Costa Rica!

The kids at school

Me at Instituto de Lengua Espanola--what a view!

Well, my blogging is back by "popular" demand. At least my mom likes to read about our adventures. But because we are no longer in Malawi--we have changed the blogs name to match our newsletters. Peaks and Valleys.

We arrived safely in San Jose, Costa Rica last Sunday after a whirlwind 2 weeks of leaving Malawi, visiting friends in London, and hanging out with family and friends in Minnesota. We have hit the ground running as Mike and the kids started school on Monday. Mike is studying in a 1-month intensive course and he kids are attending a day-camp. I am just trying to help keep things in order for the time being.

We are very grateful to be house-sitting in Costa Rica for our first 8 weeks. It was nice to move into a furnished house--it has made this first week a little easier. We will be looking for a house or an apartment closer to school starting mid-August.

So far the biggest adventure has been driving to and from school. It's a busy city with lots of cars and not a lot of great roadways. It's different than Malawi where you have to avoid the pedestrians and bikes. Here it's just a lot of other cars on very narrow roads. And because we are new, if we make a wrong turn, we get easily lost. So far, nothing horrible.

On the other hand, we live close to a big store--HiperMas. It's like Wal-Mart and outside is a little stand that sells McDonalds ice cream cones. That has been our treat after 12 hour days at school this week.