español, poco a poco (Spanish, little by little)

      So now that we have finished our 3rd week here in Costa Rica - it seems like we should be 100% fluent in the language; I would think. WRONG! Anyway we are learning and the girls are also learning and making lots of new friends. Today Janae started her first Mandarin class. That was her native language in China and, even though she has not spoken it in almost 8 years now, I think it will come back fairly easy for her. It is being taught by a young lady that was born in Beijing and now lives in San Jose and is very fluent in Spanish but lacks a bit of English. Janae thinks that it is a bit of a challenge for her to teach but it will all work out. 

    There is a national holiday on this Thursday the 15th so all five of us are off school for Thursday and Friday both. We have not and probably wont make any big plans, most likely just work on our vocabulary words and spend some time walking around town. The weather has not changed a lot since I last wrote. Still gets down to the low 60's in the evening and then up to the low 80's in the daytime. It still rains a small amount every afternoon for 15 minutes up to 6-7 hours, but overall it is just perfect weather. Our Empleada has been teaching Karen how to prepare some of the local dishes and also how to use some of the "odd looking produce" in market.

One thing that I have missed during our time here so far is not having a bicycle to ride. I had been riding some bike in the states for that last few years and have really missed that. I did some checking into finding a used one but so far I have not had a lot of luck. I have been known to drop by the new bike shops and dream but knowing that is not an option makes it easier to just look :) Last Saturday Marcy and Janae and I went to downtown San Jose. I was looking for a book for Karen but no luck. We did however find a park with pigeons and so we went to the bakery and bought $.80 worth of stale bread and spent the next hour feeding the  birds.

     That was well worth the .80 that the bread cost. After we got home from the park we had lunch then I decided I wanted to see if I could find my way to downtown walking, without taking the bus. It was about a 50 minute walk. I printed off a map on GoogleEarth and made it without any wrong turns at all. Actually I never even got my map out so that went pretty well. I spent about an hour at the park working on my vocabulary words and trying to drum up conversations with the taxi drivers and that also went OK. There was a guy walking around selling binoculars and my conversation with him didn't go as well as I had intended. There is not enough room here to go into great detail about that but just to say that he was wanting $10.00 for them and I got him all the way down to $20.00. :( So if anyone wants a pair of binoculars I have a great pair but I won't send them, it is customer pick up only!!. 

       We are enjoying the church we are attending. It has three services 8:00, 10:30 Sunday morning and then at 6:00 pm on Saturday night. When we go to the 8:00 service, we are back home then by 10:45 and it makes a nice day yet for family bonding time. We have heard that there are several students that go to the 10:30 service so we may try that sometime too just for something different. 

         Marcy had a great 9th birthday here on Sept 5th and we appreciate the cards that were sent from the states. That was very thoughtful and meant a lot to her (and her parents). We received our first care package today from Mom and Dad U, which contained several edible items along with some commodities that are not available here, like wooden clothespins for example. 
         Here is a photo of the entrance to our apartment. 

The razor wire across is very effective in keeping people from coming in as well as keeping Marcy from getting out. :) She has appointed herself the main gate keeper and anytime we go anywhere she is the one to unlock and re-lock all three doors/gates and all three of them have two locks each. It is so interesting to see how all three girls are adapting to the lifestyle here and how they just fit right in. No complaining about not having a yard to play in, not being around their school friends,and not having the foods that they were used to. SKYPE has been a big part of that as they can still  see the "Bigs"and both sets of grand parents. 
     Continue to keep us in your prayers as we seek out what God has in store for us each coming day and for patience in our classes as they seem to be a real struggle at times. God Bless from Costa Rica. 

       Well, we finished our first week at ILE (Institudo de Lengua Espnola). It went as good as we all expected I believe, we are going to make an attempt at finding a happy medium between having it totally consume our lives while we are here, and just throwing our hands up and not spending the time needed to study and do the home work. Karen and I both have 4 (50 minute) classes each morning starting at 7:30 with 5 minutes between the first and second, 45 minutes between the 2nd and third and then 5 minutes between the third and fourth. We get out at 12:05.  On Tuesday and Thursday we have Chapel during the long break. Karen and I have no classes together. One of my teachers speaks no English at all so I have taken it upon myself to teach her all the proper and improper nouns, action verbs, correct punctuation, and most all else that I failed to learn 35 years.
       There are about 60 new students here for their first Trimester. They/we are at different levels of spanish, from none at all for a portion of us, to 4 years of high school Spanish, to some that were very advanced but never really learned the correct way of pronunciations.  Then there are about 20 or so returning students in their 2nd or 3rd Trimesters.
       All of the students here have basically two choices for living arrangements. Either an apartment like we have or you live with a Tico (local Costa Rican family). They discouraged families with children in living with a Tico family and really only want couples or singles. They STRONGLY discouraged families with Marcy's in living with Tico families. So we heeded that warning and thus ended up were we are. It really is working out great here. As most of you know we have a very short walk (a couple of minutes) to school and that is such a blessing. A lot of the students have a 15-20 minute walk and there a few that need to take a bus because of the distance.
       The school recommended that those of us in apartments to hire a "maid",(empleada) to do light cleaning and some cooking but mainly for the conversation and tutoring that takes place between them and us. The name of our empleada is Sandra. She will be with us Mon and Wed from about 9-1 and then on Fri, from 11-4. A lot of the reason that the school encourages this is that most of them are single ladies from a divorce or death of husband and they need the income. Sandra's first day for us was last Friday and it looks like she is going to work out very well. She is 52 years old and has 3 grown children in their low to mid twenties, also two grandchildren. Sandra works for one other couple at the school and also sells boxes of tea in the local parks. She helped Karen out a lot with some questions that she was having in class and we are also planing on her interacting with the girls on Fridays. Marcy still has a little ways to go on fully understanding Sandra's roll in our family. "Tell me again when our servant is coming back, I really like her". :(

       Here is a picture of our average morning breakfast with pineapple, bread and banana's. I am not looking to lose any weight while I am here as the food is so good and plentiful and for the most part quite reasonable in price.
      This was our second Sunday at the same church and this morning they had communion. It was somewhat different that our communion but not that much really. As they passed out the juice cups, I had to think of when I was growing up in Shore Mennonite, we had the actual small glass cups that had to be washed and put away until the next time. Those cups had a small but deep indentation in the bottom and it was just the right size for my, at that time, small fingertips to fit into. So I would put them on the end of my fingers and do a little finger dance, until my dad saw, then the dance was all over fairly abruptly.  Oh well, it did make a good memory anyway.
      They sang several praise songs that had a familiar tune but different words than we are used to. Some Sunday soon I want to take my camera and video one of the songs and put it on here so everyone can enjoy what our services are like here in Costa Rica. This Sunday did go better than last week and I am sure that next week will be better than today.
      Keep checking back for a new update in a couple of weeks.