A Blog Entry

Blah blah blah, I'm not very good at blogging, etc. etc. You know this, I know this, it's just a fact that must be dealt with.

So. I went to Guatemala. It was amazing. Incredible. You know a trip is going to be good when within an hour of landing at the airport, you meet an insane lesbian couple who bring a not at all domesticated pigeon (they trapped it after it flew into their building) onto a 10 hour busride. Yes. It was a good omen, I feel.

Um, since Guatemala, I haven't been doing much of anything because there is no school. I have, however, been incredibly busy being insanely poor. No joke. I have had 40 cents in my bank account since the 15th of January. I did have about...6 bucks in cash. But I also have my American money and 23 bucks in emergency cash, but still. I cannot stress to you how unbelieveably annoying not having any money is. I mean, yes, I kind of have enough money to eat and stuff, but only when combined with a serious amount of mooching and abuse/dependence on said American account. But yes. It sucks. That, I feel is part of the whole Peace Corps thing though. Deprivation and being constantly out of money. No wonder people who live here think we're insane. We're poor on purpose.

School begins in 2 weeks and I am so ready to go. I´m excited because I kind of actually know what I'm doing now so I can maybe possibly be effective and get more things done in a shorter period of time. Here's hoping!

Thanks for keeping on sending me emails and letters! It really helps a ton, you have no idea. Also, some of you may be getting letters soon. Look out in the mail for those. Um. Hopefully I'll write something again before March. Maybe this time it will actually even have substance.

so, about that blog thing

I really suck at blogging. But, I feel what with being in the last 9 months (?? how did this happen?) of service, I should probably start chronicling, because things are about to get real interesting, I think/hope.

So right. Things that have happened. Went home, was great, came back, also great. Fast forward to December, because that's where we are. So, today was the Festival de Alegria aka the Festival of Happiness for the kids at school, meaning that school is over. My friend Rachel was here and she ended up teaching the kids some tae kwan do which they used as an excuse to bounce off the walls and try to kick each other in the face. If you want to know how to have a festival of happiness, martial arts combined with unlimited access to sugar really seem to do the trick.

Anyway, so the school year is over and I am pleased. I think I managed to do quite a bit in the school this year, if not quite in the high school. But I am full of plans, so hopefully by the time February rolls around, I will be able to start almost immediately what with now knowing the right people, administrators, etc. etc. and knowing what it is I'm doing. Until then, it's basically vacation for me.

I'm spending Christmas here in town, with somewhere between 1 to 4 different families (let's see how that works out) and then on the 26th I'm out to San Jose so that on the 27th morning, I can fly out to ...Guatemala! I'm incredibly excited. Going to be there til the 5th, so I will be there for New Year's. Hopefully it will be amazing and we won't, you know, experience tremendous amounts of misfortune/die, but hey! That's a risk you've got to take when...stepping out your front door. And on that note, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and a very Happy New Year!

October!

The time since the one year mark have just flown right by. Mid-service training was an extremely busy week, but we got a lot of amazing material out of it. I presented some of the project ideas from that training to the Development Association (town government, essentially) on Tuesday night, and they´re interested in all three of the projects I presented. To be fair, one was a grant request form and hey, who doesn´t want money for projects, but the other two were a town Emergency Plan and a project to develop a Comite Tutelar, which is a branch of the Dev. Association dedicated to children and youth issues. All in all, good times.

My days have been incredibly busy. I´m out and about by 9 or 10 and don´t come back home til about 8, at which point, it´s nearly bedtime anyway. This Saturday, the women´s group has a bingo and a soccer game to raise money. Should be fun! The next few weeks should gop really fast as well, and then I´m home!

One down, one to go

Soooooooo, I finished one year! I´ve kind of reached the point where I´m thinking, hey! This isn´t so bad. So, I´ve got (less than!) a year left now, which is...unnerving. I have so many things I still want to do and I only have a year left? And from what everyone says, the second year goes by incredibly fast. I really really want to finish up my projects or at least see them get the ball rolling before I go, especially with the women´s group´s panaderia. Time to get to work.

I´ve moved out into a new place. I got a really amazing deal kind of house sitting/fake renting an Italian woman´s house that my friend takes care of, so I only have to pay 20 dollars a month, plus utilities which cost about 5 bucks. All in all, not a bad deal. I have a kitchen, bathroom, and an open space above with my bed and whatnot. And I´m right next to the school! And, there´s an extra bed, so...open invitation for people from back home.

I´ll be in San Jose all of next week for mid service training and medical check-ups. The hotel has something rigged up so that you can call as if you were calling a local Chicago number, so I´ll be emailing out the number if you want to call.

And by November, I mean August...it now being September

Right. Events -

1. Giant windstorm came to town. It felt much like a hurricane, which is very not good because there are about a bajillion trees around these parts, seeing as how it's 1- Costa Rica, 2- basically part of a national park. We didn't have power for three days, running water until the day after, and a ton of trees had fallen everywhere. A HUGE mango tree almost fell on the house. That was fun. Most people managed to escape without a tree falling on their house, which was good. Those who did, it was only minor damages, so all's well, I suppose.

2. Chicas Poderosas! I started a self-esteem workshop with the 4th through 6th grade girls. They seem to love it so far. I'm hoping this will help a lot particularly in getting them to not act stupid in front of the boys or let them walk all over them. Take that, machismo. Although, the 4th through 6th grade boys are jealous and want me to do a project with them too, so I might give them a shot. And talk to them about not walking all over the girls. Because, afterall, if they have a little more self-esteem, they might not be as tempted to do it in the future. Hmm...

3. I'm getting close to rolling out this workshop I've been trying to organize which makes me really excited. One of the problems in my area, in all of Costa Rica, really, is as I've mentioned, sexual exploitation of children. Which is a serious problem, but when it comes down to it - how do you address that issue, particularly when it's mostly the result of family members abusing children or older men impregnating teenagers who nobody really views as being children, since they look like women anyway? So, it's one of the issues that's just often left unaddressed, simply because, well, what can you do? With the help of teachers/teacher guides (thanks Claire and Malathi Auntie!) I'm putting together a workshop for the younger kids in the school to teach them about how to avoid strangers, bad touch, etc. I really really hope it works. And that they pay attention. The recent workshop on not hitting each other ended up in them all hitting each other to demonstrate how they weren't going to hit each other anymore....hmmm...

Anyway, happy September! I will see you in 6-7 weeks!

November Update!

I´ve tried to update the last couple of weeks, but blogger doesn´t like me. Here´s what I got -

1. The earthquake in Peru apparently caused a wave to form, thus iniciating the first ever mass evacuation of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Since I live in a beach town, my entire town was told to evacuate. Luckily, I was in San Jose, because apparently it was a zoo. People were running up the hills holding their TVs, which apparently amused some people and scared others. Even more luckily, the wave petered out and a tsunami was avoided. It was a constant topic of discussion for days afterwards though.

2. My women´s group is not doing well. We may be losing some of the officers and less people are showing up to the meetings. Now, originally I thought/was told that the reason was because the meetings were every week (once a week, for an hour is apparently far too much) and that I had to miss 3 consecutive meetings due to having to be in San Jose. So, happily, I set off to try and fix this, setting up a meeting, making it every other week instead of every, only to be told that a lot of the women aren´t coming anymore because their husbands won´t let them. I don´t even know what to do about that. I know what I would LIKE to do, but I have a feeling that it is probably not what I should do. This is going to be fun.

3. Countdowns. I am three weeks away from my one year in service mark. I am very excited. Hopefully I get my housing approved so that Kate and I can move into our own house. SO exciting. My host mom´s already putting aside plant cuttings for me to put in the garden I´m hoping to make. I just hope Kate doesn´t eat them all. Also, less than two months til I come home to visit! So many things to look forward to.

Theater Camp

Hi all,

In early July, the kids in Costa Rica get a two weeks vacation from school, sort of like a spring break. I decided to take advantage and offer another campamento - this time on theater/art. Although (sadly) no garbage bag kites were involved this time, we did manage to have some fun with mask-making, puppet-making, improv, and other various theater games.

Documentation below: