Prayer requests

We have entered the rainy season. It is usually sunny or overcast and dry each morning. It then starts to rain around lunchtime and rains the rest of the day. It is still warm (in the 70's) and humid. In this environment colds and viruses are common especially if you are new here. I have felt cruddy since Friday and Tanner had a fever yesterday so we are both home sick today. It's great to finally have a chance to write all the things that have been floating around in my head, but I don't like to miss school. Tanner seems to feel better today. We would appreciate prayers for good health as we experience rain and dampness that beats Oregon!

We are all learning Spanish slowly but surely. We would appreciate prayers that our brains would be sponges to soak up the language that we hear all around us. Laura is having the hardest time since she resists learning Spanish. She understands more than she will speak. It is very hard as a parent to know that if she would only try it would come easy.

Wisdom as we parent our children in a different land and culture and as they go through the ups and downs of culture shock.

Prayer that we won't get distracted or forget to pray together as a couple, together as a family as well as to study the Bible alone, together, and as a family. Also that we will be fed through the sermon's we brought from home until we can understand the Spanish preaching at church.

Thank you so much!

Cindy

The mail system in Costa Rica

Many have asked us if they can send us things by snail mail. It is possible and we are told it should arrive to us within 2-3 weeks; although after two weeks we are still waiting for something from Tim's parents. It isn't a good idea to send anything valuable or brand new as we may never see it. The school we attend has a post office box in Turrialba that is checked every week. The address is: Christian Immersion Spanish Academy (CISA), 28-7150, Turrialba, Costa Rica.

We live in a house with no address. There is no house number and the three roads that intersect at our house do not have names. The only way to have a mailing address is to have a post office box in a town of relatively substantial size.

It's fun to read addresses on labels of products made in Costa Rica. If it does not list a post office box, it will say so many meters from some well known factory or public school, or other such building.

We have an important document to send to our lawyer in San Jose. It is needed to complete our visa paperwork. To send it to her office, we take it to the bus station in Turrialba where it is addressed to her courier. The bus takes it to San Jose where her courier will pick it up and deliver it to her office. We already used this method once and it worked great! The bus company provides a tracking number so we can make sure the delivery arrives.

One last thing. Laura sent a card to her class in the States and it cost less to mail it from here than to mail it within the same town in the US! Now that I know this we'll have to try snail mail more often!

Cindy

Bugs

I'm sorry that I don't have some cool pictures of a couple bug visitors that we've had in our house, but I've been too busy running away and screaming. I don't mind bugs in general, if they are small. Most of the bugs here are small, but occasionally a big one likes to make itself known.

During our first week here we stayed at a little cabin/bungalow at an orphanage. They had misunderstood that we were coming the next day so they had not cleaned house for us. When I went to put our groceries away in the fridge I found a giant cockroach in the vegetable crisper. It was dead, but I really wonder how it got in there and if it got so big from feasting on the left over food in there. I threw out the food and Tim threw out the cockroach.

When I was putting away groceries for the first time in our current home I opened up a cupboard to be greeted by a huge brown spider the size of the palm of my hand. The man who had taken us shopping told us that it was not poisonous, just a common house spider. He was kind enough to kill it for us. I have not seen any more of these, but I do open the cupboard doors cautiously.

The other day Tim looked above the archway to our kitchen and saw a huge cockroach. He would sweep it out the door to the pack porch only to have it run back in under the large crack at the bottom of the door. He eventually was able to scoop it up with the broom and throw it out in the yard.

Other bugs here are small and mighty, like the little "hormiga's" that look like sugar ants but have a king size bite. They swarmed up the kids legs one day and left several bite marks. Bigger red ants like to tear apart leaves and carry huge pieces on their backs. They make trails from a tree or bush to their anthill and it looks like a bunch of walking leaves.

We have several loud crickets in our back yard that are black with orange stripes. The kids love to look at them. There are also a large variety of pretty butterflies. The variety that we have seen are black with some type of red or yellow marking.

Not a bug, but also very fun to watch are the gecko's that like to come into our house through the windows each evening to feast on small moths, flies, flying ants, etc.

The kids have an assortment of toy bugs that they love to play with. Some are outside and some are inside. I wonder when the time will come that I go to pick up a fake bug only to find that it is alive!

Cindy

Cooking in Costa Rica

Our diet, as well as the local people here, consists primarily of rice, beans, tortillas (corn), chicken, eggs, a small amount of beef, and a large variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. I love the way we eat here and I'm having fun trying out new and local foods with recipes in Spanish.

I do most of our shopping in Turrialba, but if I need something in a hurry there are little kiosk type shops throughout our neighborhood. Produce trucks drive around the neighborhood and you can buy things from them, but I never know when they will come. They seem to come less now that it is raining more.

On Friday and Saturday there is a large farmer's market in Turrialba. Farmers come from all around to sell their produce. There you can buy any number of fruits and vegetables, some of which I've never seen or heard of. We tried this one vegetable that looks like a giant root w/ bark on the outside and white flesh on the inside. You can cook it like a potato and is very rich and delicious. I made a kind of pizza crust using this vegetable that was first cooked then mashed and topped with vegetables covered in cheese. It was a veggie pizza! I could hardly stop eating it.

A very common meal for us is home-made refried beans (very easy to make and w/o any fat either), scrambled eggs, and cheese (like "squeaky cheese" in the States) on a corn tortilla with home-made salsa. If we are missing American food we usually have French toast, oatmeal, or hot dogs. Peanut butter is a treat and we try to keep it in the cupboard. It is only available in Turrialba, but the last time we went shopping the store was out of Peanut Butter.

I cook on a propane stove. It took me some days to learn how to light the thing, but now I have it down. I will be a pro at using our camp stove in the States! The oven is a little tricky since it does not tell you any temperatures. I tried to find an oven thermometer in Turrialba, but was told that it would be very expensive. So now I just babysit any food I'm cooking and adjust the heat as needed to prevent things from burning.

All said, I am really having fun with cooking--much more than I ever did back home. It is always an adventure!

Cindy

Doing laundry

I could easily spend a large portion of my day doing laundry. People here do laundry every morning and I see now why this is so. It takes a long time!

The typical washing machine here in Tuis is one that requires you to first hand scrub your clothes, then have it soak in a gentle cycle, then hand rinse, then machine spin (the most helpful thing the machine does), then hang your laundry to dry. What isn't dry after a day is then put in the dryer to get out any dampness (when it isn't standing in a pool of rainwater).

Laura loves to help me with laundry. She likes to also copy what I'm doing and wash all her doll clothing.

Cindy

Cindy it is

For all of you out there who are curious to know, I have kept the name Cindy. Relieved? As it turns out, Cindy is a common name here so it is easy for people to remember. I'm already used to the way people call me "Seendee". I think I might even like it...a little.

Cindy

How we spend our days

We have been in Costa Rica for one month! It seems like we have been here much longer and at the same time it seems like we just arrived since so many things are still so new and different to us. We are finding our way, settling into a schedule, and adjusting to the changes.

We are up at sometime between 6 and 7am each day, depending on the road noise and when Tanner comes to our bedside to say, "It's morning!" Once we are up, we do the normal stuff like eat and get ready for the day. Laura does the first half of her Math assignment for the day and we read and discuss a chapter from Laura's new Story Bible. The kids play, I go for a long walk, Tim checks e-mail, we have our personal quiet time and if there is time Tim may play his guitar and I work on chores like laundry.

Language school starts at 9 am and we walk so we are out the door by 8:40ish. It is a nice walk and we pass many people who must stop and tell us how cute the kids are. We all have class from 9-12 each day and then we walk home. After lunch we all have a siesta for one hour. Tanner usually sleeps longer and Laura never sleeps, but plays quietly during her siesta.

Laura then does home school. We are working on her Reading, Writing, Spelling, and Math until the fall and then we'll add English grammar as well. Laura is eager to learn though often doesn't like to be taught.

By 4 pm the kids are playing, Tim and I are studying Spanish, doing chores, or Tim plays the guitar, checks e-mail, etc. Life runs at a much slower pace here and life is also much more simple. We are home most evenings, except that we have cooking class at 4 pm on Tuesdays and church at 4pm on Sundays. On Wednesday evenings we listen to a sermon in English at our house.

We are all to bed by 9 pm though sometimes it is earlier and occasionally it is later. Last night the kids and I were all asleep by 7:30 or 8 pm.

Sound boring? We are loving it, though I must admit that at times I am bored. What I am learning is that my home is not here on earth so it is ok if things don't feel like home to me. I am just a pilgrim here for a short time before I go home to my "true" home. It is difficult to feel the impact of this when I am in the States because I am so "at home" there. Here I realize what it means to be a pilgrim. Another thing I realize is that in the States I fill up my time with so many things just to keep busy when God desires me to slow down and spend more time with Him and be content to just "be".

Cindy

About Costa Rica and our first week at CISA

I guess we were warned, but it didn't prepare us for the shock to our system. We heard Costa Ricans get up early but we figured that meant SOME Costa Ricans and that they would be quiet. We were wrong.

Since it is warm here year-around people use the outdoors as part of their living space. When the sun rises at 5:30am people come out of their houses and start their day. Our neighbor is adding a back porch to their house; hammering and sawing started before 6am.

The animals here seem to be confused. This morning a cacophony of birds began chirping, chattering and singing at 3:45am and continued until 6:00. The roosters seem to understand this culture too since they crow from shortly after midnight until the sun rises and then they stop.

This was our first week of Language School at Christian Immersion Spanish Academy (CISA) www.cisacostarica.com. As with most of Costa Rica, we've felt warmly welcomed. Although we came knowing almost no Spanish we are excited about how much we have learned already. The staff assures us, via hand motions and Spanish baby-talk, that after four months we will be chattering away in Espanol (I wish I could find how to include the "~" on the "n").

Our tuition includes a furnished three bedroom rental house. It's small by US standards but perfect for us. We have kept Tanner and Laura's favorite toys packed until we arrived here and once we unpacked Tanner's toy Thomas trains he never wanted to leave the house, crying all the way to language school for the first three days.

We even enjoyed our first houseguest. Josh, an intern with eMi-AL, spent the first couple day with us helping us adjust to Tuis and giving him an opportunity to visit the friends he made while he was a language school student here a few months ago.

We walk about ten minutes to language school each day. The kids have a separate class where they do crafts and play games. Just like our classes, theirs are all in Spanish.

CISA is in a small rural town called Tuis. The town is surrounded by sugar cane fields and coffee plantations. The closest air-conditioning is in the neighboring town of La Suiza at the bank, not the best place for a family outing.

We have learned of a couple places with swimming pools where we could take the kids in Turrialba, the larger city about a half-hour drive away. And La Suiza even has ice-cream available.

We are so grateful for our neighbor Mareya who helps us figure out our washing machine and lets us park our car in her yard. We're grateful for Andres who guided our tour of Turrialba as we made our initial shopping venture to get the supplies we need to set up a household. And for Andres' six year old daughter Catalina, who has come to visit twice already this week.

Cindy is doing so well on her Spanish and is digging into the studies. She enjoys the challenge and enjoys talking in general so she has good incentive to practice. She will learn much more quickly than I will since talking is the last thing I want to do when I am tired.

Our comprehension class on Thursday read a story totally in Spanish. Hormiga is pronounced or-mee-ga. I had not heard this word before. It means ant. However, I had heard the word amiga (u-mee-ga), which means a female friend. The teacher illustrated the story by drawing the ants and an anthill, but since I thought we were talking about amigas, the anthill looked like a volcano. I spent the entire class wondering why these friends were running up the volcano and jumping in. Cindy had to explain it to me after class.

My first Costa Rican sunburn is peeling already.

Tim

"Set-up" week in Atenas

Our first week in Costa Rica was spent at the Hogar de Vida para la Ninez, a Christian orphanage in Atenas, the city where we will settle after language school. We rented a 325s.f, two bedroom cabin.

This was our first taste of Costa Rican living; walking to town on a dirt road, showering with a "widow maker" and figuring out how to buy groceries. You can't flush the toilet paper, but you can drink the water...from the tap, not from the toilet.

We spent this first week finding our car, a 1996 Hyundai Santamo. It seats seven with the third row seats up. Cindy and I both got Costa Rican drivers licenses. I got two licenses; one for a car and one for a motorcycle. We opened a local bank account, got a cell phone, got local fingerprints for our missionary visa and handed the visa paperwork to the lawyer who will handle the application for us.

We also learned to add at least two hours to the amount of time we think we need to accomplish anything; like posting pictures via a dial-up connection.

Tim

Traveling to Costa Rica

Here's a tip for travelers. When packing to your weight maximum, don't use a bathroom scale to confirm weights! We arrived at Portland International Airport at 4:00am to check eight bags. Each was weighed to be just under the 50 pounds limit for no additional charge. As we checked the bags, each was just over 50 pounds. Thank the Lord for a helpful check-in woman who helped us sort the bags to create seven bags under 50 pounds and one under 80 so we only paid overweight charges for one bag...and they didn't notice our Rubbermaid Actionpackers exceeded their maximum dimensions by 1.5 inches.

Although we didn't want to, the only way we could make the baggage work was to include my guitar as checked baggage. Because of a misunderstanding we took it to the gate and they accepted it as an additional carry on at no extra charge. Perfect!

We took advantage of every opportunity to bring luggage by bringing two carry-on bags plus a "purse" for each of the four of us. Unfortunately, since two of us were six years old or younger, that meant one of the adults managed the kids with a couple bags and the other was the mule.

Tanner and Laura did great during the travel from Portland to Atlanta playing with presents received at Laura's birthday party just two days before.

Tanner loved the train at Atlanta International Airport and we spent some of our four hour layover commuting between terminals.

Costa Rica welcomed us warmly. Families get preferential treatment here so we were sent directly to the front of the Customs line and assisted through baggage. As we got to the exit of the airport at about 9:00pm local time John Lindquist met us and drove us about half an hour to Atenas, where the eMi office is located.

Tim