Monday, July 21, 2014

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:
                                                 





Wednesday, July 16, 2014

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. 

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Costa Rica: Where The Streets Have No Name



I've been in cost rica for 5 whole days now! Monday morning Maren and I headed off on this adventure:
First things first, this is definitely a different country. We are staying with a sweet little family: a widowed mom, Rosemary, her 10 year old son Jose and her 8 year old daughter Maria Paulette. They are all wonderful and they also don't speak any English, at all. Which is actually great because we are learning loads more Spanish that way but we also have a difficult time communicating on a regular basis. 

The house is nice and I don't have any complaints! It's small but Maren and I both have our own rooms and the 5 of us share one bathroom. That's not a problem though because I don't spend much time I'm there since there is no warm water in the house (aka shower) and the mirror is pretty short and only goes up to part of my face. Oh and I've noticed my towel smells terrible because it never fully dries...ewww. 

There's also a covered porch that everyone seems to have but ours is the nicest I've seen. (See first picture). Maren and I love it! We love to sit out here to read and enjoy the limited hours of sunlight. The sun goes down at 630 pm which makes me so sad. I could never live somewhere with limited sun! And then I go to bed by 10pm and end up getting approximately 9.5 hours of sleep. It's insane!!! 




We take the bus everyday into Heredia (a larger town). It's about 30 mins and very bumpy and fast. There aren't sidewalks generally and if cars, buses, and motorcycles driving right next to you make you jumpy this is not the place for you. Seriously I could reach out and touch each bus as it drives by. Also honking is very popular but we can't quite figure out why. Sometimes it seems like "hello," sometimes "get out of the way I'm going to hit you," or maybe "get off my route this is my stop," But really who's to say. 

I don't consider Heredia to be a very pretty town in all honesty. Atleast what we've seen of it. But hopefully we'll see some prettier places soon :) there is a church that is always our landmark though and I don't know what we would do without it because have I mentioned yet the streets have NO NAMES?!?! The addresses are all like "400 metros oeste de Santa Barbara" (400 meters west of Santa Barbara) and I don't know how to figure that out! 

Parque Los Angeles - our landmark
       Parque central


But somehow we've survived our first week and we only have 3 more. We weren't able to go to the placement we are supposed to volunteer at yet because of some legal registration issues not being completed on their end but tomorrow we begin that and this week we volunteered at a kinder not run by the government. So here's some pictures and next post I promise there will be some stories :)

Oh also I cut my hair a couple weeks ago in preparation for this trip to embrace the natural craziness of humidity and I totally love it. I don't have to do anything and I end up with this. So fun!

(We helped paint a mural at the kinder.)