A large Catholic church in San Jose.
Me, Daniel, Gabriel, and Arial.
"I'm Diving in!"...literally.
Speaking of time; It does not exist in Atenas. People are happy living their lives with little thought given to tomorrow. Life is done in the present, and they are in no rush to get to the next stage. As an good American, I plan events around schedules and do my best to stick to that schedule...time is money, and time is valuable. Here, relationships are valuable, and they always take first place in priority. Consequently, meetings and events have a loose start time and almost never have a set end time. It's a laid back life, but I think I'm going to fit in just fine (I'm from the South!).
Much of this week we have spent in the office going through a second orientation process. Again, it was a lot of information to take in, and I feel somewhat overwhelmed by the mass of input. On Monday afternoon, I was dropped off at my host family's house. I knew I didn't know much Spanish, but I didn't realize how bad it was until I was alone with them. Communication is a vital key to any relationship, and language is big part of communication. Pray for my Spanish. Much of the week has consisted of me using a few nouns and prepositions to create a sentence....without using verbs. Pictures and hand motions have been useful at times. Needless to say, it's pretty funny and I can only imagine what I sound like to them. The good news is, I start language school on Monday and I'll go for two weeks. Hopefully it will give me a better foundation and I can build upon that for the next few months.
Atenas is a small town of about 5,000 people that is about an hour bus ride from San Jose, the captial of Costa Rica. I found out that Atenas actually means "Athens." Awesome. This can only be a confirmation that I was born to live here! It takes me about 25-30 minutes to walk from my house to the office, which is in the center of town. The terrain is hilly and covered with all kinds of vegetation--most of which I cannot identify.
My host family is great! The familia Gamboa Chinchilla: Geovanni, Kathya and their three sons Arial (18), Daniel (12) and Gabriel (5). They have been so gracious in not only taking me in as their son, but for putting up with my lousy Spanish. Kathya has been especially wonderful. She cooks every breakfast and dinner for me, washes my clothes, and even straightens my room everyday! She has really made me feel at home, and it has surely eased the transition from one country to the next.
The food has been great, too. Costa Rican food is usually pretty mild, and not nearly as spicy as mexican food. (For those of you who have seen me sweat while eating, you can appreciate my enthusiasm over that fact.) I haven't had a single meal that wasn't good---on the contrary, it's fantastic.
This morning I went swiming with Arial, Daniel, and Gabriel. We went to a nearby creek that had some small waterfalls and deep swimming holes. I should probably mention that wastewater(everything but the toilets) is treated much differently here in Costa Rica. And by treated differently, I mean that it gets piped out from houses and flows down to the rivers. Sooo...I'm praying that I don't get sick in the next few days. I figure if they swim in it, I can swim in it too. Regardless, we had a good time and I think it was valuable bonding time for me and my host family brothers.
I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of things I want to tell everyone, but I need to keep these blog entries short. I love you all, and I'm looking forward to telling you more about my host family, work, and Atenas!
Hasta luego!
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