Where we live now...

I thought it might be interesting for you all to see where we live now. Since the beginning of June, we have been renting a little, furnished apartment in San Francisco de Dos Rios, the area of San José where our language school is located. We really love our neighborhood. What we love most about it is that we can walk everywhere - to school, the market, the bakery, the meat shop, some restaurants, and five different parks.

The photos I'm posting are from when we first moved in, so our place looks a little different (and a lot more crowded!) now. But, these at least give an idea of what it's like. I know if I wait to take recent photos, I'll never write this post! The top photo above is our apartment building (ours is the top door on the right) and the second photo above is the view we have from our front porch. Here's what it's like inside:

the main room (add a rug, desk, high chair and play pen to imagine how it is now!)

the eating area (and the front door)

the kitchen (and the door to the laundry patio)

our bedroom

what Timmy's room looked like before we got a crib and rocking chair

the laundry patio

You may have noticed we have bars on all our windows. That is standard here in the city. Every house or apartment building is surrounded by a wall, often with barbed wire or razor wire on top of it, with a locked gate and bars on the windows. It might look a little scary, but that's just part of life in the city here. We are used to it now, and in some ways, I like having a wall and a gate around our place; I definitely feel safe inside my home! I won't miss the bars, though, and I'm looking forward to the unobstructed views of the mountains we'll have from our house in Atenas. Check back soon to see where we will be living soon!

octubre

We have somewhat neglected our blog for the past month, even though there has been a lot to write about. In fact, I (Sarah) have a growing list of blog post ideas on a Post-It note on our computer, including posts about Costa Rica's Independence Day (which happened six weeks ago!), some of the funny Spanish mistakes we've been making, our ongoing fight with las hormigas, our house in Atenas, etc., etc. etc. The list keeps getting added to, but our blog does not!

My excuse, or at least my main excuse, is that October was not the easiest of months for us. Now that it is the start of November, we are nearing the half a year mark of living here. With that, some of the struggles of cultural adaptation have arisen; we sometimes just have a hard time not understanding the language (we call it a Bad Spanish Day), or miss home more than usual, or wonder when we'll do a better job getting to know people in this new place. In the midst of that, our whole family got sick with colds, nausea, and ear infections (there were six infected ears in our household a couple of weeks ago!). We were really sick and missed a lot of classes. We're beginning to study grammar concepts I've never studied before, so missing class was rough. We were sick during a week when it was very cold (for Costa Rica) and rainy. We had solid rain for four days straight! We felt pretty low, but as always, God lifted us up.

He brought us a breath of fresh air, a cool, refreshing breeze all the way from Kansas - my mom! Months ago, my mom planned to visit us during the last week of October and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. God is so wise! Having my mom with us for a week gave us a link with home that comforted our homesickness. It gave us time to rest and recover from being sick, thanks to her help with Timmy and housework and to her treat of a relaxing weekend at a lovely inn in Atenas. As we showed her around and introduced her to people at school or met new people with her in Atenas, we were reminded of what we love about living and working here in Costa Rica. And, of course, Timmy had a great time playing with and snuggling his abuelita all week long! (hmm... now I'm adding another topic to my blog post list: Timmy's time with his grandma...)

We were also blessed with another breath of fresh air - spiritual emphasis week at our school. The school arranged for a pastor from St. Croix (in the Virgin Islands) to come speak to our student body twice a day every day this past week. His talks definitely were encouraging and challenging as they addressed issues that we face here and in our walk with the Lord. But, what really brought the refreshing, cool breeze was the change in our schedule. Our classes were shortened to make time for the extra chapel times and our teachers could not give us any homework or tests all week long. Having this more relaxed schedule was a blessing to us. The revised schedule worked out so that I had extra time every day that I could spend gazing at the mountains and communing with the Lord. That time refreshed my soul! (another addition to the list: what I've been learning from the Word lately...)

Now we're looking ahead to six more weeks of language school and of living here in San José. It's hard to believe that we're that close to the end of this chapter in our lives. Please pray for us to remain refreshed as we finish.

More to come soon... if I can ever get started on that list of mine...

Just a gecko...

Every once in a while, one of us says something that reminds us that life really is different for us than it used to be. These comments or questions are never really anything very significant, but they are different enough from anything we used to say that we realize life has changed since moving to Costa Rica. Here are just a few examples:

• "Oh, it's just a gecko..." This was Dan's nonchalant, reassuring answer to my question of what our friends' dog was barking at late at night when we were housesitting for them. We just didn't say things like that in Kansas. My response was simply, "oh, ok," which was quite the contrast to when we first got here and I cowered under the blanket on our bed until Dan chased the gecko hanging out on the wall above our door out of our apartment! (Why I was scared of a gecko, I do not know...)


• "How many piñas did you get at the market?" We rarely ate pineapple back in the States, but here we eat it almost every day. It's so good and very common here. And, for some reason, we never call it pineapple any more; it's always piña, whether we're speaking Spanish or English.


• "Do you want gallo pinto or arroz con pollo for dinner tonight?" We've been enjoying learning how to make traditional Costa Rican food. Even though we didn't know what these two dishes were before moving here, we know prepare them on an almost weekly basis.


• "We have a lot of homework tonight." The transition back to being students has been interesting for us. It's been a while since either of us were thinking about our own test scores or staying up late to finish preparing for the next day's presentation.


• "Do you have your rainjacket and umbrella?" We obviously asked this question occasionally in Kansas, but definitely not daily as we do here. When we leave for school in the morning, it's usually sunny and clear. By early afternoon, it's almost assurredly raining. Because of this, we never leave home without an umbrella.


• "Oh, the roof's leaking... Can you bring me a bowl?" Along with the rainy season comes a leaky roof, at least in our case. It's only in one spot and as long as we can get a bucket or bowl under the leak right away, it's not really a problem.


• "Wow, it's 7:00! We really slept in!" I could count on one hand the number of times we've said this since moving here. While it certainly has a lot to do with being new parents (and not just living in a new culture), I definitely did not used to consider 7am a luxurious sleeping-in time. The days start early here, with the sun beginning to rise around 5am. Costa Ricans in general get up with the sun and from our neighbors' sounds of laundry, showers, and breakfasts being made starting around 5:30am, sleeping in past 6am is uncommon for us now.


• "Can you drain the washing machine for me, please?" Refer to our previous post entitled "Laundry, Costa Rican style" for an explanation of this one!


• "Is that a ficus tree!?" We love the tropical plants and flowers that we see everywhere here. We are constantly surprised by seeing what we used to think of as a houseplant growing in someone's garden or in the park. We've even see poinsettias growing on the side of the road. We used to have a little ficus tree in our apartment in Kansas City. We saw this ficus tree when my family was here visiting (that's my mom and brother under it):

This list could go on and on. We are learning a lot from our experiences and it's fun to recognize that things that seemed strange when we first got here now seem completely normal and familiar. We still have a lot of learning to do, though!

¡Feliz cumplimes!

In Latin America, it is not uncommon to get your face knocked into your own cake on your birthday. That's right; your friends or family wait until you've just blown out the candles, and before you stop leaning over your cake, someone pushes your face right into the cake! ¡Feliz cumpleaños!

I remember experiencing this years ago with some friends from Chile and Colombia. I was a little shocked at first, but I participated fully in the all-out food fight that followed. Conveniently, I don't have the photos of that event here in Costa Rica, so they can't make it into our blog!

We have yet to experience this rather... um, aggressive... tradition here. Dan's birthday came after only being here for a few weeks and his face fortunately was not shoved into his cake. We did get a cake from our neighborhood bakery in celebration of Timothy turning 6 months old. No, we did not push our baby's face into his cake. But, it seemed that after realizing that he wasn't going to get to eat his own cake, he would take matters into his own hands. Before I could stop him, his hand was in the cake and then he smeared the whipped cream frosting on his foot. ¡Buen provecho!

The disappointment of not getting to eat his cake was reconciled by getting to eat rice cereal for the first time. It wasn't surprising to us that our little guy had no trouble figuring out how to eat from a spoon. He loves to eat and seems to really love both rice cereal and oatmeal. By the time he's done with the bowl of cereal, it looks like he's had his face pushed into the bowl!

Our blog readers can be assured that if one of us ever does personally experience the shove-the-birthday-guy's-face-into-the-cake tradition, we'll write another blog post about it!

Half a year ago...

Half a year ago, our lives were changed. We entered a new stage in life, one that we had been anxiously awaiting for a long time. Half a year ago, we experienced the miracle of new life. We were given the gift of a love we had not yet known and now can't imagine being without. Half a year ago, we welcomed Timothy Daniel into the world. Here's a photo tribute to his first six months:

March 3rd, 2008, the day Timothy was born:

1 month old and already interested in everything around him:

2 months old and CUTE:

3 months old and relaxing in a hammock just a couple of days after our arrival in Costa Rica:

4 months old and enjoying his first visit to the beach:

5 months old and sitting up:

6 months old and "helping" fold the laundry:

We are so grateful for the past six months and are excited to watch our little guy continue to grow and learn! As we say about all good things here in Costa Rica, ¡pura vida!.

Surprise!

We were pretty excited when we came home from school to find this on our front porch:

Muchísimas gracias to Doña Ana Isabel (our landlady) for this blessing!