Let the extracurriculars begin!

This week, was a whirlwind of reading stories, studying together, and creating poems. Here is the ADE high school schedule for extracurricular classes:

Monday: Creative Writing (led by intern Leigh Anne Coble)
Wednesday: Tutoring
Thursday: Spoken-word poetry (led by intern Angeley Crawford)
Friday: Soccer

**Click here to read and see more about the classes**

First Summer Update (and much too late)

As you can probably tell from my lack of blogging, we've been kept very very busy this summer. It's hard to know even where to begin, but I'll try. (Warning: I'm way behind, so this is going to be long!)

Eastern: The Masters students from Eastern University's International Development program spent a week with us at the end of April. We outfitted the ADE center with a new kitchen and bunk beds enough for 27 people - and just in time. It was a great experience for everyone involved. The Eastern students got to see some of Costa Rica, study natural disasters (specifically volcanos), work with the ADE colegio students, and help both ADE and our local community. There were also lots of really good discussions between individuals and the whole group and development, sustainability, ecology, and community resilience to name just a few. For our ADE colegio students, it was great for them to get to build some relationships with new people, learn about development and disaster preparedness with the masters students, get a view of higher educational possibilities and take part in serving their own community alongside others. It was great for our staff (myself totally included) to really get to have meaningful conversations with others in the same mind and gain the experience of hosting a group of that size. I was really exhausted after that week, but it was definitely good.

Nicaragua: Shortly after the huge group left, I headed on the Tica Bus to Nicaragua to renew my visa, visit my friend Leah and relax. It was so great to see Leah and Hemby who are in Nicaragua for the year with Manna Project International. I just hung out in their house (and pool) for a few days and read. I also got to see some of their projects and have lots of good convos about community development, learning from the good and bad of their program. It was a sweet time thanks to Leah - You're awesome :)

Interns: We've got interns (and volunteers) here for the summer! Amanda Rinker, previous YL leader at East Mont, came down in May. She's taking her summer break from getting her masters and seminary degrees to get her hands dirty in this community. Her specific role is working with our agriculture project (which Morgan, who was here over spring break and then came back for a couple weeks in May, helped to start). Lauren Ko, also a Hokie alum, came down in May also to be here for the summer. She just graduated from Tech and is working hard here. She's specifically working with some of the environment issues going on here with the reconstruction. Lauren and Amanda have been each so helpful with all of the different projects and needs we've got here. They've done everything from moving rocks and painting signs, to creating handbooks and inventories. For one week in the end of June we had Karen here doing a week of intensive English learning with our students. With years of experience in teaching English and in the process of getting her masters degree in it, she worked hard for a week and brought down tons of awesome resources. Hopefully from the training and resources she gave me, I can be a better English teacher! Now Maria is here for the month of July all the way from Austria (we met while I was in Vienna). She's up for doing anything and everything we need and filling a great need for us this month. And of course, we can't forget Mikki who was here from April to the end of June. She definitely was here right when I personally needed her - and I miss her lots now that she's gone. Look at all the amazing people God brought to join us during this summer. Blows my mind!

Georgia Group: We had a group of high school students from Georgia here for 2 weeks. They spent the first week down in our ADE Center seeing the area, working with our students, and learning and serving in this area. For the second week, they went to a small town on the Caribbean coast to do some service/learning there and our group went with them. Our students worked hard to fundraise for the trip. They hosted a Bingo night in town and made enough money for everyone to go. (Bingo is maybe the most and only successful fundraiser in this community - no lie). It was a great time with our students and serving another small community like ours.

Restaurant: Here's the big one that has totally changed my time here in many ways. On June 11th, 2010 along with the opening of the World Cup, we opened a restaurant with women from our community! It's been an exciting but very challenging venture. I myself have never really worked at all in the food service industry (much less starting a new one). So I've been learning a ton. The women are incredible! For me that's been the greatest part, getting to know each one of the "associates" (as they're definitely not employees as we're all partners in this business). The women range in ages and family status, but what is greater is bringing together and seeking relationships across borders that are usually not crossed - specifically between Evangelicals and Catholics in this community. It's been so great for me getting to know each one and feeling more and more like a part of the community and have friends (close to my age or older - unlike before when my only friends were my students)! It has also been very challenging and definitely needs your prayers in terms of money and response from other local businesses. You can check out our new website (still with lots under construction) at: www.RestauranteArcoiris.org


To come in July and August... visitors, camps, and my family!

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 :)

ADE Website

So the ADE website is up and running! There are still a couple of pages under construction, but overall it's good. You should definitely check it out:

www.glocalADE.org

On it you can see me on the ADE staff page and get my new email. You can see our internship opportunities as well as our short term opportunities for this spring and summer. We're even planning on doing a family camp this summer for a week, which should be awesome! You can start following us on Twitter and even become a fan of ADE on Facebook. Also go through our participate pages as you can see how you can be involved with us here in Costa Rica. (For those of you who had asked me to send you a support letter, though I'm still not raising support, we are asking for people to invest in our high school students and projects that we're doing. So check out the "Invest" page.)

There's a lot of exciting things going on and as usual: plenty of work to do. I'm getting really excited about our spring break opportunities and really building our network more and more to benefit this community.