la lluvia, las clases, y los monos

Tomorrow I begin my next unit of class. I signed up for the intensive course, and it is living up to its name. I spend four hours each morning in grammar class, learning basic vocabulary and verb conjugations. After lunch, I return to school for basic conversation. Exept in my case, my professor wants to talk about the hardest topics: a lunes- la iglesia (the church), a martes-fe y muerte (faith and death), a miercoles-la vida de Cristo, a jueves- los pecados (sin).

I consider myself fairly well versed in these topics. I am a priest after all. Nonetheless, trying to talk about these things in Spanish made me feel like an idiot. I don't know nearly enough words; the pluperfect tense is well past my learning level, and I don't know the subtle differences between words. It feels like I'm trying to paint china with a mop. The expereince is more than a little frustrating.

My teacher assures me that I will improve in the coming weeks. "You learn to speak by speaking," he says. I'm not so sure that learning to conjugate "to be" and "to go" and "to have" are going to take me very deep into theological territory. On Friday, I had to present a prayer I wrote. It was all wrong, but my teacher said he liked the way I prayed. LOL!

In addition to my learning frustrations, a dear member of my church died this week and because of the rain, I haven't had good phone lines and the internet has been down more often than up. This evening has been best internet time I've had all week. I feel so limited and so out of touch! (Not to mention that my blog's spell check only works in Spanish so I can't even be sure that my posts are correct.)

Oh, did I mention that it has been raining? August in Costa Rica is wet! Between rain showers, the humidty rolls in, and then it rains again. Everything is soggy and my hair is standing on end. The first thing I will do when I return, is put on a pair of dry shoes!

This weekend provided a rare respite. We had almost two full days of sun! It rained around dinner time, but we had nice beach and pool time in the morning and afternoon. This morning we were further blessed to have a howler monkey serve as our alarm clock. The troop, which had about 12 members, took up residence in the trees in front of our condo. The loud calls of the male echoed all around. There were even a couple of little babies being carried on their mothers backs. My family, along with everybody else who happened to be out at 7 am on a Sunday, stopped to watch the group eat and play. I'm sure it was more relaxing for Mark than his average Sunday morning in church.

Since the closest church is about 30 minutes away by car, and since we don't have a car, we've been doing church at home. I'm also teaching my big kids to read Compline (even though they are less than thrilled)and they are making good progress.

There are many things here which, like Church, require a degree of ingenuity on our part. We have had to "make do" in many ways. Our kitchen needs about $100 worth of equipment (so we used a stockpot as the bowl for mixing pancakes, and Mark figured out how to flip an omlet with a spoon), but we've managed to make tasty meals anyway. The single bathroom is definitely a stumbling block, especially with two two-year olds ("Mommy, what are you doing?"). In addition, the kids have to share a bed, and bedtime gets challenging (with fights over who's hogging the blankets, the pillows, etc).

When I'm confronted with these issues my innner whiner somtimes kicks in. I then remind myself that the average Costa Rican family of four lives in 700 square feet, with one bathroom.

It is amazing how little a human being actually needs to have a good life. Yes, a blender, a set of mixing bowls, an English spell check, another bedroom and another toilet would make life easier. But I'm no longer convinced those things make life better. Mark and I are no more stressed here than in our house. We eat just as well and our kids spend more time outdoors (even in the rain).

I suspect that when I leave Costa Rica, my prayers in Spanish will still be error filled. But hopefully, they will orininate from a heart that has grown more grateful.