happy thanksgiving

yes, we did have a traditional US thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey, stuffing and several types of pie (including pumpkin and pecan!!). we were very happy to accept an invitation to the pittman's house because they are actually here as missionaries and so they didn't have to go to school on thanksgiving day (as we did!). they have two kids in abigail's second grade class and they live a block away. after stuffing ourselves quite sufficiently, we enjoyed playing some games for the rest of the afternoon.

we did miss celebrating with family - i thought of many happy family thanksgivings back in the US, but we were thankful to have new friends who were willing to open their home up to a big crowd.

prayer request:
remember the post about how we found our house? well, we are having a hard time finding a house for the new family that has been assigned to us. we have been looking for three weeks and thought we had it settled earlier this week, only to find out the house we had found had already been rented. they are arriving in three weeks!

manuel antonio

after some lousy weather here in san jose, we had an awesome weekend of weather at the beach while amy's parents were here earlier in november. three great days at manuel antonio in the sun was a much needed break. the girls had a great time swimming - in the pool and in the ocean. manuel antonio is the most popular beach destination in costa rica, since it is one of the nicest close beaches to san jose. remember close is relative - it took us about 4 hours door to door by van. when you look at a map of costa rica it seems like things should be close, but when you are here you realize why it takes so long to get where you are going - the roads!!!

besides it's beautiful beach, manuel antonio has the added attraction of white faced capuchin monkeys. we enjoyed watching them parade through the trees early one morning. we visited manuel antonio two and a half years ago, but the girls were a little small for the strong surf. this time they had a great time in the big waves - and you can't beat the water temp! thanks mom and dad for a great weekend.

you can see all the photos here: http://lafamiliamacy.shutterfly.com/action/?a=8CbM3DNm0bMkW&notag=1

Grandparents visit!

We are enjoying our first visitors from the US: Charlie & Elaine Fettig, AKA Baba & Poppop (Amy's parents). We've had fun showing them our neighborhood and school and only wish the weather were better (its cold & rainy here - not hot weather at all like many associate with Central America - ok, cold is relative & its in the 60s here!).

Friday afternoon we took Amy's parents to a basketball game at Sojourn Academy (the school the girls attend on the language school campus). Although the game didn't go well for the Sojourn team, it was a lot of fun for us, and a good way to experience our community. Arianna's fifth grade class has a small business making & selling buttons so she was selling buttons while she was there. Abigail, of course, was off with her best friend Anna having a great time.

Tonight (Saturday) Arianna is playing with her youth orchestra at the National Theater (one of the best-known national landmarks in Costa Rica). The National Theater is an ornate replica of a European opera house which we toured in 2004 when we visited here. The youth orchestra is made up of students ages 8-16. It is the youngest of the three youth orchestras here in CR. It is a full orchestra, with a very large wind & brass section. We'll be curious to see how they all fit on stage, because it is quite small.

We hope the weather clears up in time for our trip to the beach with Amy's parents next week. Its usually considerably hotter at the beach, but we hope the rain goes away too. We think its time for the rainy season to end!!

Our house! - How we found it.

Here is a photo of the inside of our house. We have a 3 BR, 2 Bath house in a residential neighborhood of San Jose (the capital city). Its pretty comfy, but the kitchen & 3rd bedroom are small. One of the things we like the most about the house is how close it is to the school and many of our friends/fellow students. There's a great community of fellow christians/missionaries within 5-10 blocks of our house!


When we applied to the language school, there was an option to be assigned to a big brother, whose primary job was to find us a house. The big brother also answers the hundreds of questions you have when you are moving to another country! We of course, signed up for this option, and our big brother and sister recommended their house, since they would be finished with their year at language school before we arrived. They sent us photos and we said we liked it, but would like to see other possibilities. Well it turned out that there were not a lot of houses available since we were the largest class of new students that ILE has had in a long time (I think 90+ adults). So, in the end we didn't try to find any other options and we selected their house. As it turned out, we were very happy that our house came with neighbors who were also language school students. They were incredibly helpful when we arrived, which was great because our big siblings were no longer in Costa Rica.


If you want to see any more pictures of our house here's a link to them.

lafamiliamacy.shutterfly.com/action/?a=8CbM3DNm0bMjK

independence day - 15 de setiembre

soon after school started we got a little tast of costa rican life through the celebration of independence day. at school we all dressed in the appropriate colors (which happen to be the same as in the US) and the kids had a parade and sang songs, including the national anthem in spanish (which they knew quite well). the eve of indendence day includes children's parades with lanterns called faroles. we missed that, but did get to see a good display of fireworks from right in front of our house. the next morning we saw a parade, which was mostly made up of student bands. we had heard them practicing all week!

you can see more pictures from the school celebration and the rest of august and september here: http://lafamiliamacy.shutterfly.com/

Costa Rica #3 - October 2, 2007

hi all,

please excuse my lack of capitals. a repetitive stress injury that started last spring seems to be agravated by my new occupation as a student (i.e. writing) and a return to cooking (which had been taken over by john back in charleston). so, i am tryng as much as possible to let my right hand rest.

the best part about this is that it is forcing me to recruit the girls to help in the (small) kitchen. john has his hands full with dishes for 3 meals a day, cutting up all the big things, and doing some of the cooking. arianna learned how to cut up onions while helping me make gallo pinto - the national dish. she also cut up 5 tomatoes after deseeding them - something i had never done - to make homemade salsa. both dishes turned out well. more on food and cooking in another e-mail.

i said i would give a little background on how we ended up coming to language school in costa rica. it's a story we tell often here because it's one of the ways people here get to know each other - the story of "how did you end up here?". as i was answering that question (it happened to be from a woman i met on the plane who ended up in my section of class), i remembered that i can trace this journey back to a youth orchestra tour to south america back in the late 80's. i had a great time interacting with the spanish speaking musicians in buenas aires, and did my best to learn to communicate in our 5 days there. at the time i remember thinking that i hoped to return to latin america someday.

the travel bug hit john a few years before we met and he took a number of trips to europe - including one short term missions trip to france for a month in 1986. early on in our marriage we started wondering if we'd get to live in another country someday - something we both had a desire to do. back in 2002 we started exploring the idea of moving to the spanish speaking world - travelling to dominican republic, twice to costa rica and to mexico. on our second trip to costa rica we wanted to attend a church and i connected with a missionary couple here in cr who actually lived in this neighborhood, which is how we came to explore this language school which is primarily for missionaries (the church we went to is in this neighborhood too).

after john explored some jobs with christian organizations in the international relief and development field it became apparent that he needed some language skills and international experience if he was going to be able to get involved in that field. that is an interest of his and it finally seemed like the time was right for us to go on this adventure after we sold our home in charleston last fall - another long story that i won't go into right now. attending language school was a way that he could gain some experience, i could fulfill a dream of really learning to speak another language and we could all have a sense of community through the people at school and also in this neighborhood.

maybe the bigger question is "what next?" and the short (and real) answer is we don't know. we are praying about our future and seeing if we think god opens any doors as a result of this part of our life journey. we were having a great time in charleston, wv before we left, so we would not be sad to return there (the girls especially are hoping for that option). i have a one year leave of absence from my symphony position there.

i apologize to all of you who have sent me individual e-mails and not received responses. typing with one hand has slowed my already slow typing down to a snail's pace. and this e-mail has been in progress for a week and a half, so i'll send it now. i was trying to send a photo link, but that will have to wait until next time!!

until then,
love, amy

we're thankful for:
in general better sleep
many new friends
violin teacher for the girls, youth orchestra for arianna
good grades

please pray for:
my wrist/hand, etc.
arianna's sub while her teacher is in the us for 2 weeks

Costa Rica #2 - September 11, 2007

Hi everyone!

Our happy news is that we have an internet connection at home!! It makes me feel like I can connect to everyone back in the US more easily. If you want to reach us by phone, you can do so at 304-342-4592. If you happen to be in Charleston, WV, it will be free for you. Otherwise it will be a regular long distance call to WV. If you want to send us any mail, our address is as follows:
(Name)
Instituto de Lengua Espanola
Apartado 100-2350
San Jose, Costa Rica
America Central

Lastly, if you are in Costa Rica, our local phone is 227-0471.

Rainy Season
Before this trip to Costa Rica we wondered what the rainy season was like. Now we understand!!! Most mornings we wake up to sunny or partly sunny skies. Sometime during the day the clouds roll in and usually in the afternoon and/or evening we get rain. Sometimes a lot of rain. Our first week it seemed like it rained more every day we were here. Which started to make me a little nervous since October is supposed to be the really rainy month!!! But today it's 5 o'clock and it hasn't rained yet today. And the temperature has been very pleasant - I think it has been mostly in the upper 70's. We use our blankets at night - I'm glad we brought them. We're also really glad the girls have full rainsuits and we have large ponchos! Umbrellas don't really work for walks home from school in a downpour.

Language School
John and I now have a week of classes under our belt. We have three different classes each day. We start at 7:30 (am!!) with phonetics, then we have conversation. After our hour break we have two hours of grammar. Our first classes have 4 students in each of them and my grammar class has 8. I think John's has 9 or 10. I like all of my teachers and my classmates. I had my first quiz yesterday and John has two tests (one on verbs & one on vocabulary) at the end of the week. We finish our classes at noon and after lunch have time to do homework before we have to pick up the girls. We try to study some more after the girls go to bed at 8:00 PM.

If you have any questions, let me know - I'll use them for subjects in my upcoming e-mails. Next time I'll try to write a bit of history behind how we ended up here for those of you who don't really have the background info.

Chao!

Amy

P.S. For those of you inclined towards prayer I'll keep our requests here in my PS, along with the things for which we are thankful.

Thanks:
Safe arrival
Good health for all of us
Good adjustment to school for the girls

Requests:
Good sleep - it's getting better, but John espescially has had a hard time sleeping
Brains that can pick up spanish!

Costa Rica #1 - September 3, 2007

Hi everyone!

We arrived in Costa Rica safely a week ago Sunday. It was exhausting to get everything packed up and into storage so we were quite tired when we got here. We had disconnected our computer and were so busy that we hadn't had time to check e-mail, so when we were on the plane we realized that we didn't even have the phone number of the people we had been in touch with about our plans for arrival!

Thankfully, our new neighbor, John Woods was at the airport waiting for us when we arrived. He said it was easy to spot us since I was hauling a cello!! He took us to the van where our driver was waiting and so our arrival was very smooth.

The girls have had a great time starting school and John and I start classes tomorrow. So far we have had orientation - there is a big group of new students (90+) and we have met a lot of nice people.

There is more to tell, but we still don't have our cable hooked up at home, so I'll wait until we do to fill you in on some details. Just wanted you all to know we're safe and well!

With love,
Amy