hard for her to care for her grandfather, her mother, and also take care of her own kids. We prayed with her before leaving to head back to Coronado. We came back to the Villa for lunch, had an intern meeting, and now we're all waiting for Dama to wake up so we can eat cake for Adolfo's birthday :)

Gringos con pupitres

"Why call a moving van when you've got interns?" -Hannah



This morning, Marisol came to the Villa and told us we have to move 35 desks from Room 8 at the Villa to Andy's house a block down the street. Oh boy. Three gringos walking down the street carrying desks is not a very common sight in San Jose. The whole thing probably took us about an hour, not bad at all. Of course, we had some help from Marisol, Adolfo, Ashley, and Dama. It was actually kind of fun :) When we got back, we washed the Coaster (one of the small buses that Score owns). The girls did the inside and Jeremiah washed the outside. Now it looks all shiny and new.

Dama had to go home to Limon this weekend for a doctor's appointment but she was back this morning! I didn't realize how much I missed her until I saw her sitting in the kitchen when I came out for breakfast, with a flower in her hair and a smile on her face. It's definitely good to have her back :)

I got to talk with Andrea for awhile today. She asked me where I learned Spanish (a lot of people here have asked me that), and they're always surprised when I tell them I learned it in school. I guess they don't think that schools in the states are very good at teaching Spanish. She also said she can tell my Spanish is improving from when I first came here (yayy!) and then she tried to convince me to stay for a year so I can become fluent. I told her I have one more year of school and then I'll think about it :)

Today's word of the day is: aspiradora = vacuum cleaner
..Because I had to use one to clean out the Coaster.