Another day in San Jose

Today was my turn on “weekend duty”. Each of us spends one weekend working on meal prep and cleaning so everyone else gets a break from their daily chores. It turned out to be easier than I expected since by 12:30 breakfast had been cooked and cleaned up from, all the bathrooms were cleaned, lunch had been eaten, I’d written my book report, and I was bored out of my mind. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who was bored, so we headed back into San Jose.

San Jose is actually not the best place to go if you are bored. It’s rather small. I know this because I get lost rather easily, and I don’t think I could get lost for long in San Jose. Any major road leads to one of 3 major city landmarks. From there it’s an easy matter finding a bus back to the base. There are good things about being in a small city with only 3 landmarks though. If someone else you know is in the city at the same time, you’re likely to run into them. So, when we ran into Johan and Luis today, we weren’t exactly shocked. On our way back to the bus, we came across a rather creative money making operation in one of the 3 main landmark plazas. A miniature motorcycle and a horse were sitting there. You could pose there for pictures and then a woman with a digital camera and a photo printer would take your photo and print it for you on the spot. Somehow between the 6 of us we let her talk us into buying 4 sheets of photos off of her. . . On the walk back to the base from the bus stop, we found another fun photo shoot. What do you think?

What is a DTS anyway?

I wondered that myself before I came down here. A lot of people have asked me what I would be doing, and I always gave rather vague answers, so here’s a glimpse at what a DTS is actually like.

Every week day we have class from 9-12 or 12:30. This week the classes were on hearing the voice of God. It was both a challenging and an encouraging week. The Bible is clear that God will guide his children (John 10:27, Isaiah 30:21, Proveerbs 3:5&6). This week we talked about what we should do to prepare our hearts to hear God- trust that he will speak, surrender our will, be humble, and spend time listening to him. We also looked at Biblical passages that show ways in which God has spoken to his people. I think it was a week that encouraged all of us to walk closer to God and listen to him more carefully.

When we’re not in class, we do, oh, just about everything. There are work duties (I set out breakfast foods and clean up afterwards), times of worship and prayer, Spanish conversation practice, homework, and plenty of time to walk to the park and play on the playground equipment and watch people play soccer, or walk to the local pulperia and buy snack foods.

Wednesday night some of us went to a shelter in the evening. When we got there it turned out another group beat us there and they didn’t need us, so we took our food out into the street looking for homeless people to share it with. After passing just 1 or 2 obviously homeless people on the street, we stopped to give them some food. I figured we would move on somewhere else, but word spread like wildfire that we were there. I don’t think we were there much more than 15 or 20 minutes before our food ran out, and we must have served at least 30 people. I wished we had been able to chat with people instead of just serving food, but it didn’t work out that night. Seeing so many people (some of them very young- there was one guy who said he had just turned 18) come out of nowhere was sad. I wonder how many homeless there are in San Jose.

Thursday afternoons are set aside for local outreach. This Thursday we went to a local park to pick up trash. Parque de la paz has a giant hill in the center, and there must always be a breeze up there because it has a reputation as a great place to fly kites. There were a lot of families out enjoying the day, flying kites, and sliding down the hill on cardboard boxes. When you never get snow, you have to be creative. Our group of probably attracted attention as it was (especially since we were speaking English and Spanish and Scott had 2 of his blonde boys along), but Reanna made sure we got some more. There’s a chant that translates roughly, “Let’s go so-and-so, don’t be afraid, show us your moves. Up, chili, chili, down chili chili, by your toes chili chili” Each time you choose a different person’s name they choose a move and everyone mimics it. We chanted the whole way back through the park.

Friday nights are Freeman Family Fun night. All of us go to Scott’s house, and basically are required to make fools of ourselves. Last night everyone sat in a circle, except the person who was “it”. Their task was to try to make someone laugh. Whoever laughed first had the next turn in the center. Great way to spend time with people you just met a week ago, no?

The saga of the missing credit card

Last Monday, I went to the bank to withdraw money. My receipt came out and I looked at it, desperately hoping I’d calculated correctly and 100,000 colones was not as obscene an amount as it sounded. When I saw my remaining account balance and noticed that I was actually a millionaire I got a bit distracted. So much so, that I didn’t realize I never took my card back out of the machine until I got back to the base.

I made a quick trip back to the bank where I had a frustrating conversation with a guy whose accent was almost impossible to understand. He eventually gave me a phone number and told me who to call. Have I ever mentioned how much lower my Spanish comprehension is when talking on the phone? It’s pretty low. And it took 3 phone calls to figure this out. Fortunately there are quie a few bilingual Costa Ricans on base, so they helped me with 2 of them. I was on my own for the last one though. Taking down the address to the place where I went to pick up my card took forever. Addresses here are crazy. Apparently there are no street numbers. I’m not even sure all the streets have names. The address she gave me ended with “edificio esquinero”, literally, “the building on the corner” (and that was the address, NOT directions).

So, Scott (the school director), Breeana and I set off in search of the building. Driving in Costa Rica, if anything, is even crazier than their address system. Lanes are optional, as are stop signs some of the time. Left hand turns across 3 lanes of traffic are a part of life. Taxis drivers all seem to have a death wish. Vendors walk up and down between cars trying to sell things at lights. We bought 2 coconuts with a hole cut in them and straws to drink the milk. Not my all time favorite, but definitely worth the dollar.

We finally spotted the building on a corner, but not one we could really get to. So, after several quite possibly illegal traffic maneuvers and more lane changes than one should really make in 5 minutes, we pulled into the parking lot only to be foiled by the doors. Here’s a tip- if you’re walking into the ATH building in San Jose, push the button by the first set of doors, then pull them open. Wait until they close completely. Then open the next set of doors. That little bit of info will make you look less like a fool than I looked. Once we got in, getting my credit card back was easy. Let’s hope keeping it proves even easier.

Some odds and ends

Estoy aprendiendo Pachuco!

Pachuco is the word for Costa Rican slang. The Ticos (which is what Costa Rican’s call themselves) on our team have been teaching us pachuco. I love learning slang and colloquialisms. It’s so fun to learn words that aren’t even in the dictionary. So, so far my pachuco vocabulary includes “barra” which means “thing”, “mai” as in “guy”, “lo juimos” (or ele jota) which means “let’s go”, “sapa” which means, more or less, “I don’t want to hear it any more”. Harina, which literally means wheat, means money here. Chiva and tuanis both mean cool. (spellings here are all my best guess)

So, last night when we were starting a movie, and Chove said, “Mai, como funciona esa barra” (How’s this thing work man?”), I was so proud of myself that I understood him, pachuco and all. We’ll see what I learn next. J

Lemuel

Daniel and Claudia are the resident family at our house. They have an 11-month-old son named Lemuel who is the cutest little guy ever. Whenever he comes into a room, everyone is drawn to him like a magnet. Anyway, yesterday or the day before, Lemuel took his first steps. He is so cute and proud of himself every time he walks. Today he was walking back and forth between his dad and I, almost falling over as he walked, or closer to ran, back and forth. He would clap for himself each time he reached one of us. His pride in his accomplishment and his smile are contagious.

DTS classes have started and are going well! I'll have to write more about them later, since it's time to stop using the computer and start being either social or helpful.

Dia de Turista

My room- my bed's in the back corner.

Today was a free day, and since we went to Saturday night church yesterday, we decided to be tourists today. We took a bus into downtown San Jose and wandered around. Without really knowing where we were, we managed to hit most of the tourist hot spots- the central plaza, the cathedral, the national theater, another theater and the Gold Museum. We didn't go into any of the buildings- we just did the outside walk-by tour. I was surprised by how small San Jose is. It's the capital city and the largest city in the country, as far as I know, and it had a tinydowntown district. There were just a few sights listed in my guidebook for San Jose, and we saw most of them in our wanderings. The buildings were mostly just a few stories tall.

As we walked back in what we thought was the general direction of the plaza central, looking for an ice cream shop we'd seen earlier, we ended up back at the little park where the bus stop is. There was a church group there doing mimes and skits to Christian songs. We stayed and watched a few and ate our lunches. It was really fun. From the bus stop we knew how to get back to the plaza, so we went and got the ice cream we'd all been wanting. I was so excited to see mora ice cream again, one of my favorites from when I was in Ecuador. (black raspberry, I think, or maybe blackberry). It started to rain as we finished our cones, so we headed back to the bus. It poured while we were at the bus stop waiting for our bus and wondering if we would even know which the right one was. Fortunately for us, most of us had brought umbrellas and there was a covered waiting area at the bus stop. Also fortunately for us, the first bus we got on DID go back towards our house and the bus driver even told us when we needed to get off after Reanna showed him our address cards.

So, now we're back, feeling like we were adventuresome, slightly damp, and proud of ourselves for navigating the public transportation system and the streets of San Jose without a map and without mishap. It's only 1:40 here, and we're not really sure what to do with ourselves for the rest of the day.

Breeana and Kendra outside Teatro Nacional

Plaza de la Cultura

Random statues in front of the bank.

The cathedral

The other theater- I forget its name, but the tourist map in the middle of la plaza de la cultura had it marked. :)

A plaza across from the cathedral

Left to right- Reanna, Alex, me, Kendra

Church group doing mime.

Pura Vida!

(From Yesterday)

Today started at a time I like to think doesn’t even exist: 3:15 am. A drive to the airport, 2 flights and 13 hours later, I arrived here in Costa Rica. Despite the fact that the Continental Airlines person told us “Costa Rica has the strictest entry requirements of any country we fly to,” customs and immigration was a breeze. They didn’t even look at my customs form- I just dropped it in a box.

When I walked out of the airport (and struggled to get my backpack on my back while holding my smaller backpack in front of me- good thing one of the waiting taxistas helped me), I was met by 3 staff members, 2 other DTS students and maybe someone else? The whole day has been a sea of new faces and names. The other DTS students (11 of them), staff members, half a dozen kids of staff members. . .

(And from today)

I woke up bright and early this morning, to the sounds of all the dogs in the neighborhood barking. I think I fell back to sleep, but the sunshine, the birds, and the excitement of being in a new place had me up by 6. There’s currently no hot water here, so I had a cold shower. Good thing the beach prepared me for that! Eventually I was bored and restless, so I wandered out to the kitchen to see if I could help with breakfast. While the others were setting off the smoke alarm burning pancakes, I cut up papaya and sliced tomatoes. After breakfast we had our orientation, registration, icebreaker games, and a tour of the neighborhood and the 2 houses. The houses are in the same neighborhood, but several blocks apart- I’m pretty sure I can make it to the other house from our house, but not 100% certain I’d make it back without getting lost.

Our group is doing a bit better already with meshing. Last night we were fairly segregated by native language, but today we made more of an effort to mix and the icebreaker games forced us to. All the English speakers are starting to feel more comfortable speaking (or trying to speak) Spanish. I even translated for part of our tour when some of the bilingual staff were not around. Plans for the rest of the day include maybe wandering around a bit to see the neighborhood (so I actually feel like I’m in Costa Rica and not just in a YWAM bubble), and then going to a local church together with all the DTS students and then out for pizza.

I'm off!

My plane leaves tomorrow at 7:25 am! I get into Costa Rica around 2pm. It sounds like there will be 11 or 12 other students in this DTS, about half from the US and half from Costa Rica. Hopefully I'll write more soon!