The Trip Home

We had an interesting time going to the USA. Our trip home from Costa Rica was the opposite of “pura vida”.  (Pura vida is a Costa Rican saying for "great life") At the airport we had to wait and wait for one extra day to take off.  Before we took off, I was a little worried. When we were taking off, I was glued back in my seat.

We flew 2 long hours to get into Florida. I felt overjoyed when I could see the land below me. I watched the ground until we landed in Florida and when I was in the plane I saw 5 baseball stadiums, 2 tennis courts, and 1 beautiful sunset.

In Florida, we literally needed to run to the gate. For the second time, the plane took off. We flew another 2 hours, and we landed in Detroit.

When we arrived, I felt really tired. I thought Joel was lucky because he fell right asleep. Mom and Joel stayed with the luggage and the rest of us went down the elevator into the parking to try to find our mini-van. My dad looked at the text that said where the van was.  Because he was so tired, he thought it said “A1” and it really just said “A”.

We asked security people if we were in the North Terminal and I wanted to speak Spanish to any brown person I saw.  We went one more row over and I saw a car that I thought was ours, but it wasn’t, it just looked exactly like the car we had in Costa Rica for two months. Finally dad saw a little hitch and said, “Maybe that’s out car.” Then we went dashing down the parking lot.  Kyle said, “There is only one way to find out if it is ours.” He went to the passenger side window and looked in. He saw his Humphry book and said, “It is!” After we loaded up the van, we decided to get some fast food for the first meal in Michigan. There weren’t any other options at 1:00 am. I ate all my fries and then fell fast asleep with a hamburger in my hand.

Even though it was a rough time coming back from Costa Rica, we were never becalmed.

-Seth Wilson

Leaving Costa Rica with a Bang

I was sad to leave Costa Rica. It was an unhappy ride to the airport. When we got there, we waited and read the book, Carry on, Mr. Bowditch while we waited for the line to check baggage to open. When it did, we quickly checked in our baggage and walked to the family security line. It was a lot shorter than the regular line. Soon, we were at the food court.

We got to the food court, at about lunchtime. We were hungry, and we decided that we would eat a little bit now and a little bit in Ft. Lauderdale later that day. It turned out that the prices were outrageous! We had about a half a sandwich each, and then we walked to our gate. We met a really nice college student there. We sat there for about a half hour past the scheduled departure time, and then we had to change gates. Our next gate was in the basement!


After sitting there for another 3 hours, the attendant said our flight was canceled. We would have to say in a hotel overnight. We got our baggage, and then we waited for a shuttle. And waited. Finally, there was one to pick us up. We stayed at CityExpress and they had great dinner of rice, chicken and salad.



The next day, we had to check in all over again. We went through a gate change again that put us in a basement gate again. We boarded at departure time. Finally we were on the plane!
 
Since our plane was delayed, we had a very short layover in Ft. Lauderdale. We ran all the way to our gate except for when we were in security and customs. We made it with only a minute to spare!


It was almost midnight when we finally felt the brisk air of Detroit and we were ready to get our baggage and go. But then this announcement came on the intercom. It said, “Due to an overcrowding of baggage on carousel 2, the baggage from the flight from Ft. Lauderdale will be on in about 3 minutes. Since we couldn’t leave without our baggage, we went to look for our car. Our grandparents had dropped it off in some part of the airport’s parking structure, and they told us the general area. It took about 30 minutes of looking to find it. When we got back, our bags were ready to go. And go we did, at about 1 o’clock in the morning.


-Kyle Wilson

Journey to Colorado Springs

We made it! After two weeks of bittersweet goodbyes and packing in Michigan we arrived on Monday, March 28th. (our new contact information is on the sidebar)


To answer the question several of you have asked, "Well, do you like the house?" The answer is Yes! We all love the location, the views of the mountains, and the access to both things the city has to offer (shopping, events etc.) and also trails and open space parks for biking, hiking, and exploring. It doesn't quite feel like "our place" yet, but every day that sense is growing.

View of Pikes Peak from our front porch

We are not quite as overwhelmed with boxes and unpacking as we were 2 weeks ago, but the task of settling in is still a pretty daunting one. We've decided to make a "Stepping Stones" list of all the little discoveries and accomplishments that are helping us "cross" from living in Michigan/Costa Rica to Colorado. Getting library cards and meeting a neighbor are just a few of the things on our list!

We've had warm enough weather to bike in shorts and tee-shirts and also have had a big snow storm! Well, of course, for Michiganders "big" is relative :) The kids were thrilled to have snow to play in for the first time this year. I was a little less thrilled since that meant finding the boxes with all the winter gear!

Our first family bike ride

First Colorado snow storm

New address and phone numbers for the Wilsons

We've made it back to the U.S!  We're visiting family and friends in Michigan until Easter then we'll move to Colorado.  If you want to get in touch, here is our new contact information:

Our address (hoping that you'll come for a visit)
935 Grey Eagle Circle N
Colorado Springs, CO 80919

New phone numbers:
Sarah - 719-360-4433
Kevin - 719-360-7156

Goodbye, Costa Rica - Top ten things about our time in Costa Rica

• Going down the fast slides at Los Lagos
• Seeing the clouds drift over Volcan Poas’ crater
• Reading in the old, gray comfy chair with the padded sides for my head
• Going to Orosi Valley and seeing the view from high on the mountain
• Spraying Mom and Dad with the pool noodle in Dominical
• Beautiful, clear sunsets off our front porch
• Doing fun read- alouds with our family
• Doing magic spots in my favorite tree, which has a little seat
• Moving the flashlight beam for Chloe to chase
• Having a yummy “Curry Christmas” with our neighbors

-Kyle Wilson

Saying Goodbye to Costa Rica - a song

Saying goodbye to Costa Rica,
makes me kind of sad.
But don’t be grumpy-
Cheer up soon
‘Cause we’re leaving soon
We better have fun
We want to take advantage while we can

Ding dong didly do
Ding dong didly do
 

I will miss the jungle,
and the ocean too.
Ohh, and the monkeys, of course!

The green, the banana trees, the birds
And the wide open fields of coffee

Sweet, sweet mangos
Inexpensive fruit from trucks,
And loving people

Saying goodbye to Costa Rica,
makes me kind of sad.
But don’t be grumpy cheer up soon
‘cause we’re leaving soon we better have fun

-Seth Wilson 

Our New House in Colorado Springs, CO

When Dad was at meetings in Colorado Springs, CO for his new job at ACSI, Mom, from Costa Rica, found a house on the internet. It was a day before Dad had to leave Colorado. Mom said, “You have got to see this house I found! It looks perfect!” So Dad went and looked at it, and agreed. A few days later, we made an offer, and they accepted! Here are a few ‘dreams’ we have for the house:

• The garage is perfect for building my creations! -Seth & Joel
• I want to dangle stuffed animals from the balcony! -Wilson Boys
• A ping-pong table would fit in the basement. -Kyle & Dad
• I want to have my own bed! -Joel
• My room is big enough for a desk to do my homework. -Kyle
• There is plenty of shelving space in the garage for camping gear and stuff. -Kyle
• The family room has a good place for my piano. -Kyle
• That’s the biggest refrigerator we’ve had! -Kyle
• I can’t wait to stop doing dishes because now we have a dishwasher! -Seth & Kyle
• I want to drink coffee on the back deck! -Mom
• I want to have guests now that we have a guest room. -Mom
• Reading or playing games together in front of the fire in the family room. -Mom
• Being able to host lots of people for parties or meals. -The Wilson Family
• Playing backyard baseball in the backyard. -The Wilson Family
• Seeing deer off the back deck. -The Wilson Family
• A place to keep my legos and other toys set up. -The Wilson Boys
• More counter space for baking and cooking! -Mom
• Taking family walks on the walking trail behind our house. -The Wilson Family
• Playing Ga-Ga ball on the trampoline in the backyard. -The Wilson Boys 
• Playing hide and seek in the house. - The Wilson Boys 

And here and some pictures:


Our house


Our kitchen table


Our kitchen


Our living room


Our dining room



Open space trail behind our house (that's our house in the picture)

Coffee Tour

Baby Coffee Plants

On Fridays, we have a tradition of going on field trips. This week we went to the Doka Estate Coffee Tour.

First, the guide showed us how the coffee grows. First a worker plants the seed in a small pot and it stays there for 6 months. After that time, the small plant is transplanted with another plant into a plastic bag where it grows for two years. At that point, it’s ready for the field for the next thirty years. When the 30 years is up, they use the tree for compost.

Second, the guide took us to a small field where he gave us a coffee cherry each. They tasted both sweet and bitter at the same time. He explained that sometimes there is a cherry that is called a peaberry. A peaberry is a round cherry that has only one bean in it instead of two. Some people think that this kind of coffee bean is sweeter, but the guide said that it just depends on what you like. Someone in our group got a peaberry and she really liked it.

Then we walked to a big building where they processed the beans. First, we saw a giant hole about 20 feet deep. The guide said that this is what they use to separate the good beans from the not so good beans. First, they fill the hole with water. (It is cemented over so the water doesn’t get out.) Next, the workers drop 20, 26 lb buckets of beans into the water-filled hole. The bad beans float out a hole at the top and the good beans sink. Then the good beans get sucked up a tube and get taken away to a machine that takes the skin off.

The machine that takes the skin off the cherry

After that, we went to a large room. There was a big machine in it that takes skin off of the cherry. The bigger the beans are, the higher quality they are. The big beans go through one machine, the medium beans through another, and the smallest beans through the last. To actually get the outside pulp off of the bean, it has to sit in water for 2 days.

Then the guide showed us a big bean-drying machine. The lower quality beans go through the dryer. It takes about a day in this thing to get to the golden humidity ratio, 11%.

150 pound bags of coffee ready to roast

Then we walked to a room where lots of 150 lb burlap bags of coffee were stacked to the ceiling. We felt the beans in open bags, and they were very light.

Next, the guide took us outside to what looked like a huge parking lot. He said that this is where they dry the good beans. They have to rake the beans every 45 minutes, and leave them out for 3 days.

Then the guide took us to a room where he showed us all the different roasts that they roast. The group continued, but we stayed. There was a big poster explaining the history of coffee. It said that the Catholics baptized it so they felt it was safe to drink it. Also, a French Naval officer brought a clipping of it to the Caribbean, and that’s how coffee came to Latin America.

Lastly, we followed the group to the gift shop to get a free sample of their coffee and their chocolate-covered peaberry coffee beans. We ended up buying a whole bag of stuff, including an ornament for our Christmas tree.

We learned a lot, and after you read this, I hope you have too. It was very hard to go home.

-Kyle Wilson

Field Trip to Ark Herb Farm

Awesome Treehouse

One of the greenhouses

On Friday we went to an herb farm for our field trip.

We saw medicinal plants. Some of those plants cured parasites, headaches, memory loss, and there was aloe for burns. We tried an herb that made your mouth water that helps runners and cancer patients.

There were many things on the herb farm. There was a really cool tree house. It had hot and cold water, a shower, sink, and a fully supplied kitchen. There were three different kinds of sixty foot bamboo shoots. There was a cactus garden on his twenty acre lot and in the cactus garden I almost walked right into a cactus!

Tommy is the owner of the herb farm. He invited us to his house where he gave us a snack of banana bread, tea, and pomegranates. I loved it. I hope you can see one too.


-Seth Wilson

Field trip to Coffee Farm

A coffee plant.  The red ones are ripe.

Do you want to know more about coffee? I went to a coffee farm that is about a half hour away from our house and I learned so much about coffee!

• Pickers get paid $2 for every basket they fill.  An average picker picks 10 basketfulls a day
• Coffee pickers are hard-working people
• They can only have a coffee plant for 30 years or the coffee beans are not so good.
• The red cherries are good to pick
• In order to get to the 2 coffee beans, you have to peel off the skin.  The two coffee beans are slippery.
• Over 100 years ago the coffee pickers used a giant mortar and pestle to take off the skin.  Now they use big machines.
• Every 45 minutes the worker has to rake the beans with a large wooden rake to turn the coffee to help it dry
• The best coffee beans dry in the sun. The not so good coffee beans are dried in a humongous dryer 
• The coffee beans are done drying when they have 11% moisture left, no more, no less

The rake they used to dry the beans

There was also a butterfly garden at the farm with at least five different kinds of butterflies.  At the beginning of the tour, our guide gave us an iced coffee sample, I liked it a little, but the rest of my family loved it.  There was also a souvenir shop where we tasted six different kinds of coffee and bought some presents.

I hope you've learned a lot about coffee and can go on a coffee tour someday.

-Seth Wilson

Try Zip Lining!

 

Last weekend we went to hotel Los Lagos at the base of Volcan Arenal.  It is one of the cone-topped volcanoes in Costa Rica. 

My favorite thing we did was zip lining.  First we went to a practice line, which was very short and low to the ground.  Then we went in a 4X4 truck up the mountain.  Next, we got onto the first platform.  There were a few people ahead of me and they went zipping down the line.  Finally, it was my turn.  It was a little scary at first, but then I loved it. 

I heard the line making a sound like a bee as I zipped along.  While I was flying through the air, I saw the brown and green grass in the countryside, farm houses, beautiful, green treetops, and at the end I saw horses.  

I went on fourteen different length lines.  Every time the guide on the platform at the far end of the line was ready for another person to come he hit the cable with the bottom of his hand.  It made a sound on the end where we were waiting and that meant go!  I felt excited when I heard it because that meant I was going to go soon.

Overall I loved it.  I didn't like the harness, though.  The equipment on it was a little heavy.  Zip lining was still so exciting!

-Seth Wilson

Bird sightings

While we were on our high-elevation trip to the valley of San Gerardo de Dota, we took pictures of several different birds.  We then looked them up and found out their names.  Some of the pictures below are pictures we didn't take, but a majority of them we took.

Black billed Nightengale Thrush

Green Violet-Ear Hummingbird

The national bird of Costa Rica- Yiguirro, a clay-colored Thrush

Bananaquit (Tanager family)

Female flame-colored tanager

Blue Crowned Motmot

Male flame-colored Tanager

-The Wilson Family

Try Surfing!!

Seth and his surf teacher

Surfing is a great experience.  You should go surfing at Playa Dominical because the teachers are good.  They give you a smile and cheer when you ride a wave.  They make it fun.  One even lifted me up onto his head while I was on the surfboard. 

My teachers were good at teaching me how to surf.  First they draw a line in the hot sand for you to practice standing up and then they bring you to the water to try to surf.  The teachers find perfect waves and then they push you into the current.  Before they let go they say, "Up!" and you jump up.  It's not easy to do, so at first I crawled up and I probably won't jump up for a while because it's hard to do.  After I rode a wave my teacher said, "Do you want to ride a smaaall, green wave?"  in a Spanish accent.  "Yes, I would love to!" I excitedly would say.

It is exciting to stand up on the board.  It felt like going a little over the speed limit on the highway.  Just like the highway it's busy with surfers.  When you fall off it feels like you fell off into the snow.  The most exciting thing is when you ride a wave all the way into the shore. 

Seth balancing on a surfboard

I can't rent a board and just go to the ocean and surf, yet.  I want to keep having surf lessons to practice more.  I hope I can see you practicing surfing at the beach soon!

-Seth Wilson

You know you live in the tropics when......

You see a giant bug on the grocery store shelves
You walk out the front door and see 4 Toucans sitting in a tree
The only thing that feels warmer than the tropical air around you is the ocean water that you are walking into
You have to clean behind the stove regularly to prevent infestations of insects
Your clothes and shoes mold just hanging in the closet
It's a good idea to look UP when parking your car in a parking lot- just to be sure that coconuts won't fall on your car
You can buy rice at the grocery store in 30 lb bags
Monkeys join you at your restaurant
When nearly every trip out of the city requires a 4 x 4
A full, perfectly ripe pineapple costs .75 cents
When you're greeted by a giant spider when you're doing your laundry.
It is common in the rainy season for it to rain HARD for 8 hours a day
No matter the time of year, each day brings 12 hours of daylight
Each night your porch lights attracts a new batch of interesting creatures to learn about (shown here- a 4 inch grasshopper and a 3 inch leaf bug)

Our new house

Our new house in Santa Barbara de Heredia, just outside San Jose, is a small house on a 10 acre lot.  This is truly a little house on the prairie!  Our landlady also lives on the property and she has a huge garden.  She lets us pick from it and she grows limes, oranges, sweet potatoes, kale, and basil.  Santa Barbara is a walkable town, and has everything you need.  We'll be living here until we leave on Costa Rica on March 10.  Here are some pictures of the property:

Tour Costa Rica Using our Interactive Map!

Enjoy the beaches, volcanoes, valleys and cloud forests of Costa Rica!  Click on the map below to follow the Wilson Journey in Costa Rica with key points of interest and photos along the way.

Changes for the Wilsons in 2016

Happy New Year!


Take a look at our videogram to catch a glimpse of what we were up to in 2015.

 The other day at the dinner table I asked everyone to come up with one word to describe the year that we're having from June 2015 through June 2016. Seth right away piped up with "Exciting!", then Kyle said "Fun!", so Joel thought he would follow suit with "Fun and Exciting!". With some additional thought, Kyle changed his to "Eventful... in a positive way", and Sarah summed it all up with "A gift", for that is the essence of what we feel. The time that God has given our family to venture out and experience another culture has been nothing short of an amazing gift from God.

Two years ago this January when I started to work for Food for the Hungry, Sarah and I had a growing desire to use the flexibility that virtual work provided in order to live overseas as a family. While the thought of "living somewhere else for a while" seems fun and interesting, the mechanics of how and when to make that happen with a family of five are quite a bit more difficult. Starting in February of this year we were amazed to see God bringing the pieces together as FH started to look at Costa Rica as a location for a new software development team (which I would help lead) and a house-sitting option opened up that would provide a good home base for our time in Costa Rica. Since we had planned on moving to a house with a bit more space anyway, it also made sense to sell our house and put things into storage while we were away.

That sounds simple and straightforward on paper, felt anything but simple at many points along the way. Almost all of August was like that. Our house was half taken apart, our to-do list seemed to be following the rule of "2 steps forward... 3 steps back", and I was in Bangkok for a 10 day business trip. The driving thought in our minds was not so much "This makes sense" but rather "What have we done!?". And yet now, in the moments that I see the boys exploring a trail through the rainforest, or when I see Seth naturally use a phrase or gesture that he only could have learned from a Latin, or when I see Joel learning to ride waves on a boogie board, a clear gratitude for what God has done rules our minds.

And yet there is more (to borrow Kyle's word) "eventful" living ahead! In November, I was asked to consider the role of Director of Technology for the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) in Colorado Springs. This was a very difficult decision for us. Because I love my work and the mission of Food for the Hungry (where I work currently) I was not overly eager to leave the job. We also dearly love being close to many friends and family in Grand Rapids. All 5 of us talked many times about being excited to resume relationships with people that we'd grown to love in our 9 years in Michigan. However, the opportunity to lead the technology strategy in a global organization is something that I've been thinking and praying about for years, so in the end, we decided that our family adventure will continue on to Colorado in April of 2016.

The list of questions is growing quickly - when should we buy a house? How will we move our things from Michigan? How can we possibly have the stamina to make it through the next year? Who will we be when all this is over? We'd certainly appreciate your calls, house-hunting tips and most of all your prayers in the months that are ahead.

Although we don't know the words we will choose a year from now to describe 2016, we do know that God has gone before us and prepared a home, community, and work for our family. In the midst of uncertainty and questions, this is such a comfort. We pray that throughout the transition, He will open our eyes to see the gifts He offers.

Thanks for the valuable part you play in our lives.

Kevin (and Sarah, Kyle, Seth, and Joel)

A different christmas

For me, this Christmas season didn’t feel the same.  What I really wanted for Christmas was for it to feel the same.  I miss a feeling that I don’t think I will feel again.  Even though same things are different this Christmas, there are things that are the same.  What did you feel like this Christmas?

Christmas in Michigan

Some ways we celebrate Christmas in Costa Rica and Michigan are the same.  Our family is together.  I will be with my brothers and parents.  Our family is going to be in a house on Christmas.  Our family can listen to Christmas music on our speaker.  We can make molasses cookies that make my mouth water.  With our cousins and family we decorated our tree.  Our family gets presents for Christmas.

In Michigan, we celebrate Christmas in different ways.  At a tree farm we cut a tree down.  On Christmas it is under 35 degrees.  On Christmas Eve, we go to a candlelight church service and go to my grandparents' house.  We go to Meijer Gardens about a week before Christmas.

Christmas in Costa Rica

This year we are celebrating Christmas in Costa Rica.  In Michigan we eat pigs in a blanket and in Costa Rica we eat tamales.  In Costa Rica it is 85 degrees on Christmas and it doesn’t feel like Christmas.  Our decorations are foam and paper.  We have a fake Christmas tree.  We don’t get to go to our grandparents’ houses.

I wonder how Christmas will be like next year!

-Seth Wilson

My trip to the border crossing

Our first three months in Costa Rica have gone by so quickly.  Since we are on tourist visas, we have to leave Costa Rica and re enter every three months to renew our visas.  We decided to go into Nicaragua to renew them.  

Before we went to the border, we stayed at a house called Casa Blanca (meaning White House) with our cousins.  The house was right on the beach and only a few hours from the border.  When I had to say goodbye to the house, it was only a few hours until I was already missing it.  We stopped at the hotel that we were going to stay at to ask questions about crossing the border, but the clerk seemed to know next to nothing about it except that there are a lot of fun beaches just over the Nicaraguan border, so we had to move on.  When we were near the border we knew it, because so many trucks were waiting to cross over.  They all had lights on because it was dark, so it was really hard to see where we were going.  They only had one person working at the truck office, so things were going VERY slowly for the big trucks because there are a lot of things they need to check.  At first, we didn’t know how we were going to get through all those trucks, but there was a police guider car that helped us get through.  

Our first stop was to pay a Costa Rica exit tax and to receive a exit ticket, and then we drove about one block until we saw a protected parking lot.  It was fenced in and had a guard, so it was protected enough.  Then we went out and walked about a block across the border and through a Nicaraguan checkpoint.  It wasn’t that different on the Nicaraguan side, except that there was a HUGE blockade of police officers and soldiers with big guns.  My dad thinks that since there lots of Cuban refugees there, and they aren’t allowed in Costa Rica, they’re trying to prevent a riot among the refugees for not being allowed to get in.  We went through the immigration office without any troubles and paid the entrance fee.  After that we saw a little restaurant, called a soda.  We stopped there and drank some pop and ate some yummy Gallo

Our family eating Gallo Pinto

Pinto.  Gallo Pinto is the national dish of Costa Rica and consists of rice, beans, Lizano sauce and sometimes meat, but has many different varieties.  When we were done, we walked right back across the border to the Costa Rica immigration office.  We filled in some forms and they scanned our baggage and then we were successfully in Costa Rica.  Lastly, dad went and got the car. 

When we were driving home, we saw a 3 MILE line of trucks.  It was crazy!  We finally got to our hotel.  It was a fun but crazy evening!

-Kyle Wilson