Friday, February 18

What an eventful day! I got up early this morning in order to use the internet at the neighbor's house before I went into LASP. I needed to email some stuff to Northwestern for my scholarship and I checked a few emails quick before taking the bus to LASP. Once there, I finally returned Bitter Fruit, the book I read for my US/GUA relations thesis paper. I gave the book to Don Antonio and ended up spending some more time talking to him about the issue. After that, I headed over to Don Mike's office to discuss the Catholic church. I had some questions written down from his lecture and mostly just wanted to pick his brain to get a better understanding of the church in general and its roots in Catholicism. We had a really good chat, and I learned a lot from him!

While at LASP I also took some time to sit in the garden by myself to read the Bible and pray. It was an amazing time of reflection and recognition of the growth God has created in me and the blessings He has poured out this semester. Again, I was overwhelmed by His love and the desire to serve Him more. I didn't even realize how much I needed to take a break and sit with God, but I am so happy that He drew me near today and that I can continue moving forward with Him by my side. I hope to be able to make/find more time to keep having little retreats like this one throughout the rest of my time here.

When it was time to walk over to ICADS, I met with a group of other students and we made our way to class. Haleigh and I shared about news from home and the movement and growth we have been seeing in our lives lately. Today was our last day of this program at ICADS (we will go to ICADS again for 2 weeks after Nicaragua, but our classes will change), so we just took our quiz, played a few games and then had a celebration with the whole group of students. There were a bunch of yummy snacks, and it felt good to be completely done with this first portion of the semester.

After ICADS, a bunch of us needed to go shopping for some things we will need in Nicaragua, so we made our way to Pequeno Mundo, my new favorite store. There are apparently two Pequeno Mundos near ICADS, so every time we asked someone for directions we were pointed different ways, getting progressively more lost until we finally just decided to turn around and start over. Upon finally arriving at the store, we had to put our bags in lockers before being allowed to begin shopping.

At first I thought I was really going to hate the store, and I was hoping that Haleigh would go to the mall with me after we finished there. Its basically like a warehouse of everything you could ever imagine, but especially clothes. There are massive shelves from floor to ceiling covered in boxes. You could find virtually anything in there, and the clothes were super fun to search through. Despite the massive quantities of things, it was organized enough to sift through, and we all found some really cool things. Haleigh and I spent more than an hour going through the store picking out things for our Nicaraguan host families, friends at home, and maybe sneaking a thing or two for ourselves every once in a while.

By the time we finished at Pequeno Mundo, it was getting pretty late, but we still needed to buy medicines for our trip to Nicaragua. The LASP staff gave us a huge list of preventative and reactionary meds they want us to have for our home stays there since we will be so spread out. The poor guy at the pharmacy had no idea what he was getting himself into when he invited us to the counter, and we spent at least 45 minutes in there finding everything we needed.

Finally we were ready to head home, so we found the nearest bus stop and were disappointed four times by bus drivers who for some reason refused to stop for us. Unfortunately the driver who did stop for us was really excited about honking the horn, and it was a crazy ride to city center where we needed to switch buses to get home. In San Jose I also needed to call my host family to let them know I was on my way. Mami didn't want me walking the three minutes from the bus stop home by myself in the dark, so she asked me to call when I left so that someone could come meet me.

The pay phones in La Plaza de Cultura in San Jose, Costa Rica do not take change. I discovered this the hard way. In order to use a phone card in said payphones, one must dial 1 before entering the number of the phone card company. This I learned from a kind man who was also using the pay phones. After 10 minutes of fumbling with my backpack, change, and phone card, I finally notified mami that I was on my way home. Then we just needed to find the bus. Thankfully, we remembered how to get to the next bus stop and the bus we were waiting for pulled up just as we turned the corner.

It was so cute to see mami and papi sitting at the bus stop together waiting for me. They were enjoying the incredible view we have from our neighborhood (I now live at the top of a big hill on the outskirts of town, so we can see pretty much the whole city lit up at night), and we all chatted about our days on the walk home. When I got home Andrey got out his telescope and we all looked at the amazing full moon for a while. Then, Melany and I played cards and a few other games.

Finally I was so tired I had to call it quits and I retreated to my room to pack for my trip tomorrow. It took me quite a while to get everything organized, but now my packing for Nicaragua will go a lot faster. I'm really looking forward to getting away this weekend, and I'm praying that God will reveal Himself to me in the cloud forest. I want to know Him more and move closer to Him with every step I take.