COSTA RICA!!!

i'm too lazy to write a new thing on costa rica because i have sent out a billion e-mails so i'm gunna copy and paste and e-mail i sent to debs telling you all about my trip!

Guess what!?

I went to Costa Rica and got engaged!

haha jkjk
But no jokes, it was possibly the most amazing trip of my life.

So we get there and spend the night in San José at h.q. which is the organization we went through called Christ for the city. The next day we did orientation stuff and hung out slept there again and left for Cannas in the morning...

We were at a church called oasis. We get there and have our first of many meals of rice and beans. The families get there and pick us up and we go to our houses. At first it was hella awkward cause they speak no English and all we have is a Costa Rican phrase book.

Shall we side track to the house? Sure.
Our house was pink. Pink on the outside, pink on the inside, pink curtains, it was awesome. The house was really simple. Concrete walls that don’t touch the ceiling so you can tell where everyone is in the house and a tin roof. which only connected at the sides and there was about a foot gap to the outside in the front and back thus making the house available for any wandering insects and lizards :P I wish we could live that way, everything’s so simple, I love it.

Back to the family. We had a single mom named Rosa which was eventually shortened to ma, a seven yr old sister named alondrea, who was very shy, and a sixteen year old sister whose name is Gaby. The first day she came and introduced us to every single friend in our neighborhood, and her grandma. It is such a welcoming in atmosphere, that’s another thing I wish we could do here. But that just isn't all who was in my family. Their were only two groups of us on the poorer side of town. Me and Nicole and or family and Dominique, kailah, and their family. And because our families were friends we hung out a lot so I also had too little brothers. Joshua (7) and Brandon (5). It actually makes me want to cry every time I think of these boys because my love for them and their love for us grew so vast and so deep during the week we were with them. They never wanted to leave our sides, even when we had to leave them in the morning to do construction. They would always pull us close and whisper in our ears like a paragraph in Spanish and all you would understand was "Uno photo!" I took about a million pics of these boys the little performers they are. And Gaby took us in like sisters who were also friends. Every night she would invite some one over to meet us and she even took us to her school! Which btw the ratio of girls to guys in Costa Rica are like 10:1. Whenever you walk down the street you would hear whistles and hisses and "PURA VIDA" which is like saying whets going on? That’s one thing that’s hard about being back here, is the guys are too afraid to speak to you, it’s honestly retarded. We met a guy named Hayner who was freaking funny cause he acted out things to talk to us and with a lot of looking in the Spanish to English dictionary we had a good conversation. The people there are amazing.

Another thing I would love to take back is how the people are so on fire for God. There was some church related thing everyday. One church service the pastor was preaching his heart out, nothing could stop him, and our translator had to stop because he was going too fast. Even though you couldn't understand what he was saying you knew that the holy sprit was there in the building. People started going to the alter cause the pastor was calling people up that wanted to be prayed for. And people were praying over them and they were shaking and falling over, and it is hard to watch. And it sounds like it could be fake but it was like the real deal, I felt it inside of me, something big was going down. Then the pastor started speaking in tongues. That’s when I lost it. Almost everyone in my class was crying. The pastor called us to the front and people came and hugged us and prayed for us. Most of these people were crying as well, and most of these people we had never met or had just met that night! And you could tell that their prayers and their hugs were really genuine. It was amazing, seriously.

So moving onto a brighter and dirtier note. We did construction during the day which was digging up new fence posts and digging new holes for new ones. Everyone who drove by honked in support of us. Also because everyone knew we were foreigners. We also went to schools and did crafts, face paints, sports. It was really funny because most of the time we outnumbered the kids 3:1.

Dude, food was good but very repetitive. Rice and beans and bread. Very carby. Since our family was poorer we only ate meat three times and twice, it was like chicken patties the size of half my palm. We bought fried chicken on our way to church in secret ;p but I dropped 5 pounds because I barely ate cause my body was actually saying no to rice and beans.

At church we lead worship and did skits. Have you heard of the everything skit? its quite powerful, and I was the lead girl, and I was worried I wasn't going to be good enough but after wards a women came up to me and hugged me and shook my hand, but in the hand shake she gave me a gorgeous ring and her e-mail. Never saw her before and only saw her once after. It was quite a beautiful gesture.

Hmmm... there’s a lot of funny cockroach stories and lizards are everywhere. There was a jumping spider in my bed one night!

After that week and a very very emotional goodbye, we spent the night at a hotel in a ghost town on the beach. We had a bon fire and it was great bonding time.

The next night we spent at h.q. and me joy Corry Angus and Mr. Chung pulled an all nighter playing big two and the winner gets to make a new rule it was crazy. There were feet in mouths, fingers up noses, and you had to drink a L of water if you lost, which is really hard to do if you’re not thirsty.... lol

Then the worst thing happened, I came home.
I plan to go back next year, for sure. You should come.