Wow, we have overcome in the last two days two major bureaucratic hurdles of being strangers in a strange land!
Number One: Getting a Costa Rican driver's license yesterday. What an adventure! We went with a friend from school who also needed to do this. After she was pursued by a suspected robber in the morning before we set out, a taxi driver ditched us, an interesting medical exam, lots of waiting at the driver's license bureau, different rules at different desks from the people that helped the three of us (Andrea got a difficult person who made up new requirements that she didn't meet), more waiting, and Seth's name being misspelled on the first shot at his license, we FINALLY achieved a victory. Despite the many hurdles, God was with us: He protected Amy in escaping her pursuer (and had her meet a great "tough guy" protector in our new neighborhood -- they call him "the Russian"), gave Andrea favor with a different worker at the bureau, and got things done and us home safely in the end. Lessons in patience, you think?
Number Two: Getting extensions on our tourist visas today. We had hoped to get this done yesterday as well, but showed up just a few minutes too late to get a number in the line for that day after the ordeal with the licenses. SO, back at it first thing this morning, we were number 5 in line. Woohoo! This was a great experience in feeling like an outsider among other people who have a better idea of what's going on than you do, and don't want to tell you the secret rules of society, or don't understand that you don't know them: where should you wait, when do you know that it's your turn, where do you get the mysterious stamps that we didn't know we had to have, etc.? How humbling! After only and hour and half, we were on our way and hit the worst traffic jam we've been in here. Something was on fire on the highway, the police had close the on ramp where we (and apparently 1/2 of San Jose) needed to get on, and we fought traffic for over an hour to leave the area we were stuck in. After all that, we still made it back to school in time for grammar class!
Praise God for small victories! We're looking forward to a three day weekend, as we don't have school on Monday due to a holiday to celebrate the annexation of the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. More good news: schools here will reopen next week after being closed this week due to the swine flu. No more kid juggling and hopefully the flu risk is subsiding!
Blessings,
Andrea (and the Gang)
Dear friends and family,
It seems like July suddenly crept up on us, along with decisions about what to do at the end of this trimester of language school. This terms ends August 14 (Alden's b-day). We'd been planning on leaving language school and hiring a tutor to help us continue the journey toward fluency in Spanish. However, when we sat down and crunched the numbers, we realized it would be less expensive to enroll half-time at the institute. In addition, we've really wanted to complete the grammar curriculum at the language school, which we won't be able to by this August.
So, we'll be starting a new trimester of language school on Sept. 1. We'll take two hours of classes each day. Once we finish the grammar curriculum, which we expect to take another month, we'll begin focusing on translating. We've heard it's an excellent way to uncover weak spots in your language acquisition and correct them. Apparently, you really can't "fake it" in this class, or use circumlocution to describe what you're translating.
Andrea and I will be in class with one other fellow student from our grammar class now, Amy Lineburg, who is here with Wycliffe Bible Translators. We hope that class will begin at 7:30 am so Andrea can come back home and dive into homeschooling with the kids, while I head North through the city to La Carpio and get started in ministry! The kids will be home during these two hours or so with a maid/nanny. Andrea is really excited to get back to homeschooling the kids soon, and I'm anxious to feel productive in ministry again.
In addition, we're hoping to move to another home in the area that has another bedroom, and more importantly, two bathrooms (5 people + 1 bathroom = frequent emergencies)! In November, friends from the states are coming to stay with us and help us put together a fundraising video. Then, we hope in Dec. Seth's folks are going to come down and spend some time with us to avoid the ice and snow back home and volunteer in ministry here. So, the extra bedroom will be a blessing, too. We meet with the landlord of the other home on Tuesday.
Please pray for us that God would bless and direct our endeavours to find a loving "empleada" to care for the kids and do some cleaning or cooking while were in school. Please also pray that God will bless our move to the other home we've found and that everything would come together.
Don't forget, we love to receive updates from all of you on your lives!
Peace,
Seth (and Andrea and the kids)
