Estoy viviendo la "Pura Vida" : 11/23/12

Hello & Goodbye

It's been a while since my last blog! I've been getting so accustomed to just living out life here, I've honestly fallen out of the habit of documenting! But I owe it to all of you and to myself to continue...

I am just so humbled and so grateful to be living here. I've had the privilege of meeting some amazing people along my journey and the utter blessing to experience the beauty of this country. Most recently a dear friend of mine has joined us here at CISA, Deidre Daniels! I am SUPER excited to have her here with us. As she says hello, my dear friend and fellow student, Jennea Combs, is saying goodbye as she leaves tomorrow morning to extend her stay in Costa Rica for another three months in a town on the west coast called Tamarindo. She is going to help out with a local church plant. I pray that she is stretched and continues to allow God to use her for His glory! In the mean time, I am FULL of ideas to help bring more people to the mission here. Just recently I took a trip to Turrialba and met a nice a helpful local. When I invited him to church, I realized I couldn't quite explain how to get there and so wished that I had an invite card. I talked to Hector about it and he gave me to go to create one... well I can't take the credit here... my very talented graphic designer`/photographer boyfriend, Eric Gzimalowski created one. It is almost finalized, this is the rough draft version... still missing the service time... but awesome job Eric!

Latest Adventures

As I mentioned I have been blessed to be able to occasionally venture out of Tuis and experience a little more of Costa Rica and its beauty! As a group we recently visited a town called La Fortuna. My brother and his family were able to drive there, and two other students and I took the bus. Well that is a bit of an understatement. It took us 3 buses and two taxis and 8 hours of travel to finally arrive in the beautiful tourist town of La Fortuna where the Arenal volcano lies sleeping for the past two years. There we visited a beautiful waterfall, and swam in the local hot springs at a neighboring resort called "Baldi' You are able to purchase a day pass and experience their beautiful ambience and natural hot spring water pools (complete with 3 waters slides!) super fun!

Taxi # 2

Taxi #2

LAST stop before our 5 hour bus ride to La Fortuna!

Our bus driver was TEXTING and DRIVING! Eeek!!

We drove through ALL sorts of weather! Hot, cold.. foggy.. it was... interesting to say the least.

3 bus rides later and a total of 8 hours of travel... we FINALLY arrived!

WE MADE IT!!!!

The central park in La Fortuna

Florda, Canada, California

After a LONG day we were exhausted. To our amazement we found a Burger King joint. We were elated to indulge in the ever fattening greasy American cuisine. It was divine!

mmmmmMMM!

View of the Arenal Volcano

On our first day in La fortuna, we decided to take a swim in the hot springs at Baldi. It was so beautiful! Great honeymoon spot for sure!

Jennea's reaction to the temperature of the water... its HOT

The beautiful swim up bars

Me and Canada #chirp

Café con leche... Jennea is the leche lol

Ellos parecen Ticos lol

After our first day, we decided to spend our second day exploring the waterfall. It was a beautiful "hike" down about 300 stairs. Prior to taking that hike down, you get to see the waterfall from afar at a lookout point! It was breathtaking!

The hike down

That's Jennea and Rysen. They took the intense route!

We finally arrived at this spectacular location!

Jaden was very excited about the ''catarata" (waterfall)

After 3 days we headed back to Tuis. Another 8 hour trip! But the views home were spectacular!

Hogar dulce Hogar (Home sweet home)

After a lot of traveling I was definitely grateful to be back home! It was so amazing getting to go to school the next day and be greeted by my dear friend Deidre! She had the most EVENTFUL first day of school! Starting her day with a workout class with Daniel, then having to present ''Black Friday" via an oral presentation in Spanish for culture class, to extra class after school, to her first cooking class!

Rumor has it our new student is CRA CRA... and by cra cra.. I mean AWESOME. She is totally in her element...and is fitting right in. We had our first cooking class together with Canada (Rysen) this week. Never a dull moment with this one :) Soon to come: Free Zumba classes with Deedee as an outreach to the community! (Eric if you're reading this I'm also going to ask for you to design a flyer for that too hehe) I had a sneak preview taste of what her Zumba class would be like after stuffing our faces during Thanksgiving... needless to say.. I can't WAIT! :D

Canada, grating the cheese

threw in a little ''selfy'' :P

That is Zeidy on the left, she is our teacher! Taught us how to make ''bolitas de queso"' YUM

bon appetit = buen provecho

delish!

~Happy Thanksgiving~

This year was my first celebrating Thanksgiving not in America, and to be honest, I felt RIGHT at home. I feel like the students and the staff here are like my other family away from home. We spent the day preparing a large feast for some of our teachers and friends and it was so much fun. Such a sense of teamwork and community. I felt right at home and even got to play Aguinaldos in the background on my iphone :)

I started my Thanksgiving very early... the night before... using the same ingredient I made two delicious treats! Coquito & Bread Pudding! (Thanks Mom!)