I can not believe our time here is already half over!! The time here is going so fast and I will be upset when it is time to leave. I love Costa Rica. I have really started to adjust to life here. I am not really experiencing culture shock anymore. I am understanding the people here so much more than I was. I still have communication problems with my family, but I know that they will not allow anything to happen to me. I trust them fully so when they tell me that we are going somewhere I get in the car.
Last Sunday my mother told me that we were going on a trip with her family to Cartago. Lena went with us. We ended up going to see the Basilica de la Virgen de Los Angeles. The story behind this church is very interesting. Apparently a young girl found a statue in the woods. She took the statue home and put it in her room. The next day the statue was gone and she found it in the woods again. This happened several times. A priest then declared that this was a special site so they built a church. Today many people travel there to drink the water that flows from pipes that are with the statue. The people believe that this water can heal people. My family filled bottles up to take this water home. The church was beautiful. I enjoyed my time there a lot.
School is starting to slow down here. We had an English day for our students. We sang Jingle Bells with the entire school then separated into different grades to make Christmas cards. My fourth and fifth graders enjoyed this. Some of them were not able to write much in English but I helped them write a short message. One student didn't want my help so he copied a paragraph out of his notebook introducing himself. He was so proud of it that I didn't say anything about it being to his parents. The kids here are really great. I feel like they have taught me a lot about teaching.
Basilica de la Virgen de Los Angeles
My students making cards
Students playing outside the school