Starting over...

So this will be a quick summary of life for you :). I'm basically starting over in a lot of areas of my life right now. lol and I've reached the point that it's better not to think about the work to be done. I remember thinking in college that there was no way that I would ever be a stressed as I was during college because I was so involved in school, ministries, basketball, friends, etc. lol I was wrong...lol I guess it's just a different craziness. I love it, but it's crazy. For example, I'm starting up the special ed program at our school right? Well, it's going well but we were surprised by the incoming of three students with Autism coming in. I'm actually really excited about working with them because they are really sweet and they have an awesome family...but that was just something that wasn't really expected. Another example, I'm now living with a Costa Rican family, which I love. The food has been great and I'm so excited about the Spanish I'm learning. Except, tonight...I had so much to do...and I ended up talking to my "mom" in Spanish for two hours! It was great...but not much was accomplished! I'm also kind of starting over in my kindergarten classroom. I lost 5 students and I'm gaining four, so my whole classroom dynamics has changed. There are four new boys, who are great, but it's just different. And, we are only allowed to speak in English now, so I'm sure you can image how my Spanish speakers are reacting! :) So it's all been really interesting, but I am truly loving where God has me. I know that there are a lot of different things going on, but I know He wouldn't give me anything that I can't handle, so here we are! I was out running earlier and just once again was hit with the realization that I live in a foreign country, live with a family that doesn't speak my language, teach in a school where half of my class doesn't understand me, eat lots of things that I don't know what they are, shower in a shower that is heated by something called a "widowmaker" (scary), spend most of my day singing and dancing around to capture the attention of five year olds, and lots of other things that I didn't really expect when I had my plan for my life (back in the day when I thought I was in control of the plan for my life) :). Bueno, I love this and I love not knowing...it's so much better to live in the moment and be "tranquila" about it. God is good and He is faithful to meet our needs AND provide in ways beyond what we could have ever expected. It doesn't get much better than that :).

Mi casa nueva (My new house)

Hola! Well, I'm back in Costa Rica. Thank you for all of you that were praying for safe travels. I arrived safely and dove right into craziness! I moved into my new house. I am going to be living with Costa Ricans for this semester to learn more about the culture and Spanish. First, let me backtrack. I loved being home. Living here has made me appreciate America, my family and my friends so much more. For a brief synopsis: I so enjoyed laying around and watching U.C. basketball and football (minus the loss). I loved throwing t.p. in the toilet. I loved having a waffle party with my family. I loved serving a City Gospel mission and then going to the party at church on New Years. I loved church in English. I loved being with my family and seeing two of my best friends in the whole world. There is a lot more...but mainly I just wanted to say that I loved seeing you all. The best thing about coming back here is that is now summer and there is no rain. Solamente sunshine and it is gorgeous. I love it. Since I've been here, I have overcome some major challenges...lol besides talking with Kate and Kim and my family occasionally, I have only talked in Spanish. My brain hurts. I'm being humbled all over again because you feel like such a child when you don't understand and when you just want to communicate what is going on. This is my family underneath (minus their older son and daughter). I look really tall, lol and I am taller than them, however, I am standing on higher ground (bad choice).I mean, I can do it decently, but it drives me nuts not being fluent :). Poco a poco (little by little) is what they say. So yesterday I just moved in and stuff. I found two massive cockroaches in my room and after a minor breakdown and pep-talk, I overcame them. lol I love Costa Rica. Today was great. Me and my Tica mom went walking and bought Coco milk. Some lady just takes a machetti and chops off the top and puts a straw in it for like 50 cents. The milk inside is pretty tasty. Then, we went to church at an awesome church and we sang "How great is our God" in Spanish. That's my favorite. Then we went into the mountains for my Tico dad's birthday. It was absolutely beautiful. The mountains, waterfalls, and rivers were so amazing. At the restaurant, they told me to get the pescado entero, which translates to an entire fish. lol I knew what was coming...and of course as I expected, it was a baked fish with all but the eyes. I've eaten that once before in Israel, so it was good, but the funniest thing was my Tico sister took the crispy tail of the fish, but salt on it and crunched right into it. lol she ate the tail like a potato chip. Interesante! Then, we drove home and went to this church. Apparently we were in the first city and capital of Costa Rica (it has since been changed), but there was this old church with a lot of history, so they stopped to show me. Outside there were these fountains of flowing water. I had some trouble understanding, but apparently some believe it to be healing water and so people go and drink it and put their feet in it and stuff. I don't know what was going on, but I did end up sticking my hands in and drinking some. lol I need to research what I just did on the internet. Finally we came home like 5 hours later and I am exhausted. This is long, so I'm going to go, but I did post some fun pics for you! Later!

HOME!!!!

I'M HOME!!!! Hooray! I'm so excited! It was crazy, but I finally made it! I didn't post in a long time because we went to Al Reynal volcano for the weekend. It was a lot of fun! We saw a lot of awesome things...pics to come. It was absolutely hysterical. We have a lot of funny stories. In summary...it was me, Tricia, Kate, and Kate's aunt and uncle staying in this ghetto hostel. The floor was recently stained a reddish color...but it was splattered everywhere...so it looked like someone was murdered up in there. Plus, another person was staying with us...an 84 year old women from Arizona traveling by herself through Costa Rica. And she was crazy...we loved it. The best story is really funny :) Pardon my language in the following story :) So I had to ask for blankets at the hostel. I went and asked but wasn't doing well in Spanish, so I tried to ask the front desk men for the blankets in English. I used the word "sheets" to explain and they all looked super surpised and offended. They kept saying they didn't understand what was on the bed and why it was there. I was trying so hard to explain in English and Spanish and it was not going well. So one finally went up to look at the sheets and came back down saying that he did not know what the problem was. By this time I was just so beside myself that they weren't understanding me. Finally one was like, why do you want new bedding...there is no garbage on the bed! and then something like, "we don't see sheet on the bed. I sat there thinking and then I realized that they had no idea what I was talking about because they thought I was saying "sh*t." lol sorry about the curse word. lol it was hysterical. You see, in Spanish, the "i" sound is the long "e" sound. Therefore, sheet sounds a whole lot like our English curse word for poo. It was so bad. They thought I was cussing them out! I mean, you kind of had to be there, but it was hysterical. I was also mispronouncing the word for sheet...so in Spanish when I asked, I used the spanish word for savannah. lol I apologized like a million times. anyway...but now I'm home. I left Tuesday, but there was a wheel problem, so I had to spend the night again in Costa Rica. They put us up in a super-nice hotel room. It was crazy. I met some really cool people though and made a friend from Mississippi. It was actually fun. I finally got home Wednesday afternoon and I was greeted by my parents and grandparents and Brian and Sandy Scheurk. It was fabulous! We went to LaRosa's for dinner and we had so much fun. Then my best friend Rachel came to visit. Since then I've been eating wonderful food, shopping and doing Christmas stuff. I'm loving throwing toilet paper in the toilet, sleeping in my bed, and eating wonderful cereal and milk. lol it's the little things :) I'm so excited to be here and I'm so excited to see everyone. Thank you Jesus!

Ready...

I don't have much to say as of right now...I've been ridiculously busy...

and I am so ready to come home :) I can't wait!

Bronch-Tonsil-CostaRican-itis...

Hello! This week has been an interesting one :) I came down with some sort of sicknesses. I have had a cough for about two weeks and then all of the sudden I took a turn for the worse. :( lol so I had to come home from school and a missionary doctor came over and pronounced me with tonsillitis and bronchitis of some sort...then prescribed me these huge antibiotic pills. So I had to miss two more days of school. No good. Apparently there are a lot of respiratory problems down here because we are at a new altitude and with all the mold and weird climate...it just messes up your lungs. I don't really know. It rain so much down here and it has actually been pretty chilly the last few weeks. Then today it was randomly warm and sunny. I laid outside for a while at like 10 a.m. and I got a sunburn. lol me and Diane and Kate were laying out loving Costa Rica because we were getting sunburn in December and because we were chowing down on my awesome candy corn. It was great. good times...tonight we are going to watch Elf to get us in the Christmas spirit. Not that we need anything to get us in the Christmas spirit. We are so excited to come home and see everyone. Yesterday we had our all staff Christmas party...country themed. We went to this "country" restuarant and dressed up like cowboys. It was a blast. Costa Ricans definitely have made line-dancing their own. :)

Thanksgiving and Trophy #2!!!

So a good friend reminded me that I haven't blogged in a week!!! Yes...I'm still alive...it's just been so crazy busy here. Since I blogged last, a lot has happened. Since the semester is winding down...there is a lot going on. Can you believe it is December?? I can't believe that I've been here for almost 3 1/2 months! I love it...but I am super-excited to come home soon!! Last week was great. Thanksgiving was a little rough. Mainly because we had a half day of school on Thanksgiving and then we had to go to school on Friday. I basically rolled into school after eating that much. The day was good though. I missed my family a lot, but we had a big get-together at a mission house with like 60 people. It was awesome to be with that many people that are passionately serving the Lord...people that are willing to sacrifice Thanksgiving to follow God's call. I was really struck by that. Truly awesome. I was also struck by the fact that someone brought back sweet potatoes from the states and made sweet potato casserole. I was REALLY pumped about that. And no, we didn't have turkey..but we had some really great chicken (way cheaper that turkey down here). I called my family...and I didn't really cry except I was a little teary-eyed when I was talking to my parents. One picture above is of Thanksgiving. Moving on...this past weekend was really good. A little chilly for Costa Rica, but good. Some new developments: I really appreciate your prayers for Kate and I as we look for Tico families to live with. We have found families and will move in with them in January. Both families and houses are great and the best part is that they are only two houses down from one another :). I also found a Spanish tutor for next semester, so I'm excited about that. Let's see...what else...my mom sent me a bag of candy corn...much appreciated. Except my team stole half of it. Speaking of the boys...we had our big tournament on Saturday. It was exhausting to plan and carry out, but it came together well. They did great!. We won our first game on a buzzer shot by my pointguard. It was great. We lost our second game, but we still got second place...so we were pretty excited. I love those boys. So now our season is pretty much over minus our banquet...and I'm relieved because of time, but sad because I love working with them. Anyway, it was a great season and now we have two trophies in our office! Finally, on Sunday we had a Christmas party at my supervisor's house and it was awesome. It felt like home...and the best part was that after leaving...we didn't have to run and heat up the car. It's still warm. Thank you Jesus. :) Thanks for reading!

Hunt for a family :)

This past week was a good one. It was so busy I barely had time to blog at all. I'm trying to think of the highlights....there were pretty many. One big thing for this week is that we started interviewing families to live with next semester. It's been pretty awkward to interview people to see if you want to live with them...especially when it's in another language. I do want to say thanks for you prayers though...first, we have one family that we are really excited about. Secondly, thank you for praying for my Spanish. I feel like the Lord is helping me so much with understanding. :). Another highlight this week was that we went on field trip. oh my goodness...I was so stressed out. Being in charge of 18 five-year-old lives was a little more than I could handle. We had so much fun and the kids absolutely loved the Children's Museum...but I was pretty much crazy. Plus, I had to translate the whole time because I was pretty much the only teacher/staff person that could remotely speak both languages. lol I was exausted when we got back. I was just praising the Lord that everyone came back alive, healthy and happy. And there were no bodily function issues. Gracias a Dios! When we got home I had to switch gears because then we had a basketball game...which is always a huge production and a massive amount of work. It was great though because we won! We were all real excited! On Saturday, we we had a pretty busy day and then ended it with a trip to McDonald's for one of my student's birthday. It was so funny because I dragged Kate and Kim with me. We had our first cheeseburger in 3 months (amazing huh?) and real french fries. Crazy stuff. Then we went out and rocked the grocery store. You know you are not cool when you get all dressed to go grocery shopping on Saturday night. Finally, today has been fun. I'm learning how to cook all this random stuff. I want to make pumpkin bread for our teacher's meeting on Tuesday, and it has turned into quite the ordeal. I am making it absolutely from scratch...like literally. I mean, I am boiling the pumpkin for 1 1/2 hours to make the puree...grinding the ginger root... craziness. lol I just keep thinking that grandma will be so proud :). Well that's enough for tonight...I need to go stir my pumpkin. Adios!