Here's a sense of some of our observations thus far in our newest home:Familiar - Western style toilet.
Foreign - No flushy the t.p. (seriously, day 2 called for some plunging!)
Familiar - Food court at the mall (Subway, Wendy's, Taco Bell, KFC, Quiznos, Pizza Hut)
Foreign - A new chemical for the lungs to learn to use (diesel fumes) and virtual mountaineering over the sidewalks with strollers through the barrio to get there!
Familiar - A grocery store with a discount card playing 'Footloose' in the background.
Foreign - Colones (local currency).
Familiar - A two bedroom apartment right on a bus line (still sounds like we sleep on the median).
Foreign - Diesel fumes. Hard marble floors. Barbed wire, gates, bars on windows. Paying rent in cash. Our address: no joke, our official address is a full paragraph describing how we're a block and half from the SW corner of the nearest park in the mustard colored apartments...no street name, no street number...I'm serious, I had to put this paragraph on my application for internet service!
Familiar - Frosted Flakes or pancakes for breakfast (well, Zucaritas or panqueques).
Foreign - Ants in the sink a couple hours after breakfast...not to mention that strange grainy stuff in the pancakes.
Familiar - Random city sounds: buses, sirens, cars, voices.
Foreign - Diesel, Spanish-speaking voices, clicking geckos, random fireworks at all hours (think dry ice bomb kind of boom).
Familiar - Sunrise and sunset.
Foreign - 5am sunrise, 5:30pm sunset, just about the same year round.
Familiar - Coke, Sprite, Canada Dry.
Foreign - Heinz ketchup. No, trust me, this is foreign.
Familiar - Our daughter's blond hair.
Foreign - How everyone looks at our daughter's blond blond hair.
Foreign - New people, new culture.
Familiar - His people are everywhere. So are those yearning to live fully in relationship to him through Jesus Christ.
May the grace that is reaching more and more people reach some of them as well and cause thanksgiving to overflow to God (2 Cor. 4:15).
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