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