ADE Happenings

Over the past few months (with the help of one of our summer interns and the new focus of one of our staff members, we have been a lot better at keeping the general public up to date on ADE Happenings. There's been a lot going on over the summer. I wanted to share with you all some of these blog posts to give you an ever growing and developing understanding of ADE and what I'm doing here.

Check out the ones that seem interesting to you!

ADE's Zero Down Development and Economic Sustainability Projects
If you ever ask the questions: What is ADE? or What on earth is Lindsey doing in Costa Rica? This should help answer those questions a little. It should at least give you a good little overview of what we as ADE are working on and how. It should also give you a good idea about some of our most current projects.

The Role of the Church During a Disaster
As a seminary class did research up here in this area, one woman wanted to share her findings with our local church. This same woman is now one of our very active Costa Rican board members!

Organic Garden and Fruit Co-op
Something we as ADE are working on as week look to use our hands and the land to serve the Lord and others better here in this community.

Vara Blanca's First Strawberry Fair
Our town (along with some partners) put on a strawberry festival. As this area is full of just that - strawberries - it was a great way for people to really come together over a mutual fruit! We, as the high school, put on a few fun activities that surprising went off very well.

ADE Girls Soccer Team First Game 4-1
Our students are now playing indoor soccer (both a girls team and guys team with a few other community members). I'll be writing more about this, but hear about the first game and how awesome my girls are!

New Talent Search - Congrats to our students!
The students in our school participated in an art day at a local business. Though we as a staff aren't the most artistic group, our students LOVE any type of art they can get their hands on.

Tropical Agriculture and Mission Class
Here you can hear about the class that we hosted here in May called "Tropical Agriculture and Missions" put on by Au Sable and taught by a professor from Eastern University.

Eastern IDEV Students here again...

ADE and Eastern University in Pennsylvania have established an excellent partnership that links students in Eastern’s master’s program in international development (IDEV for short) with the communities of San Rafael and Vara Blanca in Costa Rica. Much of the reason for this partnership is that Tomás, Frances and Ben (our two newest staff members who came in January) were all students in the program. A group of students from Eastern’s program has come to visit each year for the past three years since the Cinchona earthquake in 2009.

From March 4-12 a group of twenty students and one professor from Eastern’s IDEV program joined ADE in Costa Rica. The group stayed in the ADE Center in San Rafael and each of the visitors also took turns staying for three nights in the homes of families in our community.

**Click here to read more and see pictures**

Viví. Vivo. Viviré.

So I lived in the cabin, then moved into the Dozier house for a week and now I'm down living at the center! Let's just say it's been an exciting few weeks. The owner of the cabin that I was living in (that had been free rent for the past few months), just sold it. Then we had a visitor and all lived at the Dozier house. Now Kim, Mikki, and I are all living down at the center.

You can watch this video that Tim, past intern and awesome writer, just put together the other week. He was living there, but now he's gone and us girls are there. Enjoy :)

Lots going on...Sorry

Yet again, I'm sorry for not having written in like forever. Things have just been so busy here, but they're moving forward, which is awesome and exciting! I don't even know where to begin.

Well Jason (a good friend of mine from college) came down January 20th to spend a couple of months volunteering/interning with us. He's been working hard and helping out a ton where we need it. It's also nice to have someone that I've known for more than a few months around. Jason is living down at the ADE Center - meaning he is the first official ADE Center resident. We're still doing a lot of work on it but it's definitely come a long long way!

Jason and his roommate.

Shortly after Jason arrived and started working I actually headed back to the States for a week. My grandfather was turning 90 and we were making a big deal about it (as it definitely is a big deal). I took advantage of being home and spoke to all the Spanish classes at DCCS, which was sort of funny considering the whole time that I was a student there I took German. I also met with a biology professor at Eastern and spoke to a grad class there as well. Overall it was a good week, but very very busy and I was excited to get back here.

Once I got back, it was full force ahead getting the center and everything ready for school to start a week later. The night before we were up late as a team building desks and benches and talking about schedule.

And our school started February 10th, 2010! It was so exciting to actually see some of our hard work begin to be played out through the lives in this community. We only had 8 students this week (we'll have a few more soon), but they are awesome! Kim (my roommate and the "School Director") just kept talking about how our students are such angels. They're all between 13 and 16 with most of them just starting 7th grade. It's so exciting because most of them would not be going to school at all if this hadn't opened. This week was mostly orientation and going to get books. On Monday we'll be having biology professors from the University of Costa Rica come and see what we're doing, meet our students and families, and discuss how they can partner with us. And then Tuesday will begin more normal classes. So it's definitely an exciting time!

The bridge on the way to the ADE Center.

Now you should be at least sort of up to date on what's going on here. I did want to share with you a few random stories that have happened here that at least I find interesting:

*Walking back to the cabin at night, we often turn off our flashlights and things when it's clear outside and you can see so many stars it is ridiculous. You can often even see the Milky Way. I've also seen bats fly right in front of us and then learned that this is one of the few places in the world where there are real vampire bats...a comforting thought :)

*This is a large dairy area. So though you don't usually smell it (which I'm very grateful for), you pretty much always know as there are often cows or cute little calfs right on the side of the road. One little funny story that just happened the other day: I was walking up from the center and there's a little wire gate that was open because a truck had just gone through and so I left it open. A little while later as I'm hiking up the huge hill I look back and see 3 cows following me in a line on the gravel road! They had gotten out of their fence and weren't stopped by the wire gate and just kept following me. I didn't know what to do. So I turned around and started shooing the first one back and it starts to go...Until it gets to the second one that decides he's just going to walk passed me. So two cows are walking up the hill towards the main road in front of me and one behind me. I try and get in front of the two but they start running faster. I'm about to break down, thinking that it's going to be my fault that a family loses 3 of their cows. Then the son of the family sees and runs down the hill to put them away. I was so sorry and so grateful for him!

*Oh and I just wanted to share that my puppy is doing well and growing so so fast. She's great and I still love her a lot (even though she beats up on the other puppies and the now only one kitten).

Well thanks for reading and Happy Valentine's Day! I'm so grateful for such incredible support and encouragement from the people back in the States. You guys are awesome :)