Well the 2 weeks of “winter break” are drawing to a close
and while I’ve only been here for a little over a month, it was already a nice
break and most importantly, a great opportunity to see some Tico 25ers
again. A bunch of us met up in San Jose
on the 3rd for an Embassy picnic on the 4th. We checked into our hostel, grabbed lunch
(buffalo chicken fingerssss J
) and headed to a mall where we shopped for a bit and basically just hung out
in a Chilis where I was able to again get boneless buffalo wings. They weren’t quite like the ones in the
states, but they were for sure close enough.
That next morning I took my first hot shower in a month and cherished
not only the hot water, but the fact that it was cool enough in San Jose to
warrant a hot shower.
Buffalo Chicken for Lunch...And Dinner. My Perfect Day.
We headed to the July 4th event and it was the
first time I was surrounded by more gringos than Costa Ricans and we all simply
enjoyed all the English that was being spoken all day. Live music, American
food, unlimited beer, and fantastic friends celebrating my favorite holiday
certainly made it a bit easier to not be so homesick. Last year as I sat on the lawn of the Capitol
with Kristyn, James, and David watching the Capitol 4th concert and
the fireworks over the Washington monument, I never could have imagined that in
a year I would be celebrating that same holiday with new friends, in a new
country, living a completely different life.
July 4th, 2013
July 4th, 2012
The next morning we all headed out bright and early to
Uvita, about a 3 and a ½ hour bus ride south.
We met more of our Tico 25 group there along with some other Tico groups
and we had an awesome weekend all together catching up on all that had happened
in the past month in our new sites. It
was a great balance of hearing about everyone else’s experiences in site and
also meeting some PCVs who have been around for about a year and had plenty of
advice to offer us newbies. It was a
gorgeous beach made even better by being surrounded by such great friends and
it yet again made me realize how lucky I am that I’m serving in Costa Rica... and
not Mongolia…
While there were plenty of hiccups in getting back to site,
I did eventually make it back and while we all know how much I love my host
fam, it did feel good to be back.
There’s a familiarity here that is comforting and while my host fam
drives me nuts, at least I know they’re going to drive me nuts, there’s no
surprises there and I feel like that is oddly helpful in dealing with
everything. It was good to slip back
into a routine (minus the school part since it’s still vacation) and I’ve
realized that there are a lot of little things that I’ve found helpful with
dealing with this whole crazy new life.
Just a few:
1.
Hot sauce.
I put hot sauce on every single food I am served and it really makes a
big difference when most of those meals are rice and beans.
2.
Learning useful Spanish. General vocab is great
and all but being able to be sarcastic back to my family when they say
something sassy to me has actually helped a ton because I feel like they took
my lack of Spanish to be unintelligence which I never appreciated so now I feel
they respect me a bit more now that I can quickly give them some sass back.
3.
Watching Grey’s Anatomy in Spanish. I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter that
there aren’t subtitles in either language because I apparently can recall the
dialogue by heart and hearing it in Spanish has been helpful to learning a bit
more without just reading my textbooks.
4.
Washing my own clothes. I feel like I don’t have control over
much. I don’t really have a say in the
food I eat, the time I eat, what I’m going to end up doing with my day, etc. Being able to convince my host mom that I
could handle washing my own clothes was a small victory and some Tico 25ers now
attest that I give pretty good massages since washing clothes by hand is a
pretty good hand workout. It’s a
win-win.
5.
Being messy.
I’m not usuallyyyyy a super messy person but now that I have a lock on
my door I’ve been relishing in the fact that it doesn’t HAVE to be clean and
organized.
It was great to come back to site and on my first bike ride
since being back, having many of my students come running up to me screaming my
name to give me a hug. The next morning
I met up with many of them and we went to the plaza to play games and I even
got them to count in English while playing hide-n-go-seek. It was a small victory in my life. They all picked flowers for me on the way and
the boys fought over who could walk my bike.
Adorable.
So all in all…all is well down here in the heat of Costa
Rica. I had a fantastic Fourth, a great
beach weekend with new friends, and have been able to talk and catch up with
many friends from the states since being back in site. Seriously, it makes my day to get e-mails
about the craziness on Capitol Hill about the Farm Bill or to get WhatsApp
messages with a play by play of Jersey Fresh.
It feels good to be connected to back home and makes this whole crazy
journey just a bit easier. And seriously Jersey Fresh, start winning some games for me...?
