hello everyonei hope that this email finds you well. i shoudl note that this keyboard is pretty worthless and so i am likely to have some ill spelled words. but it has been a long time sicne i have sent a mass email (actually, i think it has been at least a country since the problems that i thought i had in Tegus). but we are here in costa rica as we have been for some time now. i do not know the exact day when we arrived but it was about three weeks ago. the first thing that we did was to go to punta mona. punta mona is a hippie commune (basically) on the carribien coast of costa rica. there we learned a lot about sustainable living and tried to debrief the honduras home stay that i talked about in my last big email. that is something that we are still trying to deal with, but that isn´t the point. punta mona was a great time for our group to just enjoy being together and learning about sustainable living. i have never spend that much time that close to the ocean, but living in board shorts (only board shorts) for a week, is a great experience. we also kyaked, made chocolate, ate some great vegetarian food, and just loved the group. after a week of using the compost toilets and living in the wall-less yoga hut, we came back here to san jose for a week (this is something like the 10th or so) and had lots of lectures on everything from tourism to CAFTA to indigenous history. we also were fortunate to spend a morning with an amazing man named Don Juan Stamm who is a gringo who spend his life supporting and doing theology to help the people of central america and had some great stories. then in the afternoon we went to the american embassay and were fed a lot of disheartening and incorrect information from a worldview that i don´t know if i agree with anymore. (apparently the state department doesn´t have numbers on whether or not there is an increase in the number of illegal immigrants to the states, but yet they are building a wall...). We then packed up and went up to the University of Georgia´s San Luis Research Center which is also an ecolodge for groups. from there we did some more study on the importance of ecological sustainability, free trade, and ecotourism. we also spend a day riding on zip lines and eating really good ice cream (yea, we were tourists). then we spend two nights in home stays up in San Luis (the town). it was really interesting to see the difference between the families there and the ones that we lived with in Honduras. these were generally better off financially and had more material goods and really the kids were really happy. today, we came back to san jose and i tried to go to a soccer game between saprisa (the team from san jose) and a mexican team, but because the game was sold out, we didn´t have enoguth money to pay for all of us to go, so i hope that at this moment, the ones that we gave the money to are having a great time and we will see. so in the words of kelsey orr "Joe, that is so long, who is going to want to read that?" so i am going to stop. but happy holy week to everyone. all of you at whitworth, enjoy your spring break and to everyone please go out and remember the sacrifice that our lord made on the cross, but also remember how awesome easter sunday is. (Catholics focus too much on friday and protestants only care about sunday, find a mix). but Dios Bendiga. I love you all. check out the new pictures on the facebook profile and enjoy the face that he is risen and that we are saved. in himjoe
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018575&l=1c45c&id=59400432
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