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.

PST

March 27, 2013

 Alright, compared to my Australia days, I think I’m doing quite well with the blogging…I mean, it has only been a little over 2 weeks, but still! The major difference between my last post and now is that we are now in full blown PST (pre-service training….PC just like every other government agency loves its acronyms). So a normal week consists of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday being Spanish class days and Tuesday and Wednesday being either Tech or Core days in San Isidro. Tico 25 is spread out across 5 communities all relatively close to one another (granted I couldn’t tell you how in the world to get to anyone else yet, but we are assured we’re close to each other). The communities were formed based on everyone’s Spanish levels since we have Spanish classes in our communities, and since almost everyone here is quite good at Spanish, my community consists of only me and one other person, Nateara. So we have definitely taken up the buddy system and don’t do anything without each other…which would be slightly more helpful if one of us spoke better Spanish, but o well. Anyway, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Naty walks to my house and we head to the bus stop together. Granted this has only happened twice so far because the first week my host dad drove us both times because I think he had little faith we could navigate the bus system (which was true….but we totally got it down now). SO, we walk about a block to the bus and stand next to a horse that always seems to be wandering in the area, hop on the bus and about 10 minutes later we’re in San Isidro for a day of classes. On tech days we’re basically being taught things related to our specific project, TEFL, and on core days it’s more like, general Peace Corps things. So that’s my normal week in a nutshell.

 Hmm…some highlights of the week. On Thursday I got home pretty late because I finally got CR service for my iphone so yes, I now have internet, though often a pretty bad connection…but anyway, if I’m worth 99 cents to talk to for the next 2 years, download whatsapp so we can text! Anyway, I got home late and my family asked if I was hungry…since it was around 7:30pm…yes, I was hungry. So my host mom whips out 2 freshly made cinnamon rolls. Now, cinnamon rolls are fine and all, but I kinda wanted dinner…but my Spanish is no where near good enough to ask, “Are we having dinner soon? Or is this dinner?” So I just ate them. Then I was asked if I was still hungry…so now I thought I’d be served a real dinner, so I said, “Si!” Nope, I was then given 2 rolls (also homemade…Mom, are you taking notes! My host mom makes EVERYTHING from scratch ☺ ) So, at this point I assume that this is dinner so I eat the rolls, have an apple, and call it a day. About an hour later, my host mom comes out into the living room and says, “Cena!” (aka dinner). I was sooooo confused. But I walk into the kitchen and lo and behold, there is dinner waiting for me…JUST ME…as per usual…not sure what that’s all about, but anyway. So I sit down to my plate of yellow food…an egg, yucca, and a plantain. At this point, I’m full and don’t particularly like any of these foods on my plate, so I kind of pick for awhile until my host brother walks in a asks if I want to go somewhere with him. Its after 9pm at this point so I really should go to bed soon, but I figure if I go with him I won’t have to eat my dinner…so I go. Do I have ANY clue where I’m going? Nope. Tis my life these days. But it turns into a family affair and the mom comes with us and the dog. Turns out we were going to pick up the dad and sister. So now we are 5 people and a dog in a very small car…and we pull up to a McDonalds and they ask me if I want dinner. Yes, if you’re keeping track this would be about the 4th dinner of the night. They know I really like chicken so they just keep saying pollo but I insist that I’m not hungry but we pull into the drive thru line anyway to get the rest of the fam dinner. Somewhere in the waiting in line they family decides they don’t want McDs…and the dad proceeds to get out of the car. To go where? Beats me. Wish I could ask in Spanish, but I’m getting used to just not knowing what’s going on. Anyway, its about a 20 minute wait in this McDs line that we cant escape and then we drive a bit and arrive at where I guess they decided they should get dinner…KFC. About a 30 minute wait later for food…we are on our way home. Upon arrival (yes, at about 11pm) they sit down to dinner and are surprised that I don’t want to join. I mean I’m all for family bonding, but not over KFC at 11pm. But don’t worry…2 pieces of KFC chicken was my lunch the next day.

 Friday was actually a pretty big day…we went into San Jose for the first time. Naty and I made it and met up with the group just fine (which we were QUITE impressed with ourselves for). We were then broken up into groups and sent on a scavenger hunt of the city. I honestly didn’t do much since I let the Spanish speakers lead the way, but it was nice just to get a taste of the city. No pictures or anything though since 1. It’s a pretty dangerous place so we were told to leave everything of value we own at home and 2. We’re trying to not act like tourists. We were shown how to take the bus to the PC headquarters, tour HQ, and then were sent back home on buses to ensure we didn’t stick around San Jose since we’re not allowed in the city by ourselves yet as trainees. I also received my first piece of mail on Friday… THANKS MOM…I showed it to my host family and they absolutely loved the dog on the cover!

 Sunday was another big day…it was the first time the fam took me to do something touristy, so I was pumped! I thought we were going to a volcano…but when we were leaving, everyone else was still in their church clothes, so I started to panic thinking that “Vulcan” does not translate to volcano and I actually have no idea where were going…so I started frantically pointing to my clothes and they seemed to think it was fine so off we went. Turns out it was a volcano and I was the only one appropriately dressed. Pictures to come on facebook, promise. Afterwards we went out to lunch/dinner for the first time and I somewhat successfully ordered a hamburgesa, bien cocinado (well done of course). It was much more pressure having to interact with a waiter than with my fam at home so im hoping we don’t do that again for awhile.

 I’ve also decided I’m going to start tracking the amount of movies I’ve watched in Spanish. This weekend was:
1. The Hangover
2. Ratatouille
3. Four Christmases
4. Sherlock Holmes

 We’re supposed to be integrating with the family, which usually means I just in the living room and make my presence known, aka watch movies with whoever is sitting there as well. Considering I cant think of the last 4 movies I ever watched in the States, it is taking a while to adjust to a much, much slower pace and realizing that besides learning Spanish…I don’t have much else to do (hence really long blog posts when I reach a certain level of boredom).

 I am officially on a 4 day break though for Semana Santa…so tomorrow morning I’m going to go on a hike with some of the other trainees…so I’m looking forward to that! Speaking English for a solid chunk of time – awesome. Understanding what people say around me – awesome. I think I’ve conveyed to my host family that I’m going somewhere in the morning…but I’m not going to be surprised if they start freaking out when I walk out the door because perhaps I really didn’t tell them anything in my Spanglish…but we’ll see.

 Pura Vida!

So much Spanish

Monday, March 18, 2013 Well I had my first full day of Spanish class. The classes are actually at my house, so that makes my life super easy and there is actually only one other person in it, so a student:teacher ratio of 2:1 will hopefully get me speaking Spanish in no time. Class starts at 8 and by 7:45am my teacher was in my kitchen telling me in Spanish that I wasn’t appropriately dressed. My bad, I didn’t think Peace Corps business causal dress code was in effect when I was in a class with grand total 2 other people and in my own house? So anyway, I changed and begun a fun filled day of nothing but Spanish. We walked around neighborhood and I had to introduce myself to anyone we met on the street and describe Peace Corps to them…I think I got pretty good at it by the 10th person, but that’s about all I can say. Me llamo Brittany. Soy un aspirantee de voluntario de curpo de paz. El curpo de paz es un organication de gobierno de estados unidos ensenar los estudiantes y la professoras ingles por 2 anos. Gracias! It was also a fun reminder of how seriously PC takes the fact that we are NOT volunteers yet…we are only aspirantes. Someone from PC delivered our 8 books each and also desks, a white board, etc…so we are all set for 3 more months of classes. During these classes, I really need to learn how to say some foods. Last night, they kept asking me what I wanted to eat because the family was each eating their own thing, but I had no idea how to say anything and I wasn’t going to have them cook me something…so I had a dinner that consisted of a banana, a peach, and a pear. I don’t actually know the words for any of those either, but I knew how to say fruta. Oh, and I think im also doomed to eat bread for breakfast every day, because again, the first day they asked me what I normally eat for breakfast and all I could think of in Spanish was “pan.” So now they have fresh pan for me each morning. Could be worse! Pura vida!

The First Few Days...

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Well I finally have a free moment to actually start posting on this like I said I would.  I got an email from my Mom toward the end of orientation that said something like, can you please respond to my questions, I don’t understand how you could possibly be so busy.  Well Mom, I was, I promise, I wasn’t ignoring you.  PC doesn’t mess around as many of you know from my numerous stories of the application process.  Well, to start at the beginning…

Our staging for Tico 25 (Costa Ricans call themselves Ticos FYI) was in DC, which couldn’t have worked out better to go down and see everyone one last time.  It was about 6 hours of ice-breakers, an introduction to Peace Corps in general, and all the administrative stuff that had to be done before they shipped us out of the country.  They also found out it was my birthday, so it also involved being sung to by a group of people I had just met.  As soon as it was over I headed back to the Hill to meet up with friends for one last night together and the final goodbye.  Needless to say that was a rough night, but I couldn’t be more grateful to have people in my life that I would miss so much.  I arrived back at the hotel around 12:30am and realized no other trainees were sleeping either due to our ridiculous 1:30am check-out, so I talked to a few people, went up to the room, changed into my “business casual” clothes we had to wear for this plane ride, washed my face, packed my things back up, and it was already time to leave.  We boarded the buses at 2am and the orientation leaders parted ways with us there, leaving us with a Ghandi quote and a “good luck getting to CR.”  We arrived at the airport minutes later, and then just had to wait until the airport basically opened back up at 4am…so that was thrilling.  We actually almost missed our 6am flight due to the fact that we had 20 people and so much luggage, etc. BUT we didn’t and we arrived in Miami before we knew it.  We all spent the 2 hour layover getting our last bit of American food and making our final phone calls back home.

We were greeted in San Jose by the PC country director and many other PC staff members  before they brought us to our retreat center where we would stay until Saturday.  It’s called the “Bridge to Pre-Service Training” so aka, pre-pre-service training.  Here’s just an overview of the some of the sessions (so you can see why I was so busy Mom!):

·      Introduction of training team

·      Ground rules

·      PCCR overview

·      Medical orientation

·      PC approach to development

·      Why TEFL in CR

·      History of CR

·      Diagnostic Spanish interview

·      Administrative procedures (getting our immigration papers signed, opening up bank accounts, etc)

·      US Embassy visit

·      PCCR volunteer’s professional standards

·      Personal security and risk reduction

·      Country briefing and incident reporting

·      Geography of CR

·      How do we track progress

·      Commitment to PC

So basically a typical day was breakfast at 7am, sessions started at 8 and went until about 7pm with a lunch break.  It was a bit tedious but it was all information we needed.  It was also a great way to slowly transition from the US to CR, since we were basically at this isolated retreat center only interacting with other trainees and PC staff.  We still had wifi and hot showers, so it was great.  It was also a great chance to bond with the other trainees who are all fantastic.  On the first day, our training facilitator made a very interesting point by saying, “you now no longer have to justify your decision to join the Peace Corps to anyone, because you are surrounded by people who understand.”  We were definitely forced to do a lot of reflection on “Why Peace Corps” over the week to reaffirm our commitment, so I’ll hopefully work on actually typing up my response one day.  But TICO 25 is definitely a very diverse group and we are all excited to be in CR!

As the last activity we did before we moved out to our host families, we were broken up into groups of 4 and had to discuss the person or people it was hardest to leave behind and why we did it anyway.  Well, needless to say basically the entire room was in tears (yes, even me) by the end of it and we were not at all happy with the facilitator who made us do it, but it was probably a good thing to do for the reasons they told us…we all have feelings that we are most likely suppressing during this first week and we can’t do that for the long term.  It was also good to hear everyone else’s fears about the people they left back home and to realize we are all worried about the same things.  So that was a ROUGH hour or so. Alright, alright, enough with the sad stuff…

So the first big milestone while we are here is finding out where we are put for training.  We were grouped by our language level and since almost everyone is fluent…my group consists of only myself and one other person who are both muy mal a espanol, but even she was put at novice-mid…and I was novice-low, aka the lowest of the low…so I have a LONG way to go to intermediate-mid which is what I need to place at to swear-in.  Anyway, the two of us were placed in Los Angeles…and no, of course it was not as simple as them just telling us.  First we stood in a circle and they put colors on our backs and we had to group ourselves without talking…once grouped we had to do a word scramble to figure out the community name….then we had to come up with a chant for said community (los angles los angleles, we owe our Spanish to you, los angeles los angeles, teach us how to say blue), and THEN we were given our host family information.  I think I lucked out because im the worst Spanish speaker, because my family is great.  There is a mom, dad, 2 sisters, and 1 brother.  Thank God the brother speaks a bit of English, so THAT is super helpful.  Aunts and Uncles come and go as well, AND there is an adorable tiny dog.  The house is actually really nice AND there is hot water.  Granted it just comes out of a pipe, but don’t care.  3 more months of hot showers sounds great to me.

On my first night we went to a fiesta…I think it was a birthday party, but I have no idea which person I met the party was for.  If I thought understanding Spanish was difficult while we were chatting at home (ok, they were chatting, I was awkwardly sitting trying to figure out what they were saying) it was IMPOSSIBLE at the party with loud music.  Finally they gave up trying to talk to me, because I literally couldn’t understand a thing.  But it was good to be there and meet many people of the community.  At some point during the night a drum line rolled in all dressed in red silk, followed by…I don’t even know how to describe them besides dancers….not wearing much, in matching green and yellow outfits with large yellow feathery hats.  After they danced a conga line was formed that I was thrown into, as well as going under a limbo pole.  It was quite an overwhelming night one.  I came back early with my host sister and it was the first night I realized I couldn’t just check Facebook, send a few emails, or call Mom…so that definitely hit me that I really am living in another country and can’t always be in contact with people when I want to be.  But all in all, everything is going super well!  I know this is way more information than any of you needed or wanted, but hey, I don’t have a phone or internet and there is only so many movies you can watch in Spanish with your host family…

And I know I’ve said thank you a billion different ways to many of you…but one more time…

Michelle sent me a Winnie the Pooh quote that couldn’t sum up the situation better…

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

If you took the time to read this, you are certainly one of the people that made saying goodbye so hard…but as many of you have reminded me, it’s not goodbye at all.  These 27 months will fly by and I really can’t thank you enough for everyone how has already emailed, facebooked, texted, etc. It means so much and thank you so, so much for the support and encouragement to take on this crazy adventure!

Pura vida!