Today, my community joins the greater Franciscan community, consisting of Friars, sisters, nuns, and laypeople around the world, in the celebration of St. Francis of Assisi. We had the day off work to join the community of St. Francis College for a mass, student talent shows, and special lunch with staff and friars from all over Costa Rica. Our celebration actually began last night with a really beautiful prayer service to commemorate Francis's "Transito" (Transitus) from life on Earth into Heaven upon his death on October 3, 1226. The service was help by candlelight in the church at the convent, where many of us gathered to hear scripture, sing, pray, and watch a beautifully acted interpretation of the story of Francis's death. The service was run by the Secular Franciscans (the "third order" founded by Francis) who are based here in Moravia.
This past week, we celebrated Molly's birthday with dinner on Thursday with Fray Tono and Fray Jorge, and then again on Saturday with Fray Walter and some of our new friends. (Friends! We have friends!)
 |
| Nicole's beautiful birthday sign, and her friends from study abroad! |
 |
| Molly's Ukulele made an appearance. We missed Margie who was sick :( |
At work, I'm settling in with my class of the oldest kids. One student in particular, Juan Gabriel, really stands out. He speaks English and Spanish and absolutely adores talking to me in English. He lived in NY with his family and speaks English pretty darn well. I will be staying with students in the Deaf departments in the afternoon, so my goal for the week is to memorize the alphabet in LESCO (Costa Rican sign language! No, it's NOT the same as ASL!)
In other news, I've been on the hunt for maps of Moravia and found a few on Google maps!
On the map below, the bright blue line is my walk to work. I added blue diamonds with some cool landmarks in our neighborhood (the supermarket, Jumbo; the outdoor market we go to on Saturday mornings; the center of Guadalupe, where the parades have ended; Centeno Guell, my school!) It's about a 2km walk (just over a mile) and takes me anywhere from 20-30 minutes depending on how fast I walk and how many red traffic lights I hit!)
Zoomed in a bit more, you can see our casa, which is quite literally right across the street from St. Francis College. On the map above, SFC is the brown rectangle. Below, it's inside the yellow rectangle an dour house is in the orange rectangle. There's a gate that faces our houses's gate, which is manned during the day by Jose Maria...you might remember him from a previous post about getting locked out of our casa! The Convent and Church are in the top, far-left corner. Below SFC is Moravia's cemetery.
This is one of the only Street View photos of our neighborhood on Google, so I'll have to start taking my own. It's a view of Jumbo! The "Imeriaal" sign is advertising one of Costa Rica's favorite local beers. Notice the deep gutters on the side of the road...they turn into rivers in the afternoons when it rains!
No comments:
Post a Comment