A Few More Anecdotes

Hi Everyone! Thanks for reading.

First of all, I've been sick the past few days with the flu. Sinuses, headache, sore throat, aches, fever, and pure exhaustion. It's honestly very scary to be sick in another country. I learned all kinds of new words this week:
calentura = fever (mine was 101.1)
gripe = flu
glandulas = glands, like on your neck (mine are HUGE right now)
pastillas = pills

Speaking of pastillas, here you can get some serious drugs at the pharmacy without seeing a doctor. My mama tica went and described my symptoms and brought back some mystery medicine. I was instructed to take one yellow and one blue pill simultaneously every 12 hours. Well regardless, after taking the pills and having mama tica pray over me, my fever had a least subsided a few hours later. I slept all of Friday and have slept a lot since.

One very positive thing that came from being sick was that I discovered the TV in my room has cable, and I get American channels! I didn't even have a TV at college, so I have no idea what to do with my very own cable tv. I found that I get the food network, HGTV, ESPN, ESPN2, FOX, CNN in English and Español, and lots of other interesting channels. Unfortunately the discovery channel is dubbed over in Spanish.

Another interesting anecdote is that since Costa Ricans don't use the oven to cook things other than cake, they're fascinated by oven cooking. Lots of people have been asking me what kinds of things I know how to cook in the oven. My mama tica now tells everyone who visits our house that I'm going to cook "pollo en el orno": Chicken in the oven. I think every day she reminds me that I promised to make chicken in the oven.

Tomorrow is our first day of tutoring math. I'm pretty nervous about communicating geometry and other things in Spanish so the kids can understand.

My friend Johanna, who also went to Hopkins, is working in Honduras right now in an HIV clinic and is visiting here in Wednesday! I can't wait!

I also found out about an opportunity to go to Nicaragua in November. It would be a mission trip with the Costa Rican church to do evangelism and also some vacationing. They said there's an island with a lagoon, two volcanoes, and people who haven't heard about Jesus! It would also be over my birthday, so that might be really exciting. Oh, and also the 13 day trip would cost like $100.

OK I have to go for now but I promise to post about a lot of the God stuff that has been happening lately.