Tico Tuesday, August 24th

Whew! I made it! I'm back home in Costa Rica! But this whole last week was still spent in the States. This picture was taken out the window on the way to the Weds night Bible study my parents go to. They take a monthly offering and many of the people there pray for me multiple ti
mes a day, so it was a huge blessing to get to meet these people who love and support me without even really knowing me. I had several of them come up to me during the break and after the study was over. It was delightful and meet them and get to share with them. More on my week in Arizona and my adventure in LA this weekend on the blog!

Saludos,

Carrie

I really enjoyed my time with my parents, doing the Bisbee Stairs with Mommy (a race route with 9 sets of stairs that includes over 1000 steps up and afterwards we went out for treats and I got a delicious apple, carrot, pineapple, banana, mango, beet smoothie), hiking with Mommy and her friend Marty that is a hoot and really sweet to me, playing backgammon with Daddy, pulling out my clarinet for the 1st time in years, swimming with Mommy and enjoying my hammock. And for the 2nd half of my time in AZ my best friend from college, Bryan came out. We watched my favorite movie (Carefree with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), and went to Tombstone and Bisbee with my parents. I'd never seen the old mine in Bisbee before. Oh, and in Bisbee we found the place that makes THE BEST ROOT BEER EVER. The 4 of us also played 10, 9, 8 (also known as Up and Down the River) and enjoyed some great tennis.

Saturday after Bryan's flight out of town and before mine Mommy and Daddy and I went to a local version of Panera and enjoyed some fantastic food and played Scrabble. I got HORRENDOUS letters, but ended up only losing by 2 points. Daddy had splendiferous letters and clobbered Mommy and me very very badly. Saying good bye to Mommy and Daddy was very difficult and tearful, but I managed to compose myself by the time I found my friend Meg in LA.

Finding Meg. What an adventure! I took a shuttle bus from LAX to La Mirada, the suburb where Meg is living and will be studying (at Biola). The driver that took me was from some South/Southeastern Asian country. His accent was a bit entertaining but a little hard to understand. I thought I was paying for the transportation of me from LAX to La Mirada and that somehow only I would be the only one being transported, even though the picture was of a multi-passenger van. So, after he picked me up we were circling the airport for some time and he was radioing his boss lady and telling her "I onli haf won passengeh, won passengeh! Dis is vedy bad! vedy vedy bad! Dis is discrimation! Won passengeh!" It was all I could do to keep from laughing, except that I was a little confused since I had decided that I was supposed to be the only passenger. Whatever. Then a British lad and two Scottish lads got on. They were entertaining, though I couldn't believe how difficult it was for me to understand them!!! Finally, some 40 minutes after I got in the van and about 2.5 laps around the airport, the van was full and we were on our way to drop me off. It was an adventure to say the least! Meg had had a pretty interesting experience too.

Anyway, Meg and I stayed up late talking Saturday night since I had a lot of spilling and processing to do. I saw her in February when I visited Grove City, but she is one of my closest friends and even though we keep in touch in Skype there is still always tons of stuff to talk about! Sunday morning we did our favorite salsa workout dvd that we used to always do together and then went to do our devotions in the nearby park.

I had never been to California before and wow, the Beach Boys totally have the bragging rights they assumed. Southern California is GORGEOUS!! It reminded me a lot of Costa Rica actually, just a lot cleaner. And they say it is almost always sunny and only rains a couple weeks each year there and here it rains about half the year. But yeah, California is beautiful! After doing our devotions and praying together we started talking to people-it looked like there had just been a church service and they were having a picnic afterwards. Meg was genuinely interested in learning about the church since she will need to find one, so we talked to the people and our alterior desire was met too. We were offered free food!! Unfortunately the tamales were gone (it's a bilingual Spanish/English church with lots of mexicanos and Salvadorians), but we did get rice, beans and yummy grilled chicken. We spent most of the afternoon in the pool (her apt complex has a pretty nice one!) and then dressed ourselves up and went out to dinner. That was really fun. Meg is the perfect person to do that with! Well, actually I can think of other people with whom I'd do that, but it was a blast to do it with her!

Yesterday we slept in, did one of my favorite Tae Bo work outs (and my legs are feeling it today!), had a wonderful devotional time!, explored campus a bit, did some shopping and then headed home so I could shower and get packed up before my red eye flight. My shuttle adventure back to the airport wasn't as interesting, we were only driving around the wrong apartment complex for a really long time trying to find this guy and his girlfriend. This driver was foreign too, but I don't think I heard him talk enough that I could palce his accent, perhaps Eastern Europe? It's so fun being in places with such multiculturality! (I so just made that word up!) Reminds me of the Tetons... (happy sigh). And I really loved my trip to the States because it is light there SO late!! Here all year it gets light at 5ish am and dark at 6ish pm. In the US in the summer it doesn't get dark till like 8 or 8:30! Iremember it being light so late in the Tetons it was unreal!

So anyway, there's the end of my trip. Really really good. I like traveling a lot, but it does get tiring to see so many people and not have a real routine and feel like I don't have much time for me. Correction: I do not get sick of seeing people, I mean it's just hard to have the same brief conversation with people since I don't have time to really get to talk with each one. I would like to though!

Anyway, I'm home. It's good. I'm happy to be here. My trip was a blast, though very tiring and trying and times. I would do it again in a couple months if I could. We'll see what comes up next on the docket. I HAVE TO MEET MY NEW NEPHEW NATHAN!!!