Welcome Back!
So much has happened and it´s so hard to explain and tell everything. Mateen and I are always laughing and having so much fun while serving and traveling and everything.
One day walking down to Conte, we got to meet Achilino, who is a very devout Christian pastor and was walking up to Progreso for a 2 day convention. I talked with him for a long time, and we talked about Christ, Bahaúllah and all manifestations of God, the future of humanity and society and all sorts of things.
That´s one thing I love about the people in Latin America, you can talk about God and holy and meaningful things to anybody because people here want conversation and that human warmth and love because they have it themselves. I meet many wonderful people while walking for hours to get someplace.
One night that we were walking back from Conte, we stopped half way at the Montezuma´s house which is where Gustavino; the healer, lives to spend the night because it was late. I had a wonderful conversation with this family of about 10 or more in that household and in the complete dark because of the lack of electricity. They served us some amazing new rice they had just chopped with fish. That night I comfortably slept on some rice sacks on top of concrete.
The next morning I bathed in creek and had some more of the new rice. I got ready for my pre youth class at the bahai center that i´m doing with German and then we walked to Brazo Izquierdo which is on the other side of the mountain for another pre youth group.
I love the lifestyle here. I feel at home up in these mountains. Trying to live the lifestyle of these people and getting to know them and learning their culture is a very humbling experience.
Tuesday we walked up to Alto Conte which is a 3 hour walk higher up the mountain with some amazing views and breezes to get to another school to teach English. I loved it. I´ll be going there every Tuesday for class and perhaps some more activity since I got to meet some people and I could feel their energy and I would like to see them more often.
This Thursday I was tutoring a book 3 (childrens classes) to Marvin, Mateen and Jonatan. I really enjoyed meeting Jonatan because he lives in Sanbito which is like an hour drive from Conte or something and he wanted to start some intensive book studies with me so I´m super excited about that.
Friday at 2 am we woke up to take the bus to San Jose and spend the weekend in San Jose. Ann, Cara, Ami, Mateen and myself were in the bus. About 2 hours into the ride, we got 50km past the Panama border and the police stopped the bus to check everybodys passport or ID. If you´re not a citizen you need your passport. I showed the officer a copy of my passport and Mateen only had his U.S. ID so the officer asked us to step out of the bus. We had to get our luggage and say bye to our friends from the bus. I thought to myself...here comes another experience.
They started asking us a bunch of questions and one of them was what your nationality was and I made the mistake by saying Colombian while I could´ve truthfully said American since I have dual citenship. As soon as I said Colombian the officer got an upset look on his face and took his officers aside to talk with them. The thing is that the reason they had the block was because of Panamanians and Colombians entering Costa Rica as illegal immigrants and drug traffic. I stayed calm and explained why we were here and so on and even got to talk to them abou the Bahai Faith with them. They stationed us under this hut to wait while they continued their work. After several hours, there´s a long line of cars waiting to get searched and then a small white pick up truck was speeding like crazy on the opposite lane and passed the blockade. Victor (chief officer) shot his gun up in the air and asked a random driver in a green truck to chase that white car. A few hours later I find out that white truck had drugs on it. A few hours after that, another car with surfboards on top gets pulled over. One of the surfers in the car had his passport expired so they joined Mateen and I under the hut. Their names were Christian, Drew, Hart, and Skyler. We got to talk to them and hang out with them, shared stories, shared mamonchinos (fruit) and company. A half an hour later a Salvadorian woman joins us. This whole time were waiting for a police car to come and pick us up to go to the Immigration offices. Mateen and I were under that hut from 4 am to 1.30 pm. The truck picked us up and we went to the Batallon Sur in Ciudad Neilly which is the big police station. They interviewed me as a witness for the white truck incident and the shooting. We waited there for about 2 hours and they fed us too since we hadn´t eaten all that time. Around this time I was was kind of creaped out if they searched my bag because I use this homemade deodorant that is made up of corn starch, baby powder, and baking soda. So, heres a Colombian with a container of white powder. They didn´t end up searching our bags. They took us to immigration office and everything got worked out.
They wasted about 13 hours of our lives, but gave us 13 hours of patience and experience. The police officers were really nice and a woman officer gave us some pieces of bread while we were there and we had some nice conversations with them when no cars were going by the street.
So Mateen and I rented a Motel room in Paso Canoas and celebrated our freedom from being detained with a nice dinner, had some nice sleep, delicious breakfast and now here I am.
MUCH LOVE!!
