Two steps forward

Thats how I feel today. I drove out with my amazing Tico friend Walter in the Befus' van in search of people to fix the damage I caused yesterday. First instruction from Walter...'Do NOT say anything, or else we will get charged twice as much.' With that in mind we were on our way. After pricing out the repairs at a couple shops it turns out we were able to buy a whole new back hatch door (1/6 of the entire van body) for about 300 dollars. To paint and install it will be another 200. I thought I would be out thousands repairing the van...but it only cost 500 and should be done in about a week! I'm liking Costa Rica better already!

Next we were able to pick up our van from the used car lot. They did all the fixes they said, and cleaned it up so nice I hardly recognized it. One of Christy's first comments about the car after she had time to look at it...'Is this our GAS CAP?' Yes, its that amazing. I'll have to be sure and take a picture of it soon and put it out here. We got insurance on the car without much hassle. Insurance was taking a little longer than we thought....Walter was late to help drive the kids home (he runs a transportation business that picks up and drops off kids from La Palabra) so we had a site seeing trip at about 120KPH back to Belen...it was exhilarating but slightly intense. I was driving my new turbo diesel van like a Porsche.

Then tonight, Lisa Befus watched Sammy and Lizzy for a bit so we could go have a date night by having dinner. It was the first time we've really talked for a bit about how we were feeling, talked about our time here, talked about language school, encouraged each other, etc. Basically, it was very nice and exactly what we needed after yesterday.