Rainy Season

When we arrived here in January, San Jose was in the middle of dry season. The weather in January and February was just awesome! We had high temperatures in the mid 70s and tons of sun, and when it was cloudy the sky was beautiful!

Things have changed a little. March and April got a little hotter and with May came the beginning of rainy season. It rained a few times in the first 4 months we were here, but since we started May it has rained almost everyday. I tried to find the actual rainfall amounts for the past months and especially for the past 2 weeks or so, but was not successful. However, on average, San Jose gets about 3 inches of rain between the beginning of January and the end of April. Then, in May the average jumps to about 9 inches.

In the last week it has rained all but 1 day (I think) and we had big time serious thunderstorms on both last Thursday and Saturday. Saturday we even lost electricity for about 2 hours. We are going to have to get used to being wet because May is just the beginning of the rainy season and the rainfall is higher still in Sept. and Oct. The rainy season doesn't really end until mid-November and we will be leaving here in the early part of December.

Thank you, Lord for umbrellas and raincoats!

Video & Team update

Since we had some time off from classes between our first and second trimester, we decided to make a short video showing a little bit about what we have been up to since we arrived here in Costa Rica. Click here to check it out: http://www.troxellmissionaries.com/videos.html

I have also included a picture of what our team in Honduras looks like today. Well, at least what they looked like a few days ago when this picture was taken. As of right now, our team has 7 adults and 5 children. We cannot wait to be a part of this team and serve the Lord beside these awesome people!

The team that is currently in Honduras.

2nd trimester

This week we started our second trimester of language school. Both Ashley and I have new teachers and we now only have 2 classes - grammar and conversation. From just the first week, it looks like we are going to be moving pretty fast this trimester. We have already studied the simple future tense and are continuing to move forward!

Our first trimester was great! We learned a lot and enjoyed our classmates and teachers. However, I think this change came at a great time. New teachers and some different classmates mean that the classes are a change and we will hear Spanish from new people in slightly different ways. In my opinion, this is a good thing. Talking to new people tends to be harder for me because everyone sounds just a little different and not everyone uses the exact same words.

This is the same with teachers. Each teacher I had last trimester was different and each taught using their own techniques. I can already tell that my new teachers will challenge we in new ways, which I am excited for!

A new trimester also means new students! Today we had a "welcome-the-new-students-party' which was a good chance for us to meet and talk with new people.