My husband Phil spent the day beginning to unload the container and feathering our nest. It was a good day for him. Our neighbor came over and introduced himself and his family. I asked Phil if our neighbor was bilingual and Phil said no, but I am. I am so proud of Phil; he has worked studiously the last two years to get to this point. His Spanish vocabulary is excellent and he has become comfortable in his skin. My husband dreams out loud. For quite sometime he has been dreaming out loud in Spanish. That was a major turning point in his life, he flowed into Spanish while sleeping. I knew he had turned the corner of bilingualism, but he can never remember the dreams and did not know that he had arrived. It is never dull at our house. Remind me to tell you about the various invasions of Cuba; those were before he spoke Spanish.

We have a new member of the family, Pobrecita, (poor little thing). She is a young dog, a Heinz 57 variety with a beard and hound dog ears. She was starving to death, as so many Costa Rican dogs are. Just a skeleton with skin, too weak to lift her head, he thought she would die before the weekend was over. But a week later and with daily doses of food and love she is running around joyfully happy. Her new daddy is equally excited; tomorrow she gets a bath, a collar, and starts riding next to her dad in the pickup truck. It doesn’t get any better than that. Soon she will be joined by her big brother Jack, our rescued Rottweiler. Life is good.

This morning I had a meeting with John Fisher john@ccfsf.org at Christian Community Foundation of South Florida to learn more about how to set up my 501c3 and fund my mission to help the poor rural children and their families through education and a scholarship program. How do ordinary people like you and me direct our money to our choice of missions and reduce our capital gains tax? You can find answers at http://www.ccfsf.org/. Are you selling a home or business? Would you like to have some of your money go to a charity of your choice rather than to the IRS? That is my objective. I see so much need in my new country, how can I make a difference? I can set up the 501c3 and ask you to help me. Like most Americans, we all have too much stuff. Talk to your friends and family; ask them to donate their sewing machines, laptops and children’s books so that our volunteers can teach with educational tools. You will change a family’s life forever while freeing up some space in your casa.

Don’t forget to explore the possibilities of how to redirect your tax dollars in advance. It is important to investigate, understand and take action before you get to the contract stage of your sale.

We have drop off collection points not far from the San Jose airport in Santa Ana and Escazu, friends helping friends, to facilitate our dream of making a difference in the lives of others less fortunate. Contact me for more information, ginnee@gmail.com. If you are visiting Costa Rica please bring a suitcase of supplies for the poor rural children and consider coming to visit us for a real rural experience in what we believe is the most breathtakingly beautiful part of rural Costa Rica, Esperanza de Turrialba. It is difficult for us to bring items in because of the transportation cost factor. If you can help by packing some items in your luggage or carry on, you will make a difference. Let me thank you now, for your help.

http://weather.cnn.com/weather/forecast.jsp?locCode=CSTU.

October 23, 2006

Our container is ready to be picked up. Praise the Lord, now we can get on with the important work. Unless there is a ditch in the road that we do not know about, the tax, tag and tip is less than what we feared. I spent two years researching the shipping process and despite a few delays, it has gone rather smoothly. I don’t think we could have overcome the few problems we encountered. The only glitches were that the container failed to get on the ship (Crowley’s fault) and, the Port of Limon was on strike. Our broker Mike Rappaport rappmike1@aol.com has done a fine job so far. I will keep you posted.

We have been helping the poor rural school children at different schools for the last few years. Many never go past 6th grade because they have no way to get to the next level or their parents can not afford to send them. Some do not see the value of education. I have had children say that even if their parents could afford to send them, what difference it would make; there are no jobs for them anyway. Perhaps the seeds of hope are the most difficult to plant. But we shall plant them and nurture them with kindness and respect.

We still need supplies, donated laptops, with which to tutor children, story books and educational material as well as pencils, pens, notebooks and navy blue uniforms. It costs about $100.00 dollars a year to send a child to school and more than that after the 6th grade. If you would like to help in some way, please contact us at ginnee@gmail.com . We hope to inspire teachers to join us at our location to work with the children. We could use the talents of a shop teacher, home economics, English, and a Business 101 teacher. We are interested in hearing from interested candidates with an adventurous spirit wanting to make a difference in the lives of others.

We have been Community Service volunteers all of our adult lives. Phil and I were also host parents to foreign students and would host, house and feed as many as 16 students at a time. We have many fond memories of our “kids”. Our new country and our new neighborhood have many needs. Simply teaching a child to read will take them to lands they don’t know exist. There are no books in poor rural schools, none. When you can barely feed your family enough beans and rice, and the skeleton of a dog is on his own, who has money for books?

How can we (you and me) change lives? Education, real life skills, language skills and technical training will not only put more food on the table but change the destiny of families for generations to come. Ask me how you can help, ginnee@gmail.com

October, 2006

Our container was shipped out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Crowley. We bought a 28' Great Dane container on wheels so that we could have a storage unit for our supplies and tools upon arrival. We have been packing the container and documenting our 220 some page manifest list for more than 6 months. The container had a reservation, but Crowley failed to put the container on the ship. It has now arrived, but it is still at the Port of Limon, not yet released. Port of Limon workers have been on strike, I sure hope that is over with.

Phil has been working at the farm (finca) with our caretaker family. We now have our first fish farm pond stocked with fish. He made a pool in the back of our pickup truck to transport the fish. Very clever.