estamos aqui!!!

(which is ¨we are here¨if any of you guys were wondering.)

this is probably going to be a short post but who knows. i have 15 minutes left or ill have to pay more than 200 colones (which is like the equivalent of 40 cents US).

soo yesterday went fine. the plane ride wasnt too bad and we all even got to take a little nap! then luis picked us up from the airport and took us to the church to meet charlie, which is the man that runs the organization we are here through. so we pulled up to the church and got out of the car, and the first person i saw was a familiar face! it was wilbert who is one of the head construction guys with the organization and one of the guys we helped learn a little english last summer. i plan on asking him tomorrow if he has learned anymore, but i just didnt get the chance on that day. but anyways, all that really happened was charlie showed us around san jose again so we would know what all was around. other than that our day consisted of hanging out at the church and eating dinner. best part of the day was walking into the kitchen and seeing the pastors granddaughter laying on the bed in there and watching barney IN SPANISH (of course). it was pretty sad but my dad and i just sang right along to all of the songs in english. haha.

today we did a few more things. we went to a volcano and looked around for a while. it is called vocan poas which is right around where that big earthquake was just a little while. needless to say, some of the drive there was pretty sad, looking at all of the houses that had slid down the side of the hills or lost varying amounts of their house from the earthquake. pretty much every house had AT LEAST a HUGE crack in the side of it, which i know is sooo unsafe but they have no other choice but to live there. apparently the government is taking a loooooong time with helping them out. very sad.

after lunch, me, megan, my dad, and one of charlie´s interpretors, heidi, headed to los guido for the church service, which was amazing as always! for those of you who dont know, that is the neighborhood that we spent our whole week working at last summer, so it was definitely good to go back and see some familiar faces. i was soooo happy to see pastor edgar and his wife and kids. daniel (one of edgar´s sons) and sandra (daniel´s wife) were even wearing the bracelets that hannah and i made them last summer!!!! it made me SO happy! :-)

i saw quite a few of the kids from last summer. i know you dont all know their names, but im gonna say this for hannah´s sake mostly. i saw gordo, christopher, isca, yader, issac, joshua, fabio, rayna, the girl that lead all the dances during the service last year... uhh and thats all i can think of right now. i didnt get much of a chance to talk to any of them though. the service lasted ab out 3 hours and we had to get back for dinner. i absolutely LOVE the fact that a church service can be 3 hours and not seem like that at all though! :-)

okay VERY quick, heres what the rest of the week looks like...

Monday and Tuesday we´ll be painting and mostly hanging out with kids at the local orphanage.

Tuesday night through Thursday we will be going back to los guido to spend the nights and days there in the dorm we helped build last year! :-)

Friday morning we are gonna go visit the school for kids with disabilities and all that and then we will be off for the weekend to monte verde.

i am SOO excited about finally getting to spend time with the kids! AND about spending my 21st birthday (tomorrow) in COSTA RICA!!!

i miss everybody already and hopefully either megan or i will be able to write again soon!

-Emma