Slideshow

This is a video the youth group in Monteverde (specifically, Isaac) made for me right before I left Costa Rica. They played it in church and I cried the whole time. Leaving all my friends, students, and adopted families was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
If you have been wanting to see a highlight of my year, take a look. =]

Soon

Let me make one thing clear (if I haven't already). I LOVE it here. But anyone who's been away from friends and family for an extended amount of time will understand that even if you love where you are, it's still perfectly reasonable to miss the folks back home. For that simple reason I made this countdown today. That and I'm sick. It came out of nowhere, which is really annoying. Yesterday, I was fine and then I just started coughing in the middle of the night. Super lame. Anyway, now you know, and I know, how long I'm here for. Just for funzies. It's sooner than you think!

Christmas Break with the parentals

We're going to keep this simple. San Jose to Monteverde to Playa Pan de Azucar to Arenal and back to San Jose. Pictures are in chronological order. Enjoy.

At a rest stop on the way to Monteverde

My Costa Rican Family
L-R: Sofia, Kindria, Aileen, Me

Canopy Tour

We bought these lemon flavored peanuts...

Ficus

Monteverde Cheese Factory

Towards the Atlantic

Towards the Pacific

Playa Pan de Azucar

Arenal

It is literally this hard to take a picture of a Morpho with its wings open

Unless it's dead

Market in San Jose
150 colones or 30 cents for this delightful pipa

Best accident ever

Coffee

Maybe

Never before has a new year been so unlike the old one. My last 4 months can be described, summarized, encapsulated (you get the picture) in one word: Perfection. Sure, I’ve had my ups and downs, spells of homesickness and times of sheer exhaustion, but those moments have always been fleeting. The school year ended smoothly and vacation was beginning. What more could I ask for? In addition, I was living with a family who loved me and who loved each other, or so it seemed.

On New Year’s Eve, the father of my Costa Rican family came back from a party, staggering drunk. He could barely stand and his speech was slurred as if he had just had his tongue numbed. After resting a bit, he got up and demanded the car keys. He was clearly in no position to drive; He could easily kill himself or a pedestrian. My Costa Rican mom offered to drive him home to rest, but that didn’t cut it for him. To make a long story short, it quickly escalated to a physical struggle and he was arrested shortly thereafter. Later, I learned that this has happened before and although it was years ago, this was the last straw. He was also unfaithful in his marriage. Divorce papers are being signed. My family’s lives had been turned upside down in a matter of hours.

That night, I hardly slept. I cried to God to save my family. I prayed that the two young girls (4 and 9 years old) would be spared the sadness of a broken home. As I prayed, I began to realize that whether or not there was a divorce, this was already a broken home. I instead began to pray that God would surround the family and that they would feel his love for them and keep them from further harm.
 Later, as I shared all this with my mom (as in, Lupe), she asked me what it meant for me. Was I going to still live there or would I have to move again? I realized that I didn’t want to move. I love my Costa Rican family with all my heart. Even though I can’t fix the marriage or erase the damage that was caused, I can do my part to make sure that life continues. Things as simple as making sure the laundry is done, the dishes are put away, and the house is clean can make a world of difference for a single, hard-working mother. I can make sure mom gets a break when she comes home from a work by playing with the girls or even just watching a movie with them. Though I came here to teach, maybe this family is my real mission, or rather, God’s real mission. Maybe I’m here “for such a time as this.”

*Update* My story was published in the Collegian, the student run newspaper at WWU.

Overdue

It's really a good thing for me that blogging is not like the library. If my blogs were due every 2-3 weeks, I'd have so many fees to pay. I'm also glad that blogging is not homework. If my blogs had due dates and got graded, I'd get a good grade but I'd drag my feet the whole way and then BS my way through it.

As it stands, I get to write what I want, when I want and how much I want which, for the last month, hasn't been much. But here I am, sitting on my bed in an empty house and I want to write. Really, I do. No one is making me do this and trust me, I could be watching movies (I have roughly 140 GB of movies) or scouring the interwebs (as I lovingly refer to it) for music and such. I'm happy to be sharing at this moment.

Here's the highlights of the last month (minus traveling with my parents, which will be shown in a subsequent post)...

Decorating the Christmas tree. We listened to all my favorite Christmas music!

Graduation dinner/Family photo

The Johans before graduating from Kinder

The only photo I have of the graduating 6th graders. They're blatantly "camera shy."

Look! I got an award for my "Dedication and Efforts in Costa Rican Education." 

Last day of school water fight. We're incredibly lucky that the sun came out and that the wind died down.

And then Nate and Calle left. They left on the 11th of December. Very sad, but such things must come to pass. After they left, I deep cleaned the classrooms, which I will have to do again before school starts back up, and thus kept myself occupied until December 14. That's when I took the bus to San Jose to stay with family friends and pick up my parents from the airport. Stay tuned for the exciting story and more pictures!!!