I finally got to use this thing!

So when we first moved to Costa Rica, I bought what any guy would have - a machete! Because....you never know when you might need one, right? And, five dollars is a small price to pay for a knife (sword?) the size of my leg. But, for the first time in our 1.5 years down here I got to use it for real! Yesterday we had a thunderstorm of grand proportions - including hail and everything. It blew over several banana trees near our house - so I went to town trying to get them off the electric fence. I also cleared out some banana leaves in our back yard so we can start to line dry some clothes more effectively. Nothing makes you feel more HUGE then machete-ing huge leaves like they are butter - lets be honest though - palms and banana trees don't put up much of a fight.

10 + 1 = 8

So I was sitting with my daughter at the dinner table this afternoon and next to us was one penny and one dime. She asked me something like 'What do you see daddy?' and I promptly (and proudly) answered '11'. She said no. I smiled a sly smile and said 'Okay, 9...' She said no again. I was left with nothing to say except 'you are too smart for me, what is it?' She quickly responded with '8'. Christy looked at me and smiled, wondering if I would understand. I looked at the dates and saw no eights or clever combinations - certainly not that my four year old would be able to do the math on. I just was puzzled and annoyed. Until she explained, with the help of Christy, that when the two coins were put together, side by side, they made the shape of an 8. She is absolutely right and there was nothing I could do but smile. How many times do (dare I say 'we' as adults?) just totally miss something right in front of us because we assume we already know the answer. Worse than thinking that we already know the answer, how many of us think that EVERYONE else must be wrong. I fall into that category quite often. Thank goodness I have my daughter to help ground me in my own bias and thoughts of superiority.

Shame, let down, sadness....

These are things I feel after waiting so long to update the blog. But, in the words of of my favorite Jane Austin book/movie 'Do not worry Lizzy, this too shall pass, and probably more quickly then it ought...' Its from Pride and Prejudice - I highly recommend you at least watch the six hour A&E special version if not even read the book too.

We recently sent out a prayer letter to everyone – if you did not receive it please do let me know. I’m also posting one on the blog here and will be sending one out via email today….

So much has happened since the last time I blogged! Roughly two months ago I had the opportunity to go for an over night retreat with my 7th, 8th and 9th graders. During that retreat there were several team building events – if you have ever been to a low ropes course, you have probably done something similar to what we did that weekend. However, they also had a military style obstacle course where you had to swim through mud water, walk up muddy slopes, climb rope ladders, run through tires, crawl underneath barbed wire (okay – it was just rope – but I was imagining that it was barbed wire), and other such activities. I’ve never had the opportunity to do that and it was quite a bit of fun.

To be honest, I often don’t feel *that* much older than my kids, especially the 8th and 10th graders, but one picture in particular really sealed the deal for me realizing the cold hard truth. I AM that much older then my students. If you look at the picture here, you can see that I both tower over my students (hard to do given that I am only 5’8’’) and I am also generally much more ‘thick’ then they are. In general, I’m just old. Christy has felt a bit old lately because Elizabeth has started telling her ‘Mom, your hands are rough because you are OLD!’ I’m not sure where she learned this (I certainly did not tell her to say this – even I have limits) but I guess all you can do is laugh because the kids don’t know any different

Roughly a month ago I had the chance to attend a camp with the 10th and 11th graders which was fun as well. We went to an area called Savegre which was absolutely beautiful. This camp was situated in a mountain valley right along the Savegre river so in every direction around us were mountain peaks. Also surprising to many, it was VERY cold in the evening time. I was wearing long sleves, to t-shirts, a long sleeve t-shirt, a fleece jacket and a rain jacket over it, but was still shivering during our evening meetings. There was a high ropes course there; however, it had rained so much recently that we were only able to use a smaller section of course including a ‘leap of faith’, a ‘rapture’ – where you get pulled up in the air by your team mates, and something called a hammock where you basically jump off a 40 foot balcony and swing like a monkey for a couple minutes. During this weekend, we had the president of the board of directors come and speak to the children and on the side we also did a brief study on the Biblical character Daniel.

One thing that was interesting was the ‘serenades’ at night. I guess this is more or less Costa Rican tradition. The first night everyone ‘goes to bed’ at 10pm (realize, no one is ACTUALLY going to sleep) and the girls prepare for their serenade. It starts at 11:30pm. For this year, the girls had black lights strung up everywhere and had hold up posers in bright colors that had the words to the songs that they were singing. The girls holding up the posters wore black so you could hardly see them and four girls in the front playing instruments wore white. Overall, pretty cute. The next night we ‘went to bed’ at 10:30pm – but then the guys had to get ready to serenade the girls. The must have pulled the pedals off of about 500 roses because they put rose pedals all over the floor. They also had formed some PVC in the shape of a heart, put alcohol in it, and set it on fire. When I saw this getting set up, I asked Matt ‘…this is going to melt the PVC – what are they doing….?’ (I was also thinking, why are you allowing this). Sure enough, about 10 minutes into the serenade, poisonous black smoke was billowing from this now melted blob on the ground. Matt and I were able to put it out while the boys continued ‘signing’ – if that’s what you could call it – to the girls. Overall, an experience to see, and a neat look into the culture.

More recently, Christy and I were able to spend two weeks in Miami and help Latin America Mission out with an orientation for folks interested in becoming missionaries. It was a hard time in La Palabra de Vida because Matt taught all of my classes (thanks Matt!), but a great time for us because we got to basically just act as a taxi service for the folks in orientation, answer questions, and just basically just be friends to them for 10 days. The orientation included presentations on the history of LAM, the nuts and bolts of Latin America Mission, advice on support raising and also a whole bunch of team building activities. This last thing was something new to the orientation from when Christy and I went through it in 2007, and something I think is a huge improvement to the program. It was truly a blessing for Christy and I also to be able to hear the story of every one of the candidates and why they felt called to missions work.

We just entered into the ‘spring’ break of La Palabra de Vida which means that I have the ability to rest for the next couple weeks. Before I started teaching, I thought this was a crazy amount of vacation, but now that I know how much is involved with both prepping and execution of the school work, and also emotionally with the lives of the students, I am really looking forward to the couple week break. My folks are coming into town which means the kids will have endless book reading times and outside bicycle riding times – which will be great.

I hope everyone is doing well, and I’ll try to use this break as a catapult to blogging a bit more in the future...

Things I've realized in the last couple weeks

1. Waking up at 5:00 a.m. every morning has not been as bad as I thought it would be.

2. I like to be planned out at least 3 weeks in all my classes

3. Total lack of an understanding of 'forming lines' or 'waiting your turn' still makes me annoyed

4. I also do not like having meetings that always run 6 minutes late when I only have 15 minutes inbetween to get somehere.

5. Even though #4 bugs me, I still hold my students for 30 seconds sometimes when they only have 3 minutes to get from one class to another.

6. Number 2 is not possible

7. I'm a little sad that football is over.

8. I am very happy that I just realized that we have 3 locals channels on our cable that are broadcast out of Denver.

9. We might have to travel out of country in the next 30 days if our Visa does not come through.

10. Although waking up at 5:00 am is not bad, it is still not very much fun.

11. Teaching students, much like leading teams, is difficult.

12. Sometimes the most simple assignments yield a wealth of information and context on students, their backgrounds and the struggles they are dealing with.

13. Riding a bike on the road is not nearly as terrifying if it is 5:40 in the morning

14. I miss Hulu.com

15. I'm hoping sometime to climb Mt. Pico Blanco

16. As much trouble as I have with my classes sometimes, it is still easier than teaching Lizzy and Sammy like Christy does

17. If I don't bring water to class in the morning, but the third class my mouth gets dry and I start spitting (accidently) on the folks in the first row

18. I take too long when I grade assignments

19. We still have big time 'I miss the states' moments - and probably will for the next two years

20. The second 60% I lost on Bank of America stock was much easier than the first 60% (math joke - get it?)

I've included a picture of me teaching that Matt Befus took unexpectedly. You can see how animated I get! The room I'm using too just got upgraded and we have a project unit and stereo,DVD,etc in there. Its pretty sweet. This is my 7th grade 'B' class. This year they split the 7th grade class in 2 because there was so many students, it would have been difficult to have them in one class.

British Propaganda

Sammy is into Thomas the Train in a big way. By the looks of the toy shelves back in the United States over Christmas, so are many other kids. I'm fine with it - which is a good thing based on how many new Thomas toys, books, adventure sets, etc that he received from my parents over the holidays. That aside, I do get a kick out of reading some of the older Thomas books. This is both because of the British-isms you find in there (see below) in addition to the down right silliness that are in these books. Lets take a closer look...

(Picture 1)
In this page of our book titled 'Breakfast time Thomas' written by the Reverend W. Awdry, we can see that Thomas was acting 'Cheeky' this day as he tried to pull away from the station without his engineer! (This was against the best advice of his friends Percy and Toby the Tram).

(Picture 2)
After Thomas loses control of his engine - he crashes into the stationmasters house (NOT a great way to keep your job in these tough economic times). Notice that I'm pretty sure two people and the Catog (hybrid creature) did not survive this crash. This picture also sets up the next one...

(Picture 3)
I think its great that the author really focuses on the big picture in the final page. Never mind the fact that a TRAIN ENGINE just crashed into the house - you ruined our breakfast you 'miserable engine'. The girl looks upset that her shirt got untucked and the boy looks mad that his gel did not hold his hair in place. He should come to Costa Rica because there are MANY kids with Mohawks and I never see one piece of hair move. (P.S. - I guess the station master was the only one who didn't make it).

Did you ever just want to know whats next?

I did. Multiple times in the last couple days actually. As I may (or may not) have blogged about in the past - time isn't a real big deal down here. There are some interesting implications to that when you work in a position that is VERY time dependent in a cultural where nobody cares - but thats for another day. What I'm looking for here is a simply schedule of events. Nothing big. Not a Gant chart, not workflow diagrams, not something to the second or even to the 1/2 hour sections. Actually, I wouldn't even need times - just a 'here is what we hope to cover'. I've had 4 days straight of showing up somewhere and being at the mercy of whatever just comes next. It nearly KILLS me. One of those days began with meetings at 6:15 a.m. and finally ended at 9:50 p.m. (yes, I'm serious. We just had three breaks - our bus ride to the place, 30 minutes after lunch and about 40 minutes after dinner). I joked around with the one other Gringo there that in the U.S. - I think people would have just left. However, I just would have had a list of events, I'm pretty sure I just would have been annoyed and not down rightupset.

However, as usual, two good nights of sleep and a weekend ahead of me (with the super bowl!) tends to calm the mind and soul.

P.S. The hot water heater still does not work

For those of you wanting to know - I'm still a failure as a plumber.

The Beach!

My whole family including both my brothers (and their families) and my parents came down to Costa Rica - for what might be one of the last large Meyer Family hurrahs - about a week ago. My parents rented a house in Manuel Antonio - a rainforest / beach area roughly three hours away from San Jose, Costa Rica with plenty of space so that we could enjoy the pool, the beach, good eats and time with each other. As with all things, sometimes God's plan is a little different than ours. Our trip was cut short - as in never happened - because as it turned out we needed to stay much of the time in San Jose nearer a top tier hospital (no one is in critical condition and all my family has since returned home - so no need to worry - but thanks for starting to worry). After you leave the San Jose area, the quality of care and options start going down hill fast. However, in the middle of that week My eldest brother, his wife and my family were able to go out for a few days and enjoy the property as it had already been rented.

The kids were a bit concerned at first that we may not get to go to the beach and enjoy the pool, ocean, sand, food, etc - you can see their agony in this picture. But, after we told them they were quite happy to be going - minus the three hour drive up non-U.S.A approved style roads through the moutains. Actually, I think my brother and his wife were even less excited about that drive - its pretty brutal for anyone who gets motion sick. As the driver right in front of the AC - its a little easier.

One of the more fun things we did (I think) was go to the butterfly garden. We had done this tour before with Christy's parents when they visited and it really is great. They have a wonderful selection of butterflies in the garden itself, as well as a unique exhibit that shows the different styles and stages of larva through butterflies. Really quite impressive. If you are willing to pay just a bit more, you can get a guide to walk you through not only the entire butterfly garden portion - but you also get to tour their reptile exhibit too which for given the size of this park is quite amazing. You walk on a catwalk above a grand selection of crocs, caymons, snakes, turtles, lizards and other creatures. Last time we were there Sammy was sleeping through the lizards - so I think he enjoyed it. The other plus side about this butterfly garden / park is that it is under cover of the rainforest so you don't get quite as zapped by the sun.

Although not uncommon to see out by the beach, here in San Jose we see almost no lizards so its neat to have them just outside your bedroom window getting some rays on the warm roof tiles. I especially liked these lizards better than the ones in Jaco because I'm pretty sure if this guy got angry at me - I would still be eating him for dinner instead of the other way around.

The last pictures that Justin was kind enough to take include a little beach time with Lizzy and I. Although I will never understand why kids love to get messy in sand (in their hair, their suits, their toes...everywhere) - getting in the ocean itself will always make sense to me. Although the waves are a bit intimidating people the size of Elizabeth and Sammy - they both did great in the water. We had bought little floaties (innertubes) for them to use - and as long as daddy was close and holding on - things were good. Luckily on this particular day you can see the waves were not too bad - only one capsized on Sammy and that was mostly my fault for not paying attention (needless to say he was done with the water and wanted mom after he coughed up some salt water).

I hope the new year thus far has been good for everyone. Christy and I are excited, if not intimidated to go back to our 'old' roles in the family. Starting tomorrow I'll be spending full days at La Palabra de Vida with teacher orientation and lesson planning, and Christy will be home all day with both of the kids. Lizzy is going to be home schooling with Christy starting tomorrow (pray for them!). In addition to my teaching at La Palabra, I've officially started another class at Covenant - Reformation to Modern Church History. So, if you want a survey course level detail history of that topic - feel free to drill me on it. :)

We will be in touch!

Rattle Rattle Shake Shake

As you may have heard - there was a 6.2 earthquake in Costa Rica, very near to San Jose, yesterday. Being unprepared gringos from a location in the United States with no earthquakes, I must admit that we were fairly unprepared for an earthquake of that magnitude. There have been smaller ones to date (in fact, three days ago there was a 5.0) - but those more just feel a bit odd but are not frightening. However, when the glasses and plates start dancing, my car is rolling in the driveway - and you can physically see how the house is moving different directions than the concrete walls outside are window - it is certainly a time for concern. Praise the Lord that everyone in our family is safe. Also, all of our friends here in Costa Rica at La Palabra de Vida and beyond appear to be safe and sound. However, please do pray for those families that have serious housing damage, and worse yet, lose of life in their family (I believe the death toll is up to 15 by today). I'm actually fairly concerned that the 15 is probably woefully low given that some of the smaller poor shanty towns are probably not getting either the news coverage or asistance that they need.

Unrelated to the earthquake, my parents and my brother and his wife landed (2 hours after the earthquake - I guess it is related) safe and sound. My middle brother Jon, his wife and daughter will be landing in 1 hour and we will be having a Meyer family vacation / get-together which given the current market and also hardness to find time to get together could be our last for a while. Its fun to see everyone and I'm hoping a few days at the beach will be fun time together.

I've been working on reading up on 8th grade science text books and working through lesson plans so that I will be one step closer to being able to teach at La Palabra this upcoming school season. I will be starting some teacher meetings at the end of this month and into early February and then my first foray into full time teaching begins. Yikes!

I tried the last two nights to post some updates on the hot water heater (of which their are plenty) - but both times I lost my posts. Can you believe it? As a summary, the offical store trip count was about 10 - and we came in about 50% over budget - but on the plus side it does make hot water. On the negative side - it could at any point blow up and ruin the back half of our house. More to follow....

I hope everyone is doing well - we'll be in touch.

A shop-a-holics dream

Well, I finally got around to unburying our camera out of the hotbox so I thought I would snap a few pictures around the new place. The first one here is one of the reasons why my living room is my 'new favorite room'. Actually - I told Christy it is the first room in all of the places in Costa Rica that we have stayed that has a room that I really like. Our ceiling is a bit unusual in that it is totally wood paneled. In the family room, there is huge piece of timber that is roughly 16 feet tall, that serves a major support for the roof. However, in all directions (and in all other rooms) there are vaulted ceilings with the amazing wood paneling. I can just sit out in the family room, listen to music, read and enjoy the setting.

Another exciting thing that occurred just today actually is that we bought a mid-sized on demand water heater. I'm not sure if I mentioned before, but our house does not have hot water at all (except for that water coming out of widow-makers in the showers in the two bathrooms with have). However, Christy and I figured that it would be pretty easy to buy an on demand water heater and feed some hot water to both our clothes washer and also the kitchen sink. You would not believe it - but I am excited about the water to the sink. During raining season, when you are always wet, everything is damp, and it is about 62 degrees - washing your hands in freezing cold water is a good way to both be uncomfortable and catch a death illness.

One implication of the hot water that I mentioned to christy at the hardware store is that I will have to yet again face my arch-rival...plumbing. For those of you who have never tried to adjust plumbing or even make new plumbing from something roughed in - you may not understand. However, its an art. Even when you think you have it 'all figured out' and buy all the pieces of PVC, the glue, the bends, etc....you WILL go back to the hardware store no less than 16 more times to get the right pieces. After my ominous warning - Christy and I began our adventure.

Given my healthy respect and FEAR of plumbing, I think that plumbing must be a shop-a-holics dream. You KNOW you are going to buy the wrong parts, and probably miss something, but you can combat this by buying every bend, every union, every connection possible. And they are only about 100 colones each! We are talking about 20 cents a piece. So, you can go crazy at the store. You can see a small collection of the pieces that we will likely never use because they are incorrect to the left.

As if hearing my words and exactly on que, when we got home we realized our first (or what will be many) problems. I was all excited as we pulled the unit out of the box, one side saying 'cold water' and one saying 'hot water'. So easy, what could go wrong. We bought all the PVC and connections for 3/4'' - this is what washers use. However, if you had rulers as eyes, you would be able to see what is wrong. Yeah, you guessed it (you didn't really probably) - these are 1/2''. Which means although I had hoped to start doing the plumbing tonight, it was almost silly for me to start because if you start gluing the PVC together before it is totally cut and assembled, you are bound to make a mistake unless you vocation is working on This Old House. So....as other road blocks and bumps come about on this - I'll let you know.

Totally unrelated - you have all done it before. You are packing for a trip, space is tight, however - there is something you really want. When your spouse is not looking you unzip the bag and smash something in - forcing the zippers on the bag to scream for mercy. Well - even if you haven't - you can imagine. I did that this last trip - but the sad part is that it was not even with one of my own things. Someone once gave Sammy a mini-Wisconsin helmet for Christmas. I saw it when we were home in December and what started out as an innocent 'that would look nice on my teaching desk' turned into me risking the life of one of our suitcases AND stealing (commandearing?) this helmet for my use in 2009. None the less, I am happy it is here with me in Costa Rica. If it could talk, I think it would be happy too.


One last picture to entertain you with. I've never really seen this before in a house, because Ive never seen a house that had vaulted ceilings in every single room. But in two of the rooms, the closets are just built out into the rooms. However, the ceiling is so tall that they did not continue the concrete to the top. The first week we were hear I told Christy that it would make sweet storage. She then mentioned how ugly it would be. Case closed, right? Maybe not....

Happy New Year!

As declared in the prayer letter we sent out, I'm going to do my best to try and update the blog a bit more often. TBD how this promise (for the second time actually...) shakes out.
We had a very busy December as we finished up moving (again) to our new house. We had been living on the Campus of La Palabra de Vida at the English house. It was a very convenient in that when we were teaching we could simply wake up, throw on some clothes and go teach (okay...slight more was involved) - however - it was time to move out. In mid-January there is another family coming down to help teach and they will be staying there. Also, although we enjoyed being close to the school and Matt & Lisa, we were excited to have a 'space of our own' that we could arrange just so. Luckily, we found a house that we can rent for a reasonable low rate given the normal expenses in the Belen area - and also it is only 1km away from the school (thats about 1/2 mile for all my American amigos). This means I can walk to the school every day without any hassle - giving Christy flexibility by not having to wake up and take me to work and also by having the car. The neighborhood is loaded with kids, which is exciting, if not tiring. Everyday Lizzy says, 'Can I go play with my friends?!?!?'

We moved in early December, and after what seemed like only a few days to unpack, we fly back to the United States. We spent some time in Colorado, Illinois and also Michigan. Although it would have been fun to see everyone - we quickly realized that two weeks in the states quickly gets taken up by not only time with family - but also travel. we spent close to 3.5 days of our short trip home either in car rides or planes. I think next year, if possible, we will try to take a longer trip back to the states so that we can see more of our supporters and be slightly less rushed.

We flew back into Costa Rica on New Years Eve and thankfully had no problems with customs or immigration. Actually, we might have set a record by making it through immigration, getting our bags, and going through customs. I can not imagine it took us any more than 30 minutes to do all of that - incredible! We had 8 bags crammed full of goodies that we brought back from the states - including two army duffels. Given the new airline rules on bags, we had heard that they might try to charge us more for those bags as they were outside the size limits - but our check in lady did not even mention it. God certainly was watching over us as we made our travels to the states and back.

Over yesterday and today we have been trying to finish unpacking boxes (and the stuff we brought back from the states) and make our house a perfect home. We have been hanging towel bars, mirrors, baskets, etc - trying to get everything just so. Starting next Monday I'm going to try and hit the books hard to start planning for the 2009 school year. This was something I had hoped to do on our short trip to the states but surprise surprise - I did not get to it. Also next week I need to take our car into the shop with our friend Walter because the turbo (it is a diesel, do not get too excited) is not working. Likely this will cost us around $1000 to fix - ugh. However, the little extra power is a) Nice to have around San Jose and b) almost necessary when you drive through the mountains. The last thing you want to do is stall out on one of the very steep mountain curves because you do not have enough power.

Anyway, this post is a bit dry as it is more of an update - but, and least you all know what we are up to now. I'll try to snap some pictures of our house for everyone to see what we are seeing (where we live, our beautiful view of the escazu mountain range, etc).

Thanks again everyone for your continued support and prayers as we are down here. As Christy and I venture into yet another stage of live as I full time teach and she begins to home school Elizabeth - we will need the continued support.

Blessings to all.