Intermediate Low!

Saturday, April 20, 2013

          Considering I’m about to embark on another PCV visit tomorrow, this time for a week, I figured it was a good time for an update.  Before today, I honestly haven’t had a single day of nothing so I definitely embraced sleeping until 9 (I know, Mom…9, not noon…its like I’m a new person) and not needing to rush anywhere.  I also hope to actually have time to run to a friend’s house this afternoon to use their wi-fi so these posts will actually get updated. (<--Clearly that didn't happen..their wifi wasn't working) About a week or so after I arrived here the house magically lost internet, which was extremely upsetting, BUT through my limited Spanish I think I hear the word router thrown around every once and a while, so I THINK we’re waiting for an upgrade to wifi.  I could be completely wrong, but I’m going to stick to that story in hopes it comes true.  I still have my pathetic internet on my phone which I am beyond grateful for, but being able to skype / make phone calls / write longer emails would be faaaaaantastic.

          So what’s been going on?  We returned from PCV visit weekend to a great week of only 3 training days (since we returned late Tuesday).  We did receive bad news that our training manager was in a car accident on the highway…with a horse… so we were certainly missing her and hoping she'll be back soon!  Saturday morning all of Tico 25 was up bright and early to head off for a beach weekend!  We get 2 nights “off” during training and that Saturday night was going to be our first one.  We headed to Jaco (I honestly couldn’t point it out on a map, I let others who speak Spanish handle the logistics…I just blindly hopped on the bus) but it was about 2 hours away and pretty touristy which I’m not going to lie….I greatly enjoyed.  We went to the beach, ate Subway, went out at night, and overall just had a great weekend together.  This whole experience would be so different without my Tico 25 family and I’m so lucky it is such a fantastic group.

          We headed back from Jaco on Sunday afternoon but got stuck in tons of traffic so when I returned home around 8:30pm my family began freaking out that I had my language interview the next day, which, I was freaking out about too.  They served me a giant plate of kraft mac & cheese…I know they do it because they think it’s super American and they give it to me when they think I had a bad day which is adorable and I just don’t have the heart to tell them it is reallllllly not my favorite food.  But alas I ate some mac & cheese as virtually my whole family stood over me asking what I needed help with.  I had them ask me questions, but they weren’t super helpful.  ie-  What is your room like in the US?  Me: Uh? Rojo?  But they hung with me until 10:30 when I sent them to bed and was so grateful they were so concerned.

          I had the interview the next morning with the language coordinator anddddddddd…I placed into intermediate low!!!!!  I came in at novice low and need to get to intermediate mid to swear-in…so making such a big jump in only one month is apparently not too common and got me a congratulatory e-mail from our training director, a high-five from the country director when we saw him last week, and many, many hugs from Tico 25. It was certainly a great feeling and while I don’t exactly feel like I can communicate much better with my fam, I’m at least not concerned about being sent home!

          Nothing too exciting happened the rest of the week…more Spanish, more tech and core classes.  I’m definitely used to my bread and coffee every morning for breakfast…except yesterday they put some kind of bologna on it…hope that isn’t a new thing.  I’m also getting used to eating the same thing for both lunch and dinner, who needs variety?  But it is adorable how my host mom already knows almost all of my food preferences…. They know not to put tomatoes in my salads, that I would much rather have chicken than red meat, and I have no desire to introduce rice into every single meal. They have started buying more bananas and apples since they’re deduced those are my favorites and they even bought me a jar of hot sauce.  It’s not buffalo sauce, but I’ll take what I can get.

          All in all, things are really good down here in Costa Rica.  Some days are tougher than others and I certainly have moments while I’m sitting through a 4 hour medical session on the symptoms of dengue and how to identify common rashes we’ll probably get, where I would give anything to be back with Team Lance.  Some nights where I have nothing to do but watch Spanish movies, I would give anything to grab a beer at Hill Country or Sun Tavern with all of you that I am missing so much.  But the texts and e-mails help, and I couldn’t be more grateful for everyone who is keeping in such great touch.  At the end of the day, I really am content and happy spending my Friday nights teaching English to members of my community and feel extremely lucky to be doing exactly what I hoped I would be doing at this point in my life.

Sending many hugs to all of you in the US!

PCV Visit

Now that I have wifi I can actually post some updates I wrote awhile ago...

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

          IM BACK…I certainly haven’t had a moment to be bored lately, which I’ll take as a good thing (most of the time).  Last week was certainly stressful…3 full days of Spanish (ugh) and we had to give our first lesson, so that took quite some preparation.  We also interviewed a local teacher (in Spanish…poor her) and had to figure out all the logistics of holding a community English class that we’re going to teach for the next 6 weeks.  Busy.  Needless to say, the weekend was much needed, though it supplied zero rest.  It was PCV visit this past weekend, which meant we 20 PCTs were shipped all across the country to go visit actual PCVs for 4 days to basically see their lives and get a sense of the different types of sites. 

          So early Saturday morning Naty and I met up with 2 other PCTs in San Jose who were headed to the same region of the country, Guanacaste.  After an almost 5 hour bus ride dying in the heat…we all arrived in Guanacaste and were taken to the most culturally diverse place you could imagine…McDonalds.  There we met up with our respective PCVs we were staying with.  We had some gelato and walked around Liberia, which is an extremely large town where my PCV lives.  I believe it’s the second largest city in Costa Rica after San Jose.  One other PCT and her PCV stayed with us, so the four of us had some drinks at a very nice restaurant before heading to her barrio (neighborhood).  Liberia is certainly not what any of you are picturing as a PCV site…we looked up movie times at the McDonalds with their free wifi.  Her barrio is certainly smaller with dirt roads, but it is still not the type of site I hope to end up with.  She certainly makes it work, however, and seemed very integrated in her community.  She lives alone and is certainly lacking furniture but she DID have an air mattress and a fan, so all was great.

          We met up with the 2 other PCTs and their PCVs at a GORGEOUS waterfall on Sunday.  It was a pretty long walk down a barren dirt road for quite some time, so I was extremely skeptical that a waterfall was actually at the end of this journey (I mean, I’m so confused ALL the time, it wouldn’t have surprised me to not understand what was happening even though they were all speaking English)…BUT there was a waterfall and we all had a fantastic time swimming, jumping through said waterfall, and just relaxing.  Afterwards we headed to the other PCVs site so we could see that.  She lives about an hour north of Liberia, about 7km south of the Nicaraguan boarder.  It was by far smaller than Liberia where I was staying, but still had a small downtown.  The next day we headed to the beach about 20 minutes away.  Again, it looked like a barren desert when we got off the bus, but lo and behold, there was actually a beach about 100 meters away.  Now whatever gorgeous Costa Rican beach you’re probably picturing right now… yup, it looked just like that.  Not a soul around with mountains on either side…yea, not such a tough weekend.

            I headed back to Liberia with my PCV that afternoon to get ready for her community class that night.  Despite the ungodly heat, I put on my standard “formal-ish” uniform of pants and a polo and headed to the school.  We sat there for about 45 minutes before conceding that no one was coming.  I hope she has better luck next week!  We did run into a bunch of her students on the way home who asked for help studying for their English test the following day, so we sat outside the PCVs house and helped her host sister study.  The girl would say the days of the week or months of the year in English…and I’d say them in Spanish; it was a win-win.  One French toast dinner later and an hour of completing the homework we were given for the visit, it was time for bed.  It wasn’t hard to wake up before my alarm due to the heat and we set off to meet up with everyone again to observe their conversation club at a local school.  Teachers from all over the region come for a series of 5 day-long sessions and ultimately receive credit and a raise for completing their course.  It was interesting to see and was certainly helpful to get an idea of the projects we may be doing in out sites.  We hopped in a cab…took a 5 hour bus…ate McDonalds in San Jose…took another bus…and was finally back “home” and I couldn’t have been happier to embrace the cold.