Week Two

Our second week was great.  Another family joined us at school, so now the girls have some friends to play with. 
J and I had to do a presentation to all the classes about our hero.  We chose my grandfather and with the help of some great pics my sister emailed, were able to make a nice Powerpoint and presented fairly well in Spanish.
For their hero study, the children's classes performed a drama about Costa Rica's national hero, Juan Santamaria.  E was the leader of the enemy forces, H was one of her soldiers, and L was the hero for the Costa Rican army.  L carried a torch to start the enemy's fortress on fire and had fun saving the day.  Having the paper building they built set on fire was the kids' favorite part.  From what I can gather, school children in CR celebrate Juan Santamaria in a similar manner every April 11th. 

Our second weekend was spent in our area.  On Friday, we went took a 40 minute bus ride to the closest big city, Turrialba, so that we could hit the farmer's market.  We loaded up on fruits and veggies, and J tried some amazingly fresh ceviche.  Yum!  Afterwards, we played for a bit at the park and searched for the sloth to no avail (our goal is to find him once before we leave).  Our teacher had recommended a pizza place, so we had lunch there before stocking up on regular groceries at MaxiPali, a Wal-Mart owned store. 
On Saturday, we took the bus to another town, La Suiza, and hiked a good mile up to a pool on top of the mountain.  Since it was cloudy, the water felt extremely cold, and we only ended up staying a couple hours.  E was a little disturbed by the cleanliness of the water, which also affected our decision to leave earlier than expected. 
We had a great time on Sunday because we hosted our first get-together at our house.  All the Americans and Canadians from the mission/school joined us for spaghetti and fellowship.  It was a lot of fun relaxing and visiting with one another.  Several girls from another family spent the entire afternoon with us while their parents went to Cartago for a big shopping/stock-up trip.  They purchased things the other families requested, and I'll have to say I was not bothered at all to pay $21 for the two bags of chocolate chips and the tiny jar of JIF they bought for us!  There is nothing like a taste of home sometimes . . .