juggernaut.

six years ago last week steph and i – before the kids, young, hopeful, and with only general ideas as to what lay in store for us – landed in rwanda, where we would live for the next twenty seven months. and here we find ourselves, older, more experienced, a tad cynical yet still strangely hopeful, with two kids, in another new country. we moved to rwanda with four suitcases. to costa rica we took several more, not counting all the child items. we arrived mere hours before the century adjusted its ending numbers, and, the suitcases in a pile, iona already fast asleep after a long day of travel, ivy, steph, and i sat out on the second story landing by our new front door watching the preliminary neighborhood fireworks and eating gallo pinto, the ubiquitous and delicious costa rican rice and beans mix. and, later, alone, i fought my drooping eyelids to see the larger show at midnight, welcoming a new year in splashing light and thankful prayer.

we live now in an apartment with a curious layout, but with ample space and a good view over the neighborhood to the neighboring volcano; a stone’s throw from a park, a block or two from the school. the three other units in the building house great families. the other night we all shared a meal together, a heaping pile of barbecued meat courtesy of our argentinian neighbors. the timing of this relocation follows the pattern of moving to a new place right before one of our birthdays (robbie, jan. 22) – and right before one of our favorite musicians, john mark mcmillan, releases another album (out feb. 14). strange, and not wholly unwelcome now as these feel like traditions which we have been allowed to unintentionally keep.

costa rica, in many ways, reminds us heavily of rwanda. climate, elevation, green mountains, similar urban infrastructure, smells, sights. this surprised us. maybe this contributes to the ease with which i feel steph and i have been able to enter a routine, a level of comfort. yet amid these cross-hemisphere similarities, we can walk down the street and into a walmart, or a costco-like behemoth, or a mall. i generally seek to avoid such places myself, drawn to local markets and corner shops, but coming from the box store abundant suburbs of chicago, there is thus another level of familiarity. and so, in the transitions, in the new place, in all of it, really, there is this odd sense of normality. even the girls, who have been strongly affected by consistent travel in the past, have been doing well with everything, considering. we haven’t been here, in costa rica, before, but we can make connections on physical and emotional levels. and this is hardly our first time figuring out life in a new country. in our first days people kept asking, are you guys ok, are you overwhelmed, do you have questions, etc. and – and i’m trying to not say this pompously – we are both like, well, we’re pretty good. we’ll see if that holds true or if in a few weeks we are all tossed about by waves of culture shock. i’ll let you know.

and so language classes begin, we attend, glad of the peculiar rest in having a single goal: learn spanish. though there is much encompassed in that one goal, we know (eight months of intense study), and there are other concurrent goals (in the words of one fellow student’s tote bag: ‘today’s goal: keep the tiny humans alive’). yet we still look forward to the long application of much of our mental efforts in such a focused direction. and so we are figuring out our place in the school, among our peers, fellow students, other families, another community of the transitioning, taking part in local happenings, inviting people over and being invited, and testing our verbal abilities in class and around town. and this all moves us, incrementally, to the future in ecuador. i’m holding on to that ultimate goal, but it’s on a back burner, for this time now, this study, is the necessary next step.

and so we live here now, in costa rica, another ‘here’, another ‘home’, another unstable stability. life trundles, clambers along, and we move along, too, somewhat confused, occasionally overwhelmed, but humbled, and thankful.