Of Stars and Ink-Stained Things: Passing Weeks.......

Greetings once again from Costa Rica!! The last week or so has gone by well, and I find that the time has been flying! Here we are, nearly at the end of our first month here, the first month of 2013! It seems only yesterday that we flew in......

This week, the church we go to - Berea - had a VBS which Charlie and Lucy participated in, and Annie and I helped out with. It's summer right now in Costa Rica, and all the kids are out of school, so the VBS was in the morning, starting on Monday (21st) and ending on Friday (the 25th). So it was another busy week for us, in which I have seemed to be constantly tired! The VBS was really well planned and practiced - I got to play a part in some of the fun skits and songs that did. The whole week was themed as travelling around the world (in 5 days:), so the kids all had passports, and each time we got into our 'airplane', and went to different countries, in each place learning what the people there called God, different names for Him. Every day, we decorated the room to look like the country we would be visiting, and the kids had a great time. We also dressed up as natives from each country, and had a fun time trying to keep the proper accent while at the same time talking in Spanish. :) Try having an Chinese accent while you talk in Spanish :) It was really fun - we went to China, France, Egypt, Australia, and Peru.

entering Peru.......

songs and games.....

Charlie and some buddies.......

Last Friday, our dad took us on a 'field-trip' downtown. We visited the Central Mercado, and stopped by a theater and a museum, just to have a look. And guess what! I finally found 10 colones on the sidewalk! :) Also, we popped in a bookstore and I got the book, "Los Jeugos del Hambre" (the Hunger Games) in Spanish! It's a really fun lesson in Spanish, and it has already been improving my Spanish! :) So far the reading has been going slow, much slower than usual, but I am really liking it!!

Last week, Annie and I were thankfully able to secure a time to play the piano at the Spanish Institute! I'm happy to say that the two or three week break did not much affect us, and we are back on track. Volleyball is still going great - we've been practicing with our dad at the park, working on different basic things we need to improve. I'm pretty good at setting now, and after a lot of working on how to serve the ball overhand, I got it over the net in a practice game today! It went straight down the middle of the court; I was so glad cause my work had paid off. :)

We've also been playing with our neighbors at lot.........

....if only through the fence. :) One of our favorite pastimes is throwing a bouncy ball back and forth over the bars that separate our two houses, trying to avoid the electrical wire that stubbornly continues to reside there, while at the same time trying to keep it from going out the narrow range, over the bars into the street (which happens half of the time). My mom calls it the zoo.....often we wish that the bars weren't there, and the Meek and Gentry tribes could roam and play as much as they wanted, whenever they wished..........

making brownies.....mmm!

fun time.......:)

An interesting difference between Costa Rica and Kansas is the kinds of birds. There is a small tree outside our house that has these fuzzy red flowers that look almost like mini pom-poms! They seem to attract hummingbirds! We can see them from our bedroom window, and once one of them came, flew around, then actually sat down on the telephone wire and was absolutely still! It was amazing to see it just sit still - I'd never seen that before! Do you know the sound a hummingbird makes? Yesterday, we saw one and it was chirping - it was the coolest thing! Never heard that before either.

Another cool bird experience - a school day, when I was sitting upstairs at my desk doing Math or something. I heard this sound - it was like a loud popping or scratching, then a low whistle, and finally a very weird sound that I can't even describe! It was repeated many times, and we all crowded around the window it was coming from, but we couldn't see anything because it was too high up. A few days later we found out from our neighbors that there are possibly some parrots living up there! So........is the mystery of this bird solved.......or not??

Our good friends the Sears flew in from the U.S. a week ago, and are busy looking for a house. :) But in between that, we've gotten a couple good times with them already.

As some of you may have heard, we have experienced a couple of small earthquakes in the last week or so! I have only felt one myself, and it was the biggest one. In the middle of the night, I woke up for some reason. One thing you should know - the bunk bed Annie and I share squeaks and shakes at the slightest movement. Right then it was moving around, back and forth, and making a loud noise. I briefly thought to myself, "It's an earthquake." Then I pretty much just went back to sleep. Oh.....an earthquake...no big deal.....!!!! :) I must have been very tired, and only half awake. It doesn't really seem real now........

Following, are some pictures from the last two weeks, that kind of illustrate what we've been up to on a daily basis. :)