A few photos

Playing a game of Scrabble with my host brother Jean Carlo


Friends Toto and Mau playing and singing a song they wrote at an open mic in town


Hiking in the rainforest reserve with other foreign students our first week back


The sun setting as I write this..

Smiles :)

There are a lot of moments in life you can look back on and smile. Then there are things you look forward to smiling into the distance. And then there are moments that occur while you stand grinning. A few days ago I learned what it means to smile, and more how much it really DOES mean. I went running through Monteverde, where I live, and waved eagerly to the cars that honked as they drove by recognizing that I am back. I didn’t know people in half the cars, but I remembered what I had began doing before I left…
As I would run, I smiled or waved at the passing faces I recognized but did not know, and also at the ones I did. In smiling you can give such pure emotions without saying anything. A teacher once told me when he goes out on the one main road there is in Monteverde, he smiles or waves at every car or person he sees. I asked him what happens if the person the gesture is directed at wears a questioning face, as if they are trying to understand directions to somewhere they've never been before, and they don't wave or smile back, and he simply told me, “They will eventually.” He was right, too. Last semester I did it one day just to try, and my mood lightened as I smiled at people during the forty-five minute walk home from my friends house. By the time I got home I felt euphoric and almost giddy. So I kept doing it. I came back and forgot I had done this for so long, but now the people I used to wave and smile at do it to me first. I realized most people I would smile or wave at I now have personal relationships with, in seeing them outside their car or off the streets, or just stopping to talk to them on my way. Sometimes we hardly realize we are capable of it, but real joy can be passed on with a smile in less than a second.
I just finished playing what began as a passing game between a few people and ended a full on soccer match. The sunny days tend to welcome people of different ages, genders, and cultures to the futbol field behind my school. Sharing something with someone, like a common goal, a team, or that as simple as a smile is where the common ground love is begins. I believe we all share something, even if it's a tiny something, and in learning this I have realized there is no reason not to love. Everyone I meet has something to teach me, and by loving them-or simply smiling at them as I pass-I can create an openness that allows them to do so.

Home, Safe and Sound!

Thank you for the prayers and keeping me in your thoughts as I came to my home here in Costa Rica. On my flight into San Jose Aeropuerto, I enjoyed speaking Spanish once again using the Costa Rican slang that I know better than the language of Spanish itself. Though I was sad to be leaving my family in the states, I felt home the moment I looked out my window at the Gulf of Nicoya with it’s turquoise waters surrounded with pristine sand. Little tin roofs and farms lingered beneath me as the plane landed and I was surprised at how safe and relaxed I felt to be coming back. I didn’t realize how much a place this home held in my heart until I began to see it all again. At the airport I got rather unlucky with who was the officer at immigration. Getting into Costa Rica depends a lot on who the officer is. Some hardly look at your passport, and others drill you with questions until they can deny you entry. The officer asked me many questions and I was quick to remember how to speak Spanish, it became a necessity to remember it when he told me I couldn’t enter the country without a return ticket and proof I had enough money to be in the country alone as a minor. Basically, he sent me back and told me to find a plane ticket home at that point. I did my best to argue without getting thrown in a Costa Rican jail until the officer told me no way. Close to tears after dealing with the tough officer, I wished I had my mommy to hold me and tell me I was okay, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a cell phone, internet, no means of communication with anyone. God always shows Himself in the strangest ways because as I dragged my bags out of the hour long line I had just waited in, a man that worked at the airport (or so it appeared from his uniform) asked me “podria ayudar con algo?”. I almost hugged him. I don’t remember too well, but maybe I did. What he said after that was that we could do a “truko” which is like a “trick”. I was hesitant to say yes, but I was desperate at this point so I did. He went and talked to his friend that worked for an airline and had me printed out a fake boarding pass to leave the country. Then he said in case I went back to the same officer, I had to withdraw $100 cash to show him I had enough money to be in the country alone. After lots of walking and trouble, I made it through customs and the same officer gave me a “bienvenidos a Costa Rica”. I could tell he didn’t want to say it, but he did and I went through the toll, turning around first to thank my new friend with a grin. I never believed there is something good in everything bad. But it just takes looking. Or waiting, for God to show you what exactly it is. Costa Rica itself is HOT right now, lots of sunshine, though in many parts it is raining so things are flooding. Monteverde isn’t flooded but it is quite rainy. I feel so blessed after watching the news, about peoples tin roofs and houses collapsing or losing all they have worked for, to have a door to close at night, a sheet to keep me warm, warm rice and beans, and a tin roof of my own to listen to the rain pound on. I know my whole Costa Rican family is really, and we thank God daily for what we have. School has begun once again and I am busy studying between “mejengas”(soccer matches), playing guitar, or running with my friends through the jungle. I had to get some lemons today from the supermercado, but by the time I got there they were closed. I looked in the window and saw the woman that works behind the counter and she gave me a huge smile as she ran over to open the door for me. I forget about people like her and what big characters they are in my book of life. She is a big part of my story, and possibly a plays a part in the way I define my life in Costa Rica. And too busy thinking about my own story, I haven’t taken time to think about her book. Her plotline. Her theme. Her story. Am I in it? If it were made into a movie, would I be in enough scenes to get my name at the top of the credits? What role would I play? I love to think about the pictures tourists have taken that I am walking by or standing slack jawed in the background. I’ll be hanging out in that picture forever. I’m practically stuck in it, had Photoshop never been invented. What if I had smiled and posed? Done a peace sign? I had the power. Maybe it would’ve made the picture better, maybe worse, but I would have changed it. Someone would look at it, the way they look at their story, and define me. God wrote me into the story of people I meet, the same way he wrote them into mine. How can I change their story, or play a leading part? Or be the minor character that culminates the theme? God wrote us all for a reason. I don’t know what my reason is yet, and odds look good I never will. But he wrote me anyways.