Day 18.

I meant to share this a while ago, but neglected to. If you'd like to hear the message I shared at my church two weeks ago about my time in Costa Rica, click this link:

http://wpcanacortes.com/component/option,com_sermonspeaker/Itemid,13/id,10123/task,singlesermon/

God bless,

Hannah

Day 1.

Today, I...

saw many of my friends for the first time in nine months.

missed Costa Rica.

realized I am going to miss this community when I leave it again in four months.

learned that it's not all that hard to pick up where you left off.

smiled when I began reading my blog for the first time.

- Hannah

PS Some people have been asking me if I'm going to keep up with this blog. The answer is no. It was a great way to process my experience in Costa Rica as it happened, but I'm ready to end that chapter of my life. I will continue with my "Why I Love My Life" blog, so feel free to check that out every once in a while.

PPS God bless.

Day 255.

Today, I...

saw how much I mean to these people and how much they mean to me.

missed associating the word "tomorrow" with Costa Rica.

realized I am going to miss daydreaming about Washington.

learned what it feels like to have some one sob in your arms.

smiled when I saw God in the sun -- the same sun that shines all over our planet.

-Hannah

Day 253.

Sorry for not writing for such a long time -- my final week here has been incredibly packed full of amazing memories that I'm glad I'm making before I leave. Let me list a few of them here. Within this last week, I...

• Learned that at this point, we know for sure one girl passed her math test, two are on the fence, one we're pretty sure didn't pass, and another we haven't heard from. Unlike the SAT's and AP's that I'm used to, students are allowed to take their test booklets directly home with them, so teachers can see what they marked and review their answers immediately.
  
• Visited the house of Griselda, one of my students who has had me for every class I teach. She lives with her mother, three siblings, sister-in-law, and her brother's four kids. The roof came up to my nose and in every picture I took with her, I look like I have a severe case of scoliosis. Her mom served us atól: a boiled concoction of flour, water, sugar, and cinamon sticks that is then chilled to an almost gritty gelatin. Basically it looks like paste in a mug.
• Listened to the guard at CFCI's educational building talk about all the murders he's seen take place while he worked. Many of them happened at six or seven in the morning/evening and the killer walked away with a new cell phone, a thousand colones (about two dollars), or some times nothing at all.
  
• Sat in on the La Carpio Sunday School Band practice; two girls and four guys have been playing together for the past few months (the girls are both from the Refuge and I've known the boys since they were all ten). The sound has always been a little...off. Finally I asked Axel, the guitarist, when he last tuned his electric guitar. He hadn't. Let's just say it made quite the difference.
  
• Spent the night at Lorena's house on Tuesday night. Lorena is one of the cooks in the Refuge and I remember receiving many bear hugs from her as a twelve-year-old. Her home (like Carmen's) has a constant flow of teenage boys passing through -- her son, her daughter's boyfriend, her nephew who lives with them, and two other nephews who live down the street. The whole lot of us feasted on pupusas (a traditional meal from her native El Salvador -- a masa based dumpling filled with cheese, beans, and chicken, then flattened into a patty and grilled. SUPER DELICIOUS). Afterwards, I started asking her a little bit about her life in El Salvador and she showed me a documentary about the war that started a year after her birth and ended a year before she left. The documentary was in Spanish, except for the occasional clip cut directly from the 1985 Frontline documentary -- Mommy, we're watching that when I get home -- and I learned that in a decade and a half, an estimated 75,000 people died, Lorena's uncles and cousins among them. She remembered how her dad would surround their kitchen table with couches, cover it in cushions, and how her entire family would sleep in what my brothers and I would mistake for a home-made fort. "You see," she said to me, "bullets don't go through pillows." In the mornings, she and her siblings would poke their heads out, make sure no one was firing, and collect the bullet shells burried along their home. When I asked her how she slept during all of that firing, she looked at me blankly: "Hannah, sleep comes to those who are exhausted." The next morning, Carmen, Lorena, and I were going for a walk around the fields at New Horizons when I brought up what we had been discussing the night before. Carmen, Lorena's best friend of nearly ten years, had never heard any of these stories. I listened to one friend tell another about watching an entire basketball court of innocent men and women be shot and raped. The only reason Lorena made it out was because one of the guerilla fighters (a boy of fourteen) recognized her and her brother and told them to run up a mountain before anything started. Or about the time when she witnessed a beheading by machete and how the body stumbled for a few meters, eyes lolled, and blood ran as if it was hooked up to a hose. Lorena has held onto that memory since she was twelve-years-old.
  
• Rode in the back of a truck for the last time in a while I believe.
• Had a short visit in the home of Yancy, one of my other students. I added up all my house visits, and I know I've reached at least ten. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but to be invited into some one's home is such an honor here. On the way to her house, Yancy suggested we visit Kassandra's home (Kassandra is one of my math students who refuses to let me take her picture). Kassandra was walking with us and I automatically expected a blushed shake of her head saying no, but to my joyful surprise, she agreed. We ventured into her teeny three room apartment -- there was a living room, a room for her parents, and a pair of bunkbeds for her and her siblings. They all share a communal bathroom and kitchen with other families.
• Got absolutely drenched in a terrible terrible rainstorm. Good thing I'm leaving just as the rainy season is starting up.
• Was prayed for by Kellie (the short term director who I stayed with my first night here), and Don Horacio, the Argentinian pastor who invited me to help with the Christmas dinner for San Jose's homeless. He told me that last week, he spent a night on the streets with the people he ministers to. They watched his back as if he was one of their own.
• Went out to eat with Kellie and Brenna (another short term missionary who is leaving two days after I am). We scarfed down a ridiculous helping of horchata and a delicious pineapple and meat dish.
• Watched "Once" with Kathy, Brenna, and Megan. I had never seen that entire movie before -- there's something so raw and real about music.
• Enjoyed a paseo -- day trip -- with the girls who presented their exams and a handful of teachers. We experienced a covered pool, relaxing sauna, tons of barbecued meat, eating cake without utensils, a fun round of "Roller Coaster", and my favorite part: when Carmen spent an hour picking out the dead lice eggs that still cling to my hair. Yes, this was done in public. Without shame.
• Got to hold baby Yitsuly, the week-old daughter of Grethel, one of my best friends from when I used to live here. She's so beautiful, constantly smiling and showing off her mother's dimples. Karen (one of my students who happens to be Grethel's cousin) came with me and the three of us held that living, breathing being that had only days before never even seen the sun.
• Spent the night one last time at Carmen's house. All in all, there were 13 of us -- every single person shared a bed with some one -- and I can't even tell you how many times I swore I was going to wet myself I was laughing so hard. Luckily we caught most of it on my camera, so maybe some of you will see what I'm talking about, but I know no one will find it as hilarious as I did. This morning when I woke up at 5:30 (thank you roosters, radio, and airplanes), I got up to go to the bathroom and saw that Cesar, Carmen's husband, had already left for work. Carmen peeped her head out of her blankets and I smiled, thinking about all the times she told me about how her kids (all teens now) will still crawl into bed with her. As if she knew exactly what was going through my head, she pulled back the sheets and patted the empty half of the mattress. I curled up in her thick, dark Nicaraguan arms as she fell back asleep. The rest of the boys were still in bed and while I knew that one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would be back in this home with these people, that it would never be the same as that instant. I know God has many more blessings to surprise me with (which is hard for me to grasp -- He's already thrown so many my way already), but the fact is, this time in my life is over. The poster board that all of Carmen's sons and their friends signed for me rested on the concrete floor and I looked at each name. Axel will have to work soon. Jeffry hopefully will make it out of Carpio to study some where else. Oskar will probably go to school back in the States where his dad is. The seven-year-old Jose won't make puppy sounds for that much longer. Statistically, at least one of the eight boys who signed their names will most likely be a dad the next time I'm in La Carpio. I remember having the same realization last year right about this time -- I'm leaving my friends. Yes, there will be emails and skype calls and letters and later visits, but we all will change. I'm leaving them as I know them and I'm leaving myself as they know me. Tomorrow none of us will be the same. While Carmen's soft Saturday morning snores settled onto my shoulder, one healthy tear made its way from my heart into the fibres of her home.
  
• Remembered that when I left La Carpio last time, I held a six-year-old Valesky (Carmen's only daughter) in my arms and wept at the thought of never getting to watch her grow up. Funny, isn't it, how God put her back in my life now that she is the exact age I was when I last saw her?

I know next time I'm here, new memories will be waiting for me.
- Hannah