Ant infestations and such :)

Well, this week has been a good one. It started off well because my birthday weekend was pretty much one big fiesta. Friday was great and then Saturday, we went to this park in San Jose. You climb this big hill and on top you can see all of downtown. People go there to fly these enormous kites. It's really pretty. I also enjoyed it because believe it or not, there is a Burger King across the street. We didn't go in or anything but it was just one of those little things that reminds you of home. I guess the familiarity is comforting or something. Random. Anyway, the rest of the weekend was good. We also celebrated Kim V's bday and that was a lot of fun. Pizza, chocolate cake, Nicaraguan dancing, and Spanish Scrabble. Could it get any better :)? lol we did have an ant infestation this week though. We were pretty much just waiting for it because all houses are infested with little ants here. And of course they came like an army. Picture above is of Kim trying to get them out of our food drawers. lol they are everywhere. She tried to kill them with hairspray and so far, it has worked. Our friends have an empleada (a maid) and she said that if you stick your bread (or whatever it is that is infested) in the oven for a couple of minutes...all the ants will crawl away. lol I'm pretty sure they're not "crawling away"...they are taking their last breath and frying to death in the bread. mmmmmm. They're pretty small...so you barely even notice them. Well, it's after 9 and it's time for bed lol. We have a big bball tournament tomorrow and Friday...so I need to rest up :). I'm hoping we bring home the gold...that would be sweet. :)

Birthday continued!

Birthday!!!

I have so much to blog about...I don't even know where to start! I guess I'll start by saying thanks for all the notes, comments and facebook messages for my birthday! I felt so loved! So I was wondering how I would handle my birthday, just because I was so far from home, but God totally blessed me. I did miss my family...but it was a great day! It was crazy hair day at school, so all of my students had crazy hair. It was a perfect start to the bday. They were so cute. They all brought gifts and colored pictures. I got two bouquets of flowers, candy, candles, magazines, a stuffed animal, and a lot more. I also received some great gifts from friends and other teachers: a purse, lots of peanut butter (I'm set for about 3 months now), and lots of cheese (expensive here). The day was such a blast, we had a lot of fun. The moms in my class surprised me by coming in and bringing a chocolate cake with icing and m&m's. It was such a treat! I was so overwhelmed by that! I loved it. The rest of the day went great and then after school we had our first basketball game. A lot of people came out to it, so it was so fun! We didn't win, but we put up a good game for it being out first game! I was so happy! I was kinda going nuts during it. I laughed a lot just because CR bball games are so different than U.S. bball games :). But it all came together and we had fun! Then after the game, we all went out for pizza at this great pizza place! It was fabulous! I talked to the waiter a lot and when he found out is was my birthday, he gave me some tres leches cake! That's just a popular milk cake here. It's great. Then we came back to my apartment and we opened some gifts and Kate made me a Fun-fetti cake. Definitely a treat here as well. I was just so overwhelmed by everything on my birthday. God truly blessed me and let me know that I was loved and that even though my family was far away, I have a family here in Costa Rica too :). Plus all of the notes from those of you at home was just so encouraging. So thank you to all of you that made my 23rd birthday so special. You seriously have no idea how much I appreciate it!

Worthy...

Something to think about:
Philippians 1:27
"Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ..."

Ephesians 4:1-3
"Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called..."

And lest we forget what that worthy manner is, Paul goes on in Ephesians:

"...with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being dilligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Are we daily walking in a manner worthy of our calling and worthy of the gospel of our Savior?

The Carribbean :)

This weekend we went to Puerto Viejo, which is on the Carribbean side of Costa Rica. It was absolutely beautiful. We had a three day weekend, so we took off right after school on Friday and caught a bus from San Jose to the coast. We arrived at the cabinas (our small hotel) late that night and found out that our reservation hadn't gotten through. So we had to pack up again and go to this extremely ghetto hostel. Even the person at the front desk was pretty high (not just on life if you know what I mean). So we shared the 6 bed room with no blinds (well there were some sheets over the windows) and the communal bathroom that reeked of cigarettes and whatever else was being smoked. lol. We woke up that morning and shipped out. We went back to the other hotel and got rooms there. Much better. Basically, for the whole weekend, we layed on the beach or snorkeled and ate at little Carribbean hole-in-the-wall restaurants. It was great. We rented bikes and rode on trails through the rainforest. The rainforest ran right up to the beach, so you had to walk through it to get out to the sand. It was so beautiful. It's hard to explain how beautiful the rainforest is. Everything is just so green. The vegetation is so dense and it just goes for miles. This country is just absolutely beautiful. We even heard gorillas roaring at one point. It was all just so neat. And we only paid about $100 for everything: travel, lodging, meals, bikes, etc. so I was really excited. It was wonderful to take a break from the difficulty of living in San Jose and teaching and relax for a couple of days. Thank you Jesus :)

Stomach flu (day 2)

Today was really good. I'm feeling so much better! Thanks for telling me to suck it up dad. Sorry it didn't say I wanted my dad. Don't take it personal...you sounded so offended in your comment! :) Anyway, everyone was doing better today...although we did have one accident on the floor. That was not so much fun. I just feel so bad for these sick little guys. No good. There are just so many uncontrollable bodily functions going on in kinder! THEN, we are all in line in the hallway, and one of my little boys raises his hand with an urgent message. Like the kind where he is oohing and aahing and jumping and waving. So I call on him and it is dead quiet in the hall. He mumbles something and I can't hear him, so I ask him to speak up. He pretty much shouts, "My butt itches!" Of course it echoes through the hallway. Then a Hispanic boy decides to repeat the English sentence and says that the same thing, "My butt itches too!" I was dying laughing. I had to turn around to keep them from thinking I was laughing at them. lol it was funny. I just said, "well itch it I guess!" haha. And now we're just preparing for our three day weekend vacation. We are really excited, and someone had the bright idea to listen to some 1990's Christian music. We are now busting out some Carman and DC talk songs. We highly recommend "Satan, bite the dust!" and "Addicted to Jesus". LOL :)

The stomach flu :-/

As I sip on some ginger ale, I am recounting today's events with no fond memories. :) I didn't feel well on Monday, but it passed and Tuesday I was fine. I ate a random assortment of foods yesterday and my sickness came back with a vengeance today. I'll spare you the details. Anyway, so by the time I got to school, I was feeling super-nauseous...but since subs aren't exactly available always, I decided to suck it up. Pretty much all of my students either had or have the stomach flu right now. It's going around like crazy. Well, my students finally came and within ten minutes, one of my students got sick on the floor (sorry for the grossness). I was actually pretty proud of myself for not getting sick as well, but I just stood there with him and patted his back. yuck. I felt so bad for him. Well this didn't aide in my feeling good. Then I finally got him all cleaned up and another student takes off for the bathroom. We got him all set and sent him home as well. I was just like walking around the room with the garbage can, waiting to throw it in front of the next vomit victim. Yuck. Oh the joys of kinder. :) I'm feeling a little better now with some gingerale and chicken soup...but do you know how when your sick you just want your mom? :)

Morning O' fun :)

Let me explain our ridiculous morning:

At 5 a.m. the alarm clock goes off playing our Spanish opera station really loud. I moved so quickly to turn it off that the bed broke again and I ended up on the floor. I am so sore from sleeping in our bed (quite possibly more uncomfortable than sleeping on the floor), that I need to stretch for at least 20 minutes. We all are getting ready and Kate stumbles to the fridge to get some breakfast. The freezer (ice box) door falls off (a common occurance) only to reveal that our freezer needs to be defrosted. At 6 a.m. we start putting in the pots of boiling water to aid in the defrosting process, which quickly transforms out kitchen into a small lake. We finish getting ready quickly and realize that we need to intensify the melting process, so at 6:45, I start going at it with a hair dryer and an ice pick (a blunt dinner knife) (see picture above). We finally get to where the door will close and arrive at school 5 minutes before the kids arrive. The whole day was pretty nuts, I messed up in Spanish and had our aide make a 100 more copies than she needed to (which is a huge problem for our school) but it ended well. I made brownies for our teachers meeting, which we all enjoyed. I then gave some to the guards that watch our front school gate and one asked me to marry him. I haven't been asked that in a while. LOL. :) Then some random man came to fix our bed. We think he fixed it...he said he knows he fixed it because he laid on it and rolled....and he was a big man. Far larger than us (yes, this is an exact quote from him). Overall, it has been a funny day, but I kinda like it. :)

besando=kissing

3 Quick things for you:
1. I made empanadas (kinda like a Latin American calzone...we eat them a lot) last night...they are wonderful. If you want the recipe, I would be glad to give it to you. I was so proud of myself. :)

2. Today we were walking to the store and all of the sudden we are hearing these loud kissing noises behind us. We turn around and there is this man on a bike making these ridiculously obnoxious kissing noises at us. He is shamelessy staring at us and making these noises. He passes us and continues to look back nearly running into a van parked on the street. I was giving him the dirtiest look ever...and then I said something I probably shouldn't have, but I said I hoped he fell off his bike since he wasn't watching the road. lol I forgot he couldn't understand me anyway. lol oh well. We all kinda wished he had ran into that parked van. :)

3. This old man came up to me in the store and told me something. lol there is no concept of personal space here, so he was all up in my space. He told me something and I didn't understand one of the words. So I asked again and I gathered that he said that "I was a very ______." I didn't know what the last words were...and I can't remember them either. I didn't know what he was talking about, so I just said no and laughed. And then he laughed and said, "Well I think you are." lol now the question is...what did he say? We worked on filling the blank for a while...but it could be anything. My favorite choice was ridiculously gorgeous...but he could have said ugly, smelly, stupid...a plethora of things. We may never know. Sad. :)

Dia de las Culturas!

This week has went well. I recovered from the culture shock and I'm feeling better. Once I got back into things here I started feeling better. It was a crazy week playing catch-up, so I haven't really blogged too much. It all started Monday morning. I went in to take a shower and in the shower was a life-size cardboard David Beckham that had a sign on it that said "Buenas dias mi amor (which means, good morning my love). It scared me to death! Fast forward to Thursday. On Thursday night after school, I realized I had to run back to get a curriculum. Kate asked if I could take Beckham with me because she needed him at school on Friday. So I hauled him to school and I had to walk by this construction sight and all the Ticos were laughing at the dumb American with the life size Beckham. Then, on Friday, we had Culture Day. Basically each class had a country to study. We chose Israel and we decorated our room and learned about Israel for the last several weeks. I had my students dress up like Bible characters (which was adorable). Well, realizing that in kinder, we do it big, I decided to dress up as a Bible character. I busted out a toga (sheet), a head covering and all sorts of random things. It was hilarious. I of course wanted to make a scene, so I walked to school with the girls in that outfit. The construction sight people were rolling. They must think I'm nuts. I like it :). Anyway, so Culture Day was great and the kids were so cute (pictures coming soon). They (ok, we) ate so many cookies, it wasn't even funny. We did activities, visited other rooms, and just ate all day. Everything went well until one student had a minor accident, actually it wasn't minor, it was a major bowel movement accident. Oh it was not good. I'm not even going to go into details. There are two words to describe the situation, "everywhere" and "smelly". Yuck. So yah, we got that all cleaned up and then the craziness was over. The we went to another teacher's house for a sleepover and it was such a blast. We are all different ages, but it was so fun. We stayed up so late and ate tons of food. It was so relaxing and a great time getting to know the other women we work with :) Thank God it's the weekend :)

Culture shock :)

So, I am back from the U.S. It was a whirlwind of a weekend. I left very early on Thursday morning, but I was so excited, so it was okay. I got through customs and navigated through the airport, so that was good. I had a lot of interesting conversations with people and met a lot of random, but awesome people. God really hooked me up in that way. When I landed at my first stop in the U.S., I was a little emotional. I didn't realize how mentally stressed I was with constantly speaking Spanish and traveling on my own. It was so relieving to be back in a familiar place where I knew what people were saying all the time. It was weird because I had no idea how overwhelming it would be. The first U.S. person in customs said, "hello!" and I replied, "Buenas!" (the normal greeting here). :) oops. Then when I arrived at my final destination and I hugged my mom, I actually cried. It was so random. It was just such an overwhelming release, that I just started crying. Really weird for me. We had so much fun though. We talked long into the night. It was wonderful to walk on carpeted floors, throw my toilet paper in the toilet, and eat lots of wonderful things. For example, when I landed in America, I ordered a huge plate of cheese ziti (since we ration cheese so much here due to the price) and I bought a big bag of peanut m & m's. It was great. I probably looked like a pig just gulping it down, but it was great! On Friday and Saturday, we were in the Outer Banks for Britt's wedding. It was such a blast. We had so much fun dancing and hanging out. It was great to be able to stay in the same house as her before she got married. The wedding was beautiful...right on the sound...and so the water and the sunset were beautiful. It was awesome. Oh how I love that family. Plus, I was so encouraged by how much Britt and Sam love each other. It was just so neat to see my best friend from my childhood go from a crazy little girl to even crazier, but beautiful and wonderful married woman. So awesome. I loved it. AND, I caught the bouquet...which made it even better! With all the weddings I've been in and at this summer and with my height- can you believe I've never caught the bouquet? But I did and everyone kept saying, "your next!" lol yah right. I doubt it...but I mean God is in control. I don't even have time for a guy right now, but that is besides the point. Anyway, so then I came back home and I was really emotional again and feeling pretty sick . I think it was a combination of eating all the American foods and all the excitement and nerves going on. My body was just going crazy. But I made it back, after a pretty scary and traumatic experience with a random taxi driver late at night (thank you for your prayers of safe travels...I definitely felt them). And now I'm here...readjusting to Costa Rican life. It's tough to go back in forth, but it was fun. It made me think a lot about life. I keep thinking about the verse that Jesus talks about "leaving father and mother" for Him and reminding myself how this is what God is calling me to do now :/. So that's a basic summary. Thank you for your prayers. I also was welcomed back by having one of my student's families ask me over for dinner. We had wonderful food and ice cream and played hide and go seek :). It was so much fun. Between this weekend and today, I have so much to be thankful for. It's so encouraging to me to know that I have people that love me and want to care for me both at home in America...and at home here thousands of miles away in Costa Rica. Gracias a Jesus :)

Funny kinder comments...

This week has gone really well. I'm just preparing and trying to get everything finished before I leave tomorrow. I am so excited. I'm really excited to see my mom :). Yay! These last couple days have been funny. The students are cracking me up. One funny story is about a sweet, sweet boy in my class. He is always just such a good kid (God bless him). Anyway, we are studying Israel for our schoolwide Culture Day and so we were talking about Israel. I mentioned that I had been to Israel and we talked about how Jesus was born there. We discussed how no, I did not see Jesus when I traveled there and how yes, that was a bummer. This little boy's mom came up to me the next day cracking up and said he came home really bummed. When he finally explained what was wrong he said, "Teacher went to Israel, but hers didn't see Jesus." How cute is that? This is the same kid that speaks awesome Spanglish. Love him. Another cute story: I had one of my Costa Rican girls volunteer to pray this morning. She took forever to say three lines, but here was her prayer (oh and the whole class repeats after every line) : Gracias a Dios (Thank you God)...2 min pause....por el kinder (for kindergarten)...3 min pause...y por Santiago G. (and for Santiago G.). Santi G. is her "boyfriend" in the class. I could not contain myself. It was so cute. Plus to have everyone in the class repeat that, I was dying laughing. I felt so bad at laughing at her prayer but her sincerity and Santiago's bright red face was killing me. lol maybe those are funnier in person, but I loved it :) Anyway, so that's just a little humor for you. And one last thing that I think is pretty cool. In the States, when greeting someone, we automatically ask, "How are you?" and the person will just reply, "good." They have that here, but all the Christians here say it so wonderfully. When you ask "como estas?" the reply is "bien, gracias a Dios" which literally translates "Good, thanks be to God!" I just think that's so neat. Even in the little everyday conversation, God is being given the glory. Maybe something we should try instead of replying with the typical "good." Thanks be to God that we can say we are doing well!