For those of you who have been enjoying our blog these past 11 months, our apologies for being so delinquent in writing anything new recently. We are still here in Costa Rica (in case you thought our lack of updates meant we had gone home early and hadn't told anyone). But we are now in our final month of our year-long sabbatical. We will be returning to Minnesota the first week of September, almost 1 year to the day from when we got here. It will be a bittersweet departure, to be sure. Anyway, without further ado, here is a recap [View Full Entry]

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My sister Patti and her 2 children (John, age 7 and 10 months, and Grace, age 5) arrived first. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law Scott was unable to break away from his law practice, so he missed out on this trip. After playtime with their cousins Kyle and Sam, we enjoyed a dinner in their honor with some of our new Tico and ex-pat friends and their families. The next day, they had Luis - the very friendly driver used by a B&B run by our friends Rita and Steve - take them down to Manuel Antonio, with of course a stop at [View Full Entry]

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Wow, it has been 2 months since our last blog posts. Everything is fine here - in fact, we have been so busy with stuff at the clinic, school, out-of-town visitors, and family life in general that we haven't been able to sit down and reflect on our recent adventures. So, this weekend with no visitors and no big plans, we committed to getting things caught up. We have broken things up into distinct posts, which you can reach by clicking on the links below: Click for Nancy's account of her trip to the Bri Bri indigenous area on the Caribbean [View Full Entry]

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Beyond our travels to the various parts of the country, lots of other stuff has been happening in our lives. School: The boys continue to enjoy Pinewoods. They did quite well on their first trimester midterms (yes, they have midterms and finals in 7 different subjects every trimester!!). Their finals are coming up next week, so there will be lots of studying at our house. The school put on skits and songs for the celebration of the Battle of Rivas, where Costa Rica turned back a mercenary army led by an American named William Walker back around 1850. The dramatic point [View Full Entry]

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6 months ago today (September 3, 2007), our family woke early and boarded a plane for Costa Rica. Our adventure started on a bit of an ominous note - because of the crash of a small plane at the San Jose airport, we had to be diverted to the Liberia airport, a 4-hour bus ride away. Well, we survived that little ordeal just fine and have enjoyed an amazing adventure since then. We have experienced unbelievable natural beauty - from volcanoes to cloud forests to beaches, birds, lizards, dolphins, and amazing flowers and trees. We have met wonderful people and made [View Full Entry]

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In Costa Rican political news.... Kyle came home on the second day of the new school year and casually announced that he had been elected class president. Apparently, his responsibilities include sitting on the school wide student council and being "in charge" of the class when the teacher has to leave the room. He also claims that he has the authority to hand out "boletas" (demerits) if he sees kids acting contrary to school rules. However, Sam wants everyone to know that Kyle's powers do NOT apply when he is at home! School overall is going well. The boys have gotten [View Full Entry]

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Rather than try to create a well-crafted, eloquent blog post, we thought we would just bring everyone up-to-date with a bunch of "bulleted" snippets from the past month or so. - Christmas was great. In addition to Steve's mom & dad, his brother Jeff and his girlfriend Marne joined us. It was so much fun. We paid a visit to the United Nation's University of Peace, where they have a wonderful park and trails - got a great family photo. We also created a non-traditional (but pretty eco-friendly) Christmas tree, built a gingerbread house, and left Santa his cookies and [View Full Entry]

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We have had an incredibly busy month since our last blog post. Here are the highlights: - Kyle and Sam successfully completed their final exams, scoring in the 90s for almost all of their subjects. Most importantly, Sam passed his Spanish exam thanks to many hours of studying. They are now on break for 2 months, starting their new year of school in the first week of February. As a reward for all their hard work, they each got to use some of their money to purchase pets for their rooms - Kyle chose a little parakeet that he has named [View Full Entry]

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Many of our friends and family have sent us emails and called us to make sure we are ok - because we haven't posted any new information for about a month. Well, we are doing just fine - busy with school work, life at the clinic, etc. Also, we have not gone on any exciting side trips so we did not have any dramatic photos to show the world. Here are some the things we have been up to since we last posted. First, we finally got internet hooked up at our house. It took 4 days from the first visit [View Full Entry]

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This week's post will focus on life at the clinic (we don't want you all to think that we are simply touring around the country!). So, for all of you friends of Kyle and Sam who have been reading our blog, you will probably be disappointed not to find any pictures of cool birds, lizards, volcanoes, or waterfalls. Don't worry, I am confident that there will be many more in future posts. First, some background. Alajuelita - the city where the clinic resides - adjoins San Jose (the capital) to the south. This is not to be confused with Alajuela, the [View Full Entry]

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