The Lords Day in Costa Rica

So once we actually made it to the airport the flights all went fine, including a 9 hour layover in Denver.  Luckily my Aunt and Uncle live in Denver and they came and picked us up.  It just happened to be the same night of my cousins graduation party so we got to see everyone for a little while which was nice.

This was the view from the house we were staying in.  This was still the beginning of the rainy season and everything was still pretty brown.

So we arrived in Costa Rica on time and made it to the house we were renting in Atenas and got settled in.  We ventured into town and found a gem of a restaraunt that we did not know about the last time we were here.  Kay's is the only place that we have found in Costa Rica that you can find american style breakfast.  She serves just about anything you could find at a Ihop, Waffle House or from your Mom's kitchen.  Kay has apparently been a waitress for over 40 years and you could tell, she was a real pleasure to be around.

After we refueled we went back to the house and had our Sunday worship service.  It was another beautiful day in Costa Rica to worship the lord.  It is impossible to not be in awe of his creation when you are surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscape you have ever seen.
























This was on the way to Escazu, A big mud slide had covered the road and they had only cleared it enough for the adventurous that did not mind doing some off roading.

I made several phone calls to our contacts in Costa Rica while the kids took a much needed nap.  Once that was all taken care of we took a 30 minute drive to Gringoville, Costa Rica (aka Escazu).  This town is probably home to the most rich, affluent and upper class of Costa Rica.  It does not at all resemble the rest of Costa Rica, in fact it looks mostly like a city in the USA.  Our reason for visiting Escazu is because they had the closest Walmart, yes that is right, Walmart.  This was a new developement that had just occured in the last couple weeks, and there are only a handlful of them in the whole country.  So the questions to ask would be is this a good thing that Walmart has set it's sights on Costa Rica?  I hope so, but only time will tell.  Anyway we had some supplies to buy and this would be one of the cheapest places to buy the things we needed.  Well this was a Sunday night and if any of you shop at Walmart on the weekend you know that is usually the busiest and worst time to go.  Well I don't know if it was because of the weekend or because it was new but this place was jam packed.  This was a supercenter and it was probably larger than some in the USA, but there was still not enough room for the masses.  I don't know for sure how many people were their but it had to be somewhere between 2000 - 5000.  It looked like a crowd you would see packed into a stadium for a sold out concert except for the shelves and shopping carts.  It was insane, I am not really sure how we made it out alive.

We did make it out in one piece and we did not even lose either of the kids!!  That is about all there is to tell about Sunday but we were a bit exhausted and everyone went to bed pretty early to be ready for the next day.  Kalina and I were scheduled to meet with the Director of Hogar de Vida in the morning.  Hogar de Vita is a childrens home in Atenas and we wanted to talk to them to see what we could do to help.

-David