Day 1: Travel & Plan Change 1

We made it! 

Our flight was un poco delayed, but that gave us time to relax and grab dinner (we had burgers, perfect last meal before leaving America). It was Hector's first flight, and it was a little bumpy, but he seemed completely unfazed by the whole experience. 

Our flight was somehow filled with other Aggies. I sat next to a girl who is graduating in May and plans to move to Costa Rica to be with her family and decide what she wants to do next. She was there with a group of 5 other students, I saw a different student-aged group with an A&M hoodie, and there was a kindly old man with an A&M hat who informed the group of 6 girls that he was class of '54. 

We arrived in San José and worked our way through customs and immigration. They were more suspicious of us than I was used to, but we got through no problem. As we exited the airport, I was a bit nervous about finding Carlos Lagos, but he found us before I even started looking. He told us there are too many people named Carlos, so everyone calls him Lagos.
We stuffed all our luggage into the back of the car (which took some doing; our whole team is super light and skillful packers, but we also brought a guitar and like 100 hats) and headed into the city. Lagos asked us if we were hungry (we were) and there was a brief pause as we tried to discern if it was just a politeness offer or if he was serious. He was and we made a quick stop for food. Now and forever, the first thing I ever ate in Costa Rica will be... a Big Mac, lol. It was good though.

On the drive, Lagos taught us some slang words and let us know that our schedule would be shifted a bit. It looks like we'll spend the mornings working with H@ngout, the student ministry and the afternoons working with the city-side of the church in San Jose.

He took us to the hostel, which is essentially a really big house, and, after getting us settled in, hurried off to pick up someone else too. We're in rooms with tons of bunkbeds in them, where our team and the team from H2O OSU (Ohio) will be staying together. The guys will all fit in one room and the girls are split between two more. 

We sat on the porch and ate our Big Macs, enjoying the warm night and the cool breeze; listening to the sounds of the city of Heredia (mostly cars and laughter). Katie pulled out the guitarra and we had a short worship and prayer time.

Words we learned:

-con gusto: the tico equivalent of de nada, turns out everyone here answers "thank you" with "my pleasure" instead of "it's nothing." Makes me hungry for Chick-fil-a.

-jale: literally "pull," it gets used here as "come on" or "let's go"

-¿al chile?: gets used as "really??" 

Please pray for unity between us and the H2O team and against spiritual warfare!

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