Wow, we've only been here for just over a day, but we can already feel our brains changing. As I wrote up my notes for this post, I had to take a moment to find the English words, because we've had so much Spanish today that Spanish is starting to come quicker than English (as long as I know the word in Spanish).
Today has been another day of "getting to know the place". We woke up early, so we went on a walk before meeting up with our primary contact here. We wandered around the campus and eventually stopped for Liz to take some pictures of some of the local flora (I'm sure she'll post some pictures sometime). When we were stopped, a man (who we later discovered was one of the groundskeepers) walked by and we said "Hola" and waved, so he walked over to us. I told him that the flowers were so beautiful, and that we didn't have any of these kinds near where we are from, then he asked us if we wanted to go see more. So, obviously, we said yes, and he took us around and showed us some really interesting areas with lots more exotic trees, flowers, and fruits. It was wonderful to have our own horticultural guide! After that, Shelley came back and took us on a tour of the rest of the facilities. We are so blessed to have Shelley and her family to help us around here. They have been amazing! And we're discovering more and more amazing people all the time!
After our introductory tour, we had our first Spanish class, from around 0900-1140ish. It was so wonderful to get to see Gaby in person for the first time -- She is our Spanish teacher; for the past few months, she has been working with our Spanish over Skype, so today was our first in-person meeting! We met some office personnel and showed her our apartment too, ¡Qué Divertida! (What fun!)
After class, we wet back to our apartment for just a little bit, then another wonderful staff member came over to our place. (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to put other peoples' names on here, so I'm leaving it vague for now) She showed us how to get to Palí, a store much like Aldi's in the States. She walked with us there and to the Panadería (Bakery), which was nearby. One of Costa Rica's famous rain storms struck right around the time we were walking back, so Shelley saved the day and came and picked us up in her car/truck/whatever-it-is.
We had a fun meeting today, where we were introduced to the staff of SENDAS. Shelley told them a little about us, then we were supposed to tell a little bit about ourselves. I rambled around a little bit, trying to explain why we were there, then Liz took over. I had sort of talked a lot, so she was going to say, "Lucas is a hard act to follow" or as close to it as she could in Spanish. With the words we know, the closest she was going to get was "Lucas is a difficult person to follow." But after "Lucas is a difficult person," she stopped, forgetting the words for "to follow". The whole room laughed and then, with Shelley's help, got it all sorted out. It was fun, and we are really going to be working alongside a bunch of really neat people, who really seem to love each other.
After this meeting, we found out that there's a very good chance that we will be beginning an English as a Second Language class for a local business, in a few weeks. Things are already starting to roll! Thank you all for your prayers!
Great to hear all is going so well!!
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