Costa Rica STT

Today was a pretty good day :)  "Wait, what about the title?" I mean, yea, that happened. We'll get there. Ok, Wednesday, here we go: Woke up mildly early, went to Walmart to meet up with Lagos and Ana Raquel.  Walked back from Walmart with some bags of H@ngout stuff while Lagos, Ana Raquel, and Izzy did the shoppings for the foods. Got back to the Airbnb and we combined all the food into tastier food (s y n e r g y).  It's more accurate to say Ana Raquel, Sheryl, and Lagos did that. I did make tea, though. Powder + Water + Kinetic Energy + Sketchy Guestimation = Tasty Tea (s y n e r g y) Also, I poisoned Matthew today. I gave him a piece of mango I was eating and it made his lips angry. He's ok now though. Half of us got into an Uber to head to campus while the other half finished up, so that we would be there when people started arriving. Our Uber driver was chill, we talked about Lawyery stuff (with our driver) and then talked about ministry models (not with ou

Today was all really good. I'm tired though, and stressed, so I feel less hype about it than maybe matches. We woke up early, made lunch, and went to the CDI. We set it up and the kids came and we did...CDI stuff. Today I bonded a lot with one of the kids, Mateo . But that was the second session, i guess. The first session went really well. Our devotional and English lessons really landed and it seemed like the kids were paying good attention. We walked them to school and it was good. My Spanish brain was very tired today, I had trouble with simple phrases and comprehension. Second session arrived with a lot of kids and a lot of energy. Matthew and I (during the play time) spent a lot of time wrestling with kids. We were obviously gentle though. Mateo  (kid) saw this and when some of the littlest girls attacked him, he also wrestled them very gently. It was cool seeing him imitate restraint almost immediately.  We did our activity for the devotional: draw a picture of yourself, the

Today was sorta kinda mostly one of those days... except for the things that went wrong, i guess. Monday means CDI!  We got to the CDI, we set up the tables, we cleaned, we organized. Kids came!  Our planning sesh yesterday definitely paid off. We maybe didn't do everything exactly how we originally planned it, but I think all the things we did came out just right. Our devotional was great. The kids were a little rowdy and distracted, but they seemed to absorb the main point. Matthew did a great job of being fun, but serious. We're talking about Respect for basically the whole time we are here, and we've... well, wait a second. Can you come up with a one-sentence definition of respect? I think you should pause and try to define respect in our own way before you keep reading.  I know you didn't do it and you're still reading, it's ok, I still respect you.  We talked through it for a while as a team and landed on three different...types or levels or aspects of res

Today was quite lovely. I woke up and zoomed with Alexis to plan some stuff (i miss her a lot). It went really well and I'm very excited! After that, I spent some time working on Psalm/ Salmo  139/ 139 . I'm now up through verse 6, though the Spanish is a little rougher than the English. Hopefully, at this rate, I'll finish by around June 10. Then I'll just need to keep reinforcing it through the rest of the time here. Memorizing scripture is cool because you notice little things about the words and about the flow of the passage.  For example, 139:1, "Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me." "Searched" and "known" are similar, but different. God puts in the time and effort to search us. He doesn't just passively have all the information about us in his brain (I do think he does have it); he searches us. There's an intentionality and investment there. Also, people can search us, but never truly know or understand us. But God

I Got Saldo "....what?" I know you proabably don't care, but I really do. Saldo  is minutes on a phone here. I used the phone carrier, Claro  this year (last year we used Movistar , which doesn't exist anymore), and the AM/PM doesn't do Saldo  for Claro . So, it just took some tries to get there. But now I can use WhatsApp anywhere! Yayyy. Ok, anyway. Today Matthew got up early to go to a feria  near our house (farmer's market) while I slept in. Then Matthew, Gustavo , and Sheryl went to go on an adventure somewhere (they went to get yerba   mate ). I zoomed with Alexis and we did some planning stuff together, which has me really excited. December is a long way away, folks.  I took a nap today. Oooh, what a nap. It was a couch nap, which is the best type of nap. Matthew and I went to the Sabana  park together. He rode his longboard for 6 miles, and I ran for 3 miles. Did it take the same amount of time? Yes, yes it did.  Afterwards we got to have some really g

Today was really quite lovely. I slept in a little, we woke up to go to the baptism party, I got to talk to Alexis on the camera phone, and I got to go to church.  I woke up and read Psalm 139 a few more times. I'm starting to work on memorizing it. Let's see how we do: Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down and are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, oh Lord, know it completely.  Señor, tu me examines, tu me conoces. Sabes cuando me siento y cuando me levanto. Aun a la distancia me lees el pensamiento. um.... going out and lying down ... boo. Well, we'll keep trying on the Spanish one.  Memorizing scripture is kinda fantastic. I like individual verses, but big chunks are really, really good for my understanding of passages. If you've never memorized a chapter or passage, it's well worth the time. I recommend

I'm tired enough to talk a lot, but it's early enough that I'm not really sleepy yet. This one might be long. Today, we woke up super early to send half our team home. Alexis, Mallory, Ben, and Evan are all back in Texas now. Getting an Uber to the airport early in the morning is always a little bit of an adventure. Airports are protected by some kind of Taxi union thing, so Uber drivers can sometimes get tickets for taking you to the airport, or at least that used to be the case. Also, the airport is actually in a different city nearby to San José  (they named it SJO to get more business), so it's kinda a long drive. Also, we were hoping to get an Uber XL because we had four people (two of whom are  t a l l ) and a decent amount of luggage. It's a lot to stuff into a tiny car (which many Ubers are). Anyway, we had a couple cancel on us and couldn't find an XL, but we finally got a confirmed Uber who came for us. And yes, it was a tiny little car. But everyone a

Can you imagine how perfect it would have been if I skipped Day 9 instead of Day 8? Because then when people asked me what happened to Day 9, I could say, "oh, seven ate nine." I need to plan ahead better for these kinds of things, I'm sorry for my lack of proactivity in planning things for the sake of jokes.  Today I learned the Spanish word for "Dad Joke," at least in Costa Rica. They said it was " chiste de señores ," or "old man jokes." I'ma give it to y'all short, since it's late and we're starting super early tomorrow to send our week-long team home. You'll get sentences where I could do paragraphs and it will seem a little underdeveloped. I think Izzy has been posting more lately, if you want something more fleshed out! Yesterday was Tuesday. We worked at the CDI all day, the kids were rowdy, but it was good. There were some good, loving, investing interactions. And some fun, silly ones. Afterwards, we went to a Bi

Yikes. Lol. I'm tired, you're tired, we're all tired, so maybe I'll make this short? Today was really good, but definitely a lot. Oooh, plot twist: I just found a bag of sour gummy worms and chips (not the same bag, two separate items) and will likely find a second, sugary wind. Plans for brevity have been abandoned. SO, I woke up this morning at 4 AM, because Alexis was feeling really sick :( That's no bueno , we don't like it. We aren't sure if it's adverse reactions to all the wacky diet and just environmental difference here, or if it's the stomach bug that swept through the whole Ohio team before we came.  Eventually, we both went back to our rooms and I stayed up for a while, praying, 'til I fell back asleep. She stayed home and rested today, but isn't feeling much better. We're gonna investigate the meds the Ohio team took if she doesn't feel mejor  tomorrow. Please pray for her! I woke back up around 9 and Don Rodrigo  walked

Click-baity enough title for ya? Other options included:     -Day of Rest (except for introverts)     -the one where Matthew got it trouble But now that I made that title, I kinda feel the need to stick to the format, though I don't think I actually have 10 things to list. Let's try it.  1. Get Up Early and Work Out -That's what Matthew and I did. Well, sorta. We walked to Oxigeno , which is a giant mall area with great outside spaces. It has a wide running track that wraps most of the way around it. Matthew brought his longboard and gear (including a newly-acquired reflective vest) and I wore my running shoes. We talked about long-boarding and things like this . So, that's now very interesting to me. We got to the track and Matthew took off, then I started running. It was fun, I think the track is about a kilometer. Around the time I got tired of running (so, not very long), I saw Matthew walking, longboard in hand. He told me that two security guards had come and foun

...just not for me. If you want the eventful version, I think Izzy posted a blog about their day. Yup, confirmed, she did. For me , which is obviously your primary concern since you're still reading, it was a fun, rewarding and pretty low-key day. I woke up a bit earlier maybe than I'd choose for myself, but I still woke up before my alarm.  I have a thing about alarms in the morning. Like, if they go off and I'm not already awake, I feel like the alarm is judging me for still being asleep. Maybe that's silly, but it's really working for me. Almost without fail, I wake up about 2 minutes before my alarm... and I change alarm times each day. I almost always choose times that are divisible by 9 (you may already know that). So, today my alarm was set for 7:38, tomorrow it will be for 7:47, or even 7:56. The most normal alarms are when I want to be up by 9, because then I can set them for 8:55 or 9:00, obviously. But I wake up at 7:36 or 8:53 or whatever.  A n y w a y

We generally ease into weekends here. We don't have specific, recurring CDI or H@ngout responsibilities Friday-Sunday, though we often end up doing stuff still. Friday nights is also church here, rather than Sunday mornings.  So, today we took the first part of the day to relax and have some fun together as a team. Plan: Wake up a little late, eat some breakfast, take the train to downtown San José, walk through the central market, eat some lunch, come back home. We looked up where the train stations were and where the stops were and how much they cost.......and then we checked the horario . Well, the train stopped running before we left the house. Turns out the trenes  here are just for early morning when people are going to work, and late afternoon when they come back from work. So, our backup plan was to take a bus. So we looked up the bus routes and found the best one that would pick up near us and drop off near the market. It was the same one Don Rodrigo  had suggested to Matt

It's unfathomable to me that today was our second day of ministry. It feels like it's been so full and like we've accomplished a lot already. Today, we sent half of the team to the CDI and half to Campus. Sounds very "Costa Rica 2020," amiright? I woke up early to make sure the CDI team got out ok. Izzy took Evan, Ben, and Mallory with her via Uber to help run the CDI. Word on the street is it went well. If you want more information about that, you'd hafta read Izzy's Blog  (well worth it!).  For the campus half of the team, we slept in some more and then got started. I made some eggs that looked  r o u g h ,  but weren't actually all that bad. We got organized and decided to take an Uber to campus, since we haven't learned the buses yet, and it's a bit of a hike on foot. While waiting for the time with the students to start, we walked around campus. At Alexis' suggestion, we stopped in a good spot and prayed together for a while, then kept