Volcanoes, Parades, and Coffee

I am writing this blog from the comfort of my internet-free home so that I can save it to a flash drive and post it later. It is so hard to find time to get to an internet café, and then they aren’t always open when they say they will be open and then when I have a clock counting the minutes I use and how much I owe (even though it only costs like 60 cents/hour), I just don’t feel like I have the leisure to write a good blog, so I don’t know when I will actually post this but oh well.

I am 2 weeks into my time here and I have already had some adventures. Saturday I went with some friends to a VOLCANO. yep. It was sweet. We were right up there by the crater looking down into the steaming opening of the volcano, with the sulfur burning our eyes. On Sunday, a group of 15 of us went to Cartago where we saw the ruins of the first Spanish settlement in C.R. We also swam and had a cook-out . The bus ride back was an adventure, because the bus was definitely waaay over maximum capacity and we were driving up a super steep mountain with no guard rails in the rain. But we made it!

Today is independence day, so last night all the elementary schools in Costa Rica have parades of Faroles. A farol is a type of lantern, the kids parents make them in the shape of a national symbol or a school or house or some other shape and then they put candles inside of them and carry them in the parade. At Manfred’s school it was supposed to start at 6. We got there at 6:30 . It was dark by then, the school yard was like pure mud and everyone just seemed to be aimlessly standing around. I really didn’t understand what was happening. It turns out that they were waiting for the torch runners to arrive (because the news of Costa Rica’s independence was delivered to them by someone running with a letter and a torch) and so when the torch runners coming from another school arrived at Manfred’s school, a drum line started playing and everyone started marching down the street. It was quite festive. Then today I went with some friends to another parade. It was probably over 3 hours long, but we didn’t stay for the whole thing (especially since they don’t throw out candy in the parades here).

Classes here are interesting and challenging. We have lots of guest speakers from the community come and talk to our class about poverty, economic systems, music and culture etc. We also have a good deal of homework. It is so interesting to study culture, politics, economics and justice from a different point of view, in a land that has been hurt by American policies but at the same time loves American pop culture and fast food. This weekend we are taking a field trip to Limon, a province on the east coast. We will visit a banana plantation, and pineapple plantation and a coffee plantation (!) and no worries, we will also go to the beach!

I am still enjoying my family here, but I would like to bring up one thing, not because I want to air their dirty laundry but because I would really like you all to pray. There has been an issue because my 16 year old sister here has a “boyfriend” who is 23 who she met online. Her parents are in an uproar and really don’t know what to do. It is awkward for me to be on the outskirts of all this, and I think we all need God’s wisdom and direction, and I want to be able to help the situation as best I can.

As a side note, I have eaten so much beans and rice here! Especially rice. I also decided today that I miss Mexican food. Tacos, burritos, and enchiladas are NOT traditional Costa Rican (or “Tican”) food. But it doesn’t even matter what the food is like here because the coffee is SO GOOD. I have it in the morning and in the afternoon every day. When I travel outside of the city there are coffee fields everywhere. I would also like to mention that you can buy a pineapple here for less than a dollar, and one of those little baskets of strawberries for 50 cents.

Many of you have told me you read my blog. You don’t even know how encouraging that is. I don’t have time to respond to everyone but know that I really appreciate your thoughts and prayers. You can pray for me in the following ways:

1. My relationship with my family. Sometimes its hard to know how I fit in and what my role is.

2. Balance of time between school, cultural events and family

3. We are being faced with many challenging ideas, and I really want to process them in humility with a biblical perspective, not a perspective of human wisdom.

4. For the people I am missing and who are missing me (ie family, friends and Kipp)

Chapter 2... Costa Rica

I made it to Costa Rica! Preparing for this trip has been so different from Mexico just because I know how much loneliness and homesickness to expect, and for that reason I think I was more nervous than excited. In the Miami airport I met up with the rest of my group. There are 34 of us in all, and we are a very lovely group if I do say so myself. I only slept 3 hours the night before I left and I think I am still trying to make up the difference. I have been SO EXHAUSTED all week! This week was orientation, on Thursday we split into group of 3 and explored downtown San Jose we had a list of things we had to find, and a map. Unfortunately almost none of the streets are labeled and nobody really knows which street is which, so it is very difficult getting from one place to the other. I was with McCall and Andrew and we laughed a lot at ourselves. After a morning of being quite disoriented and getting incorrect directions from the locals (they don’t want to disappoint you by saying they don’ know where something is) we ate lunch in a very pretty park. We just couldn’t get over the fact that 2 days prior we had been at home in the US and now we were on an adventure of cultural blunders in a completely foreign country, eating lunches packed for us my women we hardly even knew in a park that we couldn’t even find on the map! There was also a lovely object lesson at lunch. Andrew’s mom had packed him a huge orange, but she had peeled it with a potato peeler and cut a small part of the top off. We just really didn’t know how he was supposed to eat it. McCall decided it was a great representation of our situation because “it’s like we have things that are sort of familiar and we have our ways of doing them, and just the fact that people here do things differently makes the normal seem completely abnormal and makes us feel completely incompetent.” We just have different ideas of how to do things.
I have a great host family. Thank you Lord! Henry and Maritza are my parents, and my sister Alejandra is 16, and my brother Manfred is 8. They have had 11 students before me, so they are “pro” hosts. But speaking of doing things differently… tonight we had taquitos for dinner, meat rolled up in a taco shell and fried. I was excited when I got to the table and saw the taquitos piled with lettuce and sour cream and salsa, until I looked closer and realized the “sour cream” and “salsa” was actually ketchup and mayonaise. Yep. It was drenched in ketchup and mayonaise. But I ate it J

A few other observations:
It is colder here than I expected. It rains every day and right now I really wish I had some sweat pants and not just shorts.
People here a clean freaks. EVERYONE takes a shower EVERY day. For those of you who don’t know my showering habits… let’s just say it’s a stretch.
People dress up here. Most women wear high heels or fancy flats. I want to fit it, but I have to walk about 2 miles to school most days and then another 2 miles to language school in the afternoon, so I’m wearing my tennis shoes… go ahead, call the fashion police.

I’m doing this guys! Please keep praying for me. It is overwhelming to think about being here for over 3 months, but God is faithful to give me strength and joy for TODAY, and that is all I need.