Tico Tuesday, September 14th

There's nothing like playing in the dirt!

Saturday the members of Soporte, the young adult group from CCI and a couple other people got together with the town municipality and planted some 70 trees and picked up a ton of trash! One of the Soporte leaders has been talking for forever about picking up trash in the community and we finally did it! I thought planting the trees would take all day, but the town had the holes dug and the trees next to them, so all we had to do was take the plastic wrapper off the roots, stick the tree in the hole and cover it back up again. The afternoon rains took care of the watering! We weren't on a very busy street, but I still had a passerby stop and ask me who was participating in the marvelous initiative. I think next time we're going to try to get t-shirts to identify us. The other side of the street is still very littered!

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Thanks be to God who takes care of us, His little trees (Jer 17:7-8) and cleans out all the trash in our hearts!

Carrie

Along with the tree planting and trash-picking this weekend I got to enjoy some excellent tennis, knowing that I was watching it with Mommy (or at least knowing she was wishing she could watch too). And Sunday Vivi, her brother Oscar, Albeiro (their cousin) and a couple other people and I went to Ojo de Agua, a place I hadn't been to since I was a student here 3.5 years ago now! Once we got there I remembered why I hadn't bothered to return... jajaja! No, it's not that bad. The water is a little warmer than the ocean in Maine in August, but still definitely not for the faint of heart. The place has just been around a while and so it looks kind of run down, the sidewalk around the lake is like all the other sidewalks in the country (cracked and uneven), people weren't there to man the boat rentals, etc. But, it was still fun to play in the water a little bit before I got too cold and it started to rain.

People here tend to be really proud of Ojo de Agua (literally means eye of water). It is basically a natural spring, so the water is really clean and the water in the pools supposedly renews itself like 12x a day or something like that. My suit still smelled slightly chlorinated when I got home though. So, if you come visit me and want to swim in a pool, I'll probably take you somewhere else...