the perfect point.

This post is going to be all sorts of out of order for my blog, but in the order of my life it is most perfectly placed. I still have a couple more posts I'd like to share from Costa Rica, but hey life has a way of not stopping and I just haven't had it in me to write those quite yet.

First of all -- New Blog Design!!  & I am definitely loving it. Look around a little bit before you go!

Next, here are some happenings of late:

The last week has been an emotional roller coaster  hurricane. Not even a week ago I returned home from Costa Rica, sad, excited, relived, & every other emotion you can imagine. Tuesday night I picked up my best friend from the SLC airport and Wednesday morning she left for the MTC (missionary training center) where she will begin training for her 18 month mission to CAMBODIA! yeah, I miss her already. I missed her before she even left so cue the longest 18 months in history.

Then Wednesday night my family and I attended WICKED at Capitol Theater in Salt Lake City. It was incredible. I would go again in a heartbeat. & Guess who else was there? Pres. Uchtdorf the second counselor in the LDS church. Alli, Zach, Zoe, and I all had the opportunity to say hello and shake his hand which was super neat.

Yesterday I attended the Timpanogos Temple with my dear friend Aubrey, made a quick smoothie stop, & then I purchased the beginnings of my new herb garden! I've been wanting some living, growing plants for my apartment this fall and what better plants than herbs? After planting these cute things I had a sisters night with Ali (16). & Although The Fault In Our Stars was sold out (it's okay I would have just bawled the entire time) we went to get smoothies, colored with sidewalk chalk, and ended up at home to watch a movie of our own. Heck, a day with 2 smoothies just can't be bad.

This morning my cute brother Zach (13) and I went and hiked to the "G" in Pleasant Grove which is quite a bit steeper than I remembered.

& Finally lots of pictures:

^ I know the touch of construction really adds a nice vibe and we can never get everyone looking at the camera ^

^ Pres. Uchtdorf (sorry it's not the clearest photo) ^

^ my herbs ^

                                                

 ^ hiking with this cute boy ^

^ did I mention I miss her? last selfie the morning she left ^

Costa Rica: dia typico

Here is Maren and my typical schedule each day here in Costa Rica:

X wake up between 530&6am 

X scripture study, journal writing, reading, breakfast that generally includes more eggs than I ever eat      (not a huge fan of eggs) often with some rice left out from the night before 

X 835 am start the walk to the busstop and after our 30 min drive to Heredia take another 20 minute bus to our center

X at this second bus stop expect atleast one person to try and tell you it's the wrong bus for you because you don't look like the people generally taking this bus to a really poor area and expect atleast one person to try to sell you something. Anything really. Oh and plug your nose because the smells on the way to this busstop are unreal...so disgusting. 

X 10am arrive at the center and play with kids all day. For me this is mostly doing crafts then watching the kids as they go to recess and going across the monkey bars (sounds like: bars-o-manos) because they think it is so funny when I do it. Then translating random words and phrases into English because they love to learn them and explain to them that I don't have a boyfriend ever day. Then I just have to be available to read stories, create new crafts, swing on the swings (colombios) or write secret love letters on demand.

X around 3/4 pm we leave and normally stop at the supermarket (Mas x Menos) or get some ice cream at POPS (okay so we've only done that twice..) 

X ride our 4th bus for the day back to our host family's house for a very crowded very claustrophobic 30 mins where someone may or may not have called you benches..[at least it sounded that way with an accent ;) ] but hey that's only happened once. 

X return "home," read, eat more beans and rice, and enjoy freak thunder and rain storms on the front porch

Oh & here are a couple pictures:
                                                 

Costa Rica: God Provides A Way

Our first Saturday we decided we wanted to visit the temple. Well remember how in my last post I said there are no street names? Let me expound upon that idea: while planning to visit the temple we didn't know how to get there and our options are bus, walking, or taxi. But since there are street names there are no names for the bus stop and no recorded routes so if you don't know what the place looks like you won't know when to get off. (Our first day we totally missed the stop to our house...). We looked up walking directions on google maps but they looked like this:

Turn right

Turn left

500 meters turn left

Turn right

So taxi it was. But when we walked to the nearest church and found a taxi the taxi drive didn't seem to understand the "address" we had written down so we were a little nervous as we headed off. I just sat there praying in my head and thinking we are completely at the mercy of this taxi driver. I have no idea whatsoever where we are or how to get there and I can hardly communicate with this man. But after he asked a couple people for directions we saw it!! It was SO exciting. I can't even describe how relieved we were. 

Walking through the rain to find a taxi. 

We found the temple!!

In the temple there happened to be a number of people who spoke English!! Which was wonderful because they were able to explain how to get back to Heredia seeing as we had no idea at all! They told us there was a bus that left every hour so after taking a couple pictures we saw it pulling up a little ways away and sprinted towards it barely making it. Thank goodness we didn't have to wait an hour!

After that it was very evident that we were blessed to find everything and not get lost without any problems as we traveled to the Capitol San Jose. There we ate lunch walked around and visited the national museum or money and oro (gold). It was neat but the neatest part was definitely the fact that we found our way around. It's tricky because we don't speak Spanish very well, we stand out, and we don't want to ask directions making ourselves stand out even more, can I even emphasize enough how much we stand out...!? 

Then on Sunday we looked up a couple church buildings and finally found the one we thought would be easiest to find. After getting off the buses with directions as memorized as we could have them (like I said, we try not to look lost and we don't like to pull out or phones too much) we immediately spotted the missionaries!! They happened to be walking by right as we left so that was quite a blessing. Not only that but the girl from the temple who had given us directions and spoken English and Spanish was in this ward! So she was able to help us with where to go for classes and such. Church was wonderful and Maren and I are just still so amazed how many tender mercies there were that happened this weekend alone.