Ramon Vargas

One man's shopping cart yesterday morning

We are believers that one of the best part of life’s adventures is the interesting people you meet along the way.  This week we met Ramon Vargas.  Ramon is soon to turn 18, and is in his penultimate year of high school at a United Nations sponsored school about ten minutes from our home.  Students are selected from around the world—he is one of three Bolivians here this year.  We met Ramon through Church connections.  Besides just being a nice kid, Ramon is on our “watch” list because he is an orphan, and has grown up in a Bolivian orphanage in a town near the Argentine border.  He has spent much of the past twenty-four hours with our family, and we are as amazed as we are impressed that from his background, he has made his way into this type of an opportunity.  We hope to see more of him.

Braden and the Yuccas

“Going to market” has become a part of our shopping routine.  Saturday mornings there are open-air markets around town where you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and generally at a much better price than at the grocery stores. 

Yesterday at the market

I went to Nicaragua again on business this week.  It is a fascinating place, and much different than Costa Rica:  still feels to me like China twenty years ago (think that comes from the socialism), and, there is much less of a middle class there than there is here.

Home of MLB player Vicente Padilla (pitcher, Dodgers);  from the small town I visited Tuesday.  Local folks are very understandably proud of him

Leon, Nicaragua

Saw a surprising number of donkey-drawn carts in Nicaragua

The kids continue to do well.  School is much more demanding that what they are accustomed to.  We have all been surprised at the sheer amount of homework that the kids have.  We commonly see them spending hours per night, and much of the weekend immersed in assignments and projects.  Fortunately, the social adjustment has been very smooth, and all have friends, and feel comfortable. 

Dalton's P.E. teacher is a staunch believer in consistent, cardio workouts, and assigns four hours a week for homework.  Pictures are required as proof of completion.   Go Dalton, go!

Dayna and I are enjoying our church callings (working with the youth in the area).  We are working out the logistical issues of needing to visit ten congregations regularly, and still taking care of our kids.  We are taking them with us on visits sometimes, and others we are starting out in Sacrament Meeting with them, and then heading off for the next couple of hours to other units.  Friends in our ward are helping us to get them home.   What is not going well at church is our attempt to get our kids to join with us in the choir.  Time will tell how much the battle to do that is worth.  As noted from the attached picture. It has literally taken some wrestling to get them to go along.

Trying to "persuade" Dalton of the virtues of Choir Practice

We still have no furniture, but it is en route.  Supposed to hit the port on October 14^th.  We hope to have it in our home within a week or two of that.  Ironically, now that we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, we are worried about our furniture arriving before our area rugs do (we ordered these locally).  It was no small accomplishment to find a place that sold wall-to-wall carpeting that could make us area rugs, and they are scheduled to arrive right around the same time that our furniture does.  The race is on . . .

We are getting deeper into rainy season—but even so, we continue to have sunny mornings, and, temperatures seem to be warming up.  Some of the locals say that we are getting less rain this year than normal, and that it may end early.  Hope so!

So, with our furniture in place in a few weeks, we will be ready to receive visitors!  We hope you will decide to come.

Pura Vida!

The Karlinseys