Iglesia (Church)

Displaying the traditional dress--aren't they pretty!

We have been blessed to find a small church that meets just around the corner from our house. Friends of ours from school are involved there and invited us to join them. It is a small congregation--about 50 people or so. Although all of the service is in spanish--the praise songs are often translated from the english, so even if we don't understand all the works--we at least know the general message.

Last week, in honor of Independence Day, everyone dressed in traditional Costa Rican dress--or Costa Rican colors (red, white, blue). A few people even performed a traditional dance.

Sydney and Kendyll ( a friend from school)

La Paz park

Last Tuesday was a national holiday in Costa Rica, celebrating its independence. We took advantage of the beautiful and hot day, by walking to a nearby park with a big hill in the center. As you can see, there is a different kind of sledding done at this park.

Sorry, this first video, you may get a bit sea sick--since I forget that a video camera can't take a vertical picture like the camera can.

The kids were both a bit tired and you may see the beginning of some outbursts at the end of the videos. But they both pulled it together and we enjoyed the day--flying kites, sliding and picnicking--with another family from school. Hope you enjoy my first attempts at uploading video. I'm so not tech-ie.

Mike and Heather's First Week of School

Mike and I have officially finished our first week of school and it's been a whirlwind. At times we think we are making such great progress and other days we are ready to pack our bags and go home because we don't understand anything. Please pray for endurance, patience with our language learning, each other and the kids, and for continued good health.

Mike and I are in different classes. We each have a class of 4 students--yes, four!! It's a great teacher-student ratio. We spend 1 hour in language class, 2 hours in grammar class, and 1 hour in phonetics class each day. We are hopefully going to get into a routine with our schedule and the kids schedule, sometime soon--but we are still struggling to figure out when all of us should be doing our homework. Thanks for the prayers.

First day of school

It was the kids first day of school on Monday, the 31st. Fortunately, they were already familiar with the school as they attended camp there this summer. They did awesome considering it was their 3rd school, in 3 years, in 3 different countries!

Sam is in 1st grade. He has 16 kids in his class and a seemingly wonderful, experienced teacher.

Sydney is in 2nd grade now. Her class is the largest in the school with 24 kids. She has two teachers--one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Their core classes--reading, writing, math--are taught in English. They have a spanish class every day. And their music class and PE are also taught in Spanish. They are both starting to pick up a little spanish and repeat things they've heard even if they don't understand what they are saying. But it is a challenge for them--it seems their first question when we are going to do anything new, or meet someone new is..."Do they speak spanish or english?"

Heather and Mike had their first day of school today. But sorry--no pictures with our backpacks for you =)