Tres Rios Project: Happy Easter!

We made it back to Costa Rica just in time to celebrate Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter. Being a Catholic country, this is a pretty important week here. Kids are out of school. Grown-ups get time off work. Families head to the beach. Everything is closed on Good Friday (except Walmart – they just can’t miss a day of making a profit I guess)…. After a grueling red-eye flight back on Monday/Tuesday night, we rested and unpacked for a couple days and then joined in the festivities. Here’s a recap in pictures: (and can I just say for the record that these photos took over an hour to upload onto the blog because our internet connection is so dang slow down here!)

On Thursday we headed to a Recreation Park across town with Gringo and Tico friends. Kate had a blast playing with her friends, swimming in the pool with her water wings, and going down her first 'water' slide (it was a pseudo water slide, but hey, she liked it!). It was also fun to see all the Tico families out enjoying themselves, since most everyone has Thursday and Friday off of work here during Holy Week.

Some random cows behind the park.

They were very friendly, curious cows...

That's Kate in the middle - way out there!

Woohoo!

On Saturday morning, we went over to one of the children's homes to just hang out with our friends Candace and Aaron and all the kids.

Candace doing an Easter story activity with the kids.

Pool time!

Kate in an outfit she chose herself: flowered shirt, plaid shorts, striped socks, and Converse.

Joe and Aaron went to buy McDonald's for all the kids for lunch. Yum. Or yuck. Depending on your taste.

Sweet, sleeping beauty who fell asleep on Candace.

Easter Sunday. Ok, weirdly enough, there was no church service today. But we had our first team that we are in charge of come in last night (from Bellevue, WA) and today there a big Easter egg hunt that they had planned. So the day was festive anyway.