Day 26: Misadventures and Adventures

You know the feeling when something is absolutely perfect, but one tiny imperfection seems to ruin it? It’s almost like, if the thing was less perfect, the small foible would matter less, because more things would be wrong, so you wouldn’t notice as much?

That’s how I feel about our hotel and the wi-fi. I cannot tell you how amazing this hotel is. The proprietor, the dueño, is (I say this with 0 exaggeration) the best host I’ve ever encountered of any hotel, real or fictional. I wish I could remember his name. Many times in my story of today, he will be a hero. And yesterday, this was no different. This guy has a ready and genuine smile and a very kind manner.

Also, this hotel, Alisson Hotel y Restaurante, was super affordable. It’s in a great location that has let us walk most places we need to go (which is handy since there’s effectively no Uber here). The rooms are exactly what we needed them to be (nothing fancy, but everything we need)

….but, as I’m writing this, I’m writing on MS Word, because the wi-fi here is terrible. It works somewhat downstairs in the restaurant portion of the hotel, but it doesn’t work up here where the rooms are. I’m out in the public area, but the downstairs is all shut down and locked, so I can’t go down there to post. And basically all of the admin work that I do at night is done online. I need to update the money we spent using my bank website and google docs. I need to respond to some emails about work stuff. I need to complete the yearly Reliant trainings. I need to keep my Duolingo streak going. I need to listen to some WhatsApp messages from Doug (sorry my responses are slow). I need to plan my sermon in Spanish for Friday. But I don’t have wi-fi. I get little 5-minute windows where I catch it, and I’ll hopefully be able to post in one of those, or get my laptop charged enough that I can go sit on the stairs long enough to post (my battery life is around 10 minutes unplugged from full charge).
So yea, there’s my rant. This place is amazing.

I woke up pretty early this morning and went downstairs for some breakfast. It was pretty good, but I hear the pancakes here are amazing, so I’m excited for breakfast tomorrow. The dueño personally came over and took my order, and may have actually been the one in the back who cooked me breakfast, I don’t know for certain. He let me know that the bus for the Cloud Forest Reserve left at 9:30 from a bus stop around the corner. Eventually, our team all woke up too and got breakfast too. Not everyone was ready for breakfast in time to get some, but our host packed up some breakfast to go.

We got to the bus stop at 9:25 and waited for about 25 minutes before learning that our bus was broken and wouldn’t be coming. We learned this because a lady who lives here in Monteverde told us. She was at the bus stop with us and finally got concerned and called the bus company. So (with some miniature mis-adventures), we eventually got a taxi with her and headed to the park. We learned that she is a 7^th-day Adventist, and the child of missionaries. She gave us a copy of the book, “The Great Controversy” in Spanish. I didn’t know that the 7DA church had a book they were so hype on. She told us it was written a long time ago by a lady who never made it past 3^rd grade education, but who wrote very skillfully and who made claims that wouldn’t make sense unless they were prophetic. She also told us this prophetic authoress knew a special way to plant trees that worked really well and was friends with the guy who invented cereal. Our new friend said she brought a copy of the book with her to give away to someone that she met that day, so, naturally, I asked if I could have it.

I don’t know a lot about 7DA churches, just that they do their sabbath on sabado instead of domingo, which is cool with me. If I ever get wi-fi and some free time, I’ma do some research. If anybody reading this is 7DA or knows anyone, I’d love to chat!

I've now copied this from MS Word into the internet, because it's now connected with 1 bar. It may go out, but you won't know and it won't stop me from typing. If the font is weird, that's probably why. I'm not much good with formatting. If the font is normal, it's because I'm so good at formatting.

We got to the reserve and walked around looking at birds for almost 3 hours. I rather enjoyed the hiking and being in nature. We heard some amazing birbs and saw some, too. We didn't see the Bellbirds that we kept hearing, or find a Quetzal, but they were around.

Esther called our hotel guy and he said he could make us to-go lunches, since we would only be at the hotel for like 10 minutes. That was one of the best burgers I can remember.

Our shuttle came, and the hotel guy asked them to come back in 10 minutes, so we could eat our lunches, AND THEY DID. That was crazy.

The shuttle took us to zipline, but that got thundered out (because: Costa Rica in the rainy season). We'll try that tomorrow early.

We had some a m a z i n g coffee/chocolate and then walked to find a giant tree root. I thought it sounded weird too. I bet if you google "big tree root, monteverde" it will come up. We found it and proceeded to play in the mud, rain, river, and rocks for almost an hour. I think it was the most fun touristy thing I've done in Costa Rica... mostly because it wasn't really touristy; it was just unsupervised climbing around and getting messy.

I had very wet shoes for the walk back to the hotel. My wrist-reminder letters for my Bible verse memorization almost rubbed off, and were covered in mud. I got a shower, then the team went to get dinner, but I stayed home. I wasn't really hungry, and was so cozy and clean and had dry feet. So, I got to talk to Alexis for a couple of hours and just rest. It was a really sweet conversation. We even got to listen to the Lord together for some help on a decision we were trying to make. <3

Now, the team's back. They brought me leftovers :D I'm tired, but done writing, and currently am back on wi-fi, so I might be able to post this!

I found a podcast where, I think, the church here posts their sermons (sometimes). The first one is Lagos!

PRAYERS PLEASE

-for us to switch back well into "do-stuff-mode" tomorrow
-for my sermon planning to go well on the bus
-for our deovtional and english planning!
-for the CDI Monday!
-for CDI and Bible Study on Tuesday!
-for H@ngout on Wednesday!
-for CDI on Thursday!
-for Sheryl's flight home, James' flight in, and my teaching on Friday!