Bienvenidos to the Young Family Blog!

Well, we have now been in Costa Rica for a week and a half. So far it's great! We have a great little apartment with wonderful neighbors and cable TV so the girls can get their fill of cartoons, Nickelodeon, and Disney channel (all in Spanish)! Our neighbors below are also here because of UPeace. Mehri is in the Gender Studies Programme and she brought her husband and two daughters, Selbi (15) and Leli (7). They are from Turkmenistan and all speak English, except for Leli. But despite the language barrier, the girls play well with Leli.

The girls are big hits on campus and even showed up some of the guys when playing soccer. Chloe brought her small soccer ball and was kicking it around with Leli and Autumn on the front lawn when some of the guys got up the courage to ask to play, too. It was funny because you could tell that they were dying to play but weren't sure how to join in.

On Friday night (August 21) they had a party for all the students. We danced for hours to music from all over the world. This academic year, 57 nations are represented at UPeace. It ended with a surprise appearance of Costa Rican drummers and dancers dressed like Mummers. It was amazing! There were conga lines everywhere! We were so exhausted by the time the bus arrived to take us home :)

Saturday morning, we got up early (again!) and caught the school bus back to campus for a UPeace picnic. The campus is on a national reserved area and we saw white-faced monkeys, Morphos butterflies, and beautiful, electric blue dragonflies! Then we played some more soccer with fellow students.

Sunday, finally a day to sleep in! Or, our landlord could get up at 6:30am and start cutting the grass! In Costa Rica, the sun comes up every day around 6am and sets promptly at 6pm. And Ticos (Costa Ricans), apparently don't like to sleep in. Maybe it's because all the roosters start crowing around 4:30am and keep it up until 9am? Did I mention that our next door neighbor has a rooster? And, it seems, a turkey. Oh, and then everyone seems to have multiple dogs. All these animals like to put in their two cents LOUDLY shortly after the rooster. Amazingly, I am already getting used to it (or I am delirious from lack of sleep, you be the judge) :)