Nerdcorps Chronicles

A Blog Entry

2008-01-30T14:04:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-18T16:45:00.000-06:00

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!

2007-10-04T12:52:00.000-06:00

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

2007-09-20T11:14:00.000-06:00

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

2007-09-01T16:12:00.000-06:00

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!

2007-08-23T15:59:00.000-06:00

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

2007-07-14T16:50:00.000-06:00

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:

Hey, guess what?

2007-07-03T11:23:00.000-06:00

I have a dog! Yup, now that I´m getting closer to the one year mark (move out date!), I am starting to plan. So, I got a puppy, which in a few months, hopefully will be large enough to serve as some sort of guard dog/captive friend.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...the lovely Kate Moss:

Success!

2007-06-06T12:26:00.000-06:00

Hello folks. Updates -

1. Giant moths and miniature crabs continue to invade my room. The mutant spiders have all gone into hibernation for the rainy season, I think.

2. I think I found a house for September. All I need to do is get PC to approve it and then, voila! I can have a place of my own!

3. Due to new house in September, am getting a cat and a dog. The cat to kill rats, cockroaches, geckos, etc. and the dog for protection (all the women living by themselves in the area have dogs. better that way). Will also serve dual purpose of being my (captive) friends. Kitten incoming next week, I´ll probably post up some pictures and need help looking for a name. Keep on your toes.

4. After having my first women´s group a month ago with a grand total of zero people showing up, a whopping 12 people showed up to my second meeting yesterday! Women´s groups are traditionally Microenterprise/Rural Comm. Dev. volunteer projects, but whatever. I may be a children-youth volunteer, but I am perfectly allowed to dabble in this stuff. In Costa Rica, women´s groups mostly serve as microenterprises, so they/we have decided to start with a panaderia/reposteria (bread and pastry shop)! I am so incredibly excited, if this works out, it will bring one more business into the town and be a much needed source of income for families during the tourist low season. Fabulous.

5. Not only did my iPod get lost-stolen, but the other day I dropped my CD player, so it no longer plays CDs, only the radio. Havoc.

6. I will be in San Jose for most of next week (16th to the 20th). That means...cell phone reception! Call me if the mood strikes you.

That is all for now.

No dengue yet!

2007-05-20T15:51:00.000-06:00

Update, update. I´m getting worse at this.

So, let´s see. What have I been doing. English classes have been going strong - over a month now, 9 hours a week with 3 separate classes total. I´ve had to revert to quizzes to make people study though. I never wanted to be a teacher, so I´m slightly aggravated when they won´t study after insisting that I teach. Hopefully, this will change it.

I´m starting a high school yearbook-memory book for the seniors and a student newspaper. Hopefully, shall be interesting projects. I´m also thinking about doing another kids´ camp during the upcoming vacations (first two weeks of July). I´m thinking...drama camp, but I would need to do research, etc. So if anyone has ideas, throw them my way!

As far as the animal kingdom is going, all is normal. The other day, I had to chase a crab, a baby chicken, and a cat with a dead iguana in its mouth out of my room.

I kind of have nothing to say. I´m losing my ability with mass communications. But! Email, etc. is still going strong, so feel free to shoot a line over.

Things to Avoid - Strike 1

2007-04-24T13:17:00.000-06:00

So, when I came to my site, I made a mental list of things I wanted to avoid during my two years in site. I can´t really remember all of them, but things are not looking good. In the town right nearby, there have been a couple of cases of dengue recently reported. And of course, every mosquito within a five foot radius flocks to me immediately, so that´s fantastic.

On the plus side, I found out that I am not allergic to scorpion stings! Hmm....

Also, did I mention that I found a crab in my room a few weeks ago? I told my host mom and she told me to get rid of it because it eats clothing. Right.

The Rainy Season

2007-04-17T15:17:00.000-06:00

So, it's April. Almost the rainy season. In America, April showers bring May flowers, but I think over here, it's more like April showers bring May torrential downpours. But it's almost as poetic, right?

Here in my lovely little Costa Rican town, there are several signs that the rainy season is about to begin. One, of course, is that is begins to rain every now and again. The other is the coming of this kind of locust-cicada type creature which makes this hideously loud noise, which according to my host mom and other people in my town is beautiful. To me, it is not, but, then again, considering it means an end to the terrible March heats, I can understand why it might be.

Another is the plague of beetles. Beetles everrryyywhere, in the house, in my bed, in my hair, etc. etc. There are beetles in every part of the house. I know I incessently talk about bugs, buut the fact of the matter is, they're very much a part of my life. Well, my life, such as it is.

Up until recently, I was having trouble deciding if it was really worth it for me to be here. I felt useless, particularly with every single project I started almost immediately stalling or failing. Some nights, I felt as if I should just give up and go home because there really wasn't anything I could do here at all. Not that I felt that my town didn't have a need, but just that the constant failure wasn't going to do anyone any good. If I ever talked to anyone outside the family about my work/projects and my host sister was there, she'd always start carrying on in a loud voice about how I never did anything ever and about how everyday was a vacation for me. Nothing was going right, and on top of it, I felt guilty, because frankly, it's not that hard to live where I do. Peace Corps people have a bad habit of comparing themselves to other people and judging themselves based on their own personal shortcomings. There are foreigners who live in my site and they're fine with it. There are PC people who live in way more isolated places than I do, in countries and sites with much more terrible problems than anything I will have to face. But, I was the one who was failing, despite having a lot of people look at me askance when I told them where I lived or that I was there for the Peace Corps. What?? You're doing Peace Corps THERE? Wow... And to be fair, it is beautiful. And it does look like there's nothing to do there because it's perfect, BUT, it irritates me when people who come here on vacation for a few days, talk to people in broken English, and wander around the beach can claim they know the people here. They know everything, and there's no reason for Peace Corps to be here.

Anyway. Not to drag this out too much longer, it's gotten better over the past few weeks. A lot better. Somehow, I feel more a part of my community than before. Projects, even though they continually fail, still come around my way, so that I can start new ones again. My English class started! Other things are happening! But most of all, I've just got this sense that everything is going to be okay. And that makes everything all better. Like one of the other PCVs said, here in Costa Rica, PC is not really all too harsh of conditions, superficially speaking. The people don't dress too different, plenty of fruits and vegetables, electricity, running water, etc. But when you really get into it and live it everyday, it will mess with your mind like you do not believe.

I have nothing to say

2007-04-04T16:19:00.000-06:00

But it´s been a month since I´ve updated, so um. Someone in the internet cafe keeps saying ¨Latin Fresh¨ over and over again with a severe accent and it is hysterical and I am trying my hardest not to laugh. I haven´t been complimented on my English (Hey wow, your English is pretty good, how did you learn to speak so well? Oh tourists, how I love you.) in the past two weeks! So this is some kind of a record. Aaaaaaaaaaaand. I have finished my 39th book since arriving to Costa Rica (June 28). Yep. That´s all I´ve got. Better updates coming later, maybe.

Bichos Redux

2007-03-08T12:17:00.000-06:00

The other day, I was hanging out in the soda, as per usual, when this woman that I know started talking to me and asking me questions which I really could not understand. Something along the lines of ¨Did you hear about those bichos that the Americans brought to Guanacaste (a province in CR)? Those are some crazy/strange bichos!¨

I had no idea what she was talking about. Bugs? A fungus, perhaps? Bird flu? But then, someone else who was eating at the soda chimed in, ¨Oh yeah, like the hippo!¨

So, apparently, bichos can also be used to describe zoo animals. Hippos, giraffes, etc.

...

Dear Spanish language,

I understand that language is a very fluid concept and that words can often have multiple meanings. Our lives and conversations are all the richer for it, but if you could provide me with some context clues, it might make my life a little easier.

Thanks,
Priya

Bichos Keep Falling on My Head

2007-02-28T12:11:00.000-06:00

For those of you who do not know what a bicho is, a quick vocabulary lesson. A bicho is a general term for any variety of (potentially) annoying critter-like objects. Ants? Bichos. Spiders? Bichos. Pokemon? Bichos. Small children? Bichos. Uhh, just kidding, I love children!! (Right.)

Anyway. As you may already know, I am plagued with bichos. But February was not a particularly kind month, because the bichos are now on the offensive, as clearly demonstrated by 3 separate cases:

One. A horde of ants invaded my room from a hole in the kitchen and began to frenzy all over the floor, scaring two small girls (who were busy trying to annoy me in every possible way) out of my room. So, not 100% bad, but still, large horde of ants all over my magazines and floor is bad. So, I killed them all with Windex and swept them out when they dried (our normal tactic for dealing with ant invasions in the house).

Two. One evening, I was sitting in the living room, watching some Sabado Gigante or the news, or whatever it was that was on TV when I feel a bicho fly into my hair. Not exactly an uncommon occurrence, so I put my hand up to wipe it off. It is not a winged insect and is actually stuck to my hair. Commence freaking out. Frantically swiping at my hair, I feel something scamper across my hair/face/arm onto the other side of the couch and eventually to the wall. Oh yes, it was a GECKO that fell off the ceiling onto my hair.

Three. There are these giant brown spiders that sometimes hang around our house. They don´t do anything, they just run around the walls and maybe you see about 1 or 2 in as many weeks. They´re not poisonous and the only thing they do is breed and lose their appendages. In any case, the other day, I saw the BIGGEST one I´ve ever seen in my time here. The body was literally the size of my palm, it was disgustingly huge. It was so big that the body was actually segmented into two bits, something I´ve never seen for one of these spiders before. I took a picture of it, but I forgot to bring it with me, so maybe next time. Anyway, fast forward to that night. I was lying in my bed, listening to my ipod before I went to sleep when I feel a PLUNK on my pillow. Immediately thinking gecko/mutant spider, I jump out of bed and turn on the light, and sure enough, the mutant spider has fallen from the wall onto my pillow. Unable to deal with it, I left for a few minutes and came back. It had since left and after a thorough search, I determined that it was nowhere within visible sight and so, went back to sleep.

Bichos.

Back to School

2007-02-09T14:57:00.000-06:00

Although summer doesn’t technically end until April, the summer vacation ended this week and the kids went back to school. The vacations did go out with a bang here in my town with the first ever summer art camp! (I’m making up these statistics as I go along, can you tell?)

Seeing as how this was my first actual honest-to-goodness project, I was fairly nervous about it, particularly seeing as how my schedule was so packed – straight from San Jose to my site, back across the Gulf to Jaco, and back again, of course, almost missing my ferry, etc. etc. But all’s well that ends well, because I did get back to my site that night and was able to start the camp in the morning.

All in all, I’d have to say it went really well. I’m pleased with the results, not only because I have something to put on my work report (ha!), but also because it got me in with the kids more. They loved it. We did all sorts of things – in addition to the garbage bag kites (unfortunately not lemon-scented this time around), we made dreamcatchers (slightly failed experiment), friendship bracelets, playdough, and toys out of recycled materials. Also, one day, a woman in my town came to teach a watercolors course and brought over a bunch of volunteers to help out, which made everything that much easier. All in all, about 25 kids showed up, which is not bad for a camp advertised only towards 7-14 year olds (although a few 5+6 year olds came too) in a town of less than 350 people.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of the camp (mostly kites):

One of the two signs for my camp - one in each pulperia.

Evidence of the existence of the garbage bag kite.

I don´t know what this has to do with an art camp, but we for some reason, did a series of relay races, including wheelbarrow races and crab walks.

Quite possibly the cutest kid in the world. One of the few times I´ve ever seen him wear anything more than just his underwear.

A ¨candid camera¨ type photo of me with the kids and their kites on the final day. I was trying to prevent the kid sitting ON the tree from giving me bunny ears.

That’s about all I’ve got for now, but I have a bunch of projects lined up and possibly ready to roll in the next couple of months, so, hopefully I’ll have things even MORE exciting to write about in the next entry. At the very least, I’ll try not to mention garbage bag kites anymore.

Also!

2007-01-30T15:37:00.000-06:00

The definition of cool - carrying a garbage bag kite roughly the size of your torso by using various means of public transport up and down the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica.

The kite tail is made of blue crepe paper!

Water Based Transportation Where My Doom

2007-01-30T15:18:00.000-06:00

I have just had the most insane two hours ever. Well, it's been quite the crazy week and a half, really. I was in San Jose all of last week (Sunday-Saturday) for our first round of re-training where we did all sorts of things like make finger puppets and choose different marker/colored pencil colors that represented how we felt about our current family/PANI/self condition. Training to work with kids involves a lot of talking about feelings/how to respond well to the emotions of others/etc. etc. And things like puppets. Aaaaaaaaanyway.

Right, so I came back to my site on Saturday (that's an 8 hour trip, BY THE WAY), and then the next day immediately turned around, crossed back to Puntarenas and headed south towards Jaco to help out another volunteer with an art camp that began on Monday. That was a 6-7 hour trip. Fun! Actually, the camp was a huge success and I had a great and extremely exhausting time. I made kites out of garbage bags and jewelry out of magazine beads and participated in enough ice-breaker/dinamica type activities to make any of you normies lose it. Wooo, conditioning to work with children. In any case, that was four hours a day of activities.

I immediately turned around today (tuesday) at 12 so that I could get back to Puntarenas in time to catch my ferry. Anytime I go to/from my site, it involves a two hour ferry ride. Well, the bus from where I was left EARLY, so I tried to go to another city to catch a bus from Puntarenas that left from there, but that schedule wouldn't have gotten me to the ferry on time, so I took a 30 dollar taxi to Puntarenas. Mind you, I still need to fix some things for MY camp which begins tomorrow at 8am. Well, I get to the ferry 12 minutes before it leaves only to discover it's been CANCELLED and the next one won't arrive for two hours. At which point, there will be no buses back to my town. Commence freaking out and calling everyone I know to yell about water-based transportation. Some freaking out later and SOMEHOW, I run into someone who lives in my town who says he has a car on the other side of the water and will drive me back home. He has a stake in it, as his two kids are attending said camp.

I have no idea how this all managed to work out, but by and large, this kind of thing happens to me pretty much every time I try to leave/go back to my site. I think it's a sign. In a nutshell, if the ferry ride wasn't so amazingly beautiful, I might just have to hate it, but instead, it just makes me love it all the more. Actually, no, that's a complete lie, I'd love it more if it WOULDN'T DO THIS TO ME ALL THE TIME. In any case, tomorrow, I begin the dreamcatcher/friendship bracelet portion of my camp. As this is my first major me-initiated activity in my site...I really really hope it goes well. Here goes nothing /everything...

Ants and Art

2007-01-19T11:10:00.000-06:00

I know I already wrote something about bugs, but honestly, I think ants merit their own mini rant. Seriously, how, HOW do they manage to find there way into and onto everything? They are in my bed, on my skin, in my laundry, dirty or clean, on the floor, on the walls, everywhere! Sometimes, in the States, I got the feeling that there was something crawling on me and it almost always turned out to be nothing, but here, it’s always ants. Large or small, black or red or some weird brown-red color, whatever. During my first week, they got into my Nutella. I was not pleased at all, particularly because I had bought it in San José as a splurge comfort item thinking it would not be found in my area (I underestimated the strength of the expat market around these parts). The jar was fully closed, yet there were a sea of ants struggling and dying (haHA) in the chocolate-y goodness. The other day, they managed to get INSIDE the rice cooker, which by the way, was turned on. So, of course, they died too. They’re real stupid and apparently all have a death wish, but wow, are they prolific. But, in the past four months, I’ve gotten used to them and have almost but not quite adopted my host family’s attitude towards them. When the ants got in the hot rice the other day, my host sister just shrugged her shoulders and said “Eh, it’s meat,” and then continued shoveling rice onto her plate. I suppose it is, at that. In any case, I don’t even want to know how many ants I’ve already eaten, but I’m sure the number is startlingly large.

In actual work news, I have been fairly busy ever since I got back from the States. For one, I started to seriously get things together for my art camp. I’m pretty excited about it because it’s more or less my first real project here. Sure, I’ve been going to other people’s activities and helping out in the school and whatnot, but this is the first thing that’s MY project. I’ve been making different art projects all week long to test out the best ways to teach them and to create examples. I’ve already got the most of the examples ready, such as Fanta Pig Jr. that I made a month or two ago, but I’ve still got more to do. Yesterday, when I brought home a pile of bamboo, my host father, who is amused by all the different manualidades that I’m constantly making, jokingly asked me if I was going to make bracelets. Just wait, I said. Picking through the pile, I selected one of the slimmer, more flexible twigs and cut it down to size using my Swiss army knife. After cutting off all the buds and offshoots, I notched the larger end of the stick and shaved down the other end to make it into a kind of point. I stuck the smaller end into the notch and then bound it up using string. After some more fiddling with the string and a seashell I found on the beach, my host father and I went hunting through the woods in the backyard for duck feathers.

Ta da! I made a Dreamcatcher! Now I’ve got to make about 25 frames for the kids, because, well, it would take too much time for them to make it themselves and because I don’t want them to be messing around with knives, even though I’m sure they do it at home. So, now I’m making the bamboo circle frames and everything else that needs to be done before the camp begins on the 31^st. That would be plenty of time, except that next week, I’m going to San José for training, then I come back here for the weekend, and then I go to another volunteer’s art camp to help him out, and the day after I get back, my art camp begins. So, I need to get everything ready by Saturday, in addition to finishing up the rough draft of my diagnostic which is due Monday. For the first time, I actually have been/will be truly busy every week for a month stretch (all of January), and I’m excited. I guess they were right about the three month mark being where things start to fall into place. I hope to have photos of the art camp up on the blog by the beginning of Feburary. Oh, I also posted something I wrote last week (backdated it, sneaky, sneaky) that wouldn’t upload because blogger was down, sooo, double post! Hopefully, will get onto a better posting schedule now.

Dios te bendiga y que se encuentre un buen marido

2007-01-12T11:03:00.000-06:00

In my defense, I did try to update before, but blogger just would not load, so I gave up. Not, of course, that I had anything pre-written when I tried. I have sort of an odd system of updating now. I write in my head, at least, I plan exactly what I want to write in my head, and then never get around to writing them. In any case, for one of them, it was probably a good thing I didn’t actually write it, seeing as how it was mainly fueled by rage. Later, when I was feeling more calm, I felt embarrassed about writing what I had really wanted to write down just the night before. Better not, I thought, and left the whole thing be for awhile. But honestly, what is the point of keeping this thing if I can’t write about what’s really happening to me and going through my mind while I’m here? I can only write about bugs and ducks for so long before I run out of things to talk about. And so, I’m making a bold move (ha) and writing about something small that happened to me that made me intensely angry and made me look at myself a little more closely.

The thing that really ticked me off happened when I was happily walking down the street, looking at the beautiful night sky and crossed paths with one of the older men from my town walking down the street in the opposite direction. He has a habit of saying rather effusive things towards me when drunk, and he also has the habit of being drunk. So, old drunk man comes tottering down the road and stops me for the greeting aka the cheek kiss. Now, the cheek kiss is an interesting form of greeting, seeing as how it’s widely accepted in many places outside of the U.S. – Europe, Latin America, etc. – but yet, ohhhh how it throws us Americans off. I almost always feel awkward about the cheek kiss, mainly because sometimes I miss and fail to make contact with the person and just hit air. Which is fine, because that’s how some people (me included) prefer it, but others are thrown by it. Right, so, cheek/air-space surrounding cheek kiss greeting, it really should be called, but that makes things far too complicated. If you’re not following this, well, salado aka too bad. In any case, the reason I feel especially awkward about the cheek kiss is that pretty much no one does it when you’re just passing each other by on the street unless you’re stopping to actually have a conversation with each other or you’re (un?)intentionally being pretty sketchy. In my book, drunken old men fall in the sketchy category. Harmless, but still, go away. Right, so the actual ticking off part comes when he missed my face entirely and hits the neck. NOT OKAY. Zero amounts of okay. Extreme amounts of not okay, I stomp furiously away on my walk, while drunken old man continues on his way back home, probably not realizing that I was angry, and also, probably drunk enough that he was actually trying to do the cheek kiss and missed out of sheer ineptitude. Hey, it’s a lot harder than it looks. Let’s just say that that was it.

In any case, I fumed along while taking my almost ritual nightly walk down the street to look up at the stars. For those of you worrying about safety at this point (Mom), let me assure you, this is all perfectly safe. First of all, it’s usually no later than 9pm, second of all, there is basically one street in my town and most people live on it, three, there are street lights all over the place, four, even though the majority of people are asleep by 8pm, there are a decent amount of people mucking about around in that hour. So, in actuality, I was fuming (on the inside) and cheerily waving hello/goodbye at people who I passed while I walked along. I thought about all the crap that women had to put up with here. Not just here, but in many of the places outside and sometimes inside the Western world. How many of the men, even when they have wives that work outside the house, won’t lift a finger to help around the house, not even to spoon out food onto their own plates. How people can cat call you on the streets and how you just have to put up with it. The time when I went to visit the high school principal IN HIS OFFICE who, in addition to being guilty of the sketchy version of the cheek kiss, wouldn’t let me disengage from conversation without agreeing to go out on a date with him. I managed to avoid that by awkwardly doing a “My, look at the time, guess I should go!!” after which he did, surprisingly, take the hint. Then I thought about all the other conversations I have. Conversations over physical aspects, why aren’t I married, why don’t I have any kids, don’t I want a man in my life? Oh, don’t worry, you’ll find a man here soon enough. And when I insist I’m not actually looking for a man, nor do I particularly want one, they either laugh and think I’m joking or just ask “Why not?” in a horrified tone. This is, obviously, somewhat of a generalization, but still very close to the actual truth of it.

Then I thought about a conversation that I had with my aunt when I was home, where she told me that Indian women not only get catcalls, but oftentimes get straight up groped. I kind of gaped in a horrified manner, because such a thing had never occurred to me. This happens in India? I thought back to how when visiting said aunt one time, my sister and I were wearing shorts at the train station and people were staring at us. I had always thought it was because they were surprised to see women wearing shorts, but no, I think that I may have been partially wrong. This kind of treatment is not unique to Latin America, nor is it probably unique to India either. Shouldn’t I have been more prepared to deal with something like this when I got here? Then I thought, hey, what do I really know about living in India anyway? I haven’t been there in…oh…I don’t know, six years, for probably all of one week. All I know, really, is what it’s like living like an Indian-American. My perception of being an Indian person living in India is most likely skewed. And I realized that although Indian culture is a huge part of who I am, I really am more thoroughly American than I had originally believed. Imagine that, I’m an ABCD.

On a day to day basis, the piropos and the conversations don’t bother me and often times just amuse me, but when the catalyst came, BAM, I was furious at everything, every little thing. Why do so many women’s lives have to revolve around men? How can it be that people can put up with such treatment without going insane? It’s one thing to know how things work outside of the world where you can comfortably and self-righteously call someone out for being a chauvinist pig and another where, hey, of course they act that way, it’s what they’re supposed to act like! Not that the women particularly appreciate it, but, what can we do? It’s so machista to the point where if a couple decides not to have children anymore, it’s the woman who gets the surgery and not the man, despite the immense difference in cost, risk, and recovery time.

The rage settled down, as it does, with a good night’s sleep, but I was still bothered by all of this. I didn’t want to be constantly irritated by what was going on, but at the same time, it was still irritating me. But then a few nights ago, as my host mom’s sister was having a slight panic attack and I was helping her calm down, she looked at me and said “Dios te bendiga y que se encuentre un buen marido,” which translates as “May God bless you and may you find a good husband.” Normally, such statements are issued by my grandmother and greeted with eye rolling on my part at such an antiquated blessing (Really, is a good husband the only thing you wish for me?), and a week ago it probably would have made me want to scream, but for some reason, this time it felt slightly comforting. Not because I’m on the prowl or anything, but it did remind me of home. I thought about the comment and the heartfelt manner in which it was delivered and thought, really, maybe it was about time to put things into context. And I accepted the gratitude for what it was and I felt good.

Look at me, I’m growing up.

about updating...

2006-12-11T17:03:00.000-06:00

so, I´ve tried several times to update in the past....however long it´s been, but the internet hates blogger. At least, RACSA does. woooo, government telecom monopoly!

But hey, what´s it matter, I´m home in A WEEK. I will see you then.

Animal Farm

2006-11-14T10:07:00.000-06:00

The amount of contact I have with other living things never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it’s the fact that I live near farmland, maybe it’s the jungle, or maybe it’s just the fact that the roof and the walls of the house don’t really connect, but there are MOVING things everywhere. The abejones in my room asides, my room at the very least is filled with small creatures. My walls have trails of ants running around for who knows what purpose – they’re impossible to get rid of and harmless, so it’s a live and let live situation. The cockroach climbing on my closet wall, however, was hunted, but escaped to live another day. Then there were the huge brown spiders in my room, also harmless, so I just picked them up with a cloth and chucked em outside. I have to be careful though – a magazine fell off my table and onto the floor and when I found it a few days later, it had been partially eaten through and was pretty dirty. Gross.

Not all the creatures cause a nuisance though. I’ve gotten quite used to the chirping of the geckos on the ceilings and since they eat insects and the cat eats them, well, the ecosystem’s fairly balanced there, I say. Recently, something really amazing has happened. Maybe it’s the rains or I don’t know, but when I’m lying in my bed with all the lights turned out, ready to go to sleep, I’ve started seeing fireflies flickering while floating lazily through my room. Until now, it’s only been two or three, but last night, there must have been about 15 – and my room is not large. It was almost like falling asleep out in the open, beneath the stars. Awww. Que lindo.

In addition to the creepy crawlies, there have been some new additions to the animal population of my home. One of the ducks recently had four babies (!) As it happens, however, three of them didn’t make past the first week or two, so only one is left. And then that poor baby was rejected by its mother. But! As chance would have it, one of the hens recently hatched about four or five chicks and adopted the baby duckling as her own. It’s too cute, the mama hen wandering around the yard surrounded by these tiny chicks and then a slightly larger bright yellow baby duckling. Also, we got a one month old puppy! It is as yet unnamed, but very cute and highly uncoordinated. I have been dubbed the puppy’s nanny because it runs to me more often than my host sister. HA. That could be because I haven’t kicked it or slapped it, but that’s just a hunch. Of course, when the puppy isn’t peeing all over the house, it’s trying to bite off my toes, so I’m not sure if the favoritism is a good thing or a bad thing.

There’s really no escaping la naturaleza here, it’s presence is obvious in every moment of the day. Even when I use my computer, I have to brush off the bugs that are drawn to the light of the screen every five seconds. And of course, when it’s time for cafecito, my bread is more often “con carne” (ants) than not. Living in Costa Rica makes it a big part of what my work is/shall be too. Two weeks ago, I was away at a retreat in the mountains with all the rest of the PCVs and I spent the earlier part of this week at a nearby nature reserve helping the park educator do a children’s camp on the environment. After living in a city for four years where my encounters with nature were squirrel sightings and walks through the Mall, it’s a wonderful and somewhat startling change to have the relationship transformed into a more obnoxious, in-your-face type interaction.

Although, I do have to admit, I could definitely live without the ones that bite, the jerks.

R.I.P....my sense of boredom?

2006-10-27T14:00:00.000-06:00

The past week has been surprisingly productive. Or maybe I´ve just gotten accustomed to doing nothing and my standards are lowered. Hmm...Well, in any case I had less down time, so that’s something, yeah? Right. So after promising to begin my CAT (the community diagnostic) “tomorrow” for the past week or so, I finally managed to begin it. It’s not as painful as I thought it would be, after all, I guess I’m kind of used to going door-to-door talking to strangers, I did do it for a whole summer after all. Only this time, I’m not asking them for any money, so they’re usually a lot happier to see me. In any case, no one’s yelled at me yet. That’s gotta count for something, right? Right. So between the CAT and just generally hanging out with people, I’ve learned a lot of dirt about my town in the past few weeks. All I have to say is wow. I am kind of frightened. The things that go on here…my mind is blown. You read twisted stories or watch them on TV, I don’t know, let’s say in an SVU episode, but then, you at least have the comfort of knowing that you have pretty much nothing to do with the stories of the people (real or fictitious) that you have just seen. There is no such comfort here. Is this what happens everywhere? Is everyone just oblivious to all the things that happen in towns and cities or are they just so accustomed to it that it’s not really shocking anymore? It’s kind of worrying to think of what I’m up against, especially because I’m not really sure how much of an impact any of the programs I do can have. I hope they do something, at the very least. Gahh.

On a lighter note, I am absolutely loving living here in the campo. Although I am fairly positive that I am more of a city person and will probably move to a city after Peace Corps, I dig living in the campo for the time being. Last week, the power was mostly out about three days straight. We played cards by candlelight, went to bed at 8 because there was really nothing to do…which is actually a lot more fun than it sounds. And then one day, when we were playing cards again, the Ticos told me ghost stories/urban/rural legends. They’ve got some crazy ones. Apparently in this one city in Guanacaste, there’s a story about a bridge that is haunted with the spirits of dead babies because there’s a woman who performs illegal abortions by it. Yeahhh…

So, besides the ghost stories, I also heard some, well…campo stories. One story was about a woman in my town whose husband was a drunk, so she went to a witch to find out if she could help (this was not too long ago, by the way, couldn’t have been more than 5-10 years). The witch told her that her husband was possessed by an evil spirit and for a fee of 100.000 colones (200 bucks), she could help. So, the woman came back to my town, sold her horse, and took the money to the witch, who then did her thing. Well, it didn’t work and when the woman went back to confront the witch, the witch said it DID work, but that the husband had just been repossessed by a different evil spirit. And then there’s the story that my host mom’s sister told me that apparently proves that not only do grasshoppers eat clothing (true), but they also kill babies (probably not true). Her evidence? Some family member’s friend’s baby died or something, and when they came to the cradle, the only thing in the room was a grasshopper sitting on the edge of the crib. Anyway, despite my arguing, she remains convinced that the grasshopper killed the baby. Please. Even the scorpions aren’t lethal here, how is a grasshopper going to kill someone??

In other news, I’m coming back to the States for a visit in December! So, if you will be in DC or NJ/Philly anytime between the 18th and the 25th, drop me a line and let me know!

Today is the 18th of October…

2006-10-18T15:26:00.000-06:00

...as you may have already known. And if you didn’t, well, the date pops up right about the blog posting, so you really have no excuse. Anyway, two things today! One, it’s my birthday, congratulations to me on not having been killed by a howler monkey or a hobo dog or a strung-out crack addict. Go me! Two, it’s the one month anniversary of arriving to my site and this weekend marked one month since my group swore in as Peace Corps volunteers. Woo! One month down, 23 to go? Ha!

So, recap. My updates have been slightly sporadic, nonsensical and almost entirely useless. In my defense, the updates themselves sort of represent the life I’m leading. Things happen only every once in a while, when they happen, they usually make no sense whatsoever or are completely insane, and I have been doing virtually nothing of any use so far. Not bad, not bad. Well, I’ve only been here for a month, I can’t really expect to have done anything of use so far besides learn more about my town and maybe improve my Spanish a bit. Oddly enough, I think I’ve improved my Chinese more than my Spanish (yeah, I don’t understand either), BUT, my Spanish is doing okay! So, that’s good. I think I may have to revise my grammar book a little because sometimes when people correct my Spanish or if I hear someone speaking, I’m almost entirely sure that while I may not be right, they are definitely wrong. Gotta love the rural Spanish.

Okay, so about my town. Well. I wish I could write more details about this place, but Peace Corps security regulations, etc etc blah blah prohibit us from revealing information publicly on the internet that makes it obvious as to where we live, and so on and so on. Let’s see…generalities. It’s definitely more than meets the eye. It seems all tranquilo village-esque with the children playing with their bikes on the streets and the fishermen and the sun and the birds and trees and monkeys, but wow, you have no idea. I mean, I knew before I came here that there were problems with drugs and alcohol and not finishing education and unemployment etc. etc., but generalities are so much different than knowing the who and the when and the how. Going to the school, finding out how the kids spend their three hours a day in school (two and a half, if you factor in the breaks), hearing the gossip about what happened to so and so down the street x number of days, weeks, years ago. Also, those monkeys are anything but tranquilo. Howler monkeys make noises like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It’s some kind of belching, barking…uhh…howling…noise that sounds more like a medium-sized dinosaur than a small black monkey. It used to creep me out when I was walking around by myself, but now that I’ve proven that those noises come from small harmless looking creatures, I’m okay (watch, I get attacked by a swarm of monkeys tomorrow. It’ll make a good story at least).

My perceptions on the one month mark? Well, I guess it’s kind of a relief, to be honest. I’ve made it one month and it wasn’t too bad. Okay, it’s not bad at all. I’ve gotten used to the gecko chirping, chasing frogs out of the house, the abejones buzzing around the house bumping into every single wall before eventually smacking into your face, the white moths which ALSO like to fly into your face, running around outside trying to collect your laundry when a rainstorm comes suddenly, and, thankfully, the heat. Not too shabby. Basically, I’m perfectly fine with all the factors that need adjusting to and aren’t really worth complaining about. What I haven’t quite adjusted to is the absolute nothingness of things to do. Yes, I realize that eventually, that will change, once I actually have projects to do and am not just kind of flitting around every now and again trying to figure out where exactly it is that I am, but for now…I usually spend at least a good few hours of each day doing nothing, although it’s usually more like 4 or 5. The pace here is reaaaaaaaaal slow. And my attempts to do…well, anything, have been wildly unsuccessful. As a result, I’ve read a ton of books. Since getting to my site, I have read 6 books. And they’re not small books either, one of them was The Fellowship of the Ring. This brings my total count up to 14 books in 4 months. If I keep this up, I’ll read about 150 books by the time I’m supposed to finish my Peace Corps service. So, on that note, if you’ve read a good book and you have some disposable income that you don’t know what to do with, send it on over to me! If you really want, I can even mail it back!

In spite of all this, I am still feeling positive about this whole thing so far. One, apparently nobody does anything during their first few months – this is what the PCVs in country say, anyway. Two, I’ve got ideas. And anytime an idea somehow doesn’t quite pan out, I come up with another one maybe a few days later. When the ideas die, I’ll be in trouble, but for now, I think I’m good! Who knows, maybe in the next update, I’ll actually be able to report on doing SOMETHING.

Ha. Here’s hoping!

R.I.P. Patos

2006-10-02T14:17:00.000-06:00

Well, I’ve been in my site for just about two weeks now, so while I’m still exploring the community and meeting the people, I am beginning to settle into the life here. One of my goals for the next two weeks is to more or less develop a routine. I’ve got the basics down already – get up between 7 and 8pm (internal clock, I’ve quit using my alarm clock), spend a vast majority of the day doing…nothing…something…walking…eating…working (??)…and going to bed somewhere between 9:30 and 11. As I’m writing this, it’s 9:15 and I’m already beginning to feel a little sleepy. Oh man.

I’m also thinking that over the next two weeks, I might actually get to start some work! Last week when I was walking to the next town/exploring the main road, I came across a dance studio. Using my recently emerging social butterfly skills, I decided to waltz in and introduce myself. After about an hour of conversation, I found out that the psychologist in the clinic a couple of towns over is thinking about opening up an albergue, but needs some help. I got her contact information and am going to meet up with her some time this week. Also, I met an ex-pat who wants to offer conversational English classes in my town for free, but needs help organizing the structure and logistics. I, of course, jumped all over this because it means that *I* don’t have to teach the English class! Well, this one, anyway. My biggest fear is that I’ll end up having to teach English as my main project which is so not what I want to, or am supposed to, do. That being said, English is probably one of the things the people want the most, since it would help them get jobs in the tourism industry. Hopefully, I can just organize English classes rather than teach them. To round out the work-bit, I’m also devoting more time towards working on setting up my community assessment. Hopefully, these things will make it so that I can keep moderately occupied, if not busy, over the next few weeks. Once I launch the CAT, then I’ll be busy. In the meantime, I suppose I might as well enjoy my downtime, I guess.

A few days ago, a friend of mine came to visit me and we went for an 8 mile walk to a town on the other side of the peninsula. The road was completely full of steep hills and turns – it was a difficult hike, but so incredibly worth it. There were points where you could see the Gulf of Nicoya and the Pacific Ocean and miles and miles of undeveloped green space. Later on, the road turned more into a jungle-like area and we had to walk through a couple of streams to continue on the road. Along the way, we saw some cows, a deer, some howler monkeys, and a dead 6 ft. long boa constrictor. So much for there not being any snakes in the area. I also found a dead scorpion in the bathroom the other day. I guess as long as they’re dead, then hey, they can’t bite me! Anyway, if any of you come and visit me and you’re not opposed to a hard walk, I will definitely take you on this hike. If not, well, there’s plenty of other more accessible pretty things to look at.

Oh, and explaining the subject line – about the ducks. Last night, the neighbor’s dog came and killed four of the ducks, including my favorite, the one with the fro. Poor ducks. Who’s going to wake me up at 4am now? Certainly not the chickens, they don’t go off til about 5am.

I’ve officially taken up letter writing as my main form of communication since it’s easier for me to write + send them than it is for me to type up letters in an internet café. I still plan on using email, but I am supplementing my communication arsenal with letters. It amazes me how everyone I know has suddenly spread out across the world. I’ve sent letters to at least four different countries, soon enough to be about seven. And that’s only less than five months after graduation! Who knows where everyone will be at the one year mark. In any case, if you want a letter, either write me one yourself + I’ll reply or send me an email and ask for a real deal letter.

Oh, I bought a CELL PHONE! But I have to go to a city several hours away to activate it, sooo, by the end of this week, I´ll be able to email out the number! Excitement. Too bad I don´t really get reception at my house, but STILL!

Wait, so what am I doing here again?

2006-09-21T18:30:00.000-06:00

You know, as of a week ago, I could have answered that question without a second thought. Blah blah, I’m here with the Peace Corps/PANI to work with children, youth, and families! Now that I’m here, actually expected to work, it’s a little more complicated. I really can’t explain what’s going on, but mainly, it’s a lot of confusion. Over the past few days, I haven’t really done much of anything – mainly laundry, letter writing, unpacking, and a lot of sitting around trying to figure out what I should be doing. Okay, well, I know what I should be doing – I should be “getting to know” the people of my community + eventually planning to start my community assessment. Which, I actually have been doing, but it feels weird. For one, the getting to know my community bit involves me waltzing up to complete strangers and having conversations with them, which I’m not sure I’m ready to do as of yet. So, I’ve developed a new strategy – I’m going to sit outside the local pulpería and the soda and just be seen. We’ll see how well this works.

The community assessment is going to take a while just to prep. Right now, I’m in the process of developing the survey that I want to bring door-to-door to every household in my town, and I think I might be done with it by the beginning of next week. I’m trying to sit on it for awhile because I want to make sure I’m not forgetting to include any questions. Once I actually start distributing the survey, I plan on being reaaal busy. It’s non-traditional work, but I’m going to end up going to several houses a day and having conversations with the people who live there, most likely having to eat something + have coffee before being able to drop off the survey or even mention it. Yesterday, I had a conversation with some woman for about an hour and a half in her home before it finally occurred to her to ask what my name was. I had assumed that I was already supposed to know who she was so I was afraid to ask. Anyway, I’m thinking the surveys and house visits will take me at the very least a month to complete, at which point I will hopefully know virtually everyone who lives in my town. And so, I have a community entry strategy! Two-pronged at that – community survey + sitting outside writing letters/doing work/nothing until someone comes and talks to me. What has my life become?

Since I can’t really explain what exactly is going on in my head right now, I’ll just put up some more pictures –

This is my house! Isn’t it pretty??

This is a picture of some of the chickens. Today, my host mom fed them scraps from the chicken she made today for lunch. I’m trying not to think about that.

This is a picture of my favorite duck. You can’t really tell from this picture, but it has a fro. I’m not even kidding, it’s fabulous.

And here is a view of my backyard. It kind of resembles a miniature jungle because of the density of the greenery.

Just for good measure, here’s a picture of my shower. The red lever is basically a wrench that goes up and down to turn the water on and off.

Remember how I said there were bugs everywhere? Check out this monster –

I put the pen in the picture so you could get some sense of scale, but I’m not sure how well that worked. In any case, the bug is about the size of the pen cap, including the stem portion. Abejones (so they’re called) fly around like they’re drunk and make loud buzzing noises. I hate them, but am thrilled that they are completely harmless. Still. Huacala! (One of the better Tico expressions – same thing as gross/que asco/etc)

Ooooooooookay, that´s enough photos and enough internet. I have to go have discussions with my PC friends, discussing what our lives have become.

Aspirante is a dirty word

2006-09-18T15:47:00.000-06:00

So, because I am brilliant, I typed out a beautiful long post last night and I forgot to upload it onto my flashdrive. I also left my absentee ballot request form, a postcard for Laurel's birthday, and a shopping list on the bus. Let's try and see what I can remember, shall we??

Okay, also - blogger is evil and no longer lets me upload photos. So I'm going to try to link them from feisbook. A ver.

RIGHT, so Thursday, I swore in officially as a Peace Corps volunteer. No more aspirante, I'm full-fledged, baby. The ceremony took place at the house of the Ambassador, which obviously, was ginormous and quite lovely. Somehow, I got wrangled into giving an interview with some radio station - all I have to say is trainwreck Spanish. Some photos!

This a picture of everyone in my Tico 15 CYF group! As of now, we're scattered alll over the country.

On Saturday, I left my host family in San Jose for GOOD, finally. My host mom was so evil, the night before, she tried to tell me that I should leave at 5am so she could go shopping. Anyway. I'm done with them, so that's good. My friend Marianne, gracias a Dios, has a Tico friend who offered to drive us to Puntarenas, where I would take my ferry to go to my site. Fantastic because I have wayyy too much stuff and it is a pain to lug around everything. On the way there, he asked if we wanted to go the scenic route, so we went all the way down through Jaco, which is south of Puntarenas. There, we went to this one lookout point where you could see the entire Nicoya peninsula. Of course, photos do no justice, but mire:

All I have to say, is I live in COSTA RICA. Man.

Right, so, I'm super glad that the view was so breathtaking, because it made me miss my ferry. It's alright because there are multiple ferries everyday, but still. As a result, I ended up hanging around in Puntarenas for awhile, which made me glad that I don't live around there. Puntarenas is a really cool city, but wow, it's way muggier than my site and has a bajillion more mosquitos. The day after I got to my site, I tried to count how many mosquito bites I had and I stopped somewhere around 80. It's all nasty, I have at least 20 between the wrist and elbow of my left arm. LOOK.

You can't really see all the bites, but it's all misshapen. Grosssssss. I bet I have dengue now.

Okay, so I was going to take some pictures of the house, but it was raining today, so maybe later. For now, be content with story time. I live in the campo. It's fairly rural, considering the location. Examples of such - today, my host mom tried to feed me bull testicle. I declined and stuck to my rice and beans and platanos. Also, later, she called me outside to the henhouse because something was going on. It turned out that there was a snake poised directly above the hens and some of the eggs. After debating what to do for a bit, we decided I should stand guard with the broom handle while she went and got the neighbor. She returns, with neighbor, AND a machete and a shotgun. The neighbor SHOOTS THE SNAKE and then runs into the trees hacking at it with a machete while it escaped.

Only in the Peace Corps baby.

I am a bad, bad blogger

2006-09-05T13:58:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I knew this would happen, but I’m a really bad blogger, I’ve gotta say. Ah well. At least the long gaps between posts means that I have a ton of things to say by the end. So there. I’m really only spreading them apart so I have that much more to say (yeah right).

So, first things first. My site visit. Absolutely amazing. Somehow, even the 8 hour plus journey is not a big deal. I think this country has already made me a lot more patient time-wise. I left San Jose at around 7ish in the morning, meaning I was up and getting ready at around 4:30 am. I took a direct bus through Puntarenas but I did have to also get off the bus, get on the ferry, get back on the bus and switch buses a couple of times. All in all, it was slightly more than 6 thousand colones, which is about 12 bucks. For this country, that’s bastante expensive. The journey there was a real trip, I kept running into tourists, particularly from Europe. Apparently the Nicoya peninsula draws more Europeans than Americans. Honestly, it was weird enough seeing any tourists because I was thinking “I’m going to my Peace Corps site!” and all these people were sunning themselves on the deck of the ferry reading Lonely Planet Costa Rica. I swear, I saw at least five of those on that boat. As I got closer to my site and closer to the touristy areas, I started to get a little anxious. I mean, hey, I like going on vacation as much as the next person, but I do NOT want to live in a town with a bunch of tourists.

So when I finally got on the last microbus that would take me directly to my town, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my town was not another Manuel Antonio. It’s real rural. All in all, there are somewhere between 300 and 450 people in the town. When I got on the bus, all I had to do was tell the bus driver the name of my host mother and he dropped me off right in front of the house. I fully expect to know at least three-quarters of the town by the end of my first year. I mean, hey, I met at least 20 people in 6 days, so it’s entirely possible. The whole town consists of this one main road with maybe about 3 side roads.

The people in this town are wonderful, especially my host family. As I’ve told some of you, my situation with my training host family has at times been less than ideal, but I’m expecting things to be a lot better with my site host family. For one, my host mom is way less OCD and is perplexed by the fact that I ask before I ask if I can turn on the TV. Oh yeah, Costa Rica is pretty standard on that – even if you’re dirt poor, as long as you have electricity, you have a TV. How else can you watch the fútbol matches? But yeah, there’s about two channels, so I’m really doubting that I’ll be watching it very often except for the news every now and again. Anyway, there are three people living in the house – my host mom, host dad, and my host sister who is 20. They’re all laid back and I can go in and out of the house as I want, whenever I want. The house itself is also fairly campo – the roof and the walls of the house don’t exactly meet + the kitchen walls are half mesh, half crisscrossed pieces of wood. So, basically, there are lots of bugs and geckos and all that inside the house, crawling on the walls and the roof. Well, not a lot, but enough. Sometimes, some of the chickens come in the house too, but they usually get scared by the non-dirt floors and jump right out. My family has 13 chickens, 9 ducks, a cat, a pig, and some cows in a pasture further down the road. Even more exciting, they have tons of fruit-bearing trees: limon dulce, grapefruit, avocado, banana, guineo, papaya, oranges, and oh so much more. Even more exciting is that they have a whole FIELD of export mango trees. Apparently, they used to sell them to this guy, but then he died of AIDS and they couldn’t find anyone else who was interesting in buying them so now the monkeys eat them. When my host mom told me that, I kind of had to have a moment to process all that information (Mangoes? AIDS? Monkeys??)

I also hung out with some of the sixth-grade girls that my host sister is friends with (I love how I’m already too lazy with my English to correct my grammatical mistakes. Ending sentences with a preposition, tsk tsk). Anyway, one of the days, we had a dance party. The girls taught me some merengue and then asked me what kind of dancing I knew how to do. I was kind of at a loss, because there’s not really “types” of dancing the same way as there are here, so I said that I had dabbled in a couple of different types of Indian dancing, at which point they insisted that I teach them. Alright, so, normally, I would be all embarrassed and would refuse and say no and whatnot. But one of the things that Peace Corps has really done well for me is push me to do things outside of my comfort zone, particularly in social situations. They’re really big on the “soft skills” here. So, it ended up being me and three girls dancing bhangra (I happened to have a CD with me) in the living room of my host family in Costa Rica. Since they were so insistent on learning steps, I taught them the beginning of the giddha from the Senior Bhangra in Rangila. I have to say, it was so much fun and I was really glad that I did it. My host sister was not too into it, but the 12 year old and the 13 year old were all about it. We must have played that song about 6 or 7 times. After that, the girls showed me a couple of the traditional Costa Rican dances, costumes and all.

As far as the actual assignment goes, I definitely think I have plenty of work to do. The main purposes of this site visit were to –a- figure out if I wanted to spend 2 years there and –b- to introduce myself and check out what the place was like. So, I did a lot of exploring and a ton of introductions. While I was there, I visited two primary schools in my town (one private and one public) and the secondary school that was located in a different town. I went and visited my PANI office as well as the local community resources, like the Guardia Civil and the Municipalidad. The night before I left to go back to San José, I met with the Asociación de Desarollo (Development Association) to discuss our mutual expectations. From all of this as well as talking with various community members, these are the projects that people seem to be interested in: a complete community assessment, anti-drug/alcohol programs in the primary school such as DARE or another equivalent Costa Rican program, more after-school activities such as sports, and the development of a women’s group focused on making crafts and artisenry (I don’t think that’s a word, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out the English equivalent of artesanía right now). I didn’t discuss this with the Asociación, but I’m also investigating the need for sex.ed. programs (there is a problem with child sexual exploitation and teen pregnancies in general where I live). I feel as if I would have to do the community assessment before I can find out how bad the problem is and what’s needed, not to mention who in the community I should talk to about developing/picking whatever program is needed. But yes, definitely lots of things.

I’m super excited about the fact that swearing-in is in a week and then we are off to our sites. After about two and a half months, we’re finally hitting the home stretch. As of my next entry, I will probably be a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer (!)

Oh, and P.S. – I now have a different mailing address. If you’ve already sent me something in the mail, let me know, so I know to look out for it, but if you want my new address, email me.

And, the pictures refused to upload, so I´ll try again next tiiiime.

I know where I´m going!!

2006-08-21T16:08:00.000-06:00

Okay, for those of you who didn’t get the email (as if anyone who isn’t on the email list is reading the blog…), I got my site assignment yesterday. I am going to the lovely province of Puntarenas on the southern end of the Nicoya peninsula. I can’t really post too many details about my site because we’re not supposed to publish exact information about our locations on the web, but, if you didn’t get the more detailed mass email, drop me a line and let me know so I can forward you a copy. If you want. Or get it from someone else.

Either way, I am super excited to finally find out where I’m living. This part of training has been pretty fantastic. The day after site assignment, we decided to take our first night-out-of-site. Amazing. We went to Quepos (a tourist town by the Pacific coast) and hung out on the beach until Sunday. So much fun, so weird to see gringos everywhere. Even when we tried to speak in Spanish, people would respond in English. Oddly enough, I met a RPCV who was in Uzbekistan for a year before they pulled the program because of civil war. She´s now an English teacher down by Quepos. This Thursday, we go back to the same retreat we went to 7 weeks ago to meet our PANI counterpart (the person from the child protective/development services government office we’ll be working with). From Saturday to the following Thursday, I’ll be visiting my future site for the first time. After that, we’ve only got two weeks until we move to our sites permanently.

For the first time, I’m actually able to kind of wrap my mind around the fact that I’m going to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now that I have details, it makes everything that much more real.

I´ll try and post pictures of my site when I come back on the 31st. Less than a month to go til swearing in!

Where am I going??

2006-08-12T18:09:00.000-06:00

Wow, I haven’t written in this for almost two weeks. Whoops. I’ll try and be better about updating, but I have a feeling it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Right, okay, so beginning with last week (which feels like it was sooo long ago). On Tuesday, we went on the Romería, which is the pilgrimage to the Church in Cartago to celebrate the Día de la Virgen. The Virgen de los Angeles is the Patron of Costa Rica, because a looong time ago, an indigenous girl found a statue of the Virgin Mary in the woods and everytime she tried to pick it up and take it home, it would go back to the same place. So they decided to build a church in the spot, and people started making pilgrimages to see it. The Romería was an absolutely wonderful experience. Almost everyone from the CYF program, 14 of us, walked from the city of Guadeloupe to Cartago, a distance of about 20+ km. I can’t really remember the exact distance, but it was pretty far. We left the church at Guadeloupe at about 7:20 at night and arrived in Cartago at 12:57 am (we kept official times), so it took us around 5 and a half hours. At least we weren’t coming from Guanacaste – it takes people almost a week to complete that walk.

The Romería was an absolute blast, the atmosphere was almost carnival like. The vast majority of people do the walk the night before, so the government shuts down the major roads leading to Cartago, so people have enough space to walk. Even then, the highway was absolutely packed with people. According to the news, there were 2.5 million people doing the walk that Tuesday night. There were street vendors lining the sides of the roads, selling all types of foods like carne asada, jello, pipas, fruits, as well as various religious paraphernalia like rosaries and statues of “La Negrita.” Oh yes, they call the Virgin Mary statue that appeared in Cartago “La Negrita.” Right. I packed like a good little Girl Scout and brought Gatorade, my swiss army knife, peanut butter crackers which I made (peanut butter is expensive but SO worth it), hand sanitizer, napkins, and lord knows what else. Amazingly, everything I brought ended up being used, so hey, it’s good to be prepared. Anyway, me being me, I ate a ton. I had one of the peanut butter crackers, a ChocoBigger (ice cream bar), some pineapple, a small guayaba empanada, melonchinos (I think that’s how it’s spelled…anyway, they’re lychees), some other snack items people brought, and a PIPA. Pipas are young coconuts cracked open with a machete so you can drink the coconut water with a straw. And then at around 2am, we ate at this one restaurant, but by that point we were half dead from lack of sleep. I didn’t get back til around 4:30 that morning and slept til 12. Such a rarity, but so good.

At the end of the week I went to go visit a volunteer at her site in northern Limon. I really loved the area, it was significantly more tropical than where I live now. The weather is hotter (here, I sometimes need to wear my windbreaker because it gets a little chilly), there’s an abundance of pineapple and all kinds of fruits. One day, we visited a bunch of her friends and everywhere we went, we got stuffed with food so I got to try a lot of new kinds of fruits. The ones I liked the most were probably yuplones, which are kind of an acidic fruit, taste like limes with the consistency of an apple. They’re good with salt. I also had mamae, guanabana, cacao, etc. Good stuff. Besides the fruit tour, it was also really good to actually be able to see what she does in her day to day life, who she was friends with in her community, and so on. In Costa Rica, there’s little chance that any of us are going to be friends with Ticos our age, because almost all of them are married, engaged, and have kids. We pretty much have no peers, so for most people, their friends are old people and kids. Que divertido. Well, I guess it’s not a bad thing, but it’s definitely going to be a change. One thing I’ve realized though, is that middle aged women are ridiculously fun to hang out with. Oh yes, when I’m coming back to the States, I’m going to be friends with everyone’s moms.

Also this week, we had our interviews with our APCD to discuss more about what we wanted for our sites. Now that I’ve seen a bunch, I have a pretty decent idea of what I want. I want a rural or semi-rural site because hey, when am I ever going to have the chance to live in the middle of nowhere? I’m probably going to live in a city for the rest of my life, so I thought why not. When I told my APCD this, the Program Assistant asked me how I felt about learning a third language and living on an indigenous reserve. Hmmmm. I’m not going to make any speculations about what my site is going to be because I don’t want to get too attached to the idea, but an indigenous reserve would be amazing. Friday is site assignment day and an all day picnic which is mega soon, so I’m just going to have to wait. Everyone’s getting really excited thinking about where we’re going to go, me included. We’ve had tons of conversations about what we want, what hints the office staff has dropped, who thinks who’s going where, all kinds of chisme (gossip) and wild speculation. I love it. I think I’ll have to bring my phone card with me to the picnic so I can make a bunch of phone calls when I find out. I will definitely update as soon as I find out. 6 days!

Oh yeah, the past week was also kinds of craft-oriented. We had to make a toy out of recycled materials, so I made a pig out of a Fanta bottle. The pig is awesome, I used my swiss army knife and the medical tape from my med kit and some nailpolish to paint it. I sliced open my thumb, but it was so worth it. I’ll put up a picture of it soon enough, along with one of the necklace I made out of magazines for my last NFE (I totally stole that idea from Kim, but it worked so well with the kids in the albergue). I also set up a photo website for our Tico group, so when we get some stuff up there, I can send out the link to whoever wants it.

I swear though, update on Friday/Saturday. It’s happening.

Dando Hoy Nuestro Pan

2006-08-01T15:46:00.000-06:00

Right, so I haven’t written anything in about a week, but to be fair, the past week wasn’t too news-worthy. We had Spanish class Monday through Thursday, as per usual, and went to San José to the office on Friday for training. We did, however, have our first visit to the albergue to work with the kids, and oh boy, that was …interesting.

On Wednesday, Rebecca and I went to the albergue to do our first non-formal education activity. For training, the trainees all have to find a group of kids to work with (schools, community groups, daycares, albergues, orphanages, etc), and do six non-formal education activities. All I’ve got to say is, wow, I haven’t worked with kids in awhile. Five girls somehow manage to act and sound like twenty. When we first went to visit the albergue the week before, we met the girls we were going to work with (ages 4-11) and asked them what they wanted to do in the sessions. Pretty much all of them wanted to do arts + crafts and some English language education. Fair enough. Rebecca and I planned an NFE on discussing what the Costa Rican identity meant to them by having each of the girls draw a picture of something they thought reflected their culture. We were also going to make origami picture frames to put each of their drawings in. We were pleased with our idea and brought in our art supplies and our ice-breakers and our happy little thoughts about how we were going to have a wonderful arts and crafts session.

Well, the conversation about Costa Rican identity kind of died when –a- the girls started looking at us as if we were crazy/they had no idea what we were talking about –b- we discovered that one of the girls was Nicaraguan. So finally, we abandoned the NFE and asked them to draw something important to them. Yeah, most of them spent the session using stencils to draw rainbows + stars. Then one of the 16 or 17 year old girls came to the table and drew a picture of a man hiding behind a magical mushroom while a drunken elf holding a bag of wine pointed at them and said something I can’t remember. It was quite the drawing. I gave her a black picture frame. Anyway, the whole thing was a mess because no one listened to each other and it essentially was nothing more than a free for all drawing session.

On Monday, however, we got smart about it and did a session on rules (fun) before we did our activities. This time, it went MUCH smoother + we actually managed to carry out the activities we had planned. We’re learning, I swear.

I’ve noticed that each week seems to have a theme. Last week, for example, had the theme of “I think my host family is driving me insane.” Oh yeah, that was quite the fun week. This week, however, seems to be a rather more interesting theme – religion.

On Sunday (don’t you love how I completely flout chronological/temporal order?), I went to church for the first time. Yeah, sure, I’ve been to churches before, but only for weddings. And despite meaning to go to church at Georgetown to at least SEE what was going on, I’ve only been to one Catholic ceremony in my life – the funeral of my high school history teacher’s mother. I have to say, the ceremony wasn’t that bad. Sure, it was in Spanish, and I was only able to follow along for a part of it (Church Spanish is wayyy more highfalutin than conversational Spanish), but it was only an hour long and I had plenty of new sights and sounds to absorb. For example, the life-size statues of Jesus, the apostles, and Mary which occupied the back of the altar, behind the priest, right below three large recessed panels in the wall. The two outside panels contained giant paintings of San Antonio healing the sick + blessing a married couple while the middle housed another life-sized statue (this one of San Antonio) in front of a painting of doves and cherubs and sunbursts. Of course, there were also stained glass windows around the church + oil lamps scattered along the walls (the kind you have to pay to light). I love how you can tell the difference between a Catholic church and a Protestant church just from the decorations and artwork alone. Some of the older women wore white lace veils over their heads and their best dresses while the middle-aged and kids showed up in jeans and t-shirts and tube-top-esque clothing. Highlights of the Mass – one, when the priest was blessing/transubstantiating (is that even a word?) the wine + the communion wafers, he lifted each over his head for about thirty seconds while someone else shook what can only be described as a sleigh bell. I have no idea if this is standard, but it seemed almost theatrical. Two, the “giving of the Peace.” Again, I don’t know if this is typical of Catholic ceremonies. In the middle of mass, the priest indicated that it was time to “give Peace.” At this point, everyone started hugging, kissing, and shaking the hands of the people surrounding them + wishing them peace. Little kids ran up to the altar to “give Peace” to the minister. It took me by surprise, but I thought it was a really nice thing to have in a ceremony.

Of course, since it’s me, I couldn’t go through a new experience without (nearly) embarrassing myself. Being the brilliant person that I am, I decided that I wasn’t hungry that morning and went to an 11am mass without eating breakfast. After all the sitting and standing, while everyone was praying for who knows what, I was praying that I wouldn’t faint in the middle of mass. Let me tell you, it was a NEAR miss. Claire, I think I would have one-upped your fainting in the Prado story. I spent a good part of the Mass horrifying myself with images of what would happen if I actually had fainted. Did I mention that on the gira, I fell out of the Salon Comunal (the community room) in the indigenous reserve + fell in the mud? Because I did. The driver definitely started laughing at me. Why am I such a spaz?

OH, so another god-based Costa Rican saying – “Si Dios quiere” meaning “If God wants/God willing,” etc.

My host mom and host brother, wishing each other good night:

HM: Buenas noches. (Good night)
HB: Hasta mañana. (See you tomorrow)
HM: Si Dios quiere.

WHAT. Apparently, when one of the other trainees said “See you later” to his host family, they said the same thing to him + it threw him completely off. I suppose it’s better than the one family who told a trainee that they hoped that the blood of Christ would cover him. They’ve got some pretty interesting dichos here.

Anyway, this Wednesday is the Día de la Virgen de los Angeles, the patron of Costa Rica. The tradition here is to walk to the church in Cartago before the day as a sort of pilgrimage. On Tuesday, a bunch of the CYF volunteers are meeting up in the city of Guadeloupe to make the five plus hour walk to Cartago. We’re leaving at 7 in the evening and joining up with the hordes of people walking the Romería. And on Saturday, I’m heading out to the province of Límon (on the east end of CR) to visit a CYF volunteer who’s been in her site for about a year now to see what life is like as a volunteer. Should be a lot of fun! I’ll try to write about it in my next update, which should be sometime next week. Hasta luego (si Dios quiere, of course).

The Gira

2006-07-21T15:32:00.000-06:00

Finally, we got to leave the San José area. Don’t get me wrong, I like the area just fine, but it’s only a fraction of the country. Most Costa Ricans I’ve met don’t even like the city of San José and hardly consider it one of the main attractions of the country. For our gira (trip), we went to the province of Alajuela, a province north of San Jose. Alajuela might not be far, but it might as well have been a world away for all of what we saw when we were there.

On Monday, we met up at the PC Office at 8am so that we could all separate into our own microbuses. MED + CYF (that’s my group) each divided into two groups, so there were four giras in total. One went to Límon, two to Puntarenas, and us to Alajuela. We each were to visit the sites of PC volunteers to see what our future sites might be like. In addition, we each got to do a couple of fun activities. One group apparently got a “Disco Bus.” I am kind of curious to find out what exactly that was. My group had nine trainees, three language trainers, and a driver who I have to say, made us feel really safe on some not-so-paved type roads (Costa Rica apparently has a real problem with infrastructure).

Anyway, so Monday, we went to a town called Naranjo to visit a volunteer who lived near there. On the way up, I had my first interview with our APCD, the guy who is basically my boss, since he’s in charge of the CYF program. We talked about what I might want for my site, etc etc and I told him I wanted to work with child prostitution but didn’t really want to be in a huge city. I have no idea how that will play out, but I have a couple more meetings with him so I can figure out more about what I think I want for my future site. This talk I think was more of a getting to know you meeting than anything else. Anyway, he seems like a pretty cool guy who is receptive to what we’re talking about, so that bodes well for our futures.

Naranjo is a beautiful town. The downtown area has this really gorgeous church with a garden and fish pond and an outdoor pulpit. Right across from the iglesia is a park where men were playing a kind of a checkers-chess hybrid (called tablero - more checkers than chess, really) on these tables that were cemented to the concrete. After walking around the church and watching the guys play tablero, we visited a PANI office. PANI (Patronato Nacional de la Infancia) is the CYF counterpart organization in Costa Rica. They’re kind of like social services, since they’re the ones who take kids away from their parents when something is wrong with the family, health, etc. They also are responsible for promoting the general well-being of children and youth. At the office, we learned a bit more about how the office is structured and what kind of relationship PCV’s have with PANI.

After that, we visited an albergue. Albergue is the Spanish word for shelter, and most of the albergues here are for the children that were taken away from their families by PANI for whatever reason. There are also albergues for sick children, pregnant teenagers, adults with disabilities, etc. Albergues for children are different from hospicios (orphanages) since the goal is to eventually reunite the kids with their families. The kids there were really cute and seemed happy that a bunch of gringos had come to play with them. One of the kids I was with for a bit (I think he was 3 or 4) kept playing with my sunglasses. He kept pulling them off my face and putting them on top of my head and vice versa for literally 10 minutes. Ha, I get to play with kids as part of my PC job. Not too bad.

After the visit to the albergue, we went to the volunteer’s house in a different town to have a cafecito (the ever present afternoon coffee break, complete with cakes and snacks) and basically discuss the projects that were done in her site. Two of the more popular projects among recent volunteers have been Chicas Poderosas and Arte Para La Paz. The first is a girls’ self-esteem program done for girls in the sixth grade (a boys’ version also exists), and the second is a program promoting anti-violence through art. Besides those programs, there was also a lot of work with the local school and albergues.

After our talk with the volunteer, we went to meet our host families for the night. My host family near Naranjo had two kids who were the same age as the kids in my host family in San José. It was really interesting to see a different family dynamic and a different family lifestyle. My host family in Naranjo was excellent. The first night, we stayed up till 11:30 talking about Costa Rica, the U.S., the problems in their community, languages, etc. Okay, 11:30 may not seem late to you, but to me, it’s like staying up til 2am. This is how sad your life becomes when you go to bed at 9pm everyday. Anyway, they’re cool and I definitely plan on visiting them again. When I left on Wednesday, they gave me a book called “Cómo enriquecerse sin dinero” (how to enrich yourself without money). Aha, how fitting. It’s part of this series called the “Vida Abundante” and I’m not entirely sure that it’s not some cult religion book, but we’ll see when I read it. The day I left, their six-year-old son planted an orange seed in the backyard and told me he’d call me when it grew so I could come back and eat oranges with him.

So, Tuesday morning, after breakfast, we went to this coffee farm called Espiritú Santo, which was a cooperative. It was absolutely amazing. Our guide (one of the farmers) told us that over 80% of the land is owned by small farmers and their major buyer is none other than the American company of Starbucks. Before any of you hippies start groaning, let me tell you this. Apparently, Starbucks not only pays the highest price for coffee beans in the area, but it also won’t buy from coffee farms which use child labor or fail to provide adequate provisions for worker safety and health. For Laurel and all those other people who are anti-Starbucks, all I have to say is HA. Claire, Sonia, Neesha, you’re officially part of the support network for the small coop farmer. Say it loud and say it proud. Haha (okay I’m shutting up about that now).

I can’t even stress how amazing that farm was. Our guide hitched up a wagon/covered seating thing to a tractor and talked to us about the plantation while we were driven all around the coffee farms. I learned way more about coffee that day than I ever thought I would need to know (including how many hectares are in a manzana, a fact I promptly forgot). Right now, the coffee beans are green since they’re not ready to be harvested. Harvest season starts around November, and when they’re ready to be picked, coffee beans turn red in color. Since Espiritú Santo is located on a mountain, we had the most amazing view of the province below. We also got our first glance of the Cloud Forest, which is absolutely enormous. Anyway, here are some pictures:

I don’t think those pictures can justify how beautiful this place was, but that’s all I’ve got. If any of you come to visit, I would totally not mind going back to Naranjo to visit the coffee farm again. Afterwards, we went to a coffee place that used the coffee from the coop and I have to say it was some really good stuff. I might be becoming a coffee addict, but not in the “I need my caffeine fix” sort of way which is good! I think. I hope.

Anyway, after the morning cafecito, we went to visit the coffee processing plant. Coffee is a lot more complicated than I imagined. There are machines to take of the shells, to remove the glucose layer, to dry them, to remove this, toast that, etc etc. And there’s different ways of doing different parts that create different flavors and textures. What with all the machines, several of us came to the conclusion that a coffee plant is the perfect place to film a scary movie. I mean, at one point, we climbed into this silo that had a giant screw-like object hanging from the ceiling that was meant to mix the coffee beans for some reason or another. Anyway, it could totally have been used for one of those scenes in a horror movie where some diabolical person wants to stop some fair-trade coffee people and tries to kill them by turning on the machine while they were inside the silo. I’m not kidding, there were tons of different apparatuses which were just begging to be turned into death traps for a horror movie. Moving on.

After we came back, we had some Spanish classes and a short break before we went to the local school to visit. To make a long story short, we had to sing the national anthem in front of the entire school, we saw little kids perform traditional dances, and one of the mothers dressed up like a clown and performed a dance with a kid dressed in a lion costume. It was like watching Mexican television. Schools here are wayyy different than in the US. For example, there is no way that kids would be allowed to talk/run around/do their own thing during an assembly, particularly when the principal is talking.

After the assembly, the Junta de Educacion gave us (surprise) a cafecito (surprise) without coffee. It was amazing. We had queque seco (which is essentially pound cake, so good), soda in plastic cups, crunchy things made of corn, and tortillas filled with garbanzo beans, chicken, and potatoes. I don’t think many of us managed to eat dinner that night. On our way back to our host families from the school, we found a pool hall where we decided to hang our for a little while. Afterwards, someone’s host brother took us to a karaoke bar which was a ton of fun. Tuesday was a great day.

On Wednesday, we left Naranjo in the morning to go visit a volunteer who lived in an indigenous reservation. On our way up, we stopped in a sculpture garden. Here is a picture of a dinosaur:

And here’s one of a monkey riding a Big Wheels tricycle:

The rest of the drive was gorgeous. We passed by an active volcano (it was too cloudy to see the lava), the Cloud Forest, and many rivers, waterfalls, farms, and pastures. We saw banana and plantain trees, pineapple…bushes (they actually grow on plants on the ground, not on trees) and a whole bunch of other plants. Super cool. The indigenous reserve itself was absolutely amazing. I loved our time there. I was originally scared of going to a rural environment, but now I have to say I think I dig it. I wouldn’t mind being placed in the middle of nowhere for my assignment. The family I stayed with there was also great and we got to visit the place where the volunteer assigned there will live. I don’t think it will be me in that particular site, but I no longer am against the possibility of living in a boonie type area. And oh was it the boonies. Apparently the volunteer who is there now goes to the bus stop to hang out. And there’s no one at the bus stop. That’s quite the social life, but hey, I’ve never really been the type who goes out all the time anyway.

The trip was absolutely wonderful. Not only did we get to see “a day in the life” of the volunteer, but we saw two drastically different sites for our particular program. I know that it gave us all a better idea of what we want for our future assignments. Me, I think I would prefer something a little more rural, but I could do anything from city to boonies. I’m really excited and am now kind of impatient to find out what I get. I’m also looking forward to the fact that we get to go on another trip in two weeks! (This time to visit another PCV by ourselves for a couple of days.) There is so much change in the land and climate here that even in a five hour drive, you see so many different things.

Next Wednesday is the one month mark. Yikes. Hopefully, training will just fly on by starting now.

Pictures!

2006-07-16T18:21:00.000-06:00

I also forgot to mention that I had some photos. So without further ado...

This was taken the last night I was in DC. Beautiful picture, taken by one of the other volunteers on my camera.
And here is a photo of my room. It used to be the 7 year old{s room, hence the lovely design. I dig it.

A virtual mountain of literature. This is where your tax dollars go. As of this photo, I think we have since gotten more books and pamphlets and packets.

A picture of the local Iglesia-Catholic Church-Templo (I have no idea why my host family calls it a templo, but there you go)

A view from the street outside my house. No matter which direction you look, you can see mountains. The San Jose province is a valley (or plateau?) surrounded entirely by mountain chains.

Another view from the street outside my house.

Where am I and what am I doing?

2006-07-16T18:06:00.000-06:00

So, I’ve been in Costa Rica for over two weeks now and I’m beginning to get a gist of the way of life here. (In the outskirts of San José anyway). To give you all a sort of general picture of where I’m living and what I’m doing, I’m going to write a bit about the people, the language, food (of course), what exactly I do in PC training, and whatever else I can think of.

The “Ticos”

The majority of Costa Ricans (who call themselves Ticos) are classified as being mestizo/white. Unlike Guatemala and some other C.A. countries, Costa Rica has very few indigenous people. I’ve heard of a couple of indigenous areas, but that’s about it. Of course, since the category is mestizo/white, the meaning of “white” over here is entirely different than white in the U.S. For example, when I first met my host family they said I had “piel normal” (aka normal skin). When all of us were sent to some government agency to apply for 2 year residency permits, the woman processing my application wrote that I was white. Oh yes, I am officially “the man.” Some people can tell I’m not Costa Rican, but unless they’re really looking, I can usually pass for Costa Rican, which I’m hoping will be helpful.

The racial/ethnic minorities here are pretty much just black + Chinese. I think most black Costa Ricans live on the Caribbean side in a province called Límon, which also happens to be the poorest province in Costa Rica. There seems to be a lot of racism against black people and prejudice against people from Limon in general. I’ve heard stories about black PC volunteers who had trouble being accepted by their communities at first since the people there thought they were from Límon. Some things are the same everywhere, I guess. The Costa Rican Chinese (from what I can tell) have a stereotypical economic niche too, as mini market owners. A lot of the host families differentiate between different mini markets by referring to some as “the Chinese one.” It seems to shock some of the volunteers, but I really doubt anyone here means any harm by it.

Language

As with all Spanish-speaking countries, the Spanish spoken here has its own particular flavor and style. For example, the informal tú form is almost obsolete here. The only time it’s used is for small children, and even then a lot of people don’t do it. Instead, they use something called vos, which I’m attempting to learn. In the meantime, I’m sticking to using the formal Ud. form which is fine, because even vos is used sparingly here. People here even use Ud. with their spouses, children, and pets.

Costa Ricans also tend to use a lot of diminutives in their speech, hence why they’re called Ticos. Perrito, ratoncito, chiquitillo, the whole nine yard. One of the more confusing ones is “Ahorita.” It doesn’t mean “now” but “in a little while.” Ahora doesn’t really exist here and apparently it’s kind of rude to use it sometimes. During training we heard a lot about “Tico Time” which apparently is a lot like “Indian Standard Time” aka everyone is late to everything. Consider me adjusted already. But when people want to emphasize the now-ness of something, they tend to use “ya” which also means “enough.”

In our language classes, we’ve also been learning a lot of Costa Rican slang. Both my host mother and my current language instructor emphasize the fact that while it’s good to know these words, I should probably never use them because they’re “palabras de la calle.” (street words) For example, “maje” or “mae” for short is a word that essentially means dude/man(g)/bro etc. whatever.

Besides the “palabras feas” (ugly words), there are several standard Costa Rican phrases, most of them having something to do with God. When my host mom says bye to me in the morning she normally says either/both “A Dios le acompañe” (May God be with you) / “Se vaya bien” (Go well). When someone asks a person how they’re doing, you can expect a “Bien, gracias a Dios” (Good/well, thanks to God”). “Pura vida” is one of the most famous Costa Rican phrases, which literally translated means “Pure Life/Good Life.” It’s used for a multitude of purposes, from describing your mood (“Estoy pura vida”) to providing a reason why not to worry about whatever is going on in your life. My favorite, however, has got to be “¡Y Diay!” which literally can be used for anything. The closest any of us have come to finding an English equivalent is “Eh/What” + a chin nod. It’s a question, an exclamation, a response, a greeting, and oh so much more.

Food

Since I’m writing this massive posting at my house, I’m not really sure what I’ve talked about and what I haven’t. So if I repeat myself, I’m not really sorry, but now you have a reason at least.
People here eat so much carbs, it’s kind of insane. If you’re not eating rice, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re having bread. Often, you have both. Luckily, my host mom is health conscious and aware that so many carbs are not the best thing for you and doesn’t think it’s too strange that sometimes I can’t eat a mountain of rice with two slices of bread.

I cannot stress enough how integral rice and beans are to the Costa Rican diet. One of the more traditional breakfasts is called gallo pinto, which is rice + beans cooked together. Often, it’s served with a fried egg on top + buttered bread on the side. The traditional lunch/dinner item is the “casado” which means “married.” This time, rice and beans are separate entities, served side by side along with vegetables, beef, chicken, or fish. I eat this a LOT, mostly with vegetables. I like the food a lot, but wow, it’s a lot of rice and beans. I’m not (completely) sick of it yet, but I guess eating rice at least 4-6 times per week for the 17 years before I went to college may have helped with that. Still, when I get to my permanent site, I’m probably going to end up cooking the majority of my meals myself. Maybe then, I won’t get a weird look when I say that I prefer my spaghetti without rice (oh yes, they do that here).

There are so many fruits here, it’s amazing. I love it. I get fruit juice with meals, fruit for breakfast, lunch, snacks, whenever I want it. Unfortunately, almost all the fruit juice has about a pound of sugar per glass so sometimes it’s so sweet I can’t even stand to drink it. But the fruits themselves are great (for the most part). I eat a lot of bananas, apples, and oranges (which oddly enough are not orange, but green. Yet the word in Spanish for orange is “orange.” Nothing makes any sense). However, I have determined that some fruits are my enemies. There is one fruit which is either called guayaba or guanabana or guava or something that looks like an apple but tastes like grass. I don’t really like the papaya too much either, since it also kind of tastes like grass. Maybe something is wrong with me and I just think everything tastes like grass.

I’ve never thought I was a picky eater, but living in Costa Rica has made me think otherwise. Besides my rejection of grass-fruit, I’ve had to explain my apparently bizarre food preferences. I don’t beef or fish at all, I’m not really a fan of eggs, and I’m not too crazy about the ham lunchmeat here. I do, however, eat chicken and pretty much any vegetable put in front of me. This confuses my host mother to no end. It doesn’t help that I told her that I like chorizo either. Chorizo yes, beef no, does not seem to be all too common here.

By far the most unpredictable meal of the day is breakfast. Through a process of elimination, my host mother and I are making a list of things I’ll have for breakfast. Before you judge me too quickly for being a brat, let me tell you what I’ve had for my first meal of the day. Gallo pinto (fine), gallo pinto with a slice of lunchmeat ham on top (not fine), a ham sandwich (not preferred, but eaten), crackers with cheese (also fine), cornflakes in liquid strawberry yogurt (questionable) and a pork paté sandwich (you have got to be kidding me). I think now we’re mainly sticking to tea, fruit, toast, gallo pinto, and/or cheese sandwiches. This I can deal with.

Stores

For the most part, the clothing people wear here is pretty much the same as what people where in the States, with some stylistic differences. There are a lot of spandex and tight clothes, but jeans and t-shirts seem fairly standard. I’m not quite sure if it’s the same when we’re outside of the capital city, but we’ll see. Things here are pretty cheap by American dollar standards, but when earning $3 a day, you don’t have much to work with. The good thing is that in Costa Rica there are a ton of “Ropa Americana” stores, which sell second-hand clothing, presumably from the United States. It’s not a chain, so the quality/price of the stuff in each store varies significantly.

The influence of American companies is strong in San José and the outlying areas. There are KFCs, Papa Johns, Pizza Huts, and of course Taco Bell (I am not ashamed to admit that I ate there last week). In two of the main supermarket chains of Costa Rica (Palí and Mas x Menos) I saw employees wearing Walmart tags. However, the more “traditional” stores and markets still have a big presence here. The pulperías (mini markets/corner stores), verduleros (vegetable stands/mini stores), carnecerías (butches), and panaderías (bread/pastry shops) are everywhere. Every Sunday, most larger towns have outdoor vegetable markets called ferías, where farmers from surrounding areas come into the city to sell their own products. The fería is fairly packed and has a vaguely festival-like atmosphere. At the fería today, a band from Peru was playing traditional music and something that sounded like the theme song of an American Old West movie.

What am I doing besides eating food all the time?

Mostly, I’ve been practicing Spanish and going to language classes, but we’ve also been going into San José quite a bit. This week, we went to the Embassy so we could be formally introduced, had our fingerprints taken at some government office so they can background check us before they give us the permits to live here, and given our first “non-formal education” presentation. Like I predicted, we no longer are going to have much free time. Today was my only free day this week, since yesterday we had to go to the Office. At the PC Office, we get lectures on safety, medical emergencies, and crash courses in dealing with kids and families. Most of the books we read discuss theories of non-formal education and development, community activities and involvement, and even some child psychology. Of course, it’s all very touchy-feely, self-reflective learning from books. Hah, I’m in hippie school. For the most part, I like the activities we’ve done, but the books are fairly dry. We’ll see if any of this training stuff turns out to be useful when I actually get to my site.

In addition to sometimes visiting the internet café, I spend most of my free time either with my family or with other volunteers in San José or around the training site. At my house here, when I’m not just sitting/standing around talking to my host family or playing with my host siblings, I watch TV or read. I’ve read three books so far – Middlesex, Catcher in the Rye, and The Secret Lives of Bees. As busy as I am, we still have a lot of down time/travel time, so send me things! Letters, books, CDs, shiny pieces of paper you find in the street, anyyything. My mailing address is:

Cuerpo de Paz, Apartado 1266-1000
San Jose, Costa Rica

Until I get my site and figure out whether or not I’ll get cell phone reception there, I would say the main way to contact me is through mail. I don’t want to tie up my host family’s phone line too much, but if you want to call and talk, shoot me an email + I’ll give you my phone number + we’ll arrange a time. When I get back from my trip to Alajuela at the end of the week, I’ll try and write something again.

"If I play one more game of Go Fish, I´m going to throw something"

2006-07-10T15:41:00.000-06:00

Well, we´ve officially been here long enough (aka one week at our site, almost two weeks in country) that we´re now settled and no longer freaking out everytime someone tries to speak to us in Spanish. All the new and shiny things are getting familiar (as shiny and new as it can be, anyway). This may or not be a good thing, however, because it coincides with the time that we have literally nothing to do. The quote above is from one of my friends who called me trying to find something to do. Unfortunately, it was raining. So pretty much, all we did was um. Sit. And do Spanish workbooks for fun. Saturday, we did have some fun, playing Scrabble in Spanish with English letters + playing Jenga aka Yenga.

Anyway, hopefully that was the last of the extreme boredom. The projects are starting and I´m guessing we´re going to wish we had less to do soon enough. Next week, we´re going on a weeklong site visit. That should be fairly entertaining.

Besides my host mother hinting that I´m eating too much and am going to get fat, all is good on the host family front. I think it´s just because she´s terrified of getting fat herself. She talks about it everyday. I mean, when all you eat is vegetables and rice and salad...you can afford to eat a little more. All I know is, I really want some cheese. Mmmm. And some peanut butter, which I´m probably going to buy today. Fatty fatty. I actually think I may have lost weight because of all the walking. (¿) Score (?)

So now that I´ve learned that I can upload pics at the cafe, I´ll try and have something to post for next time.

Content entry!

2006-07-03T17:48:00.000-06:00

So, yesterday, training finished and we moved in with our host families. We´re right outside of San Jose in this town called (EDIT: okay, so apparently I can´t tell you.. Um, so it´s near San Jose.) Anyway, I´m living with this family who are reaaally nice. Names withheld because it´s a blog, but they´re wonderful. They have two kids who aren´t too hyper but seem to like me well enough. I´m amazed at how well we´re able to communicate with each other. I´ve taken Spanish for so long, but I never expected that I would have so few problems communicating. Of course, being able to understand each other is a far cry away from speaking well, so I have plenty to work on. My grammar is awful, particularly my verbs, but I have people to help me! My host mother loves to talk and has already gotten me to promise to teach her how to make cakes (since I can´t teach her how to drive).

Right now, it feels a little like a study abroad program, but that´s because our neighborhood is pretty nice. It´s lower middle class, so it´s safe enough, but not after dark. Language training began officially today so I´m beginning to get better! I think the most language training will happen with the host family though. Today, I hung out with my new little sister and we played card games - El Gordo (Spanish for The Fat One, the same as Old Maid), Pesca (Go Fish), Ace (no English equivalent I know of), and Guerra (War - okay, that one´s just straight up American. I taught her that one). The tech training aka how to deal with kids, families, etc. when they´re not quite so well-off...that´ll begin later this week.

Another food update - oh my god, I´m going to get tremendously fat. The food here is really good. People keep trying to stuff me til I´m full and right now I´m letting them. Salads, avocados, rice, zucchini, pineapple, bread filled with dulce de leche, and coffee coffee coffee. Luckily, I have to walk half an hour to get to class. Uphill. Both ways. In the rain. And I´m not kidding.

I´ll probably be able to update once a week, because even though I´m literally earning about $3 a day, this doesn´t include my meals and housing, so I can afford to drop 50 cents (about 500+ colones) on the internet now and again. If you want to know anything in particular, leave a note here or email me and I´ll address it later.

Love,

So it begins

2006-06-25T17:08:00.000-06:00

I'm going to try and update this as much as possible to let my friends + family keep up with what's going on. Let's see if this works!