June 18 - June 21

6/18/2012 at 9:00pm

Papí grinding up coffee beans for our amazing coffee!

I really didn't want to wake up this morning, haha, I was sooo tired!  This morning with the last of the PowerPoint translation was also really rough; I wanted to sleep sooo bad.  But I began waking up around lunch with all of the laughs of Ryan failing the cracker challenge epically, and also from playing Frisbee with Alex and Ryan.  After lunch, I worked some more and it started raining sooo hard all of a sudden for no reason!  I took a video but yeah it was like a flood.  Eventually while working the song "Todo Se Lo Debo a El" came on and Erick heard and he asked me if I was Christian, and I said yes, and as it turns out so is he, and that made me happy because it was like discovering I had another brother, which it was...a brother in Christ.  It was a really cool moment.

Abby, Ryan, and I went to a lecture about women in Costa Rica and CASEM, one of the ways women can get employment making things like clothes and souvenirs and art.  Ryan made quite the entrance, knocking a chair down loudly, but it was super funny.  He's awesome and I feel bad for the random things that sometimes happen to him, but they always make me laugh.  There was this amazing vegan chocolate cake that Jenny made as a snack after the charla and oh my goodness it was amazing.  After, we walked partway back home and luckily ran into Coco along the way as he was driving for a tour, and we got him to drive us home.  I showered, ate, helped Luis study, and then we went to la reunión de jóvenes.

(I forgot to add:  When I first got home, Luis and I tossed a Frisbee and ran around the block with Olge [sp?] for a bit, which was super fun and a pleasantly welcome form of exercise before showering and eating).

Mamá frying up some plantains, my favorite!

At the reunión de jóvenes, I had to keep an eye on Luis to make sure he didn't run off.  Worship time was super blessed and I felt my heart ready to burst at certain points.  We played some games, one of which Gabriel led (a sort of repeat-after-me game about a fat watermelon) and he other that someone (who looks like his sister but probably isn't) led and it was a charades game.  I enjoyed seeing them lead because it was really cool seeing the gifts/talents that God blessed them with at work in the service.  Then we had a talk from one of the people who serves a lot over at the church about having short roots versus being rooted in God and building a house on shifting sands versus building a house on a rock.  There was also a cute video to go with it.  The service ended with people coming to Christ or becoming reconciled, including my new friends Nimsi and Marlet (her cousin), and it filled me with such joy to have those two especially there, and I love them so much.  I am glad Saray asked me to pray over them even though I really didn't know what to do or what to say very well, and I kept switching from Spanish to English and back.  I was so grateful to God though for that opportunity and was filled with such joy to do it.  Little Jimena and Emma came and said hi to me and they were just sooo cute, and before I knew it I realized I would be late for taking Luis home if I stayed longer.  He said he really liked the church and is glad he went, because of being able to reconnect with old friends.  It just makes me happy that he is happy and is learning about God.  We got along really well today and for that I am so grateful, and I look forward to the certain craziness tomorrow will no doubt bring!

6/19/2012 at 8:10pm

I don't know why I'm so tired.  It could be a combination of diet, sleep (or lack thereof), physical exertion from walking up hills all day, or mental exertion (but probably not because I didn't have much work today).  It's in fact especially strange because though I did extra walking today by going on a tour that Rafa and John were offering to a few people from the States, and though I did go to the cultural shock charla (also known as storytime with Evelyn), the only work I had to do was some proofreading of the Traveler's Philanthropy stuff and making sure I got folders of data on paper and on a flash drive ready for me to start on tomorrow.  Other than that, my afternoon was a welcome lull where I had the pleasure of connecting with some people (like my mom and sister) via Facebook, though I've been trying to stay off of it.

Luis whining about his social studies homework and exam.
Love him, but he's definitely 11!

Abby, Ryan, and I stopped at the Supercompro for ice cream and talked a little to the woman working there who makes really pretty drinks, and then we went to Vitosi to get their string for their plots.  I came home, ate, suffered through Luis's whining again, and eventually made my way out to hang out with Abby at a pick-up soccer game at the gimnasio.  It was loud and echo-y and I was tired, but nevertheless it was a good way to end today.

Tomorrow will be a full day because not only do I start working with data but I also will be attending some conference lectures held at MVI about topics like tourism, social justice, and education, all of which I'm pumped about.  Then Thursday will be more of that, too, plus I'm going to the church in the evening to do more in-depth study of the bible.  My biggest prayer right now is for my work to honor God and that I would keep Him my first love above all else, that every word and movement would be for Him.

6/20/2012 at 6:35pm

Today was one of my most work-intensive days so far, and I still have so much to do.  I'll probably go earlier tomorrow to get it done...maybe.  We'll see.  I also have all day Friday.  So maybe I'll just work really hard again tomorrow.

A hummingbird got stuck in the atrium where we usually eat!

Basically after I got to my Spanish class, I sat through that (including reading my short story out loud to the class, much to my dismay because I don't really like reading my stories out loud because of interpretative reasons) and then grabbed the folders of data from Marlene and began inputting it all right away.  I've gotten through six months of 2010 only, and I still need to do the rest of 2010, 2009, and 2008 if there's workable data for those months, plus I need to look at 2011 and 2012 to check them, then copy them all over to Excel.  I stopped for a half-hour lunch and then I did a small bit during the conference today, which was actually really interesting and worth my time as Jenny and Fran's talks were really informative.  Someone also asked me if I spoke English today.  That was possibly the highlight of my day right there, being mistaken for a Tica by a tourist.  During the conference, too, I got to talk to Mike, Steven, and Gabriel via Facebook chat while I took notes and I caught up with them a bit.  Then I came home with Abby and Ryan (going part of the way with Jenny, yay!) and ate dinner with the lights off half of the time from a random out-of-the-blue power outage.  It was interesting because I really couldn't see, like at all, and yeah.  It was fun though.

If I could explain what I like the least about my work it would be this: Numbers start looking really weird after staring at them for a couple of hours in a row, and since some things are out of order, one slip-up means going back and changing the whole column of 90+ numbers in a six-column set.  But what I like most is that I definitely feel like what I'm doing is a huge help for everyone who needs the data, even just digitized records, not to mention the analysis and tests I hope to run next week on the data.

Being here and serving this way has gotten me thinking already about hopefully coming back next summer for my senior thesis research.  I'm thinking about writing about sustainable tourism and international efforts towards that end, maybe looking as well at globalization and what steps Costa Rica has taken towards sustainable tourism since it relies so heavily on tourism in general, maybe even looking as well at the negative environmental, social, and political consequences as well as the positive.  I'm interested as well in culturally what effects tourism has had on people here.  No stealing my thesis idea, by the way!  Haha!  I should email my advisor about it.  I'm also excited that due to my work with ASADA, I'll have something to present at the spring Symposium at LFC.  It's super exciting.  Woohoo, praise God!  I am so incredibly thankful for this opportunity that the Grace Groner Foundation has granted me and I only hope that my service here shows that I am not here to vacation, that I care, that I love this place and am so happy to give back.

I pray, Lord, for You to give me discernment and courage, and that You would speak to me and lead me.  I pray that my ears would be open and my selfishness wouldn't get in the way of all You want.

7:43pm

It's going to be so painful to leave here, I already know it.  My Lord, You know.

6/21/2012 at 9:55pm

A green toucan hit the window today!
Poor thing!

Today was quite the full day.  So I did get all of the necessary data digitized; I have some pretty bad data from 2009 and 2008 that I could try inputting as well but for now I'm struggling with trying to look at the data visually and analyze it graphically.  Nothing looks significant.  I need to put myself in contact with Alberto again and see if he can get me some data on the storage tank readings for 2010-2012 because those would help a ton in my analysis.  I also need to know which meters correspond to hotels, fincas, houses, etc. and so on.

Later, Abby and I sat in on the conference again and I took more fun notes, and at the end they had some kids come out and do traditional Costa Rican dancing, and I really want to learn it now, haha!  During the talks as well I caught up with Mike, Katrina, Gabriel, and Chase via Facebook chat.  I need to stop using that site so much.  I said I wasn't going to use it while here but my work involves the computer so it's hard to avoid the Internet, and Facebook by proxy.

It downpoured when Abby, Ryan, and I left MVI today, but thankfully Pastor Josúe gave us all a ride from halfway to our homes.  Later I left to walk to the church when Saray and her husband offered me a ride, yay!  The service was great, not only fun and funny but also deep and Spirit-led and impacting.  I met more people, learned a lot, and was reminded of a lot today.

Sunlight streaming through trees.

One of the things Pastor Josúe said that wasn't really pertinent to his message but was a tangent and caused an "amen" to escape my lips was this: God initiates marriage, and it's important that each partner's love for God exceeds the love for the partner.  I agree 100% and have even said something similar to some people here and a little in the past when asked why I won't date so-and-so or why I'm currently single.  My future husband needs to be so enamored with God that it will always exceed his love for me, and his love for God shouldn't be motivated by wanting to get closer to me but rather by wanting to get closer to God.  That is attractive right there.  As for me, I have come to realize more and more recently how much growing I have yet to do, how often my intentions are less than pure and how often I neglect to seek God first.  But I want God to be my center and my first love not because of someone else, but because in reality God is the best there is, and so good, and He honestly has changed me in incredible ways and has given me the unthinkable: unconditional love and forgiveness.  There's no way I deserve it, not with all I've done.  But in His sight, I'm His daughter, a princess, and wholly blameless thanks to Jesus.