Family, Teachers and Sunsets

Thursday, October 4

Before I tell you about our day, I want to introduce you to our "Costa Rican Familia."

Samia is our host mother.  Her children are Jimena (14) and José Pablo (12).  Samia (pronounced "SAM-e-ah") is a great cook and loves to clean.  The house is always clean when we get home from school and breakfast and dinner are always delicious. Jimena (prounounced "he-MEN-a") is very studious.  She spends a lot of time doing homework when she is home. José Pablo has had two tests this week in school and he is a typical studen: he does not want to study and he is easily distracted by TV, games, Eddie, and especially Jaden.  The whole family already loves Jaden!

Freddy could not attend church with us becuase he has to work from 2am to 6pm some Sundays.  On Monday, he traveled a few hours a way for his job and he will be there all week.  He will be home tomorrow, but here is a picture we got before he left.  Samia is holding her neice, Ebony.  Freddy speaks English pretty well, but he doesn't speak it very much (only when I really need him to).  He is very good at helping us to understand what he says, too.  He also loves Jaden very much!

This is a picture of three of the teachers at the school.  My teacher is Sonia, on the left.  Eddie's teacher is Karen, in the middle.  Ana is on the right, and she loves to play with Jaden.

 This is Jaden waiting patiently to watch TV in his classroom.  The TV wasn't even plugged in.  He just decided to pull up a chair, press "power" and sit down and wait.

This my classroom on the first day of Spanish Lessons.

Yesterday was another great day of class.   My teacher worked with me on a family tree and then asked me questions in Spanish about my family and where they live and what they do.  I am learning to understand and answer in Spanish, but I often feel unsure of my sentence structure and my limited vocabulary. 

Today, she had me write sentences about 12 different animals.  I had to write three sentences about each animal.  The sentences had to have the verbs “to need” or “to want” in them.  I feel like all I did was write today.   As she read my last section of sentences she said (in Spanish, of course) that my sentences were very good and perfect.  She is very encouraging.  Obviously, they weren’t perfect because she corrected my grammar on several of them, but I was encouraged non-the less.  I tried to write relevant sentences and I tried to use a variety of sentence structure instead of just writing, “I want a monkey. I need a dog.  I want a cat, etc.”  We also played “Twenty Questions” with 30 animal flashcards.  I picked a card and she asked me questions until she could guess the animal, and vice versa.  On one of my turns, I picked “horse” and she had a hard time guessing it.  She was asking me something I could not understand.  She looked it up in the dictionary, and I still didn’t understand what she was asking me.  The translation was “on the scent.”  It took me a few minutes to realize that she was asking me for a “hint.” 

Back to yesterday; Jaden actually fell asleep at school yesterday so we were able to eat our lunch without a temper-tantrum, and we walked home with a much happier child.  When we got home, someone else needed a nap: Eddie.  Jaden and I went exploring.  We found lots to look at and I will try to post a video soon of a plant that “dies” when you touch it… I don’t know what it is called.

When Jaden and I returned from exploring, Gabby was at the house with Samia.  She is Samia’s friend who teaches at a school for children of the indigenous people.  Gabby rides her four-wheeler for an hour everyday up into the mountains.  There is a small school where she teaches 4-5 year-olds and her friend teaches 1^st-6^th grade all together.  There are 31 children that attend the school, and many of them walk 2-3 hours to get to school everyday.  They have to cross a very big river and there is no bridge.  The older children walk with the younger ones and their parents do not accompany them. Vos Que Clama mission takes groups of people on mission trips to the indigenous villages.  It is a 5-hour walk and you have to carry any supplies you may need.  If they are going up to build a house for someone, the people on mission have to carry the wood and other supplies up the mountain. 

Gabby was telling us all of this in Spanish and using her cell phone to show us pictures.  I have to say that I am quite proud of us for the amount of Spanish we are able to understand in just one week.  It helps when people speak slowly and use a lot of hand motions.  Speaking, on the other hand, is much harder for both of us.  We are learning little by little, though.

After our afternoon snack, we had homework to do.  Each week, the students at the school are required to participate in a culture class.  We have to do a presentation in front of the other students and teachers.  It is supposed to be memorized, but Francine (who has been here for 3 ½ months) still writes down what she wants to say so she can read it.  “Ambitious Eddie” decided we should do a Power-Point presentation on “The People of the South – In the state of North Carolina.”  Several hours later, we had our speech written and translated and had photos to go with it.  We are pretty proud of how it turned out, but we already plan to make next week’s presentation a little simpler.

Our presentation included information about North Carolina accents, college basketball teams, homes in North Carolina, and food in North Carolina (including fried food at the fair).  They were very interested in the crazy amounts of fried-everything they serve at the fair: fried Oreos, fried pb&j, fried pecan pie, fried coca-cola, fried Twinkies, fried candy bars, etc.  We even told them about the Krispy Kreme Burger you can get at the fair.  There are only two other students at CISA right now.  Francine talked about the culture of New Zealand (which I didn’t understand most of.)  Jennea talked about the competition between Northern and Southern California and the tattoos involved: No Cal vs. So Cal.  She said that some people even tattoo their telephone area code on their bodies with pride.   You learn something new everyday, right?

After lunch today, we had our first cooking class (also in Spanish).  I am not good at Spanish or cooking, so I was kind of dreading this class.  It turns out, I enjoyed it and I am sad that we will only have it for 4 weeks.  Zeydi (pronounced Sadie) was our teacher.  She cooks our lunch at school everyday and her food is great!  Today she taught Eddie and I how to make corn tortillas from scratch and then make empanadas with them.  All it takes is corn flour, salt and water.  Once we had a tortilla made, we put refried beans and cheese inside and folded them in half.  You pinch the edges shut and cook it in hot corn oil.  They were delicious (…and I thought I didn’t like corn tortillas). 

This afternoon, Eddie and I ventured down to the river again.  We carefully climbed down the bank and brought Jaden with us.  When Eddie tried to put Jaden’s toes in the water, he kinda freaked out.  He was nervous about the river, so we just carried him.  

We walked for a few minutes and realized it was starting to rain.  We had our camera with us, and we were afraid it would downpour.  Eddie ran home with it, and I carried Jaden as quick as I could.  Thankfully, we made it home without getting wet.  Then it was time for a nap for Jaden.  Samia stayed home with him while Eddie and I went for a walk.  We didn’t know where we were going, but we wanted to explore.  We walked up a stone road that was pretty steep.  It led us to a cemetery so we looked around for a few minutes.  The cemeteries here are above ground so it was very different than what you would see in the US.  It was nearing sundown so we headed home, and God gave us a gorgeous display of his handiwork as the sun sank behind the mountains in front of us.  It was a beautiful reminder of his love shining down on us. 

On the way home, we stopped to meet our neighbors, Daniel and Bernice (Danny and Berney).  Since there are only three houses on the road we live on, it was time for us to meet them.  We walk past their house multiple times a day, and just waving isn’t going to help us learn Spanish.  It turns out, they love to talk!!! They were very patient with us and talked very slow.  They said, “You want to learn Spanish and we want to learn English!”  I think it would be fun to teach them English, but I have no idea where to start.  I am praying that God leads us to the areas he wants us to serve.  So far, we know we will be involved with the youth group.  Other than that, we don’t know.  The directors of the mission, Daniel and Hector, are in California right now presenting the results of their most recent mission trip.  They are also examining the needs of the indigenous people and making plans for the next trip.  Please pray that our hearts be open to where God wants us to serve Him while we are in this beautiful country.