Costa Rica is becoming normal for me.  Not in a bad way though, where it has lost its adventure.  I am not as distracted with the surface anymore.  It´s normal in a way that allows me to see San Jose and the small communities I´ve been working in for who they are.  People are people and children are children.  Earlier this week Caila picked me up to go to the site.  Some days she has the car and some days Krysta has it.  Caila had it this day.  The drive was getting more familliar.  I am begining to know where we need to turn, know which roads have bigger pot holes and can tell when the rivers that we drive over are full or not that day or that hour.  I played with the older boys at the site most the day.  The boys are fun.  We played marbles and armwrestled at the end of the day.  They beat me most the time at marbles, but I won a few matches.  Playing with them took me back to gradeschool when I went through the marble phase.  The competitiveness; the arguing; the skill.  Marbles are a good game.  I saw the boys sort through their collection and choose their favorite one to play with.  They usually let me barrow the cat eyed marbles.  The cat eyed marbles were plentiful as they were when I was a boy.  We´d play in the dirt and rocks next to the covered area of the site.  They had aquired crafty techniques.  They shot the marbles with strategy and precision.  My skills were not so refined anymore.  As we were playing I noticed a boy, who I had orginally thought to be the tough boy of the bunch, soften up a bit.  I saw another side of him.  He was kind in sport and seemed to be a good friend.  A boy who I had originally thought to be too cool to be penetrated now smiled, laughed and even let me barrow a marble to play with him.  Is that fruit or knowledge?  The boys are likely teaching me more than I am teaching them.
Caila had to stay after to do some stuff with some other women in the community.  I could´ve waited, but decided to take the bus home.  The way the buses work are they all go into downtown San Jose and drop you off.  You then have to catch another bus from San Jose to your community.  So I took the bus into San Jose.  I was thinking about grabbing a coffee there, but decided to head back to Desamparados to check out this cafe´ I´ve had my eye on.  The buses pick you up all over the central park area.  You have to just kind of know where to go to catch the right bus.  I had gotten lucky in finding this bus stop a few days prior.  There was a growing line of about 20 or 30 people waiting along the curb, facing the street.  While I was waiting there I saw a man across the street drop a bowl and a piece of bread out of his bag.  The man looked poor, maybe homeless.  From the stagger in his walk I noticed he may have been injured or drinking.  As he walked away I wanted to let him know.  I felt an urge to shout out to him or even run across the street and give him his bowl and bread.  But I didn´t.  I sat quietly with the rest of the line facing him.  I wondered why I didn´t speak up.  In reflecting on the situation now, maybe I was afraid of looking different.  Maybe it was because I was standing next to a pretty girl in line and didn´t want to jepordize my position there.  It was likely both;  Fear and selfishness.  I wonder why nobody else helped this man.  It could have been for the same reasons I didn´t help him or becuase the city moves too fast to notice or care about the needs of another.  Regardless of their reasons, I didn´t help the man.  I didn´t care enough.  I passed up a good blessing.  While I´m watching the man walk away another man stepped out of line and was talking loudly to everyone waiting for the bus.  He was walking back forth in front of us.  I asked the pretty girl next to me, in embarassing spanish, what he was saying.  I couldn´t really understand her, but I think she said he was preaching and then she smiled and giggled a bit.  I wonder if the preacher thought to help the man who lost his dinner.  A few moments later somebody kicked the bowl into the street and it was ran over by a bus.  Thats that I guess.  The bread was still sitting there though.  People passed it by paying no attention to it.  The freshly cooked, golden bread looked clean and refreshing sitting against the broken and moss covered sidewalk.  Another man was approaching.  This man looked much like the broken moss covered sidewalk and gutter.  He blended perfectly into the streets of San Jose.  He was definitely homeless.  I was curious if he would see the bread and if he did, what would he do?  Before I could finish the thought he had already picked up the bread and with out hesitating to even brush the streets off, he took a bite.  Funny how God works.  I´m almost glad the man dropped his bread.  I still feel convicted.  There´s no salvaging the bowl.  The bus arrived shortly after that and I headed to Desamparados.  As we approached where I needed to get off I pulled the rope so the bus driver knew to stop and made my way to the exit. 
I walked to that little cafe´ I´ve been wanting to go to.  It was called Paneteria & Cafeteria, I think this means bakery & food place.  Cute name.   I ordered a cafe con leche and this little fruit and bread pie thing.  I didn´t know what it was called so I just pointed to it.  The lady told me how to say it several times and apparently I said it right one of those times, cause she stopped trying to teach me.  I still dont know what it is called.  I think she was the owner.  As I tried to pay, she instructed me to have a seat so she could serve me.  I made my way to the corner so I could see the cafe´ in its entirety.  She brought the coffee and snack over, each on its own dish.  It was amazing.  The coffee was a perfect blend and the pie thing was delicious.  In a part of town that isn´t quiet nor beautiful in a naturalistic kind of way, they have succeeded in offering a pleasant corner of the town to hide in.  I sat there sipping my coffee and journaling a bit.  I wondered what the man who dropped his bowl and bread was doing?