the team is here

and i am sitting in the internet in los chiles. i have felt very strange with the team today. like i don't belong. dany and i went to san jose yesterday to meet the team and today i am with them. dany and his brothers are my family and i feel more costa rican and feel more like i belong with them than with the team. i have been a mom for the past 6 months and i have to leave them. it doesn't seem right. and i don't know how i'm going to do it. this is my home and they are my family.

and last night dany told me that their soccer championship tournament is this weekend. and i will be with the team and i won't be able to go.

i wonder where God wants me. i know where i want to be and it's not with the team. being with them means i have to leave. and i don't want to.

i know if i want to live for God i have to put aside my wants. and i know He knows the plans He has for me and i know that when He tells me i will want the same thing. but right now i can't imagine leaving my family here.

they are teenaged boys but they are my babies and i love them.

dany - the newest member of saprissa

it was so cool. got home on friday to learn that saprissa had called dany. jonny got home just before dany and he was so excited he threw his arms around me and hugged me. he was so excited for dany. it was very cool. we had dany's saprissa shirt and hat, his tacos and shorts sitting on a chair outside the house. his dream come true. we are all so very happy for him.

i had told him that morning as we were walking to the bus stop that he wouldn't go to saprissa until after i left. i had thought that saprissa would call him on monday but on thursday and friday i just felt it in my heart that he would still be at home for my last week here next week.

it is so cool to see him so happy. he has played soccer probably almost every day of his life and now to realize his dream - awesome. he is such a good boy.

i'm a millionaire

or at least i will be by the time i withdraw all the money for the team's expenses and donations. the equivalent in costa rican money will be over 1,000,000 colones. that makes me a millionaire.

i once laughed at a tourist in mexico who purposely withdraw enough pesos to give him a million just so he could say he was a millionaire.

don't get too excited, it's actually less than $3,000.

frontera schools

it's so hard to decide which schools are the poorest when they are all so very poor.

went to las delicias yesterday. as i was wandering around outside i noticed that there were no doors on the baños. there were two baños and they faced away from the school but neither one had anything that resembled a door.

i chose one school, el cachito, for the team to go to because when asked what the greatest need was the teacher said food. the kids are hungry and there is no money to buy food. they have a new school building with concrete bathrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. so does that mean they are better off than the school i went to yesterday?

las delicias has lime and orange trees and banana plants. and power.

el cachito has none of these things.

el coyol that i went to on wednesday - the teacher sleeps in a tent in the classroom and has his kitchen on a plank in the front of the classroom.

the uniforms, tops and bottoms, that most kids had were very shabby, held together with pins, or just left gaping. one girl in el gallito, where i went tuesday, held her shirt together with a bc pin we gave her a few years ago.

kids are wearing shoes that are either very much too large for them, or very much too small and they are cramping their feet to fit into them, or they have none at all.

it looked like some younger kids were wearing pants that would have to last them all their elementary school years. and older kids that looked like they had worn their uniform for several years and had outgrown them. pants and skirts that no longer came together because they had been outgrown.

and yet we had milk and cereal in plastic cups, washed hands, brushed teeth, listened to information about lice, good nutrition, cleanliness, good dental hygiene, malaria, etc. and played games and soccer in the scorching sun, and they were all laughing having a great time.

they are SO poor and have nothing but they had a blast. and so did we.

it's makes me sad to think of all the things we give our kids. most of these kids don't even have power in their villages, never mind a tv and vcr in every room in the house.

the tears have started

i have been looking forward to the team's arrival but as i thought about it two days ago i thought how that would mean i would have to leave here. and i started crying.

prior to coming here i lived alone for 13 years. for the past 6 months i have had a family and i have come to love them.

the boys get up at 5.00 every morning to go to school and i watch them as they walk away from the house. running, if they're late, to catch the bus. four of them come home from school at 4.00 and i have their lunch on the table for them.

it feels really good to have a family and i can't imagine living without them. God told me the 2nd day i was here that i was here for one year. so i know i am coming back after a month but even for that one month i will miss them terribly. even writing about leaving is bringing tears to my eyes and constricting my throat.

when i have gone to san carlos with friends it feels good when we are heading home. i am home and have a home in costa rica. i sold my house in mission. i don't have a home there anymore and have no idea where i will even sleep the night i get home.

yesterday i took an hour and a half walking the usual hour walk home. i talked with God the entire way. i will need His peace and comfort a great deal until i return here.

i am coming home alone on a different flight than the team and wish i could sleep the whole way home so people won't see me crying the whole way.

gotta stop now. i can't keep crying in the internet.

saprissa

dany has survived the next cut for saprissa. he got home from the hospital on tuesday and tuesday night saprissa called him again to come the next day to san jose. jose told them dany had been in hospital for a week and when dany practiced with them yesterday they said they knew how he played and that he only had to play for 1-2 hour. the boys were told that if they got called again within the week that would mean they had made it, they would be saprissa players. i am pretty sure he will make it. they practiced against the real saprissa players and although dany is very good and very fast he was amazed at how fast they were.

he is back at school today and tomorrow and has a math exam on monday. after that i think he will be moving to san jose to live there. to train and play for saprissa and go to school.

he has such a tender heart for God and i think God is blessing him with this opportunity and he will be able to help his family. and he will be living with his brother marcos and marcos attends an awesome church.

needless to say everyone is very excited about it.

food poisoning

dany and i got sick from eating or drinking something while we were in san jose. he spent the week in hospital while i spent the week at a friends house. i've been sick here twice now, although never in the north, but i never leave home without drugs for 'montezuma's revenge' i was feeling better in a few hours after taking what my doctor had given me. dany was a pincushion for a week while they took tests to figure out what was wrong with him.

jaco

is a lot bigger than quepos. and it has grown since i was here a few years ago. i spent most of my time reading. there is a book exchange place where you can turn one book in and get a used one at half price. a couple of grisham novels for a couple of bucks.

there were a few surprises this year, none of which i enjoyed. there was a big fight on the beach. as i learned later there were some people that had come from san jose without money and wanted to get into the hotel. it got very ugly and the police were called.

then there was an american guy telling an english guy that his job was to get him whores and lots of booze. they disgusted me. they had a spanish girl with them that didn't speak any english and she was drunk most of the time. they made some remarks to me and i ignored them.

while standing in line a costa rican approached me and asked if i was married and then asked if i would like to go to bed with him. his approach was very matter of fact and was less offensive and vulgar than the american and english guys.

and there was a girl laying topless on the beach.

i was happy to leave there.

the waves looked wonderful but i was raised to never swim alone so i never went in.

quepos last night

the beach was filled with noisy, north americans talking about money, how to spend it, how to make more and how to induce others to spend more. i thought they were rather arrogant and i was uncomfortable in their presence, in the internet and when i went for something to eat.

unencumbered by my backpack and suitcase i walked through town to where i found the ticos playing soccer. way more fun.

this am i walked to where the locals set up their open street market and bought some of the weird looking fruit i saw the bus driver pick off the trees yesterday. i have no idea what they are but they are edible. i have to buy a knife so i'll find out later. i felt like a tica.

it wasn't that long ago that i would've been one of the party-goers. i don't know if it's an age thing (don't think so) or that i feel that this is my home and north americans (for the most part) come here for 2 weeks, party like crazy, with a very me first attitude and very little regard for the locals. it's good that they want to dump their money into the local economy though.

bus ride through the mountains of costa rica

i sometimes wonder why i do things and wonder if i'm not out of my mind. i used to be so sensible and practical. now i find myself going off on different adventures with no goal in mind and wonder what i will find at the end of the road.

i have spent the last few days visiting a friend in puriscal who was returning to canada today. she offered to drive me east to san jose where i could catch a bus to jaco that would've taken 2 hours.

rather than go with her i wanted to see a bit of the country i hadn't seen yet so i decided to take a bus from puriscal heading west to jaco. while i sat at the bus stop waiting for the bus i realized i had no plan. although i knew where the bus was going i didn't know where that was or what to expect or do when i got there. i started getting a little nervous but it was too late to back out cuz my friend was long gone.

i wondered where God was in this plan of mine. was He also shaking His head wondering if i was out of my mind. i wasn't doing anything for Him. i was just taking off on my own.

it was so incredibly beautiful it brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. this country is so beautiful it really touches my heart and it really feels like this is my home. i don't know where i belong anymore but this sure feels like it. we passed through the mountains over gravel roads that had steep banks on one side and dropped off to lush, verdant valleys on the other side. sometimes the road was at the top of the mountain so there were steep dropoffs on both sides. or we passed through dense jungle that closed in on us. we stopped once for a bathroom break and 3 times for the bus driver to stop and pick fruit from the trees at the side of the road. it was so simple and peaceful. God has made this an incredible garden and i want to live in His garden.

when we got to the highway the bus turned south and the first signs i saw a sign that said 23 kms to quepos (which is where i knew the bus was headed) and 45 kms to jaco (north which was my actual destination).

panic set in. we passed a large community and i thought how i started out with no plan and i was now heading away from where i wanted to go. i had expected a quiet little village where it wouldn't be hard to find a place to spend the night. then as usual God's amazing peace settled on me. i wonder if He was shaking His head at me as i was at myself.

it was past 5:30 when we arrived here in quepos and it's dark just after 6 and i have a heavy suitcase (i really have to learn to travel light) and a backpack so i knew i needed to find a hotel first.

i don't know what the population is here but it's filled with tourists and it's a large noisy beach town. i would rather be back on the dusty mountain road with the locals. i would rather spend time with ticos than listen to the tourists talking about gambling and real estate and cruising and fishing.

tomorrow morning i will head up to jaco. it's also a tourist beach town but it's much smaller, at least it was 3 years ago.

when i go back to san jose in a couple of days i would rather take the bus back through the mountains. even though it took over 4 hours and the other way is only 2 hours the drive it well worth it.

most tourists come here for the beaches but there is so much more to costa rica than the beaches that most tourists never see. the beaches actually pale in comparison to the beauty of where i was this afternoon.

if i had doubts about whether i was coming back here after going home for a month i don't now.

tremors

having breakfast monday morning in san jose and i could hear this loud roar like a freight train coming through. it was a minor earthquake. not enough to shake the house but i guess they are regular enough to relieve pressure so there is no big quake. when i arrived in desamparaditos de puriscal there were several more and nobody pays any attention to them.

scorpions

well i've had spiders as big as my fist on the wall beside my bed, and we've had a coral snake on the floor on the way to the bathroom and now a scorpion. there was a scorpion on the floor of the house where i am visiting and the man of the house stepped barefoot on it. i told him it was a scorpion. he did it again. i told him it was poisonous and he put a sandal on and moved it outside. he is danish and didn't know about scorpions.

training camp

turns out that the team that dany would train with is in a tournament and won't be around for his age group to train with so dany went home and is waiting to be called back and i am visiting with a retired cdn teacher i met last year with world vision.

wait

i was crying this am as i was talking to God - wondering about coming back here after i go home for a month, where will i go, what will i do. as i was crying God covered me with His amazing peace and it was like wait - I know the plans I have for you. wait - I will tell you when you need to know.

i have been learning patience here but sometimes it's hard and i see that i still have such a long way to go.