Apr-Jul: I'll be in the South Pacific.
In Costa Rica; leaving Costa Rica
Today is my third day in Costa Rica. We spent the morning at the Paraguayan embassy obtaining visas for our upcoming trip to Paraguay. The ambassador was very nice and helped us right away, so now I have a multiple-entry visa for Paraguay that’s good for the next seven years! I may never get a chance to use it again, but it’s nice to think that I can if I want to.
The Wycliffe Americas office and the apartment I’m sharing are in a neighborhood called Moravia, not too far from downtown San José (Costa Rica’s capital). The apartment has a nicer shower than mine at home! I’m enjoying new foods like dulce de leche, a thick, caramel-like sauce used in pastries, and tasty Salvadorian pupusas. We get around on foot, by bus, or in friends’ cars.
I’ll be visiting Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile with my colleague Tom Van Wynen, who grew up in Bolivia and (thankfully) is fluent in Spanish. It’s been a bit overwhelming being dropped into a Spanish-speaking environment. I’ve studied Spanish on and off through my life, but always in fairly academic settings — very little real-world practice. So I try hard to understand what’s being said — sometimes doing pretty well and other times not — but I’m afraid to try speaking. I need to get over that and just talk, I guess. Hopefully I’ll be a lot better off by the end of these two months in Latin America.
Anyway, I’m really excited about this upcoming trip to the Southern Cone. We’ll be visiting remote rural Paraguay as part of a sociolinguistic survey team — we think. Plans are somewhat fluid here, so we learn just to show up and see what unfolds. I’ll have sporadic internet access, so I should be able to blog periodically. The adventure begins tomorrow afternoon as we head for the airport.
categories costa rica
Comments
Comment from Kasi
Time: February 22, 2008, 3:39 pm
We look forward to your blog that keeps us up to date on your activities — we’re all praying for you!
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