A Walk Around Site

As I’m sure you can imagine, a week at the resort with Mom had little in common with a normal week.  For example, today it’s a bit cloudy so hope of doing laundry was lost. (One needs sunlight for clothes to dry down here as a reminder.)   So I woke up and did some yoga (I’m trying to be more zen these days…) which is always slightly difficult with the 3 dogs surrounding me.  After a cold shower and some breakfast, I headed out to take pictures of my community for a presentation I have to give at IST next week.  I certainly felt a bit odd taking pictures but I finally felt comfortable enough that no one would steal my thousand dollar camera and enough people know who I am that it wasn’t like I was a stranger coming into their community to take pictures for who knows what reason.  After yet another shower because I was once again covered in sweat, I relaxed and watched some NCIS that happened to be on tv. There is a fantastic channel that plays NCIS, all the CSIs, Covert Affairs, Criminal Minds, and Law & Order all day long in English with Spanish subtitles.  So I enjoyed that for about 2 hours, chatted with Mom a bit on the phone, and then the host fam came back from their errands in Santa Cruz so I hoarded back up in my room.  Hmm…how did I pass the time?  I swept & mopped my floor, cleaned the top of my “dresser” to get all the gecko crap off everything, wrote 2 letters to friends back home, read a bit, and have on and off been typing this.  I’ve also exchanged some texts with PCV friends including the trainwreck of a soccer tournament one is at and following up with a friend who got stung by an unknown sea creature and is currently at a clinic.  I talked to friends back in the states over Whatsapp and can certainly say I wish I was with you guys in AC this weekend!  It finally rained so it’s a bit cooler at the moment than the normal intolerable heat so I’m finishing this up outside on my rocking chair as the dogs run around playing and my host fam sits next to me discussing nothing at all and probably wondering what the heck I’m doing on my fancy computer.

Mi Casa 

There are 2 roads in town, the horribly paved one on the left & the dirt one on the right.

Our run down playgroud that I'd love to fix up one day... 

Mi Escuela :)

Mom in CR!

So much has been going on that I’ve been putting off blogging since I don’t even know where to begin.  But.  Clearly the biggest event of the past month has been a visit from Mom!

While we had arranged for me to meet her at the resort the day after she arrived, she was flying all the way to Costa Rica to see me…least I could do was meet her at the airport!  Well, she saw me (after literally being the last person off the plane just to torture me with anticipation…) and she kept on walking.  Now, I’ll admit I look a bit different. My skin is by far tanner than it ever has been and Mom has only seen my fauxhawk in person for about 3 days before I left the states…but comeon Mom, I was even wearing my lime green “Jersey Girl” t-shirt!  So I finally screamed, “Need some help with all that luggage?!” which made her give me a second look and it slowlyyyyy dawned on her that it was me.  She of course broke down in tears as I ran over for a hug and I hope I gave her a welcome to remember.

She made it!

We headed off to her resort and I proudly conversed with the busetta driver in Spanish on the way.  HE understood me…unlike some of the people I live with.  I was for sure showing off for Mom, but it was good practice, which would continue throughout the week at the resort.  While my so-so Spanish doesn’t impress people in my site or in Santa Cruz, my attempts at the resort were a completely different story.  I suppose they’re used to traveling Gringos who don’t speak any Spanish, so everyone seemed impressed with my mas o menos conversational skills and then got extremely interested when I would mention that I live about an hour away.  Many of them with children thanked me for being a volunteer in their country and I even made a few Tico Facebook friends during the week.

While I was of course ecstatic to see Mom, I was also quite excited for the 2 full suitcases of things she brought me.  Of course there was a delicious assortment of all my favorite foods (including 3 bottles of different buffalo sauces), but most importantly she came bearing a much more appropriate wardrobe for me.  I don’t think I would have lasted one more day in pants and polos at school.  She did a fantastic job of picking out clothes to my specifications of “no sleeves & it can’t touch me” and I can certainly attest that the Bermuda shorts and no sleeve shirts have made all the difference in surviving the heat at school & in Guan in general.

Better than Christmas!

While Mom was here, she wanted to meet all my new PCV friends I talk to her about all the time and of course make sure everyone was well fed.  My friends made the trek from all over Guanacaste to meet in Tamarindo (a very touristy beach town that I figured would be much more up Mom’s alley than a “real” Costa Rican town).  It was a fantastic day with both friends and family and I was so glad Mom got to meet some of the people that I’ve become so close to over these past 5 months.  My hope for the day was that she walked away realizing that I’m surrounded by amazing people down here that make every day so much easier than if I was going through this crazy adventure alone.

Mom, Me, & Some Awesome PCVs

While I would consider our day in Tamarindo a great success, I’m not sure I would classify our day drip to my site as such.  I had been debating bringing Mom to the Cac or not, but heck, was she really going to come all the way to Costa Rica and not see where I’m going to be living for the next 2 years?  So I hired a pirate taxi (I floated the idea of taking public buses but I think Mom just assumed I was kidding) and we were off to Santa Cruz.  Mom may have shed a few tears upon seeing my actual site, but I think the warm welcome at my school softened the blow a bit.  After the school visit, it was on to my house for lunch with my host family and thank goodness I 

have a visiting Aunt who speaks English so my translation skills did not need to be tested.  Afterwards we headed into Santa Cruz to walk around a bit, grab a smoothie, and chat with the PCVs who live there, Erin & Braden.  It was a pretty quick stop, and I suspect that Mom was anxious to get back to the resort and hop in the pool after a day of no air conditioning in the heat of Guanacaste.

 Me, Host Aunt, Host Mom, & Mom

A conversation I was realllllly hoping to avoid came later that afternoon when Mom tried to rub what she thought was dried sunscreen off my shoulder.  When it didn’t come off, she looked at my quizzically and I simply said, please don’t ask me what that is.  Of course, that didn’t work and I had to proceed to explain that most of us PCVs living in the heat of Guanacaste have a bit of fungus going on.  It simply can’t be avoided and only appears as some white dots in various places on our bodies.  I do have a bit on the side of my face that I would like gone, but the specks on my shoulder aren’t too big of a concern…to me at least.  Mom freaked just a bit and I think just tried to ignore it for the rest of our time together. 

 

Overall, it was an amazing week filled with fantastic food (ZERO rice and beans), air conditioning, comfortable beds, a language I can actually speak, and a heck of a lot of hugs. 

I so appreciate you flying down here to see me Mom!  I loved getting to be on vacation and enjoy some first-world accommodations but it was also really great to be able to show Mom a bit of what my life is like down here.  Perhaps the most meaningful part of the trip came at the end though when Mom (probably dead serious) offered to buy me a plane ticket to just go back with her and it was in that moment that I realized while I miss so many people and things in the US, I really had no desire to take her up on her offer.  Life is tough sometimes down here and I certainly get lonely, but on the whole, I’m extremely happy being here surrounded and supported by great new friends and a community that both wants and needs me here. It’s only the beginning and there is a lot of work ahead, but right now, I’m happy and content and that is for sure a great feeling.

See you soon for Christmas Mom!

July 4th & Uvita

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 3^rd for an Embassy picnic on the 4^th.  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 4^th 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 4^th 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…

Uvita

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...?

So What Am I Doing These Days?

A little over 2 weeks in site and I’d have to say, todo bien (minus the fam still).  I’ve fallen into a schedule, which is great and am certainly starting to feel more and more apart of the community little by little.  It’s a little difficult to explain to people that I’m not actually doing anything until September, but after being here, I completely understand why PC says it’s best to wait since I certainly have my hands full trying to integrate, befriend my co-teachers, and study a bit more Spanish.

So, what AM I doing in this small, Costa Rican community everyday? Well, on Mondays I head to the escuela in the town next to mine.  To get there, it is just one dirt road that passes through my town as well for about 8km and that is the only way in or out.  Therefore, I just stand at the edge of my street around 6:30am every Monday and wait for a teacher to drive by and give me a ride.  I’m clearly the only gringo around, so I’m pretty easy to spot.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are spent at the escuela in my community and while I was pretty skeptical how I would actually like it (considering I generally don’t like teaching…or kids…) I actually love it. Each grade has roughly 5-8 students and there are 2 English teachers (since they are only there 2 days a week), the director of the school who also teachers, one other general teacher, a janitor, and a cook.  Talk about small but I love it and totally feel like a part of the staff already and could not appreciate more how welcoming they all are.  I am also basically a 5 year old when it comes to sports and games and love playing soccer, tag, kickball, and hide n go seek with kids during all their breaks (which are often).  They generally have an hour and a half of class and then a half hour break…I certainly would have liked that schedule when I was in elementary school!

So while I'm not actually teaching, I'm at the schools observing all the classes, getting to know the students, becoming better friends with the teachers, and sometimes I help with pronunciation.  After September I'l hopefully start co-planning and co-teaching the lessons. After school, I generally don't do much in the afternoons since it is just too hot to function.  When it starts getting cooler around 5pm though I usually head out on my bike and say "Adios!" to anyone I see.  Sometimes I run into students and they introduce me to their parents and other times I just smile to the people I pass.  It's my current integration strategy and I think it's working pretty well for now.  I'm just waiting to start getting stopped by these people I say hi to everyday when they finally get curious enough to ask what in the world I'm doing here...

 There may be tons of bugs but at least it's a pretty view on my daily bike rides

First Days in Site

Officially been in site for a little over a week and honestly, it feels much, much longer than that.  For week one, I think I’ve been extremely busy and productive, so that feels great.  I got driven to site by a member of our project team so he could have a chat with my family about the previously mentioned craziness and I certainly think it’s helped a bit.  I’ve been able to leave the house by bike and can take the bus to Santa Cruz by myself, but we’re still not up to letting me go running by myself.  As everyone has been saying about my Spanish, poco a poco (little by little), I’ve certainly adapted that to describing life with the new host family as well.  Just taking it one day at a time.

I arrived last Thursday around dinnertime and Friday morning was up bright an early to head into Santa Cruz for an English festival at the high school.  I met Richard, a fellow PCV, and together we met up with both of my co-teachers.  They introduced me to a friend of theirs who I discovered teaches at a school one town over from where I live, so one conversation later, I had found another co-teacher and another school to go to. Perfect.  When the festival ended we planned to get a ride with the teachers to a town about 10km away where another PCV was having a spelling bee.  Apparently the teachers had another plan and we ended up in the garage of a pottery maker and got to watch him make and explain how he makes pottery all by hand.  It was fascinating and certainly an unexpected adventure.  We did eventually get dropped off at the spelling bee right in time for it to start.  It was good to see a bunch of the Santa Cruz cluster of volunteers and afterwards we headed back into Santa Cruz and waited at a fellow volunteer couple’s house until our buses came (I only have 6 buses a day to and from site) and I was home by 6.  Talk about a long, productive day.

The rest of the week was filled with a student government inauguration at my new school and 2 days of classes at the school in my site.  My day off on Wednesday quickly turned into going to a local university with one of my co-teachers for a workshop instead and it was certainly one of those situations where it was simply good to be seen at compared to actually being useful for me.  It was like being in tech class all over again, which wasn’t so bad until they morphed into a philosophical discussion on teaching which also morphed into them reverting to Spanish.  I could catch a word here and there but I’m not up on my philosophical teaching conversation vocabulary.

 

The week ended with a day at the beach with Richard and Tara in Tamarindo where we thankfully ate non-tico food and conversed in English all day.  While it may have only been just a little over a week in site, it was already a much-needed reprieve.