Hello everybody from San Juan Sur

Thursday March 26, 2009

Well hello everybody from San Juan Sur, Costa Rica! I’m writing from my host family’s house up here in the mountains about 1.5 hours from San Jose (where I will save it to a flash drive until I find some internet). I really lucked out with my living situation in my training community. I live with the principle of the local school Don William, which down here is just about the most respected person in the community. Along with his wife Dona Yorleny and their children Francisco or better known as Franciscito. (Costa Ricans put “ito” or “ita” on just about anything to show that something is small or young) who’s 10 and Nazareth their daughter who’s 14. The family is great, they are as nice as it gets and their food is good as well. I think the mom is trying to fatten me up, but she says that she only has 3 months then I wont be ably to eat much because I will be in a much more rural and poor barrio. I usually eat fresh fruit along with rice, beans (Gallo Pinto) and an egg for breakfast, more rice and beans and a salad for lunch and a small soup or more rice and beans for dinner. Alone with the family is 5 dogs including Bruno my favorite who’s only 3 months old, a parrot, 8 little birds, a rabbit, and 40 chickens / roosters. So as Nazareth put it, their home is a zoo, lol. The house itself is actually very nice for the community, minus the cold showers but I’m getting used to those and even starting to think they’re refreshing. Between our house and the surrounding family members houses we have just about every fruit and vegetable imaginable, and there are lots down here that I have never seen or tasted up in the states.

The Tica mom takes pride in cooking and doing the chores so its fairly hard to even dish my own plate for dinner let alone do my own laundry, she even irons my tee-shirts. But I try to help out as much as possible. Their customs here are much different from those back home. Family comes first here in Costa Rica above all things. For example my immediate family goes to church every Saturday night together, while my host dad’s mom and sisters go Sunday evenings and he gladly drives them and picks them up (a whole half mile away), as well as walks up to his mothers house ever night to talk to her and other family members over cafecito. Even as late as 9:30 after an hour and half bus ride from San Jose he takes most nights of the week because along with being a principle he’s also in Law School studying to be an attorney.

This town is beautiful it sits up in the mountains outside San Jose, which on the other hand is in my opinion ugly, crowded and sketchy for us gringos. Up here we have a supermarket, school, church, and a few little stores, along with even an internet café, which is slower than 56K, if you remember dialup. (WOW a quick interruption, a BIG ASS spider was just crawling up my leg, that’s another thing I have to get used to, lol) So San Juan Sur is the third town in a string on 4 communities that our Rural Community Development program is split up in. There are about 5 trainees in every town. I can fairly easily walk to 2 of the other communities where some of my friends are at, but when people do meet up its usually in my town, because we have the only internet café and its in the middle. My week starts out on Monday and Tuesday with language training in my town where I’m trying to improve my Spanish, which is a necessity if I’m going to be able to interact with the community in my future site. Four other trainees and myself have one language facilitator as the PeaceCorps calls it. Her name is Karla, and she is very supportive and that helps out a lot. It also doesn’t hurt that she is a beautiful 25 year old Tica. Wednesdays myself and the other trainees take the bus to Jerico, the 1st town in our string of communities where we have technical training with the other Rural Development trainees in ingles, which is nice. There we learn more about what rural community development is and usually have a current volunteer tell us about their experience. Then Thursday is back to language training with Karla in San Juan Sur. And Fridays we have to make the journey to San Jose by bus. There we meet for safety training with all 52 trainees in country from all 3 programs. Which is nice to see some other faces that I met and became friends with at the retreat. It’s a relief when I go to San Jose that I’m in the RCD program because I know that I wont have to live in San Jose. The city is not a pretty place and from the sounds of it, it can be more dangerous than the rural areas, and the people aren’t as eager to talk to you. Last Friday we learned about all the horrible things that have happened to volunteers in the past. Its good to learn about because we do stick out like crazy down here and bad things have happened, but its sort of depressing to learn about muggings and sexual assaults on a Friday afternoon. Needless to say as much as everyone wanted a beer in San Jose, we decided to get back to the safety of our RCD communities…

Last Saturday we had more training in San Jose so Sunday was our 1st day off since arriving in Costa Rica. We all were very happy to have it! I started my day a little later around 8:00am, which is surprisingly late with all the noise from the animals (They’re all outside, but between 40 roosters and barking dogs, and the strong Costa Rican sun; that’s late!) I took a jog to the neighboring community, which got the sweat going that makes cold showers more tolerant, a little trick I found out quickly. Then I played a little Soccer with Franciscito. In the Afternoon I met up with a few friends who came in from the neighboring town and went to something similar to a Saturday Market. After that Don William was nice enough to drive the visiting trainees back to their town, which saved them a 20 min walk. He actually took a detour for us and drove 15 min up even further into the mountains to a viewpoint that is up there for one of the best in my life! Miles and miles of rolling Costa Rican mountains, forests, and coffee plantations. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera so I wasn’t able to photograph the view, but it was amazing. While we were there some clouds came in and we could feel the mist as they rolled by, this was the first and only moisture I have felt since arriving. Everyday I would say its around 70-75 degrees and sunny, in the evenings clouds come in and make awesome sunsets in the mountain range, I’ll try to photograph this phenomena but I think that it will be hard to capture it.

Saturday I take a 6 hour bus ride up to a rural coastal town in Guanacaste by my myself to visit a current volunteer and stay with him until Tuesday. This should be an awesome experience to see what an average volunteer’s day is like. I actually met the volunteer last week he happened to be a guest speaker in my training class on Wednesday. He seems like a cool guy so it should be fun, interesting and helpful. I just hope I get there around 5 in the afternoon that’s when Costa Rica plays Mexico in a soccer match, which is one of the most anticipated games of the year. I do know that his sight isn’t too rural and will have tv’s around to watch the game. So ‘si dios quiere’ (if god wants) we’ll be able to watch the game. I’m excited to go to this sight but kind of bummed on the other hand because from what he has told me is its an unusually large community around 2000 people unlike some rural sights that I would have to take a couple hour boat ride to and definitely couldn’t count on a tv, lol. I do have a couple more sight visits in training so I’m sure I will get to see what I can expect to get for my sight. Nevertheless, I’m stoaked for this viaje.