At the beach with comrade Atriskov, and other minor updates...

Last Saturday was a great day at the beach. Jessica and I went to Esterillos, a beach on the pacific side of the country south of Jacó. It was just a day trip, so we left extremely early. After crawling out of bed at 3:20 in the morning, we headed over to her church around 4:00 and left about an hour later. I got to know many of Jessica’s friends from church better, though I spent most of the day with her and Daniel (her boyfriend). On the bus, a few of them decided a bus ride to the pacific provided the perfect opportunity to try out conversations in English, which turned out to be hysterical, not because they were bad at English but rather because of what they decided to talk about. I wasn’t really even paying attention until Carlos (one of the youth leaders) started making up a story (in slightly fragmented English) about a man who was stranded on an island and later was carried home by two dolphins. Totally random, but totally funny. He asked me now and then for vocabulary help. When I translated the phrase “at risk of,” they all thought it was hilarious and sounded like a Russian name (“Buenos días, compañero Atriskov!” they said with great Russian accents).

At the beach we spent our day at a hotel in which we paid for a sort of day pass for use of facilities (pool, etc). Jessica, Daniel and I spent our first hour or so there just walking along the beach. I felt pretty third wheel, but they didn’t seem to mind at all. Afterwards I played a few games of pool with Daniel, who beat me twice in a row, and I won the third game only when Jessica showed up to play for Daniel and scratched on the 8-ball. After lunch we just hung around in the shade, and I spent some time reading my book and listening to my iPod. One interesting aspect of the particular beach we were on was the fact that even though it’s on the Pacific side it faces northeast in such a way that the sun rises on the water and sets behind you, making you think you’re on the Caribbean. Overall it was a very fun day. We left the hotel at about 4:00 and got back to San Rafael (where the church is) at 7:30/8ish. On the ride back I spoke with Julio, a member of the pastoral team who had gone on the trip with his wife and three girls, which was an interesting conversation about how he had moved to Costa Rica from Panama and lived here in San Rafael with his new Tica wife.

Angie left! She’ll be taking her tests this coming Monday back at her school in Limón. She left this past Tuesday, and much to my disappointment I didn’t really get a good chance to say good-bye. I had come home for lunch and told her ciao before going back to classes, but when I got back she had left for Limón. The good news is that I will in fact see her again – Eli told me that we’ll be going out to Limón sometime in the next couple months to visit their family. I need to at least get a picture with her!

In other exciting news, Jessica had a job interview this week! She had been waiting for some time after having finished classes to get a call from the Proctor & Gamble branch here in Costa Rica to which she had applied. They called her a few days ago and asked if she’d still like to come in for an interview, to which she of course elatedly said yes. They ended up calling her only a few hours later and said “How about Wednesday?” Because they ask their interviewees a few questions in English, she practiced a little bit with me the night before. The day of the interview I think she was a little nervous, but said afterward that she felt it went really well and she’ll be hearing from them next week. Her graduation ceremony is also next Thursday, so it’s been a pretty exciting couple weeks for her.

The weather here has been pretty crazy, with two things I’d like to highlight. The first is the rain – even though we’ve been done with the rainy season for some time now, it still drizzles extraordinarily lightly every other day or so, or at least has been doing so for the past week and some. Because it’s so light, it’s very common for the sun to be brightly shining all the while. This has provided the largest and most beautiful rainbows I’ve ever seen – every day of the week. It’s really incredible – I walk outside and as soon as I notice one I want to tell the nearest person to me to look. I wish you could all see them. The other weather factor we’re experiencing is wind – it’s picked up quite a bit, and it really is worthy of South Dakota comparison at this point! It’s driving my host family nuts because a) it’s really noisy and b) it makes for pretty cold days (again, relatively speaking), particularly when one is outside. The bad part is that the wind pretty easily messes with the power lines, and we’ve had more than a couple power outages in the area that last for an hour or two.

Yesterday (Thursday) a group of six of us got together at Brook’s (one of those of us who went to the megachurch) house for the first of hopefully many small group Bible studies. There were at least two people who are going to come next week for sure but couldn’t make it yesterday. We talked a little bit about our faith lives/stories and then started on the gospel of John. Next week we’ll be meeting again, and judging by how well it went this past time I’m sure it’s going to be a good group. Seems to be a pretty interesting mix of people, theological perspective-wise, so we’ll see how it goes.

This weekend I’m laying low, making some more plans for upcoming travels and catching up on homework. If you’re reading this, let me know how YOU are! I’d love to hear from you. =)

As always, thanks for prayers and support. God bless!