Happy 1 month Adele!

Sarah: Adele turned one month old on Wednesday. At times it feels like she's been a part of our lives for much longer than one month, and at times it feels like I have no idea where the time went and she should still only be a week old or so. It has been a good month - one of joy as we hold her, laughter as we watch her make funny faces and noises, and one of little sleep. :) Unfortunately, Adele has not quite mastered the concept of sleeping at night and being awake during the day.

Our small community of San Gerardo de Dota has really welcomed their new member and taken her under their wing. We've had a number of community events to go to and Adele ends up being the star of the show wherever we go. She is getting her share of being held by many different people and listening to a combination of Spanish and English all day long. It is a fun and new thing to be treated so differently by our neighbors now that we have a baby. Everyone looks out for us and is extremely friendly, even more than they were before.

Tuesday night we attended our first Posada of the year. This is an event I kind of think as comparable to Advent, only it's a Catholic tradition. 10 days before Christmas the Posadas start, and take place at a different house every night leading up to Christmas Eve, when there is a service at the church. At the Posada, people take turns reading portions of the birth of Jesus, followed by lots of recited prayers, and singing Christmas songs in between. On Tuesday, the first Posada was held at Efrain and Caridad's house, and there was a great turnout. The priest gave a brief but nice message on the meaning of Christmas and the importance of the holiday before the scripture reading and singing began. We dressed Adele up in her first Christmas outfit of the year, bundled up, and joined the community for the special event. Adele did great, and slept through almost the entire thing with the exception of a few grunts and squeals.

The last couple of days we have spent in San Jose on a few different missions. In preparation for the semester program which will begin on January 4th with 10 students, we have been taking inventory of all of our kitchen supplies and bedroom linens and towels. While in San Jose we headed to a number of different stores to price items, and ended up purchasing lots of new supplies for QERC. Our second mission was to get all of Adele's paperwork in order so that she can travel with us for Christmas. This has been a long process, and one we were afraid wouldn't be completed in time for our travels. However, on Thursday we were able to finish the process and we now have Adele's Costa Rican birth certificate, a US passport for her, her US birth certificate, and permission from the Costa Rican Immigrations office allowing us to leave the country with her. We have learned a lot about the process of having a baby in another country! Finally, we ended our trip into San Jose with a Christmas party with the LASP staff, which was a lot of fun and great to again show off Adele to our friends here in Costa Rica.

The pictures in this blog are a few of our favorites from the first month of life with Adele.

Projects

Sarah: Now is the time of year that David and I are trying to get as many projects finished before the start of the semester program in January. There were a few big projects we wanted to accomplish this fall, and were somewhat dependent on getting the money approved for those projects, picking up the material for the projects, and coordinating with the workers who would be working on those projects with us. Naturally, the accumulation of all of that happened the week of Adele's birth. So, we were slightly delayed as everything was put on hold while David and I began the process of figuring out our lives as parents.

Within the last couple of weeks, we were able to get all of the material out here and our workers began to work on a few of those big projects. One exciting project to see come to fruition is the installation of 2 solar hot water heaters that will be able to provide hot water for QERC without the use of electricity. This has been one of David's dreams as QERC's hot water tanks slowly began to fall apart, so the approval of these solar hot water systems was very exciting. It is one more way that QERC is heading in the direction of being sustainable in the way we use resources. Since we have an unlimited supply of water, the elimination of electricity in our water use cuts back a lot our use of energy.

There have been a couple of workers who have been here every day working on a couple other projects for us as well. One is the construction of a car port. With the purchase of our new car, we decided that in order to take better care of the car and eliminate the wear of the weather we experience here, a car port was a necessity.

Another project is the construction of a covered laundry structure to dry clothes. Before we had clotheslines up outside and encouraged the use of drying clothes on the line, but with the rain that falls every day (especially during the rainy season!) it becomes more difficult to dry clothes in that manner. Now with a covered drying area, we can eliminate the use of our dryer - with the exception of Ana, who often has to turn laundry over quickly with groups that come through. It will be another way that QERC is able to practice good conservation ethics and use less energy.