El Toaster

August 15, 2017…Day 1
Mom, quit texting me. Dad, quit freaking out. We made it to Costa Rica, safe and sound.
Our journey today started bright and early at 6am, where we piled into Hope College vans and drove a bumpy 2 and a half hours to Chicago Midway Airport. From there, we began our day full of flying and waiting in lines. After fueling up on overpriced breakfast food and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, we boarded our first flight destined for Houston. Departure was around 11am, and after 2 hrs of Cody’s abnormally long legs folded into a middle seat, we arrived to Houston at noon (Houston time, appr. 1pm Michigan time).
We then proceeded to survey all available food options in the Houston airport before unanimously deciding on Chick-fil-a for lunch. After lunch Juliana insisted that there was a Nestle Toll House/Auntie Annie’s shop hidden somewhere within the airport. After searching each inch of each terminal, an employee of the airport informed us that, we were in fact, thinking of the wrong airport. ):
After a short but highly competitive stint of card games, which included euchre, war and poker with whatever coins were available, we boarded our Costa Rica flight around 4:40 pm. We were far from in the air however. After going through pre-flight checks we backed out of the terminal…and then proceeded to pull right back in due to a family who needed to exit the plane. After sitting in a steamy airplane cabin for an hour past our flight time, we finally had lift off and were on our way to Costa Rica.
Night fell as we traveled into Central America. We arrived at San Jose International Airport around 8:45 pm local time, 10:45 pm Michigan time. Lines for immigration were not short by any means, plus a hold up with Luke’s bag in customs only added more time to our airport stay (thanks to Juliana’s Spanish, Luke is still with us and not spending his first night in a Costa Rican jail cell).
We met our bus driver Christian and Nattie in the parking lot outside the airport, along with our means of transportation for the night, a great white bus affectionately name “El Toaster”. After a rather short 30 minute drive into San Jose, we arrived at our housing for the night, the AMCA house. This will serve as our housing or “base” for 3 or 4 nights of our trip.
We didn’t have to wait long to experience the typical Costa Rican cuisine of rice, chicken and beans, which we ate for dinner around 11 pm local time, 1 am Michigan time.
Thank you to everyone who has supported, is supporting and will continue to support in the coming week as we continue to serve in this awesome country. We have a big day coming up tomorrow and it is safe to say we are all in need of a good nights sleep. Continue to check back for updates this week, signing off for now…
Written by: Frankie + Luke