I'm tired and my shoulder hurts. A little whining from yours truly

I can tell you with a straight face, that I've never worked so hard in my life.  Four hours with junior high students in the morning.  They're all sweethearts, but they wear me out like a tire on an Illinois highway.  After lunch, we've shoveled, wheelbarrowed, and dug for hours on end.  We've pounded nails and painted.   While making twenty podiums for the classrooms here, I've spent more time on my knees than Mother Teresa.  This work's harder that catching a Tebow down and out.

One day, Julio, affectionately known as "Chuck Norris" among his peers, asked me to shovel up a chasm of dirt and concrete chunks.  It was the hardest six feet I've ever walked, one hour per foot.  He just kept walking by me with a big smile saying "pura vida."  I half-heartedly replied the same.  

The next day, Tom from Wheaton, a regular at this place for the last eleven years, let me spell him for a few minutes every hour feeding a concrete mixer with another shovel.  After that, my friends, my shoulder's as painful as a Rick Perry sound bite.  

It's been a fantastic thirty five days so far.  We've seen walls built, classes taught, prayers answered, lives changed, and attitudes improved.  We've hopefully lifted missionaries spirits, and made a few new friends along the way.  It's been fun and it's been hard.  I guess that's the way it's supposed to be.

So, these short term missionaries are needing a break.  And the school was more than happy to give me one.  The students have had all the Okie English they can take.  So this weekend we're driving west from San Jose to Quepos on the Pacific Coast.  There you'll find Manuel Antonio National Park, one of the neatest places I've ever seen.  We're staying in a villa where we'll relax, swim, cook, zipline, and ride horses.  We'll probably tour the park again, where there's more wildlife than a Lady Gaga look-alike contest.  You can see monkeys, toucans, sloths, ants that will take a toe off, and maybe even a loud American or two.  Sancho's, a little Mexican roadside joint run by two amigos from South Carolina, cooks up the best fish tacos south of San Diego.  We'll eat there at least twice.  Besides all that, I'm not sure I care what I do.  I'm as flexible as Mitt Romney's platform.  Because there won't be a shovel or a white board in sight.

I need a break.  And this is the country to take one in.  God Bless Costa Rica.  See you in February, mis amigos.