2 Months here

Chandler receives an IPOD!!

December 30, 2007

Now we have been here 2 months. At times I am amazed at the Spanish we have learned and then often reminded of how little we know. But, I am pleased with all of the other things we are learning!! We had a fun Christmas week with Grandmadele, Annie, and Karissa here! We spent 2 days at their hotel and I even got to take 2 hot showers! I think hot water is what I miss the most! It was a nice break and we so enjoyed the visit with them! The hotel is “a small distinctive hotel” called Casa Turire and was very quaint and lovely. We all enjoyed our time there and the food was a treat! Thank you Grandma and Annie for everything! Christmas day they arrived with 3 suitcases full of goodies for our family! Gifts from them and the Shankle’s. One case of completely full of candy, pop tarts, nutrigrain bars and all sorts of things! It was exciting for all of us! My grandma brought one box especially for me. I opened it to find 3 bags of Velvet Cream Popcorn!! It has been a tradition in our family and a favorite of mine! It brought me to tears and everyone thought it funny that I would cry over popcorn, but what can I say? Pops sent baseball gloves, Grammy sent a Magic Bullet, wonderful craft supplies from Aunt Summer, Moon Sand from Uncle Ben & family, and also our Christmas Jammies arrived just in time! Everything was as perfect as it could have been without actually having the entire family here with us. On Christmas Eve we received our box from Grandma Barb & PapPap too! It was so fun to open each gift! We received Spanish worship music, candies, Spanish children’s books, jewelry, so many wonderful things. It was all such a treat for us! Thank you all!!!!

Goodies from Grandma & Annie

We have become increasingly frustrated with the inconveniences here! I think we are the only people in the town without a phone and we are having a terrible time finding one to purchase. Every day we are confronted with a new issue because we don’t have any way to communicate with other people when we need to! We have spent many hours waiting for people to come that never do or walking or taking a bus somewhere to wait more! No one can contact us to change the plan or give us more information! It has certainly tried us and I don’t know if we have “passed”, so I guess we have more to learn in this area. This month, what I have to say about our conveniences and technology is this…

I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!!! :-) No, really, I thought once we got here we would think we have too much and appreciate too little. Partly, that is true, but what I hope to take from this is to use our technology and conveniences to the advantage of our family, not to do more, but to have more time with our family and friends and ministering to others around us. We are blessed in the U.S. that we don’t have to spend the entire day- every day- doing laundry by hand, cooking everything from scratch, walking to the store, the bus and everywhere. But, somehow we fill our days with all kinds of other things ( well, at least I do) And then I still don’t have time to play with my kids, visit with my grandma, or talk to the lady next to me in line at Wal Mart. I want to use technology and modern conveniences to my advantage and the advantage of Christ.

Day for the birds

Kid's table at lunch today

Friday, December 28th - Today we went to Rancho Naturalista (www.ranchonaturalista.net). This place has some really cool birds. I would not consider myself a bird watcher, but I enjoyed seeing some unique birds.


Our family was joined by Hector, Daniel, David, Beverly and Herb. This place is actually the only lodging option in Tuis. It is located 1 mile up the road and another 1 mile + up the mountain. We were supposed to have transportation from the school at 11AM. At 12:25, no one arrived, so we used the vehicles from the school and drove to the top of the mountain. The place was nice. We were able to see many birds. There were dozens of hummingbirds buzzing around.

Hummingbirds near next to our table

At the top of the mountain, it was foggy and we were unable to see beyond a few hundred feet. We will probably go back a different day to get some better pictures. There were more than a hundred birds (this number was debated among our group). Actually, I think it was more. The food was great.

(L to R) Annie, Grandmadele, Beverly, Herb, David, Daniel, Hector, George, and Kipplyn

Herb and Beverly have been attending classes for a few weeks. Beverly is the US representative for the school. This is the first time that she has taken classes (I think). She has a good knowledge of the Spanish language and speaks well. Herb and Beverly have been instrumental in helping Daniel and Hector with the Mission. David has been attending classes for two weeks. He has been taking classes in the morning and afternoon. He has progressed well in two weeks of classes. He appears to be a little frustrated with his progress, but he has done well. No matter how much you learn, it only takes one conversation on the street to be humbled.

Every morning John David is excited to get to school early and see Daniel. Daniel is an artist and enjoys drawing pictures for the kids. John David loves to try to copy the drawings that Daniel does for him. This is JD with one of Daniel’s drawings. John David received quite a few fun art supplies for Christmas and has spent much time practicing ever since. He is quite the artist himself.

John David with a drawing that Daniel made for him.

There is a microloan program that is available to aspiring business people in the Tuis area. These loans are available to persons that generally have needs of $300-1000. In some unique cases, the loans are higher. I had a meeting last night (Thursday) with 7 of the individuals. I will be meeting with them in the coming months to help them with their businesses. I get the opportunity to have conversations in Spanish and they get free help with their business. The businesses represented last night include construction, furniture making, sewing, and truck driving. I am looking forward to this opportunity.

Tomorrow is the last day that Grandmadele, Annie, and Karissa will be here. They will be leaving for San Jose in the afternoon. Chandler went to the hotel to stay with them tonight. We will be going over to the hotel in the morning to hang out, eat lunch and swim if there is sunshine. Their visit has been enjoyable.

Karissa and Chandler at CISA

Merry Christmas

I can honestly say that I have walked miles and sat in front of computers for hours to bring this video post to you. I miss my consistent high speed internet in the U.S.

Today has been mostly sunny. That is a nice change to the constant rain that we had for 3-4 days. Yesterday, we had strong rains all day. The rivers were running rapidly and the roads were flooding in places. Grandmadele, Annie, and Karissa arrived safely at their hotel. The hotel is really nice (www.hotelcasaturire.com). It is a 4-star hotel. Right now, we appreciate any hotel with stars. It is located 1.5 km (that's a mile) off the main road. The road is terrible. It took 10 minutes from the main road to the hotel lobby because of the holes in the road and the heavy rains. We all spent the afternoon at our house and opened Christmas gifts. It was a great day. We received many gifts from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. The children were very excited. I think Chandler almost cried when we she received an IPod. Early in the evening, we gathered two taxis and went to Casa Turire. We had a great dinner at the hotel.

I left everyone at the hotel as they were about to get in the pool. I was going to take a bus into Turrialba. The hotel is located near the halfway point between Tuis and Turrialba. While I waited at the side of the road, a few of the professors, Henry and Armando from our school drove by and picked me up.

Thank you for the comments and e-mails that we receive about the blog. The whole family looks forward to the responses. It has been fun to journal our experience online.

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Christmas Eve

This week, Kipplyn, Chandler, and RandiKate made chocolate chip cookies. They did it the old fashioned way, from scratch. They were great. It is a treat here. Last week, we we were able to buy chocolate chips on a trip to San Jose. It's hard to believe, but the people here have never had a chocolate chip cookie. They like them too.



It's Christmas Eve. It's raining. I spent the morning in Turrialba. I went to the Post Office to see if our packages had arrived. Every package that we were expecting from our family was there. I was able to get a ride with Hector and Daniel. It was a good thing. If I had taken the bus and picked up the packages, I would have had to take a taxi back to Tuis right away. I also made a trip to the pet store (SHHHHHH, it's still a secret) to buy a bunny. Actually, I bought two. They cost about $1.80 each. The lady in the pet store spoke very fast. When I asked her to repeat things, she spoke faster and louder as if I was unable to hear her. That is part of the joy of living in another country and learning a new language. I just smiled, decided to buy two (I'm a big spender), asked how much and paid her. I think we are going to give the bunnies to the kids after the Christmas service tonight at the church. Actually, Kipplyn does not know that there are two rabbits. She is still expecting one.

Right now, Kipplyn's grandmother (Grandmadele), her aunt (Aunt Annie), and cousin (Karissa) are traveling from Tulsa to San Jose, Costa Rica. They will be staying in a hotel in San Jose tonight and driving to Tuis in the morning. They will be staying in a nice 4-star resort near our home. Grandmadele is 87 years old and has another birthday in about 2 months. Annie & Karissa lived in Chile for years and speak Spanish well. We are looking forward to spending the week with them. We will not have classes at the school, so we will have lots of time to do things.

We have a Christmas tree on our front porch. It was a gift from Seidy (our helper and friend) and her family. It was very nice of her to do this. She and her daughter, Gabriela, came over this morning. Chandler went to Gabriela's "graduation" last week. I think they have a ceremony after they pass the 8th grade. Chandler is enjoying getting to know her.



Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope that you enjoy this season as we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am in awe when I think that the creator of the world would send His Son as a child to live on this earth. That is why we celebrate this time of the year. May God bless you so that you may bless His people.

More PICS from the Panama trip

Here are some more pictures from the Panama trip. I am not sure if you can open these without a Snapfish account. If you need one, they are free.

http://tinyurl.com/2umt82

George at school

This video is about a month old, but I am working on adding video to the blog. Cameron is the one on the camera. Ana is one of the teachers and she watched George and Lily for the first month.

Craft Day, Christmas Caroling, and the Chirripo

Saturday, December 8th (before the gymnastics trip) – Earlier this month we had a Christmas Craft Workshop at our house for the kids in the neighborhood. We had 4 different crafts, cookies and juice. It was really a fun time! The kids don’t have an abundance of craft supplies to play with, so everyone was thrilled with the things we had. There were about 40 kids here and we met a lot of new friends.

Wednesday night, December 19th – There was a Christmas celebration at the mission on Wednesday night. It started with a candlelit parade of Christmas caroling in Tuis. There were more than 80 people that participated. After caroling, we returned to the meeting area for a service. RandiKate participated in an interpretive dance with a few of the other children. Sorry, I forgot to bring a picture of this with me.

Friday, December 21st – There was a Christmas celebration in the mountains for the Chirripo people. The Chirripo people are an indigenous group that has lived in the mountains of Costa Rica for hundreds of years. The majority of the people live in remote areas. We loaded up two trucks (one with clothing, food, and gifts) and the other with people. There were also about 5 SUV’s with people. In total, about 40 people left Tuis in our caravan. Chandler, RandiKate, Charlie, and John David rode in a Jeep. I stood in the back of the truck (see picture) for the whole trip.

It took 2 hours and 35 minutes to get to the meeting place. The roads were terrible and the majority of the time, the truck drove about 10 miles per hour. The entire time I had to hold onto the bars above my head. It was a workout. But don’t feel sorry for us, the Chirripo people walked 4-6 hours to get to the meeting place. The terrain for them is very difficult as it has steep inclines and declines. At times, it is dangerous. There were more than 200 Chirripo that made the trip. This included more than a dozen mothers with little babies. I was the photographer and video person. After arriving, my hands were totally black from the soot on the bars in the bus. It took me about 10 minutes to find running water where I could clean my hands before handling the camera equipment. Hector & Daniel (the directors at our school) began the celebration by leading the Chirripo children in games. The children were having a lot of fun. The son of the chief of the Chirripo (I can not remember his name) is a Christian and pastors a church. The people that came were part of his congregation. I was unable to get any pictures or video of this because John David had an issue with ants. He came to me and said that ants were biting him. When I looked at the back of his green shirt, it was totally black. There more than 400 ants rapidly crawling all over his body. He had more than 30 bites on his body. He truly had ants in his pants. After stripping off his clothes and 20 minutes of shaking them, he was clothed and ready to play. He ran off and played with the other children as if nothing had ever happened. I heard there are a zillion ants for every person in Costa Rica and you need to learn to live with them. We are getting used to it, but it is no fun when you get into an ant hill and get attacked.

After the games, the children lined up for drinks. They get very excited about red Fanta. The whole event is very chaotic. Most of the Chirripo people speak some Spanish but they have a language of their own. This makes it difficult for providing instructions to the people. After drinks the people from Tuis served meals of Rice and Tuna. To top it off, they had hot dogs (cold and uncooked) in a bun. The red Fanta and hot dogs are a favorite of the people.

After the food, it was time to give out the clothes and Christmas gifts. There were hundreds of pounds of clothing (you can see the large white bags of clothing in one of the pictures) and gifts. They would carry this to their homes in the mountains on their backs. Their walk home will be 1-2 hours longer for each of them.

On the return trip, Chandler rode in the back of the truck and I found an opening in one of the cars. The mountains, rivers, and waterfalls were really beautiful on this trip. This is a great place to be.