El Jardin de Eden

Hey team, we´re sorry we haven´t posted in a couple of weeks. Let´s see, where we left off before was with some folks from the US that had joined us at language school. That was three (plus) weeks ago. Turns out now we are living with those Americans so to speak.
A quick synapsis. During the last two weeks of school, Annie learned Spanish and I got progessively dumber. She now does most of my communication for me. I´m exaggerating only a bit.
The Americans we met were missionaries. Two couples. Nathan and Amber and Rick and Judith. Amber and Nathan are the same ages as Annie and I respectively. Rick and Judith are in their fifties. Rick is a non-denominational pastor, Judith is a clinical psychologist, Amber is a nurse, and Nathan is an administator... They arrived in Orosi after we had been here a week. Nathan and Amber are the directors of a place called El Jardin Segrado (The Sacred Garden), which is a retreat center for Tico (Costa Rican) churches from all over the country as well as a base for medical missions to indigenous natives that live in remote mountain reservations in Costa Rica. Both couples are establishing permanent residence here and are basically reviving this slightly dilapitated place which thier mission agency just recently bought. Annie and I now live in the Garden which is aptly named. I think I have eaten more fruit off trees here in one week than I have in the past six months. To give you an idea of what is there: bananas, manzana agua (water apples, they look like red pears), three kinds of oranges, two kinds of lemons, one sweet, grapefruit, guayaba (gauva), chiyote (I couldn´t begin to describe this), cass and frutas (I´m pretty sure most of you have never seen these two diffent crazy kinds of fruits), coffee plants (of course), two kinds of platanos (plantains), etc. It also has a pool all in about four acres. Hmm, you are asking what are we doing here... I must back up.
I mentioned Marjorie, my language teacher. Margoth was Annie´s teacher. They have become some of our closest friends in town along with this other Tico, currently a coffee picker, named Adrian, who´s 24. During our three weeks of classes, we learned about a huge landslide in Orosi that killed 7 people 4 years ago. A week after this slide, the river flooded (Rio Rentevazon, it´s pretty huge) and destroyed an important bridge. The replacement bridge is a cable suspension walking bridge about two persons wide and I´d say nearly five hundred feet long. In the bouncing center of the bridge, you are probably sixty feet above the roaring river over rapids which turn insane muddy brown when it rains (which is nearly every day-- down the road is a National Park which is tied with the rainiest place on earth). Anyway, Orosi is on one side of the bridge, and the Jardin is on the other, so we cross it often. If we can ever get pictures to upload, we will post some photos.
Later I learned this landslide (you can still see it), destroyed Marjorie´s family´s house and killed her mother, her sister, and her brother. Yeah. Marjorie lives in an apartment in town, with two kids and her spouse. They are trying to build a little house.
I offered to help her family (free) if I could, which cannot afford contractors, only materials. (of which they are waiting on a loan from the government). She later told her other students whom were the new missionaries in town - they thought it was nice that we offered to help, so they offered the Garden as a place to stay. Turns out the Garden needs a contractor bad, so this last week Annie and I together have built a simple outdoor kitchen and demolished part of an interior kitchen that needs to serve over a hundred people. I have already built a couple of tables with found materials, there are counters to be contructed, tile, a new sink, etc. In return for our work Annie I live in this huge nice white house on the Garden. Across the way lives Robert, a 19 yr old Panamanian guy in his own yellow cabin. He is the groundskeeper, and the secretary I think. We´ve been meeting neighbors, fixing various things, reading books, having dinners with people, exploring and having a great time. We even watched the new X men movie on Nathan´s laptop, we rented it from a video store in Orosi. It appeared to be a bootleg of someone taping the movie in a theater with french subtitles. You could see people walking in the theater.
Last week our friend Adrian took me to a video bar. This is a bar where they show music videos simultaneously on a bunch of TVs and a projector. The best part is that Ticos LOVE 80's music. While there I saw a local Salon Football player...
Futbal Salon? Side Note: Salon Football is this a Latin American type of indoor soccer. In Orosi there is a free arena where there are games every afternoon and night...always. This game is awesome to behold. The court, of artificial grass, is maybe 5% larger than a basketball court. It is completey covered in nets. The game is a like a cross of soccer and basketball. To slow the speed of the game down, the ball is much smaller than a typical soccer ball and maybe four times as heavy. This game is crazy. fast-paced, high scoring, the players (five on five plus two goalies in little nets) as in basketball -can foul out. It also reminds me of hockey, lot´s of brutal plays and injuries, fights... I am totally addicted. They have a special type of leg pumping they employ when a player get a the ball in the chest at high peed. In fact this internet cafe is inside the Orosi Futbal Salon arena. We´ve been catching games occasionally, especially some final matches. It makes sense that this indoor game is so popular in a place that rains so often.
So anyway I saw one of the players and I told him good game on Domingo (Sunday). He was so excited a gringo had recognized him he invited me to his brother´s wedding the next week. The wedding was nice, it was at the Catholic church in Orosi which is 400 years old. The reception was the night before. Very fun. Adrian let me borrow nice clothes and his mother found Annie a pair of heels. We also went to Tico birthday party. Yes, they have piñatas in Costa Rica.
Yesterday Margoth hiked with us up into the mountains to a little Cafe Finca, (coffee farm) owned by a great guy called Nano. We went to a catarata (waterfall), swung like Tarzan on a vine, cooked food in his kitchen, and fed his dogs bananas. Good times. We have been in Orosi for over a month now, reluctant to leave... we know many people in town and we feel like part of the community. We are in some ways no longer tourists.
Okay, we´ll nip it here... we love you all.