Welcome to Santa Rosa de Pocosol by Jack

I'm writing this blog to give you an explanation of what our small town of Santa Rosa de Pocosol is like.  

Santa Rosa is a small northern town in the canton (providence) of Alajuela.  It is 80 km from Nicaragua on Highway 35.  

From the highway, you take a left down a hilly street which leads to the center of town.  On that road there are two banks, an electronics store, an Internet service company, a furniture store, a hardware store and the mechanic's shop.  I think there is a second-hand clothing store too.

In the middle of town there is a grassy plaza with a basketball court in it.  We go to the basketball court a few times a week to play basketball, American football or soccer.  This park is a favorite destination for the people of Santa Rosa in the early evening.  Here are a couple of pictures of the parque I took:

 

Right across the street from the parque is the Catholic Church.  Every Sunday there is Mass there at 11AM and 6PM.  There is also daily Mass every day at 6PM.  Next to the church is a small restaurant run by the church.  The profits of the restaurant are used to pay the church's bills.  

Here is an ariel shot of the church that we found online and a photo that I took of the front.

 

Only a few blocks away from the church is the bus station, which is the hub of transportation for the town and its surrounding areas.  A lot of people don't have cars and so they have to rely on the buses for their transportation.  Here is a photo of the bus station that I took and a standard Chilsaca bus that I found on the Internet:

 

On the same road as our house, there is the high school, which goes from grades 7-12.  This school is special.  It is a technical school funded by the European Union, so it's nicer than most of the other schools in our area.  Here is a photo of the front of the school that I took.  I will start 9th grade there on February 19th.  My brother, Michael, will start 7th grade and Anna will start 11th.  I've only gone there once to register so I don't really know anything other than we have to go to school for like 10 hours a day.   

Our favorite restaurant in town is called Hot Cheese Pizza.  When the local people say it, it sounds like Hachi's Pizza, which is funny.  It is a pizzeria owned by a Costa Rican man who lived in Connecticut for 11 years and worked at an authentic pizzeria so he knows how to make pizza very well.  Here is a photo of the restaurant.  It is usually busy at nighttime.  

In Santa Rosa de Pocosol there are people with a lot of money and people without much money.  The people here call the people with money "millionarios" which means "millionaires" in Spanish.  

Here are side-by-side photos of the two extremes:

 

Our house is somewhere in the middle.  Here's the little path that leads to our house:

Following are the photos I took of our house.  I put captions under each one so you know what they are.

Welcome to the Carmody Home.

Here is our porch or what I like to call
our "outside lounging area".

This is the view from our porch.  The sun rises right up above the houses
so my mom sits here each day to watch the sunrise and do her personal
prayer time.

This is our clothes washing area.
We have to hand-wash all of
our clothes.

This is where we hang up our clothes to dry.
I guess it's hard to see because we had to put all of
our clothes away.

 

This is my parents' bedroom.

This is Michael's and my bedroom.

 

 

This is the Living Room.

This is the kitchen.

 

This is the shower. We only have cold
water, but I don't really care because
usually it's pretty hot here.

 

This is Anna's bedroom.

I hope you enjoyed seeing where we live.  Have a wonderful rest of your day!  

Love, Your Favorite Missionary (Jack)