Happy Vappu!

Today we celebrated Costa Rican Labour Day, and Finnish Labour Day (Vappu), which was yesterday. In true Finnish fashion, we drank a fermented lime juice that Laura made, and ate sugared donuts, which we had to do without licking the sugar off our lips until we were completely done. Where do the Finns get these crazy traditions?! 

Here are a few photos from the last week. 

Drawing a blank on Mother's Day gifts?
How about this lacy and charming washing machine cover?
...So no one has to look at your hideous white washer underneath.

My friend Carolina and I went on a hike to an old tree house.
The view looked just like the African Savannah. 

Howler monkeys in the trees.
They sound like bears or lions, and then you get up
close and they are so shy and quiet and small.

A cactus in the front yard, with at least 3 or 4 birds
nests in it. 

The view from the base before a 6am run. 

Sunset! Things finally start cooling off..

Then There Were 3.

Hi! So a Canadian lady staying at the base left last Saturday, two South African boys who enjoyed killing and barbecuing iguanas left on Sunday, and on Monday, Ina finally arrived! She caught a few buses from San Jose and made it to the little old Quebrada Honda bomba (gas station) which is about 30 minutes away from the base on very a rocky road. We didn’t know she had made it until after she arrived at the gas station, so she waited for us on the side of the road like a good little hitch hiker, and made friends with a rogue cow in the meantime. I drove, for the first time in Costa Rica. And a stick shift no less! We didn’t crash once.

In the car, Ina recounted the highlights of her long journey to Vivi and I , which are just too good not to share. 

On the flight to Miami, Ina gets ‘surrounded by greatness’, in her words. On one side, there is a Ukrainian man who fell asleep and stayed asleep the whole flight, with his mouth wide open. His breath smelled, according to Ina, ‘like pumpkin pie’.  Two male flight attendants tried to wake him up for the drink service, but couldn’t.  On the other side are two German lesbian teenagers who don’t speak a word of English. They started the flight in good humour but eventually a fight started and things escalated so severely that they were crying and yelling at each other for approximately an hour, with everyone around them looking on. By the time the flight was preparing for landing, however, they’d worked things out and were hugging and kissing and one began singing “Welcome to Miami!”, so apparently she did know some English.. 

Because Ina’s flight arrived in the evening, she stayed the night at a hostel called Charly’s Place. After getting there, she meets the owner’s daughter, Connie, a 50-something Costa Rican woman who comes out in her pajamas and asks Ina if she has a cigarette. Ina leaves to go get water and comes back to find two American guys outside the hostel who ask her if she wants mota (weed). Ina sweetly declines, and one of the guys tells her about losing his left flip flop earlier that day. Later he was walking on the street, and suddenly a flip flop flew out of a nearby window, landed right next to him: it was the left flip flop AND the right size. What?! Ina goes to bed. She gets up in the morning to enjoy the continental breakfast, and is joined by Connie, still in her pajamas. (Ina wants to note they are bright pink with green frogs on them.) Connie talks with a lisp, and her bottom lip hangs down, and she proceeds to tell Ina, “I took LSD for 7 years, and then I got really depressed. But it could be because I’m schizophrenic.” Also, her Dad is the infamous “Charly”, who is currently in Miami with her mum who is having surgery. He doesn’t allow smoking in the hostel, but while Connie is in charge, Ina gets a nice little (huge) helping of smoke with her breakfast. When Ina eventually leaves, Connie gives her a hug and a ‘big sucky kiss’ on the cheek.

The end. 

Now there is just Ina, Vivi (base staff), and me here, working away. Yesterday we did a few interviews at the hospital, picked up massive amounts of groceries for the cowboy team coming from Wyoming this weekend, and cooked up some African peanut soup, which would've been really delicious had it not been a bajillion degrees when we were trying to eat it.

Estoy Aqui.

I'm here! A few things:
- It's hot. Really hot. It's also windy, but the wind is also hot, so you don't even notice it.
- It's buggy. I forgot about this and how much it drove me near the edge of my sanity the first time I came. Honestly, I called Mum and Dad in tears one night and was like "THERE. ARE. BUGS. EVERYWHERE. I can't handle this." And Dad made some crack about "are you going buggy?" and I almost hung up the phone. When it's dark out and the lights in the house are on, it feels like you're in one of those butterfly sanctuaries where all the butterflies come and land on you... except instead it's flies, moths, those neon green hopping bugs, more moths, mosquitoes, etc. I even had a tick land on me last night, even though I'm 99.5% sure they cannot fly.
- The beans and rice are even more delicious than I remembered.
- I have a lot of work to do. But it's fun stuff.
- Ina gets here in 2 days! So so so excited.
- There is another Finnish family on staff here and they have a 3-year old boy who fluently speaks Finnish, Swedish, English and Spanish. Did I mention he is 3? The funny thing is, we met yesterday while I was helping with a kids club and speaking Spanish to all the kiddos around me. He instantly chimed in in Spanish, and now he will not speak anything else to me but Spanish, even when I ask him questions in English. His hair is almost white from the sun and everyone who sees it must touch it.
- Miss you all.

On the Runway Again.

Hi from Houston Airport.
I know myself and a few others in the family have the reputation of being jet-setters, but until today I forgot how much I greatly dislike the experience of getting from point A to B. On the way home from somewhere, it's usually a good processing time to mull over a few months in another country. But today traveling definitely feels like a necessary evil to get to the good stuff -- being there and getting things done. Admittedly I prolonged the experience by giving up a spot on a direct flight for a slightly less direct route and generous voucher. It seemed totally worth it at the time, since I had a long layover and nothing to lose. Three hours later, sleep-deprived and in the middle of turbulence over Denver, (on a totally calm, sunny day.. go figure), I was second guessing that decision....

BUT. All of this just emphasizes how good it feels to be going someplace to get something done. It's been 5 years since I've been to Costa Rica and 7 months since I've been abroad and working on a something big and exciting. It's one of those weird God things how this all came together -- a few years ago my friend Salla (who staffs a YWAM base way out in the boonies of CR) noticed a huge need for information/education on sexual health among young people, and is now essentially writing a sexual ed curriculum. They want to be able to use this in a more formal setting (like schools), but also have it be flexible enough to use in other contexts, and address things like HIV, STDs, birth control, as well as purity, abstinence, and where God comes into play with this stuff. The topics are so up my alley it's ridiculous. I could whine about it not being in Africa, but the fact that it's in a context I'm familiar with already and where I can actually (rustily) speak the language is really, really good.

More from the hot and dusty boonies of Coral de Piedra. Love to you all!

With a gigantic grasshopper on the first trip to Costa Rica, in 2005.

Well, That Was Fun.

I never know whether to put up a final blog post when I get home.... to those around me I'm obviously home, but for you further away folks, I figured it was good to fill you in on the final leg of the trip (for me). 

Maren and I had a fantastic last few days in Paris. We continued to walk more than we've ever walked before... along an artsy little street called Belleville, around various sites from the movie Amelie, to the Eiffel Tower, up the Eiffel tower, away from the Eiffel Tower, and back to the Eiffel Tower at night to get amazing photos, through Musee D'Orsay, and eventually, to the train station, to catch a train north to Thionville and my dear old friend Jess, who I met long ago as an au pair in Australia. She hosted us for the weekend, fed us cheese fondue, did our laundry, and let us sleep until noon. Last Monday we all took a train to Luxembourg. Jess went to work, I said a sad goodbye to Maren, and got on a bus that took me to Germany, another bus that took me to the Frankfurt airport, then a sky train to the international terminal, followed by a bus to the correct plane. After landing in Vancouver 12 hours later, I came very close to kissing the sweet North American airport carpet. It is strange and wonderful to be home; the sun is shining everyday. Maren ventured from Jess' today to a little French town called Nurlu, and will go on to see Belgium and Germany before coming back for Thanksgiving dinner. She is missed. 

Maren being Maren. 

Nothing quite as good as an enormous old
cemetery in autumn. 

Artsy Fartsy. 

A sweet old French lady offered to take this if I held
onto her dog. I tried to get the dog into the picture
it was not very cooperative. 

Classic tourist shot.  

Maren having an "Amelie special" in the cafe from the movie.
(Right after this a French guy told us we should go try a frappacino
from the Starbucks around the corner. What???)

Bam. 

Strange things in the endless aisles of cheese
at the grocery store. 

Eating Raclette (cheese fondue) with Jess,
her boyfriend, sister, and chatty cousin.

Along the River Moselle, in Luxembourg. 

That's all for now. Love to each of you.