Costa Rica!!

We're back from our amazing vacation in Costa Rica! (and we've already had 2 planning/devo meetings... so we're jumping right in!) Overall the week was amazing and such a blessing to our team. It was great to spend unplanned time together at the beach soaking up the sun and just enjoying the relaxing atmosphere.

For those of you who are wondering what the vacation was all about - let me explain a little. Half way through the year, every STINT team goes to a 'Midyear' where they travel abroad to meet up with other STINT teams to get rejuvenated, work through problems, and gain renewed vision for the second half of the year. Midyear consists of 2 parts: 1 week of conference type trainings/workshops/meetings/speakers/etc. and 1 week of vacationing around the midyear area to see some sights. Because our team is the first to break STINT ground in El Salvador (and there is no established conference in Central America) we were left with the task of figuring it all out on our own. We've connected with a staff couple from SLO who are coming to do the "conference" part with us the second/third week in February, which left us with one week's vacation time and a quickly approaching new school year. After much research, talk, voting, and budgeting, we ended up finding a last minute deal on plane tickets to Costa Rica and discounted bungalows on Hermosa beach. The rest is pretty much history.

Lauren was finally able to surf her heart out while Bean and I rented boards to see if we were prodigals. Alas, we are not. But we still had a ton of fun trying to look the part. We did a lot of reading a BBQing (kabobs were my fav!)...hangin by the pool and watching sunsets. Sunday we were able to visit Manuel Antonio National Park, which is basicallly a sweet rainforest that has short trails to some coved beaches. There were tons of cute little monos (monkeys) hanging out right at the base of the beaches. Other than those, we saw a sloth, a very not wild deer, a couple iguanas, and, well basically a million crabs. I actually got pinched by one. Not cool. And I scraped by foot on some coral while we were snorkeling. Bloody scratch + sea water is not a good mix. All in all though, it was a beautiful day and nice to get to see another area of the country. And can I just say, for ten white people, I was thoroughly impressed at how little sunburns there were! Yay for saying "no" to skin cancer.

Alright, well, I'll stop making everyone jealous with this vacation in January talk. Here are a couple pictures from the trip. I posted more on Facebook and should upload the rest to Flickr soon!