Back to Kindergarden

Life here in Costa Rica has calmed down a bit and we have settled down into the school routine. All that is left of my virus is a cough that gets a little better each day. Updates on the earthquake are still on the local news. It created quite a mess and they are still trying to clean things up. I'm not sure what the death toll is at right now but last I heard it was going on 100.

School has been going well. I have three classes; Grammar (2 periods), Language, and Phonetics. For the first time in my life I am enjoying learning Spanish and feel like I am understanding it. It is nice to not feel like I am just barely hanging on for dear life like I did in high school. Maybe it is because I am slightly more motivated to learn it this time around. Jenna has two classes; Grammar and Language, both are two periods long so we both end up with 4 periods of classes. Classes end by 1:00 so we have a lot of free time in the afternoon which is nice. Of course some of this time is devoted to homework, but there is still a bit of down time. I have to admit, I am feeling a bit boxed in here in a city after living on a farm for a year. I am itching for a chance to get out of the city one of these days.

We spend a bit of time with our fellow students/future missionaries. We have reunited with Joe and Heidi DePuy who we knew from back in high school. There are also a few other SAM missionaries here who we have been getting to know. We also spend a lot of time with our host family. The other week, our host mom Aida had a birthday and what a birthday party it was! We were told it would start around 6pm. We left the house a little before 7pm with the daughter who was hosting the party. We then proceeded to buy food for the party from Price Mart which is the local equivelent of Sam's Club. When we got to the house, we sat around for several hours while people gradually trickled in and the party got set up. As the party geared up, Jenna and I debated with Reinko, a fellow from Holland who was staying here at the house with us, about how long the party would go. Reinko thought the party would wrap up around 10. Jenna and I guessed it would only be getting started around 10pm. It turned out Reinko's gross underestamate was because he did not realize it was a birthday party, much less a party for our host mom. At one point we mentioned the purpose of the party and it took Reinko a minute to wipe "You're kidding!" off his face before the embarasement set it. Needless to say we had a bit of fun with that.

During the party we had live music from a musician playing the Marimba. When he left, Jenna, Reinko, and I decided we were becoming too exhaused to hang around much longer and called a cab. This was around 11pm. Soon after we called the cab, a Mariachi band showed up to serenade Aida for about half and hour. That was fun to watch. Once they were done, the cab driver showed up for which I was quite grateful since I was feeling rather ill at this point. Then to my surprise, the cab diver sat down with a plate of food and proceded to eat dinner. I soon learned that the cab driver was actually a relative of the family who's wife is dying. I guess it is always a good idea to get the whole story before I get too frustrated.

The photos above are of the house we are living in (the green and white one), a sunset view from our house, and the Mariachi band from the birthday party.

Earthquake Update

Apparently the quake yesterday was a bigger deal than we thought. It was the biggest Costa Rica has had since 1991. It was a 6.1 and the epicenter was about 20-30 miles from here. It was a shallow quake so it did a bit of damage. In some places the ground split open and in other the land folded over on itself. All that happened here was a light fixture detached from the ceiling. Something like an earthquake makes you realize just how small we are and how little control we have.

As far as our health goes, Jenna is doing much better and went to orientation today. I am still home sick with a fever. I hope I kick this thing soon.

Volcanos, Earthquakes, and A Virus

Well it has been quite the adventure despite the fact we have only been here a few days. Our trip down here went without a hitch but was a long and tiring journey. It was really sad to have to leave ECHO. With tears in our eyes, we left Fort Myers, Florida at 9pm on Sunday night and drove 3 hours to Miami airport. We had to sit around for quite some time since out flight was not until 4am. We then landed in Managua, Nicaragua for a little layover. From the airport we watched a volcano in the distance spewing smoke while we waited for our plane. We then flew to San Jose, Costa Rica and arrived at our host families house at about 11am on Monday. Needless to say we were exhausted once we got here and were soon to pay the price for stressing our bodies.

Tuesday began the orientation at the Spanish Language Institute. It is a nice little campus with a great staff. I am actually looking forward to learning Spanish, believe it or not. During one of the orientation meetings we had a little earthquake. The teacher did not even notice until the uproar among the students who had just experienced their first earthquake became too much for her to keep going. Once it was explained to her what everyone was so excited about, she said "Oh that, that was just a little tremor, we don't consider that an earthquake." Well it was certainly the biggest one I have ever experienced, that is until today.

Tuesday afternoon I began to not feel so well. By nightfall I had an extreme headache and just could not seem to get myself warm enough. I had a small fever when I went to bed and several restless hours later it peaked at 102 degrees Fahrenheit which is really high for me since my average body temperature tends to be about a degree lower than average. I finally went to sleep around 3am and then took some meds in the morning. I spent the day...

Whoa, there is another earthquake!

Where was I, ah yes, I spent Wednesday resting while Jenna went to orientation. Then in the afternoon it hit Jenna. Her's started with nasty stomach issues then the fever. She has been resting today and I went to some of the orientation since I am feeling a little better. Our host mom had a doctor come and visit us. He said it was something we picked up in our traveling since out bodies are stress, which is what we figured. It is probably the flu. At least we are sick before classes start. They start on Monday so hopefully we will be back to health by then. Usually you hear about people getting sick from being in a foreign country but this is the second time I picked up something before I arrived in country and went through the symptoms abroad. The last time was in Nicaragua when I had unknowingly picked up Whooping Cough in the States before I left.

I little earlier today we experienced a good size earthquake. We all huddled in the doorways for protection in case it became severe. It was a strange feeling. It does not seem possible that something as solid as a house can feel like a rippling wet noddle.

Well it certainly has been an adventure. We are enjoying our time here despite being sick. Our host family is wonderful and take good care of us. The earthquakes will take some getting use to, apparently they have over 100 quakes a month.

If for any reason you would like to send something here, we do have an address. If you do send something, make sure it is sent before April to make sure that it arrives before we leave.

(Our Names)
Instituto de Lengua Espanola
Apartado 100-2350
San Jose, Costa Rica
America Central

Of course the easiest way to contact us will be by e-mail. Check back later for more updates on life down here.

Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

This year we cut ourselves a Christmas tree from our backyard. We cut down an Australian Pine Tree (invasive in Florida), but it was too thin and we had to cut another one. Yes, that is a machete I am using to chop the tree down. We twisty-tied the two trees together so that it would look like a more full tree. It still looks like something from Charlie Brown.

We had a great, 80 degree Christmas down here. It felt like one continuous Christmas party here at ECHO. All the ECHO folk got together for a brunch at one house, then dinner at another house, then desert and carols at another house.

This is a year that we will probably remember for the rest of our lives, not because of some huge event today, but because of our Christmas Eve experiences. We decided to accompany some of our friends to their service at an Evangelical Free church. After the service was over Jason and I both agreed that it was the most informal Christmas eve service we had ever attended. (After it was over we walked out of the sanctuary to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock)! Needless to say after that we kinda want to have a more reverent experience for Christmas Eve, so we accompanied our friends to an episcopal service that started at 11:30pm. As we sat down and began looking through our 28 page program, we began to wonder how long this service would be. It was very traditional and filled with beautiful music and pipe organs (quite the opposite of our first service) however after 2.5 hours we were totally exhausted. We didn't leave there until 2am. It was definitely an experience - and one to remember at that. Overall it was a fun friend filled holiday.

Let the packing begin!!!

Our New Friend

Yesterday we met a new friend. Jason met her first around the library building here at ECHO. Later that evening he introduced me and I couldn't believe how much I actually liked her! Shocking I know, but I found myself softening to this orange striped kitty who was unbelievably friendly. She was very thin when we found her and she had a tick on her neck that Jason pulled off. We brought her some food to nibble on since we could feel her ribs and she just chowed down. She couldn't decide whether she wanted to eat or to be friendly with us- always rubbing against our feet. We guided her to our house where we could keep an eye on her and keep her a little more fed. She is obviously an old house cat- she jumps at any noises from outside things, and she keeps trying to get into our house. We set up a little bowl of water and food for her in our laundry shed. She is one of the most friendly cats I have ever seen- in fact, she kind of reminds me of a puppy. Perhaps this is why I like her so much- she's like a dog. :-) We named her Agatha. If you want to adopt her- please let us know, since we can't keep her ourselves. Caution: when you walk, she is always under foot. :-)
Jason and Agatha - She sat with Jason cuddling for more than an hour today!


Agatha being photo shy!


Pure contentment.

A day in the life of an ECHO intern

My replacement arrived the other day. It was nice meeting her and it will be fun training her but I must say I am not eager to say goodbye to my internship here. I still have so much I want to do and learn here! I know there are a lot of you who do not really know what all is involved in the life of an intern here. I will do my best to outline for you what life here at ECHO looks like.

Mornings:
Every morning starts off with a meeting. Mondays the meeting is with all ECHO staff for worship, devotions, prayer, and announcements. All the other mornings the meeting is just with interns for a time of prayer and to go over the plan for the day. After the meeting every intern has to complete their chores before continuing on to the activities of the day. The rest of the morning on any given day I could be doing one of the following options: demo time, giving a tour, answering "tech requests", cooking intern lunch, or selling plants in the nursery. I'll explain these activities more in a moment.

Afternoons:
Afternoons are a little more consistent. Mondays and Wednesdays all the interns get together for a seminar put on by either a guest speaker, ECHO staff, or one of the interns (every intern has to give at least 2 seminars). Tuesdays and Fridays four interns work in the seed bank and four work in the nursery. I am a nursery intern so I work in the nursery on these days. Thursdays is farm work so everyone gets together to work on one large project on the farm or several small projects. At the end of each day we also have chores to complete.

MORNING ACTIVITIES:
Chores: Every intern is assigned a farm animal to care for. I take care of the ducks and the geese. In the morning I let them out of their pens and clean their cages. In the evenings I bring them back into their pens and feed them. When I got here there were about 7 ducks in the flock and I have grown that flock to over 30 now. Trying to feed 30 feeding frenzied ducks under your feet has been an interesting task. Raising most of them from eggs was quite a fun experience. I have quite a few of them trained to follow me when I whistle. Having a supply of fresh duck eggs is nice too!
Also part of the chores is taking care of my assigned nursery area. My first 6 months I was assigned to taking care of "Pre-Sale". This is a rather large area of potted trees and other plants that are basically waiting to be sold. Making sure this area is well watered is a difficult task when you have overgrown pots of bamboo that need lots of water and seedling papayas that can't take much water. I have to say I am glad I no longer have that chore since I am in my second 6 months. Now I take care of watering and caring for seedlings in the greenhouse.

Demo Time: Most morning are spent filling this task. Each intern is responsible for one of the simulated eco-regions on the farm. My area is the "Tropical Rainforest Clearing". Demo Time is time to work in our assigned areas. My area is a little over an acer in size and packed with all kinds of Rain Forest crops. Many of the plants in this area are perennial Rain Forest plants such as Cacao, Vanilla Orchids, Miracle Fruit, Bananas, Black Pepper, Passionfruit, Jackfruit, and all kinds of other stuff so my focus with these is maintaining their health and harvesting fruit. I also have garden beds scattered around the area where I grow a variety of perennial crops that could be grown in a rainforest area. Every season I am assigned a list of crops I have to grow in my area and so I have to learn how to grow crazy crops like Winged Bean, Luffa Gourd, Cassabanana, Amaranth, Purple Yams, and countless other things. Some of these things are grown just so I can gain experience with these while others are grown to harvest seeds that are then sent to our network around the world. Demo time is probably my favorite time since I have a lot of freedom to try new things but this time is also overwhelming trying to keep up on all the required growing and caring for what is already there. With all the sun and water, fighting weeds in this area is a constant battle.

Tours: Tours are a great opportunity to share what ECHO is doing to fight hunger around the world with the general public. While sometimes giving tours is frustrating to us interns because it feels like it takes away from all the million and one things we have to keep up on, tours are a great opportunity to educate others and practice teaching what we learned. Tours last about an hour and a half as we take guests through the farm giving them a quick overview of hunger and malnutrition issues around the world and some of the solutions to those problems. Through tours, awareness of what ECHO does has been spreading like wild fire and this year we were visited by a variety of news crews and reporters including a nice story done by BBC and a rather lengthy program done by PBS. One time someone showed up asking to take photos of me working on the farm, next thing I knew I was on the front of a magazine.

"Tech Requests": These are questions we get from our network around the world. People working in community development around the world can send questions to ECHO and sometimes the interns have to answer them. One of my most memorable questions was "How do I keep Elephants out of my garden. I am thinking of building an electric fence." Any guesses? Well an electric fence in Africa is not practical for several reasons; it is extremely expensive, electricity is not reliable, and Elephants will pull up trees to knock fences down. After I did some research, I found out that Elephants cannot tolerate the smell of hot Chili Peppers.

Intern Lunch: Every Monday and Wednesday one of the interns spends the morning cooking lunch for all the other interns. We usually use a lot of produce from the farm for these meals so it takes a lot of prep time to put these meals together. Sometimes we commit to what we call "Farm Challenge Week". During this week we eat only things gathered from the farm for every meal.

Nursery: We have a small nursery here where we sell some of the unusual plants we grow here. It is only open in the mornings and one intern runs the nursery every morning. The nursery is usually fairly busy with customers. We get all kind of interesting questions from customers about our plants so this is actually where I have done a lot of my learning since I have to track down answers.

AFTERNOON ACTIVITIES:
Seminar/Library Time: Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon feels more like college. We listen to various lectures on all kinds of agricultural topics from grafting to cultural challenges. Time that is left after lecture is used for personal study or catching up on paperwork.

Nursery: Afternoon nursery duty consists of taking care of all the plants in pots or propagating plants to sell. This is where I have learned all kinds of techniques for propagating seeds, grafting trees, Air Layering branches so that they become small trees, and making new plants from cuttings. Propagation is my favorite part of nursery but we spend a lot of time maintaining the thousands of plants we have in pots.

Farm Work: Once a week all the interns get together to tackle some of the big projects on the farm. Sometimes this time is also used to help an intern that has a particularly large project they need help with. I have used farm work quite a few times to get extra help on my Papaya and Sweet Potato experiments.

OTHER:
Variety Trials: Each intern is suppose to oversee one large experiment while they are here. I was "fortunate" enough to end up with two variety trials. I am testing 7 varieties of Papaya against each other and 17 varieties of Sweet Potato (you didn't know there were so many kinds of sweet potato did you?). Maintaining the plot of land I am conducting this experiment on takes a lot of work and it all has to be squeezed into morning demo time or farm work. Soon I will be harvesting all my sweet potatoes to see which varieties performed the best and which we should recommend to our world wide network.

Field Trips: Occasionally we get to get off the farm and visit other places dealing with tropical agriculture. Recently we went to a missionary training facility called HEART where they were digging a well using an old boat motor. Some of us also were able to attend an agricultural conference down in El Salvador.


Well I did my best to describe what life is like here at ECHO. I do not think I really did it justice. The only way for you to really get to know what ECHO is all about and what I do here is to COME AND VISIT! You will not be disappointed, this place is amazing (and we will put you to work too).

Dr. Seuss Party

I've always wanted an excuse to dye my hair blue. This weekend afforded me the first opportunity; Jason and I were invited to a Dr. Seuss party. Jason came up with the best idea ever! We decided to go as Thing 1 and Thing 2, which meant red shirts with labels and best of all- blue hair! OTher party attenders included the Lorax and her Truffula Tree, several Sneeches, 'The Pants', another pair of Things, and green eggs and ham. All in all it was a very interesting and creative evening filled with snacks, dramatic readings, vow renewals, and the feature presentation: Horton Hears a Who.