Dear Aunt Flora-Collecting the nuggets of wisdom

¡Hola! ¿Cómo es usted, Tía Flora?

I am hoping and praying that your knee is in full recovery from the surgery. Every now and then, I go through the photos on my cell phone and come across the last one I took of you and uncle Hassan. You two are just the cutest!  LOL

Any who, I haven’t in a while, I but did get to play my drum during my earliest weeks in CR. There are a few students here who gather occasionally on Fridays for a jam session. Very nice indeed.  ^_^  I must say however, I do miss playing my drum with the frequency I played in NJ. I especially miss dance school and singing with Mark… I’ve said it before in Mom’s blog, but I do miss NJ. Really. Although, I’m sure she expected me to run away forever with all this sunshine. LOL

Oh! Before I forget, thank you, for all of your nuggets of wisdom you planted in my journal! 

On keeping my street smarts...They came in handy during my first city bus ride on the town. I went with Meghan, (my partner in crime and fellow Monmouth-ian) to the mall. Getting to the mall was pretty painless; getting back however, well that was a different story. You see, there are many perks to being in Costa Rica, but I’m not sure that public transportation is one of them. Either that, or the efficiency of public transportation in NY/NJ has me so spoiled, the idea of a bus picking me up where it dropped me off has become an expectation. Needless to say, I had to get over that during this trip. It took Meghan and I a little over an hour, but by divine grace and a little street knowledge, we found the right bus stop.

And you were very right in that there is much to learn from the children in any culture. One of the projects I worked on was for an educational program with teaching children about conflict resolution. They were amazing! In fact, I would venture to say the children taught the adults more about conflict resolution than we taught them.

In closing, I think I’ve gotten all the important Spanish phrases down. I can understand quite a bit more than I can speak in Español, but this experience has increased my desire to learn. Perhaps I will take a Spanish course to keep my skills as fluent as possible.

Any who, I miss you much! Thanks for your prayers and sweet spirit. It means so much more than you know!

Miss and love you!

PS Tell Hassan I said ‘hello’