Day 195.

Today, I...

saw one of my student's homes. Karen, the eighteen-year-old sister-in-law of two-year-old Wendy pictured in my last post, invited me to her house. She, her husband, and her daughter live in one bedroom in a house that belongs to her mother-in-law (who lives there with her own husband, other son, and daughter). The house is falling apart, made of nothing more than wood and nails. It's interesting...six years ago when I would visit these kinds of places, I would sit on the edge of the hole-covered couch or stare at the stains on the plates people served me. Now none of that enters my mind. It's a home, just like my own.

missed the Farmer's Market in Anacortes! Luckily it will be just starting up again when I return.

realized I am going to miss how Pizza Hut and ampm are high-end restaurants/grocery stores here.

learned that my laptop's power cord is frayed and about to die. Yay.

smiled when Karen told me that getting pregnant, married, and moving out were the best things that God could have given her. Her own household consists of four girls (one of her older sisters has had four miscarriages due to alcohol consumption and the other is caring for her newborn baby while in rehab), her father moved out and lives alone with his drinks, and her 44-year-old mother beats Karen's twelve-year-old sister, has had four other children with a handful of her 20+ boyfriends over the years, owns a bar, and moved in with a 22-year-old. In all of this, Karen looks at her baby and sees her for the miracle she is. We were discussing how so many mothers beat their children (a very accepted practice in Costa Rica), and Karen had this great line: "There's a reason I don't beat my baby. It's not because I'm afraid of leaving marks on her body...it's the wounds that I'd put on her heart."

--Hannah