House Tour, Independence Day & School

Our House Tour on Video

Casa De Los Otts

Our Master Bedroom

Love the Natural light that streams in!

Every Saturday morning, we head to the feria. It's a wonderful way to buy fruits, vegetables and bread. So much produce! Such great prices! It's about a 15 minute walk from our house. We bought a feria cart to carry our produce home. It's a two wheeled cart that makes this outing more enjoyable.

Here's our first day of school picture! It's been a loooooong time since we've had one of these! We started school on September 2nd, which is Labor Day in the States.

And the kids picture! Some were excited, some were nervous, some didn't want to go. Clayton's uniform tops were not in yet, so that's why he's wearing his regular clothes.

Our cute 1st grader! He's already made great strides in being more comfortable at school and just making friends in general. We're proud of his progress and him!

Our kids school is considered bilingual. They teach Spanish and English along with a few periods of Portuguese. Portuguese makes the kids roll their eyes, they really don't see the need for it. It's new to this school as it was recently mandated to teach it.

On the first day of school, all of the kids met in the chapel where the President of the Board had a welcome and prayer for them. There are probably 80? kids in this room from Preschool to 12th grade.

This was a hard day on Mom and Aria. She wasn't eager to leave us and go with her teachers. A few days we had to pry her off of us and hand her to the teacher. I walked past her classroom one day and heard her crying. Tough! So tough. But she's also come a long way in the 3 weeks we've been here. She usually walks in the door with a teacher and doesn't cry.

But....you can bet that she's happy to get out of there once we come to pick her up at 12:15! Hulda is her teacher, right behind her.

After school, we come home and eat lunch. And then its time to nap!

Our teachers put on a Welcome Fiesta for us the first Friday of school. They did some traditional Costa Rican dances and then served us a lunch of rice, beans and salad. It was delicious!

This is the main "hallway". Behind me is the administrative offices. To the left is the chapel and terrace area where we study. Our classrooms are in the building where these two people are heading. English classes are taught to locals in the building to the left. If you continue on down the hallway, you would see the high school, secondary and primary classrooms and then finally Rajitos, which is the preschool Aria attends. It feels so good to be so close to our kids. Its a cultural thing here that parents are not allowed in classrooms. So we can drop them off at the door, but cannot enter without permission. If we need to get something to our kids during the day, we talk to the Secretary who is able to go and get our child out of school. Therefore, you won't see parents volunteering at school.

This is my(Erin) first hour class with Eugenia. (Ay-yew-hen-ee-ah)

She teaches Lengua (Language) and makes us feel very comfortable. There are 3 other women in my class. We have a lot of fun together! They are so sweet! Abby, Sarah & Alissa.

And here is Andy's class. We can always hear this class laughing down the hallway. Actually, they are on the second floor and I'm on the first floor and I finally figured out who was always laughing! So in this video, they are practicing phonetics, which we always do on Fridays. This excercise was both annoying and amusing, so Andy got it on video. His classmates are a hoot! Hannah, Emmanuel, Kyle & John (Juan).

Andy and I are in Building 5, Sierra and Malaya are in Building 8, Clayton is in Building 13 and Aria in 15. We bring the kids through the South Gate Entrance, which opens at 7:15am. They get out at 2:40pm.

Independence Day for Costa Rica is September 15. On Friday September 13, the school put on a program for the parents.

Sierra's class put on a play.

Clayton's class did a Dance.

Malaya got selected to dance in one of the final dances. Poor thing didn't know what to do at the end, so she just sat down :) After the program, all of the students who made lanterns were able to march around the block with their lights on. It's a tradition at the school. Andy took the 3 older kids and I stayed in the gym with Aria.

We have an hour break between our 2nd and 3rd classes, so we hang out here when we don't have a chapel service. On this particular Friday, Kurtis Moss shared his snobery of coffee with us and educated us on 4 of the ways to make coffee. After all, Costa Rica is Coffee Country!!

Hannah and Zac team together to plunge the French Press.

The "sock" method. I'm sure it has a more fancy name, but I wasn't taking notes.

I didn't realize Andy was taking this picture, but I'm so glad he did! Don't I look happy holding a baby? Speaking of babies, in our group of new students this trimester, there is one baby on the way, Kyle & Alissa. Please pray for the two other families who were expecting, but suffered first trimester miscarriages. Little Kohen is Kurtis and Carrie Moss' baby.

This past week, Aria started to not feel well. She was running a low grade temperature, boogery eyes, runny nose and a deep cough at night. We kept her home from school Wednesday, made an appointment with Dr. Longworth on Thursday to get her checked out. He comes to the school on Tuesdays and Thursdays to meet with patients. As we are making small talk, he asks where we are from.

"Illinois, not Chicago, south of Chicago."

"Oh, whereabouts?"

"Ever heard of Peoria/Bloomington?"

"My wife is from a little town called Gridley."

"Really? We are about 25 -30 minutes from there."

And so we started talking about who we know and found out we know some of the same people, like Clark Stoller. :)

He renews his licence at Roanoke every four years and golfs in El Paso every summer when they're back. Her name is Peg Houser, for anyone curious. She's related to the Roths and Andy's boss Mark Roth is somehow related and God continues to show me that the world is a really small place and He has people placed in certain areas to help us.

So anyway, back to Aria, Dr. Longworth diagnosed her with an upper respiratory infection. This photo above is of me taking her to the Pharmacy down the road from the school. She's been a bear about taking her meds so we've resorted to dumping them into a cocktail of fruit juices. She's sleeping through the night again, and she gets to go back to school tomorrow!

This picture was taken before church one Sunday.

Guess who forgot their umbrellas for the way home from church? We did and we were SOAKED. It's about a 10-12 minute walk from home. It started raining about the minute we got out of church and didn't let up for awhile after.

Ashley is a lady of many talents, like giving haircuts! Clayton held so still for her. Thanks Ashley!

This is the church we are attending. El Lugar is the name. It's a rather small congregation but they are super inviting to those of us who are studying! I didn't bring my phone today so I couldn't Google Translate but I got really excited when I was able to translate a verse.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

Si confesamos nuestros pecados, él es fiel y justo para perdonarnos nuestros pecados y limpiarnos de toda injusticia. 1 Juan 1:9

Parks are a very big thing here. We have one across the street from us and we walk through one to get to school. There's another larger one by our friends house.

This is on our street, looking towards the mountains. It's a common site to see an overcast sky in the afternoon. Mornings are usually pretty sunny.

This is my new favorite picture of Aria! We were invited to friends of ours house for games and they had just bought this swing at the market. Aria's favorite pastime is swinging and she was so thrilled with this!

Andy was studying one night and noticed this card on the desk. I'm not sure where it came from. If you stuck it in our luggage, thank you!

We've been here almost four weeks and have experienced highs and lows. We are aware you have too. None of us are promised an easy road and if we are being completely honest with ourselves, we wouldn't want it to be easy. Satan can work with easy and comfortable. He can whisper the lie in our ear that we don't need God. We can do it all on our own. But thanks be to God that He is with us when its hard, when its comfortable, when it's peaceful, when its turbulent.

Specific Prayer Requests

1. It's been tough studying and balancing parenthood. Pray that we can find the balance between studying enough and also being there for our children.

2. We are working through the visa process. We are trying to get a one year Student Visa, which will keep us from having to leave the country every 90 days. They recently told us that our birth certificates were too old. They need to be issued within the last 6 months. My mom was able to get new ones for us and got them apostillised in Springfield last week. She sent them by mail and so please pray they get to us safely and intact and soon! All of our paperwork needs to be filed before November 28, 2019. We are expecting to be well ahead of schedule, but it certainly doesn't hurt to pray!

3. It would really help our Spanish progress to start communicating with Ticos regularly. I am a little on the timid side naturally and being in a new country doesn't help. I feel like my mind blanks out when I'm supposed to respond or start talking. Pray that I won't be anxious and that I will overcome my timidness.

4. Pray for the two families who've experienced miscarriages this past month. God has reasons that we know not, but we Trust Him. Pray for their hearts, their marriages and their ability to concentrate on school.

5. Pray for Andy and his ability to memorize. It has been hard for him to change from work life to school life and memorizing is hard for him (and there is a lot of it).

Tonight we went to a Bible Study on Jonah. It is hosted by a missionary pastor from the States and is in English. One thing he said that stuck with me was "I have had people come and say "I respect you for the sacrifice you are making by serving Jesus in Costa Rica." He went on to say that he doesn't see it as a sacrifice if hes in the center of God's will. He said don't let fear or our own plans for ourselves stop us from serving God. Just want to encourage you to whatever God calls you to do. Live for Him and be His hands and feet. {Andy}

I find myself in amazement that we are here! in Costa Rica! I consider it a privilege to be here. I'm so thankful for all the love we feel from back home. I am convicted when I think if I was in your shoes and you were in mine. Would I do as good a job as you are doing, supporting your missionaries? So thanks from the bottom of my heart, I truly mean that!

XO--Erin