I can't believe how fast time is rushing by. In one day we will have been here for 5 months! That is almost half way through the year. We have pretty much come to the conclusion that when the year is up we will in fact be heading home. I'm sure grandma will be happy to here that. Anyway, I really need to be more consistent about writing.
We had a baptism (one person) last Saturday. I had to give a talk on baptism. I didn't write it all down this time and tried to speak more from the heart. It was really hard, and I badly mispronounced several words. It is amazing to me how poorly I speak Spanish. I thought I had a really good handle on it during my mission. Don't know if I've forgotten everything or if I really didn't speak it as well as I remember.
Our Sunday meetings now start at 10:00 AM instead of 9:00 AM, and sacrament meeting comes first now.
Yesterday was also the first day of school for Costa Ricans. We decided that Matthew and Elisabeth will go to a public school here. We selected one that is not too far from home and where several other kids in our branch are attending. Our next door neighbor is also a teacher at the school, so she can help to keep an eye on them. Anyway, that was the plan. It turns out that to be enrolled in school, you must first produce some documentation and present it to the school authority in San Jose. Knowing this to be case, we had our school back in the states fax down the documentation. The other day, however, we found out that this was not sufficient. They will only accept original documentation in a sealed envelop from the former school. Since it takes several weeks for mail to arrive, and then the government agency takes some time to certify the documents and produce a certificate, it could be a month or so before the kids are able to start. We went to the principal of the school to see if he would be lenient and let our children attend school while we waited for the official documentation. No dice! He had a paper with the new law stating that the documentation HAD to be approved from the central authority. I tried to explain that it could be a whole month before the certificate was available and that I didn't want our children to get that far behind. He then explained that they didn't really do very much in the first month, so it wasn't a big deal. Wow! that really inspires a lot of confidence in the school system. Now we are taking a wait a see attitude. In the mean time, the kids continue to do math problems from Saxon math, get writing assignments from Bekah and Hannah, and get lessons from "Everything your 4th (or 6th) grader needs to know."