A weekend in the life.....

I had the thought last night that it was the most amazingly weird thing that we live in a different country....that we live in COSTA RICA! And Josh responded, "You´re just now realizing this?" with a chuckle. It´s not that I´m just now realizing, but each time it comes to mind, it is still a funny thought. The Lord has brought us so far, yet we have so much farther to go until we feel a part of this culture. I had a friend email me this past week and comment that it must be so exciting living here. And, yes, it´s an adventure every day and amazingly full of beauty, but at the same time, it sometimes feels like just every day life. So, I thought I´d take you guys through a few typical days for us in an attempt to let you guys see and understand what our "normal life" looks like these days.

It´s the rainy season here right now, and October is the rainiest month of the rainy season. This means TORRENTIAL downpours for sustained periods of time!. It hasn´t been a typical rainy season this year as there has been less rain than normal, but the rain during October is not limited just to the afternoon. You could have rain in the morning and during the middle of the night (as happenned last night). So, Saturdays start out making the grocery store rounds before the rain sets in. It´s interesting here because there are few stores that have a vast array of everything. There´s a grocery store called Palí that is the cheapest, but I can find only about 1/4 of the items on my list. So, we make the rounds to 3 different grocery stores trying to find all the items without paying an arm and a leg or without getting run over by other drivers. As I do love to grocery shop, this is just fine by me. As a side note, it´s been interesting adjusting to having one car because Josh now gets to accompany me to the grocery store the majority of weekends:) Every other week, I have the chance to go to El Comedor, a soup kitchen for kids that Josh blogged about last time. One thing I love about Saturdays is that, with school during the week, it's our main day of service out in the community. In alot of ways, it is refreshing and the Lord always teaches us things through it. The football team Josh is coaching has practice every Saturday from 12:30 to 4, which sometimes turns into 5 or even 530. It´s been so amazing to see how God has worked through Josh´s witness and testimony with the team. We can truly see the Lord´s hand at work and he continues to build stronger relationships with the guys on the team. After he gets back, we try to have a date night which sometimes involves watching movies on our laptop (we don´t have a television at our apartment), making a nice dinner, or even going out to the movies. Even the nicest movie theaters here in the city cost about 4 dollars to see a movie, which is a nice reprieve from the arm and and a leg at theaters in the states. If we don´t go on a date, we´ll have a game night with friends. Cities and Knights is our favorite game to play (Thanks Sibleys for the introduction).

Sunday mornings, I wake up about 630 which is actually one of the later wake up times in our week. This is the morning to go the market. During the weekend, there are large farmer´s markets throughout the city. Farmers from all over the country bring their produce into the city to sell, as well as replenish supplies for the families in their villages and towns. I love market days. We´ve learned that it´s uncouth to bargain with the farmers, so I walk up and down the rows and rows of fresh vegetables and fruits trying to find the freshest vegetables for the best prices. I´ve found that bananas and lettuce require the most looking to avoid bruising or speckling of the lettuce leaves. A normal market day includes purchasing fruit for every morning of the week...usually bananas, strawberries (which are in season right now and really inexpensive), pineapple and sometimes watermelon. We usually get lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and potatoes every week, too. All this comes about to around 2000-2500 colones which is about $4.50. We come back to the house and have breakfast. We´ve made a tradition of eating breakfast together each morning and we have our specialties. Josh is the expert fried egg maker and pancake maker. And I make the cinnamon vanilla oatmeal and anything else that we make. So, we´ll have something like that along with fruit. Once we´re done, the dishes have to get done (it´s just become routine that the dishes are washed after EACH meal due to the vast amount of intelligent ants and small sinks that we have in Costa Rica). Then we head off to church which has become an actual time of worship again. When we first arrived in Costa Rica, church was more of an act we went through because I was only picking up about 30% of the Spanish, but now we can actually worship and focus spiritually. It feels almost normal...lol. Then, Sunday afternoons are spent spending time with friends and doing homework in preparation for Monday. The Lord´s blessed us with a community of believers and friends that sharpen us daily.

This is a pretty long post, but we wanted to give you guys a peak into what has become "normal life" for us. This may sound exciting or adventurous, but it just goes to show God´s faithfulness that it has become more like normal life for us.