one year in costa rica

So much about my life now strikes me as bizarre and completely random.  The seating arrangement in my new house goes as such: one, the corner piece of a couch set that has two gaping holes in the upholstery that I’m pretty sure I found a rat bone in, two, the dilapidated reject chair from a local high school which was on its way out, and three, a fold-up beach lounger from ‘Mundo Magico’, shit you not, there is a store named magic world. The way I managed to scrounge up the seating for my new house probably pretty accurately depicts how I have met some of the most awesome people in my life over the past year, a series of random happenings that leads to something unexpected but worthwhile.  Peace Corps points a random finger on the globe and off you go. Then more finger pointing at maps and boom you’re living in the hottest region in Costa Rica that looks more like the African savannah than the rain forests touted on post cards. Then last but not least Peace Corps gifts you a host family and you’re in it for better or for worse.

 If Peace Corps has taught me anything it’s to be open to meeting friends in odd places; be it at 4 a.m. in a hostel when you’re scrounging around for ibuprofen for a splitting headache or when you are supposed to be some place in less than an hour and it’s more than a two hour hike and some kind soul offers you a ride.  Yes, perhaps these situations have potential for you to be abducted but instead your instincts tell you this stranger is a-okay, so why not?  Similar to my hodgepodge seating I have accumulated a range of worthwhile friendships in my first year here in Costa Rica.  Some of these friends were gifted to me, such as the awesome group of volunteers from training, but most were happenstances from a random gringa being plopped down in the middle of the campo in the part of Costa Rica most tourists zip past in their air conditioned cars.  So yes my life is “random” but I’ve come to really enjoy it and am thankful that living abroad has helped me break out of certain monotonies and encounter people from all walks of life. 

Guardia

I live where the road turns to dirt,

and my bike wheels bump over dusty stones.

My home has a zinc roof

that turns into a mirage at the hottest part of the day.

We sit in the yard 

during the omnipresent mid-day heat.

Everything slows, and swings on hammocks.

High school students dance the mambo

and their clothes sticks heavy to skin.

I live on a street where everyone

is brother, sister, cousin, or mother. 

We'll miss you Don Carlos

Sorry it’s been way too long since I last blogged.  Since I last wrote I’ve really started to feel like Costa Rica is a second home. Two days ago my host grandfather died and it’s been a pretty emotional time. He was quite old and I was expecting it to a certain extent but it is still very sad to say goodbye to a good friend from my site. He was the sweetest and I would sit and talk with him when he came to visit. It was really sad to see my host family grieving, especially my host dad who is his son. Living here for 2 years I get to see all the stages of life here and all the rites and rituals. The day after he died we had a “vela” for him where the family stays awake with the body the whole night and then we buried him the next morning. Its weird thinking that probably all my host family and most of my town will be laid to rest here in the same cemetery, but who knows where I’ll end up. Going through this whole process, it makes me realize that while my host family and I have our ups and downs I truly care for them and would do anything to help them out.

The last couple days haven’t just been about loss here in site. My 10 month old host nephew recently started walking. It’s been really interesting see him develop in the past 6 months, when I arrived he was mostly just a swaddled cute little bundle who didn’t move much, and now he’s all over the place. As my host mom says he’s a “rallo” and he’s constantly getting into trouble, waddling around like a chubby little duck, pulling stuff down, falling down and getting right back up again. Yes, one life is passing on but Kaleb is just starting his.  It’s great to see Kaleb make my host dad smile during this hard time of saying goodbye to his father.  I feel grateful that my host family has taken me in and have let me be there for everything from Kaleb’s baptism, to cooking and cleaning all day to prepare for hundreds of people to come to our house for my host grandfather’s vela.

I feel like my life is so full here in Costa Rica.  My job comes with its own set of challenges but it’s also awesome because I get to create so much of what I do during the day.

The school year is wrapping up but here is some of the stuff I’ve been up to these first 6 and a half months in site:

-co-teaching English with 5 Costa Rican teachers in my town’s high school in the mornings

-4 community English classes a week for the past 6 months

-I recently started an English conversation club for community members with a more advanced level of English

-a weekly art class in the elementary school for the past 3 and a half months

-co-facilitated a monthly conversation club and teacher training session for local English teachers

-collaborated with the elementary school music teacher to prepare a performance for the school graduation next month

Some things I’m planning on working with my community next year!

-Run “Voces Valorosas”, a group with young women from the community where we come together to talk about important issues like self-esteem, sexual health, etc…,and do an art project after each of our sessions. I’m going to run it with my high school’s excellent guidance counselor (very excited about this!)

-Continue with my weekly art classes/community English classes/and conversation clubs

-attend a Peace Corps training with a member of my school’s PTA to learn how to take on bigger projects: some projects they have in mind are a new school kitchen, more offices for the guidance counselors, and to build a school library

-write a grant with the elementary school’s music teacher to bring more instruments to the school for his weekend practices with the school’s marching band! Also really excited about this project

Aside from my work in my site I’ve been enjoying traveling around the country with my fellow volunteers. I’ve met so many other great individuals. When I first got my placement in Costa Rica I was a little disappointed, but I’ve definitely changed my mind on that. This country is so geographically and biologically diverse and beautiful; anywhere I travel I’m pretty much guaranteed to be in a gorgeous location.  Can’t help but feel pretty spoilt... I recently went to help another friend in her site building a learning center in the mountains and it was cool to see a very different side of the country. I’ve learned that while I like my site it’s really important I take my time away to travel and have some “grigo time”, it recharges me, keeps me sane, and helps me to appreciate my site more when I’m back.

Recently I’ve really realized that deciding to join Peace Corps was probably the best life decision I could have made for myself right now. It’s an emotional roller coaster but in general I’m very happy with my life here in Guardia. Not many jobs let you make your own work schedule, bond with people you would have otherwise never met, be a role model for kids in the community, and travel around one of the most beautiful countries. Again I feel blessed to have this opportunity and look forward to showing my parents the country in a month.

Art class for kids in my community

 

I had a meeting in my community a couple weeks ago to plan an art class for kids in the elementary school. To be honest the whole day before the meeting I was worried and nervous that no parents would show up since there is little to no parent involvement in the high school where I work.  Then don-don-don it started raining right before the meeting was supposed to happen, and tico culture is notorious for going on pause whenever it starts to rain. People stay inside until the rain stops.  However, when I got to the school after donning my rain jacket and pants and rain boots there were a bunch of smiling faces there waiting for me.  I was really happy that so many parents and their kids had shown up. It makes me feel really blessed to be in the community I’m in that parents showed up because I know that isn’t the case in a lot of the communities where other volunteers are.

Any ways the art class is now a go! We’ve already had 3 sessions.  It’s been great to continue doing art with kids after volunteering most of college at drawbridge an art group for kids who live in homeless shelters in Santa Cruz CA. We’ve been doing projects that focus on using recycled materials. This week we made wallets out of old milk cartons and the week before vases out of plastic bottles. I’ll try to put photos of the projects up here.

 drawing of my host niece jailene

juevos de torro......

Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last post, so much new to report on. 

Today for lunch we had some sort of mystery meat so I decided to just go for it and eat it since otherwise it would have been just rice and beans, which is all I had for breakfast too.  After I finished eating my host sister told me the reason her daughter hadn’t eaten lunch today was because she doesn’t eat huevos de torros, a.k.a. I had just eaten bull testicle!!! I thought it might have been mondongo, cow intestines, because my host mom had made me try that before. Really the testicle wasn’t quite as gross as eating the intestines……but it might have been easier since I wasn’t aware what I was eating……Anyways I am quickly adding things to my list of weird stuff I’ve tried such as blood sausage and a plate of snails in Spain. I might be persuaded to try iguana here but I absolutely refuse to eat turtle eggs which they like to eat here.

In two weeks I will have officially been here in Costa Rica for half a year! It’s gone by fairly quickly, but at the same time I feel like so much has happened during that time.   The first 3 months in site we are supposed to do interviews with community members to learn about the community and try to figure out projects for the future.  The interviews have been some of the coolest and most interesting parts of my first months in site.  It’s been a good excuse to go talk to people who live in other neighborhoods. I was able to go talk to people in “barrio chino” a poorer neighborhood where a lot of Nicaraguan immigrants live, and people in “barrio fosforo” probably the poorest neighborhood, where many houses  just have wood stoves in the backyards.  As my mom from back home put it, “isn’t it weird that some gringa is coming around on her bike trying to ask people questions”, and really that would be my response if someone came knocking on my door,   but I’ve been really touched by how willing people are to open up to me after just sitting and talking for a few minutes.

One woman from barrio fosforo told me her life story about how her husband had left her with 6 small children.  Not only that but he sold their house leaving them homeless. They had to sleep under trees and during the day a neighbor would let her cook on her stove.  She would wake up every morning at 1 am to cook her kids’ food and then head to work.  She told me she wasn’t able to get far in her education but that she really loves to read, so if we do a library project in the high school I want to bring her books to read. It was also interesting hearing peoples’ immigration stories to Costa Rica and their hard work to succeed despite encountering a lot of racism. Doing the interviews really made me realize what a unique and wonderful experience it is to be here. I get to interact and become friends and adoptive family with so many people I would have never met otherwise.  I already feel a great deal of responsibility towards the people in my community and especially towards my host family.  I feel like they really deserve to have a volunteer in their community, and despite how challenging volunteering can be at times I’m going to do my best to stick it out for the full two years.

Other random things to report from the month of july:

1)It was really nice and my immigration proceeding to get my equivalent to a green-card happened to fall a day after 4^th of July.  So I was able to go celebrate 4^th of July with a lot of the other volunteers in the capital.  Then, the next week I went down to Quepos to see another volunteer’s site and to see some other volunteers.   I like my site but I’ve realized the importance to taking breaks and taking trips to see other volunteers.  Sometimes you really just need a break from constantly trying to integrate into a different culture and it’s nice to just be able to relax.

2)The month of July is a big time for parties here in my region of Guanacaste since on the 25^th they celebrate their independence day.  Because of this the past two weeks have been the fiestas in Liberia.  It has been a lot of fun, I’ve finally been able to get my fill of dancing in. I really love all the traditional dancing here such as merengue, cumbia, salsa, and bachata.  It makes me feel thankful to be placed here in Central America.

                3) By default fishing has become my new pass time. It’s something I would have never gotten into in the states, but it’s really popular in my community.  Honestly it’s just a good excuse to get out into the beautiful nature around me and just sit around and be peaceful. It’s a nice break from all the screaming teens and pre-teens in my classes.

4) My community classes on Monday and Wednesday are still going well.  They’re also one of the most rewarding parts of my service.  It’s nice to have a class of my own since my time in the high school is spent supporting tico teachers.  It’s nice to be in charge and be able to work on whatever I want with the students.

5) I’m starting the process of trying to organize an art class in the elementary school! I’m really excited about the prospect and so are many kids I’ve talked to in the school. Really there is no lack of student interest.  I think the hardest part is going to be getting parents involved to fundraise to purchase some basic supplies. I also intend to use a lot of recycled materials but there are certain things you have to buy.  Next week I’m going to try to have a parent meeting and hopefully some parents will show up… fingers crossed!

Host nephew Aaron

Kaleb!

drawing of my host nefew
Kaleb!

If my life was a musical it would be called "Iguana On a Hot Tin Roof"

Hello again from Costa Rica! In training peace corps stresses the importance of being flexible, and I’ve definitely experienced that. During the first Peace Corps retreat my project partner was the only one who didn’t show up of all the volunteers’, but I just had to take a deep breath and not stress it.  Then a couple weeks ago (after being informed by a PTA member that they were at war with my school’s principle) I show up to school to find my school’s PTA posted in front of the gates not letting anyone enter.  So currently neither my schools principle or the PTA can legally enter the premises for a month until things are sorted out.  I’ve always considered myself a relaxed person who can go with the flow, and I find that part of myself is something I have to exercise to an extreme here. If you let every little thing that doesn’t go as you expected get to you in Peace Corps you would drive yourself insane and be on a plane back to the states asap.

                I was pretty sure no one was going to show up to a meeting to plan our community English class.  Then around 20 minutes after the start time, when I was about ready to pack up, 15 people stroll in.  The same applies for classes in my high school; class generally starts 10 to 15 minutes after scheduled.  You just generally have to switch your conception of time here.

                My community English class got off to a good start last week. The class is going to a Basic English conversational course, Monday and Wednesday from 6-7:30pm.  I was pretty nervous going into the class considering I’ve never taught on my own before, only co-taught, but I had my second class this week and I already feel a lot more comfortable and confident teaching.  The first class about 25 people showed, and honestly I was pretty surprised.  Then this week I got a nasty stomach virus and couldn’t give class on Monday so I was skeptical many people would show up on Wednesday.  Again I was surprised when more students showed up than there were chairs in the classroom.  I think its good we’re starting out with a big group because apparently people drop like flies, so hopefully we’ll end the 10 week course with a smaller, dedicated, group of students.

                Besides teaching I have a lot of free time and I’ve been able to do fun stuff with my host family.  Last Sunday I got to go fishing with my host dad and his nephews and I caught 3 fish!  Considering I can’t remember if I’ve ever been fishing before, I think I did alright. I’m hoping next time maybe he’ll teach me how to use the harpoon, but I’m guessing his machismo is going to get in the way of that one, so I’m going to have to be satisfied with line and hook. On another random note, apparently for summer vacation we’re going to camp out at the beach and my host grandma is going to bring her giant turkey and cook him up too.  According to her before killing a turkey you have to get them drunk…so this could get very interesting. Drunk turkeys on the beach, only in Costa Rica…