¡Que lindo!

Here in Costa Rica, when we walk down the street, around the feria (outdoor market), or through a store, we hear exclamations of "¡Ay, que lindo!" (how cute!) or "¡Que bello!" (how beautiful!) as people walk by us. It only took us a couple of seconds to figure out that these admirations were not in response to Dan or me, but to our darling baby. Timothy is definitely the source of much attention here. Even really little kids like to stop and peek into his stoller. People stop to admire his blue eyes, his curls, and his roly-poly chubbiness. They inquire about his age, his weight, and his eating or sleeping habits. He seems to really melt hearts when he's wearing a sombrerito (little hat). When we first arrived here, Timmy often cried when someone spoke to him in Spanish, but now he almost always rewards his admirers' Spanish baby talk with a winning smile of delight. It is so cute. Dan and I also enjoy the names we've heard him called, including guapito (handsome little guy), gordito (little fatty), blanquito (little whitey), and muñeco (doll). [cultural note: calling someone, even adults, gordito or blanquito is not offensive here and often shows endearment...]

I realized how much attention Timmy draws a couple of weeks ago when I was on a walk without him for the first time since we've been here in Costa Rica. I noticed that no one stopped to talk to me; usually when just Timothy and I are out for a walk, we talk to a lot of people. So, the lesson learned is that having a baby is a great relationship-building tool, especially in this warm culture that adores children!

It's not so easy...

The week after we wrote our previous post about accepting the unexpected, we were put to the test, and I (Sarah) was completely humbled. Right after optimistically writing that we had learned to accept inconveniences like the electricity or water being out, I realized that that really wasn't true of me.

Our running water was out first for repairs, then because a bulldozer broke a pipe during the repairs, and then because of un movimiento de la tierra (lit. "a movement of the earth"). For six out of eight days, we did not have water, along with hundreds of thousands of others in our city and the surrounding areas. The first day without water was a Saturday and by Thursday, I had had enough. Dan had gone to three different stores before he found a large bottle of drinking water to buy for us. We had only a little bit of water left of what we had saved and pouring that into the toilet did not flush it. I had absolutely no desire to accept this unexpected event! And yet, we heard on the news that no one knew when we would have water again. By Friday, we were both tired of rationing drinking water, barely washing our hands, not having showers, and giving Timmy sponge baths. Our dirty dishes were piled up in the sink on our back patio and we were out of clothes to wear. The smell of unflushed toilets in our neighborhood was getting more and more evident. Thankfully, we were able to leave for our previously planned visit to Atenas, not only to see our friends there, but to take showers! How good of the Lord to have arranged that trip for us for that weekend!

I sat down and cried when, as we were getting ready to leave Atenas on Sunday, we learned that our area was still without water. I really wanted to outright refuse to go back to San José, convinced that our water was never returning. I was not even thinking about trying to deal with the difficulty, much less gracefully and joyfully accepting the unexpected (who wrote that previous post anyway?). Dan assessed the breakdown and decided to keep the family in Atenas until Monday morning.

We took 15 gallons of drinking water back with us, with plans to share it with friends or neighbors if everyone was out of water and still couldn't find any in the stores. We were esctatic to find out that that wasn't necessary because we had water again when we got home! Apparently, it came back on sometime on Sunday night; we were among the last neighborhoods to get it back.

So, I learned that I have a long way to go before I can say that I've learned to accept the unexpected. But, I have learned to be thankful for some of the things I used to take for granted... and to keep a large supply of full water bottles on the back patio!

Accepting the Unexpected

Greetings from beautiful Costa Rica! The past several months have been a whirlwind as we adjusted to life as new parents, packed up and prepared to leave home, moved to a new country, and began language school here in San Francisco de Dos Rios. Amongst the whirlwind, there have been many new joys, unexpected struggles and important lessons. As we look back on the experience so far, we find it hard to believe that we’ve already been in Costa Rica for nearly a month. At the same time, it seems a very long time since we left home!

Our focus right now is to increase our knowledge of Spanish and to learn how to live and thrive in our new home before moving to Atenas (the location of EMI’s Central America office). While we are eager to begin our roles of project leader and intern program coordinators there, we are realizing more and more how necessary this time focused on learning is for us. One of our biggest lessons has been learning to expect to be surprised and to expect things to not necessarily be as we had originally anticipated.

Accepting this has helped us feel at home in the “furnished” apartment that surprisingly didn’t have the pots, pans, utensils, dishes, small appliances, or the automatic washer and dryer that we had understood it would have. It’s helped us to start to accept in stride things like our electricity or water being out at random times throughout the week. It also helped us very quickly change our original language school plans when we arrived at our school on orientation day and realized that we did not feel ready to put little Timmy in the nursery while we are in class. While Dan is attending conversation and grammar classes, Sarah is now studying with a private tutor so that Timothy can be with her. In all of these things, God has graciously carried us through the unexpected.

In addition to our language study, we are beginning to learn how to live here – how to shop for food at the local stores and the market, how to cook with this food, how to find our way around, how to appropriately dress our baby in the rainy season, etc. We have enjoyed exploring and putting our Spanish study into practice. There are many things that we appreciate about this culture and we are eager to become more a part of it as it becomes home to us.

Please pray for us as we learn to expect (and accept!) the unexpected.