Rough Patches

So, my last few posts have been pretty spotty at best - my bad.  It's been hard to find both time and internet (one of which should now be solved...read on).  I've been hired as an English teacher, but I'm waiting on classes to form up.  Essentially, I have a job but no work.  That means I've been looking for other kinds of work, both with other English companies and with what they call "call centers."  I don't really want to go back to doing surveys again, but it would beat telemarketing (or starving).

I'll hopefully be starting up English and Music lessons after church on Sunday afternoon.  We've been waiting to schedule those until I have a work schedule, but I think we might just have to go ahead with it.  There should be some fun projects as far as the music - we've got a couple of guitars, drums, recorders, and a keyboard, so I think I might start working on some arrangements to accompany the singers in church.  Right now it's basically whoever can play a plucked instrument (guitar, mandolin, etc...) chordally accompanying the singers by ear.  People who play violin, flute, etc will sometimes add whatever harmony they like or reinforce the melody.  This is a lot of fun, but for obvious reasons it has its occasional problems.  I'm hoping I can set up a few three or four part songs for some of those instruments and get some cool rhythmic stuff going as well.

This is an incredibly involved church, especially compared to the U.S. congregations I've experienced.  They only have around 30 members.  About 12 of them are adults, and they have an 6-person leadership board (which may or may not include the 2 pastors and deaconess).  They had elections last week, which was a pretty interesting affair (as someone used to running meetings with a system at least resembling Robert's rules).  They have three weekly Bible studies, two of which rotate homes and involve sharing supper, so they share a significant amount of time with one another at least once every other day.  It's very interesting - they have almost no resources in the material sense, but are more deeply catechistic and biblically knowledgable than all but the leadership of any church I've seen in the US.  Pastor Sergio leads these studies and doesn't hold anything back in the discussions - we discuss context, controversies, and deep theological implications of every passage.  His theology (and that of the majority of the congregation) is much more liberal than my own, but he is not at all militant about his own point of view.  He can get a little over-excited sometimes, but in general he does a lot more asking than answering.

Costa Rican Food Pyramid

I ran this morning, for the first time since coming to Costa Rica.  Miraculously, my waistline hasn't ballooned with the Costa Rican diet.  I would say their food pyramid would look a lot like the old USDA one, except you would have to switch vegetables with oil and salt.  They fry something at every meal, I think.  Another thing I didn't expect: they blend and drink almost all of their fruit intake.  I tried my hand at it yesterday with a pineapple and an orange, which turned out pretty well.  The only ones I've seen people eat "raw" are bananas and avocados.

Thanks to Gregorio, one of my friends at the church here, I now have internet access via a little USB stick.  It's pretty slow, but it only costs $10/month so I'm not complaining.  It works well for voice calling on Skype, but can be a little sketchy once you add the video, so feel free to call me if you see I'm online.

I guess the last thing I'll write about for today is my Spanish usage.  I'm definitely going through a bit of a rough patch the last few days.  I hit the ground running pretty well when I got here and did really well at the Bible study on Wednesday night, but for some reason my brain has been shutting down a bit recently.  I usually need a good half hour or so of conversation before the lightbulb comes on and I start understanding the majority of it, but the last couple of days that just hasn't happened.  I hope it will get better here soon.

That's it for now, thanks for reading and hopefully I'll have more news about a job and work at the church very soon!  ¡Hasta luego!