We’re getting ready to head to school! This morning we took Alex and Maggie to Sojourn Academy for their first day of orientation. They really enjoyed it. Tomorrow they will return for another day of fun, check mostly games and crafts very much like VBS to get acclamated to the area. They came home with all sorts of advice on life in Costa Rica.
Corey and I went to Cincel today for placement testing. The first part was a very long written exam. I have forgotten a lot of Spanish! I made it through most of the test with confidence, there but a couple of sections I questioned my answers and one section I skipped entirely. Corey, having very little Spanish, wasn’t able to answer anything on the written exam. It’s all for placement, though, so that’s okay! Then we each had an oral interview. Mine went ok. I fumbled around a lot looking for words in Spanish that I just couldn’t seem to pull out. I understood everything Mr. Luis, the interviewer, was saying, but I was having a hard time conjugating in past tense and really putting together the senteces. Part of it was just that I was very nervous, but a large part is that I am very out of practice!
That’s the whole point of us being here, though, for this time is to learn and improve in Spanish so we can minister to the people of Colombia. Corey’s interview went well and he came home with some homework. He has to memorize some introductory statements so he can tell others who he is and a little bit about himself.
After the test we walked home from school. We have been blessed so far with transportation. The school has a van you can rent that we were able to be driven around in since we’ve been here. But once we went for our exam we had to leave it behind and true Costa Rican transportation is about to begin :). The walk home from school is pretty much all uphill. We should have very nicely toned muscles in our legs at the end of our time here! From here on out we will mostly depend on busses, taxis and our own two feet to get us where we need to go. Our apartment is one of the farthest away from the school, but it is the one closest to everything like malls and grocery stores, so we’re pretty happy with our location.
We’re pretty exhausted! This weekend we’ll have a little bit more of a chance to settle in. We’re almost done unpacking. My wardrobe and the kid’s toys are the only things left to be sorted out. But for tonight it’s time to crash. We start again early tomorrow with all of us going to orientations. God bless!
~Tona
p.s. The picture above is of our patio (which if you read the kid’s blog you’ll learn about our first creature encounter.) We’re very blessed to have this added space!