Good News

The visa process is looking good! Sean just went to the embassy today to take yet another document in. It was the one apparently that they've been looking for all this time. They gave us and the other MAF family here going to Ecuador an appointment for 2:30 pm on Tuesday to go in and get our visas. Although we still don't have the visas in hand it is pretty certain that we will have them on Tuesday of next week. Thank You, Lord! But keep praying...we're a little nervous about any little snag coming up until we actually have the visas in our hands!

Tomorrow is our big oral exam. It doesn't affect our grades but will tell us where we are as far as our Spanish speaking abilities. We're not particularly nervous about it - but, of course, would love to come out with high scores. Ultimately how well we do isn't what is important. We were told when we first arrived by our Regional Director that we would leave here with the basic tools to use in really learning the language over the next 5 years. So we're at least on our way!

Also, tomorrow is a big celebration for Dia de Juan Santamaria. The actual holiday is on April 11 but since we won't be in class that day, they want to have a celebration at the school tomorrow. Juan Santamaria is one of the very few Costa Rican heroes. He was a 15 year old boy that burned down a house where a bunch of misguided Americans were holed up. The "misguided" Americans were "Filabusters" - mercenaries from the South of the United States looking for more slaves. (No, the US government did not send them here, they were acting on their own.) This all happened in the 1850's, I believe. Although poor Juan died in his effort and the Filabusters escaped, he is revered as a national hero. Eventually the Filabusters were either killed or chased off and the people of Costa Rica and Nicaragua were not enslaved. Costa Rica does not have much of a military background (they don't even have a military now) and they have very few wars in their past so this is a big deal to folks down here. So, tomorrow we celebrate! It should be fun - a big assembly and then a drama acted out by some of the students and teachers.