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.