Getting settled in...

Hello and welcome back to my blog, sorry I haven’t updated it since I moved to my town, I’ve been busy and haven’t had the time. I’ve been living here for about 2 months. I’ve gotten to know just about everybody in my town and have started working and trying to find my place here. Which, I am happy to report has gone pretty well. Living in probably least populated PeaceCorps Costa Rica town ever; I was a little worried about how it would work out; it still is a concern but there is surprisingly enough things to do to pass the time, and I’m having a good time doing it. The PeaceCorps is a very interesting experience. I am the English teacher but other than that I don’t really have a job title, but if I were to describe what I do here, I would say that I am a very active member of the community. I have passed the days doing everything from exploring waterfalls to working in the banana, plantain, and coffee farms, to milking and slaughtering cows, repairing the school, working on trucks, killing poisonous snakes, and even fishing just to name a few.

Rural Costa Rica is a beautiful place to live, I wouldn’t trade it for anyplace in the world right now. I miss ya’ll back in Portland and those of you who live elsewhere, but I am truly happy here. Needless to say I miss the shit out of all you as well! I would like to congratulate Lauren and Tim, Alex and Lindsay, and of coarse Brent and Abbey; I would have loved to be at all three of your weddings. You’ll are all great friends, I apologize for missing your big days.

I have made new friends and learned a lot about myself along with the world outside the US. After watching four girls ride one quad together every morning at 5:30 am to get to a neighboring town where they can catch a bus to the high school, I have realized that education in the US is taken for granted. Its interesting how things work here, there is government aid out there for rural Costa Rica but the people have to search and ask for it (usually many times) For example I just finished writing a letter to the government owned electricity and communication company asking for public phone lines. There are no public phones in my town. But there is a program to give all schools phone lines with an emphasis on access to internet for the children, yet if we didn’t write letters asking for these programs that are usually only available in the city it would never happen. I also am in the process of looking for aid to build bridges that the area is lacking along with general road repairs (sometimes the bus that only comes once a week can’t make it to my town because the road or lack there of is in such bad shape, and I end up having to walk to my town anyway). But all in all, the development in Costa Rica has come a long way. Just 10 years ago there wasn’t electricity in my town, now it’s a common commodity that is fairly reliably. I’m also in the process of figuring out how much material cost for a cemetery project we have, I need to know exactly how material and the cost before I can ask the government for help. We’ll see how long it takes for these tasks done, unfortunately I hear that it can be a slow process, but in the mean time, I can soak up all of the beauty and fresh fruit rural Costa Rica has to offer.

Another interesting thing about PeaceCorps in Costa Rica that makes it unique is that CR is a major tourist destination, which in turn means a couple things. For example a good friend and fellow volunteer’s brother is joining the Marines so their family sent him to CR to visit her before boot camp. They went to some national parks and saw a lot of the beauty that CR has to offer, but had an extra day to spare on their trip back to San Jose and the Airport. We got started talking and the next thing I now I hitched a ride out of my town for a couple days and we went bungee jumping. For those of you that know Casey Dale and Bungee.com, he was nice enough to put me in contact with the owner of a 265 ft bridge and got us a killer deal. Needless to say my volunteer lifestyle was lacking a little adrenaline and it was just what I needed. Thanks Casey! After I got that out of my system I made my way back down to the central coast to meet up with a group of 20 or so volunteers in my zone for an annual meeting at a mansion we rented out that has a pool, hot-tub, life-size chess board, and waterfalls on the property. It was pretty amazing and nice to eat something other than rice and beans but after all that excitement I was more than ready to get back to my peaceful tiny town. I don’t believe there are many places in the world where you can live in a very humble but poverty stricken undeveloped town and within hours transform into a tourist that feels like you are in another country, it’s a weird feeling, but can be nice every once in a while for a change.

Well until next time take care,
Pura Vida,
Leif

Finally a volunteen

I can finally say that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, up until Swear-In day on May 29th I was considered an “aspirante” or trainee in English. For those of you who aren’t up to date on who the PeaceCorps functions or have been wondering what the hell I have been doing in Costa Rica, I’ll give a little summary of to what has gone on.

March 10th I flew to Washington DC, where I met the 51 other volunteers in my training class “Tico 19”

March 11th I arrived in Costa Rica and spent one week in a retreat center outside San Jose. This is where we met the Staff and got to know each other a little better. The center is a beautiful complex with sport courts, fields and sits on top of a large hill to overlook a town called Tres Rios. The trees where also home to hundreds of Parrots which I happily listened to every morning.

March 15th I traveled to my training community San Juan Sur. Here my community was in a cluster of 4 training communities separated by level of Spanish and also by program, mine being Rural Community Development. It was in this town that I had Spanish training 3 days a week with the other 3 volunteers (was 4 but one decided to go back to the States). We also traveled one day a week to a neighboring town Jerico for technical training with the other 3 communities. And every Friday we got the painful experience of going to San Jose for Safety and Security training. This on a packed hour and half bus ride usually standing up. In San Jose we learned about earthquakes, floods, diseases, more earthquakes, and diseases. Oh, and sometimes we were lucky enough to get vaccinations during lunch. I would say that I got a good one-hour of useful information each 8 hour day there. During the 11 weeks of training I also visited to current volunteers at their rural sites (neither of which are even close to as rural or small as mine). It was these site visits that I enjoyed most during training, not that there wasn’t good information giving to us during training I just enjoyed being in rural Costa Rica, that’s why I’m here.

May 14th I met my counter-part for my community who happens to be the President of the development association that I will be working with and went to the town for a week. I enjoyed it, went back to my training town for a week to swear-in and now I’m back!

Ok, that should have got you caught up on what the hell I have been doing, basically a lot of BS mixed in with some good training, lol. And now for the next 2 years I will be living in the community of San Luis, Peréz Zeledón. I will be working with the Development Association on a variety of projects and teaching English as well.

As you should be able to see from my photos, I lucked out on the beauty of my site. I definitely have the best view that I have seen in Costa Rica just 20 yards from my house. My town’s name is San Luis outside of San Isidro on the way to Dominical. There’s a 300 ft waterfall that we can see just a couple kilometer walk from my house or I have gotten in the habit of running to it every morning, it takes about 20 minutes. There is also a river on the way to the beach that is good for fishing, or I can go fishing in the Talapia pond a 3 minute walk from my house. My family is super nice, sometimes I go working in the family’s banana or coffee farm. The father is teaching me the guitar, so hopefully in 2 years I will be able to play because, right now I suck… Oh yeah, the town let me on their soccer team. Some of the weekends we go to neighboring towns for town parties and soccer games. They set up a kitchen and bar and all the neighboring towns come to socialize, play soccer and it’s actually a pretty fun time.

So other than that I am just trying to get to know everybody in town before I can really start doing anything. I have a community assessment project to do in my first 3 months here, I have to interview basically everybody in town and go to town meetings to figure out what they want to improve in their community. The only bummer in my town is its size. To have a development association you need 100 members and to get any government funds or to receive a PeaceCorps Volunteer you need the association. Well, my town has it but in order to receive it they formed an association with 2 neighboring towns, which sucks for me! In my town I have counted 11 families so far, so the nice thing is I will be able to get to know everybody in my town easily. The bummer is the walk to the other towns, Ceibo and Morete. Ceibo is actually bigger than my town and want me to work with their school as well but I hope to wait till a get a horse or something to make the walk easier. Also the climate is changing to the raining season. So every morning it is beautiful and sunny, by the afternoon I can’t see 20 yards in front of me because the fog is so thick and the evening is filled with strong thunder showers along with the heaviest downpours I have ever seen. It’s actually relaxing and I enjoy the storms, assuming I am inside…


Now that I am done with training, I can finally start the real process of being a PeaceCorps Volunteer. Its something that I have wanted to do for well over a year and now I can make it happen. This comes as a bitter sweet feeling, although this has been a dream of mine, the reality of isolation starts to set in. Up intil this point I have been surrounded around some people that I now call close friends. We`ve had some good times together and for the majority of these volunteers, I probably wont see but a couple times a year. However I am sure when we do meet up it will be filled with more good times.
Well, until next time,

Tenga un buen día

Pura Vida, Leif

I know where to call home for the next 2 years, finnaly!

Hello and welcome back, I’m sitting at my training community’s house writing from here for the last time. The last couple of weeks have gone by very fast and I’m happy to say that I know where to call home for the next 2 years. Friday I will swear-in and become a PeaceCorps Volunteer and the next Monday I will arrive at my site. Training has been a long, frustrating and fun process; but I am very ready to move on. I have made some great friendships that I will feed off of for the next 2 years but I came here to live among the locals and learn from them as well as help them and training is just prolonging that process.

My community’s name is San Luis and is located in the mountains above Punta Uvita and Parque Ballena (whale’s park) which is a beautiful part of Costa Rica. My family has the only Pulperia (tiny store that sells everything from gas to rice and flour) in town just up a small hill about 25 yards from our house where you can see this awesome part of the Costa Rican coast. If you haven’t googled Punta Uvita you should! Other than the Pulperia the town has a small one-room school with 11 students up to the 6th grade. If I had to guess I would say there is about 50 people in my community, but I will be working with the Development Association from 2 other towns as well. Unfortunately most students can’t continue their education in high school due to the lack of transportation. In fact there are only 5 students from my town that attend high school. There is one boy who has a dirtbike and can ride the 15 kilometers on a dirt and sometimes very muddy road. The other 4 girls share a quad and pack all four on it at once. Seeing how difficult it is just to get to high school really makes one realize how much we take our education for granted in the US. Transportation is an issue for me as well, which the director of my program said was one reason why I have a very difficult site, but I’m up for the challenge. I have bus service to my town once a week on Monday’s assuming the rain isn’t too hard and hasn’t washed away the road. The bus passes by at 5:50am and leaves San Isidro at 2:00pm to get me home around 4:00pm. Tuesday through Saturday there is also one bus roundtrip but to the neighboring town which is about an hour and half walk and there is no bus service on Sunday. The good news is that my host dad has to buy supplies in San Isidro once a week for the Pulperia or I can hitch a ride with one of the many Gringos that live around my community and have farms in the area and are stoaked that I am here to help the community they have been living here for years and employ some of the community.

My host family seems real sincere, the father is a hard working Campesino named Emilio. Him and his 7 brothers have coffee and banana farms that they work together as well as produce many other fruits and vegetables on a personal farm. I drink café every morning, which they make all in the home. My host mom Rita is Native so she speaks another language as well as Spanish and I have a little host sister named Melissa who is a pretty awesome 10 year old. She is one of the 11 students at the school and is excited to learn English (we already started a little) I have a 21 year old host brother named Denier who is married, he and his wife live about a half mile away but came over almost every night in the week I was there. They really like Monopoly so we played that a couple nights last week. That brother didn´t go to school after the six grade but works in the finca with his dad and uncles, there is another brother named Danier who is 19 years old and did go to the high school and a received scholarship for one of the best universities in Costa Rica for engineering and lives with distant family in Cartago. Along with that my dad is one of 13 children ranging from mid early 20s to mid 40s so I have a large new family that has been very accommodating. I also was able to go fishing in the family´s Talapia fish pond that they built 4 years ago, which is something I see myself doing quite often. A larger fish farm for the community is also one of the plans for me to help out with along with being the English teacher among other things. While I was there I helped my dad collect a semi truck full of bananas which was a good work out as well as use a chainsaw and hammer to help my brother build a green house which was fun. My host aunt who is 23 took me on a hike to see a water fall that was very pretty, unfortunately I didn´t bring my camera so you´ll have to wait for photos. That night I woke up to feel something on my thigh, when I could feel that it was stuck in my skin I knew it could be only one thing; a tick. I got up turned on the light and had the pleasure of pulling out and killing it. After seeing it in light I realized the color and shape and lack of little legs wasn´t ticklike but yet some other nasty little insect that I didn´t want in my body… But other than that experience all was great! lol

The house I will be living at is very simple and kept very clean for being not fully enclosed. The floor is cement and there isn´t a ceiling just the tin roof that is kinda fun for listening to the winter rain shows at night. Unfortunately, the walls don´t go all the way up so lights and noises are shared throughout the whole house which is interesting, lol. The kitchen is partially outside as well and they use a wood stove for cooking. But it is a very peaceful place that I think I will enjoy very much. The other morning I grabbed a ripe mango from the tree outside our house and sat in a chair over looking the sea and just listened to the tucans and howler monkeys, ate my mango and drank my home made coffee as I realized this will be my home for the next 2 years of my life and got a big smile on my face. So as for now I am excited to swear-in get back to my site and get to know the community a little more, and see where it takes me!
-until then, take care

Sight Visit

I returned from my technical visit today and it was by far the highlight of training to this point. I spent a week at a volunteer’s community near Los Chiles in northern Costa Rica. Her town is typical campo; small rural and wonderful. A town with all the necessities, a school, health center that’s open a couple days out of the month, one payphone, and 2 extremely small stores called pulperias. I stayed with a mother named Yorlone, Farther named Ruiz and their three year old named Olsvaldo. The majority of production that takes place there is cheese, yucca, and pineapple, along with other fruits and vegetables. As I look back on the week, I don’t think it could have gone better.

The first morning I was awaken by the very strange and unmistakable sound of the Mono Congos around 5:00am, having been informed that there were Holler Monkey in the area I did what any person who had never seen a monkey in the wild before would; I went searching. And to my surprise with less than a 5 min walk I was right underneath a tree with 5 monkeys. (You should be able to see some pics) I also got the experience of milking cows, which if you haven’t done; it takes practice, making cheese, teaching English, practicing Spanish at the local school and giving self esteem / non-violence talks at the school as well. There’s only one small elementary school in the community. Kelsey the volunteer has helped bring a night high school to town twice a week but this is still a new concept of theirs. Most kids don’t go to school after 6 grade, which is quite sad. I also passed time by riding horses, swimming in the river, and jumping from vines into the river. It was amazing, and the last night after a tour of the jungle like atmosphere, the townspeople were nice enough to have a special dinner with carne asada that they got from a cow who conveniently for us died last week, lol. My family was super nice to me and saying good bye was hard for them, minus their volunteer, I was probably the second American they have gotten to know; that’s how rural this place is.

I know that my positive experience in her community is a reflection of the work and help she has put in. I only hope to have as well as relationships in my town that she enjoys in her community. This experience couldn’t have come at a better time. As some of you know the 29th was the 7th year anniversary of my brothers passing. It is a day that no matter how much time passes or where I am in my life; I remember and dislike. Usually, I am somewhere where I can have a beer with family and or friends, and even if we don’t talk about that day, it helps. This year was different, but not in a bad way, I might not have been with family but I was in a truly beautiful place to do some remembering as well as some good reflecting about my upcoming 2 years as a PeaceCorps Volunteer which leads to this Friday the 8th of May; my sight-assignment day; where I will learn exactly where I will be calling home for the next 2 years. Its crazy to think about, but I can’t wait. To celebrate sight assignment day, we rented a huge house with a pool this Saturday at Jaco Beach, which should be a kick ass time in itself, lol. Well until then, peace!

Tortillas, flowers, cofee, and Cock fighters

Agnostic Gringo in Costa Rica during Semana Santa

Well to start out, I hope everybody had a nice Easter with family, friends, or loved-ones. I wish I could have teleported myself home to eat some good old mom’s cooking; I’m sure it was great mom! But there will be many more Oregon Easters to come so missing one or two will not be the end of the world. Anyway, on to my stories; I’m looking at this experience as an opportunity to try new things and see others’ perspective on life, so I’m keeping an open mind and jumping in headfirst. So as holy week approached I was invited to partake in traditional Costa Rican holy week activities, which I gladly accepted. The Sunday before I went to my host relatives home in a somewhat more rural area to make Miel de Cheverre and miel de coco (2 delicious customary Tico desserts) Cheverre is a vegetable that most likely resembles a watermelon from the outside and inside is stringy unflavored substance. We took machetes to the cheverres and got all the eatable substance into a huge caste iron wok looking thing that was filled with water and built a fire underneath it. We let that boil for a good 45 mins occasionally stirring it and then emptied the water. Next we put about a kilo of dulce (basically brown sugar) in with the Cheverre and stoked the fire once again. We walked through their garden and collected some orange tree leaves and cloves to add to the sweet mixture. We let that cook for a while and finally removed the leaves to get to the finished product; which my host cousin and I happily licked each leaf like it was a spoon with batter from cookies back home. My cousin´s name is Puala she´s studying pharmacy in the University. Her family is real nice, her dad owns a coffee plantation and that night we watched Slumdog Millionaire (translated to “Quien Quiere Ser un Milionario” who wants to be a millionaire) which I hadn’t seen and was really good even dubbed in Spanish, no wonder it won all those Oscars! Later we made Empanadas de Cheverre and put it also on Arroz con Leche (rice with milk), which was muy rico.

Costa Rica happens to be a Catholic country so holy week is no god damn joke; they have the entire week off. No school all week and the few businesses that are open, are only open till Wednesday. After that the busses don’t even run. This might be one example of why things just take longer to get accomplished down here; the pace is much slower. Unfortunately the United States Government doesn’t agree so we had training until Wednesday. It was nice to have some time off, some friends and myself jugamos bola (played soccer) and Frisbee in the local field. I also used this opportunity to spend more time in a church than I have my entire life, minus skate church of course. I’ll be honest here, I lied to my host family; my uncle asked me if I believed in god in a manner that there was only one right answer. He asked this after just talking about how loco somebody was in the community for being 7th day adventagist, how Jewish people are weird and wrong for not believing Jesus is their savoir, and how gay people are going to hell. I saw how incredibly closed minded he was so the last thing I wanted was to stir up a lecture on religion; so I said, “of coarse I believe in god”. When in reality I don’t really think I believe in shit! Why should I believe in Christ, Buddha, Allah, or the Feathered Serpent (the Mayan god, who had a more concise calendar than we use now thousands of years ago) In my personal opinion religions are foretold by a combination of factors including; location, genealogy, and social-economic status. Take Costa Rica for example; this region was conquered by catholic missionaries and religion has been passed down from family to family. Let’s not forget that it is a relatively poor country. It’s no coincidence that developing nations have a higher amount of religious constituents. There are indigenous communities in parts of the world who do not know who Jesus Christ is, and that is just fine. They do not need to be saved; they’ve gotten this far, they’re doing all right. As for gays, I think that their desires are weird and different, but it shouldn’t condemn them by any means. I am fully aware that this is a huge stereotype, but I had to say it anyway. Probably for the fact that I sit back and watch people prejudge others here on their religion, which I do not agree with. What really matters is the quality of your character, and that can originate in any religion or non-at all. This is also not to say that the Catholic religion is not a positive aspect here, I just had to rant for a bit. On the contrary, the vast majority of people in semi-rural Costa Rica that I have met show very positive morals, many that far exceed those of my own. All in all, my religious experience here has been interesting, I have no idea when to sit or stand in church, went on four processions, two of which depicted the crucification of Jesus. One guy walked about a mile with a large wooden cross on his back and then they actually put him on an even bigger cross, minus the nails of course. And this was in the heat of the Costa Rican sun. (I should have pics showing this) In the end the processions were actually very interesting and I am glad that I got to see them, it was an experience that I won’t soon forget. I did have a funny incident that occurred during this holy week; after going to “bastante” masses at the church one day we decided to play some ball in the local field, afterwards we went to the “Super Corazon de Jesus” (Super Heart Of Jesus) the local grocery store get something to drink. And a beer sounded mighty nice, but unfortunately I was unaware that it is illegal to sell beer or booze during holy week. This was a big bummer; but I survived.

Ok enough holy week talk… Going back to a week ago Saturday, I got my first tourist experience in Costa Rica. My host dad being the director of the school had planned a fundraiser to go to Jaco beach. If you don’t know what Jaco beach is its one of the more popular beach destinations in Costa Rica and filled with gringos. He told me about it a few weeks prior and said there were some open spots so I should invite some other trainees. Not wanting to over extend the welcome I told two other trainees about it and they were excited to finally get to see the beach. I had actually gone to a beach in Guanacaste the week before while visiting a volunteer in his site, but this would be for the entire day. To my surprise my host dad informed me that there were 12 spots on the bus and he wanted me to fill them, so I was able to invite 9 more people to spend the day at the beach. So my friends were pretty stoked with me and more importantly my host dad. It was a 4 hour bus ride each way and we left at 4:30 in the morning but all totally worth it. The water was warm and the sun was even hotter. We tried to keep as much Peace Core issued 30-sun screen on as possible but inevitable some of us gringos got burnt, my back was a little pink, but others turned out like a lobsters. At lunch I got some ice cream with some friends and enjoyed some shade. We got talking about how weird it felt to be in probably the touristiest beach in Costa Rica. Up until this day, we had been kept so busy that we had not been able to experience any of the tourist spots. Even there in Jaco Beach where we probably heard more English than Spanish it was weird because we might have looked like tourists, but we’re not and we’ll be here for another two plus years. Which is crazy to think but also great to know I should have time to see some of Costa Rica’s beauty. Around 4:00pm I decided to pay about a dollar to rinse off the sticky salt water and sand that I had been playing in all day and decided to have a cold beer with a friend before sitting in the bus for four more hours. I don’t think one beer had ever tasted so good!

The other day I was over at a fellow trainee’s house named Kyle but the town has renamed him el gigante (the giant) because he’s 6’5’’ which is taller than 99.9% of ticos. He’s got a cool family as well, his host sister speaks really good English and has been in the US a few times; she’s a manager for HP computers and only 26 years old. Her older brother lives behind their house in a house that would be considered nice in US standards and likes to plays soccer with us. Ricardo’s twin daughters are 11 years old and along with the grandma are probably the cutest people I have met. They also took pleasure in showing us their neighbor’s gallinos de pelea (Cock fighters) and explained how the neighbors fight and sell the roosters. Cock fighting is illegal in Costa Rica but this isn’t the first time I have heard about it, so I’m not sure how much that rule is enforced. (I should also have some pics of the roosters)

Well that’s what I have been up to lately so nothing too exciting but I’m still enjoying it! This Saturday I am looking forward to a dinner dedicated to welcoming our training group and saying goodbye to Tico 16 a group that is finishing their service. Afterwards we all rented rooms at a hotel in San Jose called the Royal Dutch, which is supposed to be a great time when all three groups get together, there’ll be about 100 of us gringos there. On the second floor there’s a casino and a bar on the third floor so needless to say it shouldn’t be too hard to have a good time. All right, until next time, pura vida mae!

Tuesday, March 31

Tuesday March 31, 2009

Well, I made it back from my first sight visit with no problems and had a great experience! Saturday morning I took a 4-hour bus from San Jose to Liberia the Capital of the Guanacaste region, which here in Costa Rica is there Cowboy country. The bus ride was nice, a 27 year old Tica named Marybeth sat next to me, who was on her way to Coco beach where she lives and goes to college. She was very nice like many Costa Ricans I have met and while I wasn’t able to sleep the conversation in Spanish was pleasant. At the end of the bus ride she gave me her email address and phone number and preceded to tell me to call her if I’m ever near Coco Beach, which I thought was very nice of her. From there I switched busses and made my way to Cuajiniquil a rural fishing village in the northwest part of the country only about a half hour from the boarder of Nicaragua. This is where a current volunteer was waiting for me. His name is Rob and he has been in Costa Rica for about a year in the same program as myself. So it was nice to get an idea of some of the things I could be doing in my future site.

Upon arriving at the fishing village Rob asked if I would be interested in watching the Mexico vs Costa Rica soccer game, which I gladly obliged. We ended up getting invited to the local bar to watch the game with a local fisherman named Cola who is also part of the development committee and has befriended Rob. Unlike most Ticos Cola is a big man; well over 6 ft tall and broad shouldered. During and after the game we chatted over some beers with Cola and some other locals. Trying to understand slang fishermen bar talk was somewhat challenging but a good experience. Throughout the night I was taught to pretty funny Costa Rican sayings that I will not soon forget. Although it was a fun night, Costa Rica lost. Towards the end of the night we were invited to a development meeting in the morning so we elected to call it a night so that we could wake up without a hangover for the meeting. We tried to split the tab, but Cola would not have it and payed for all of our beers, unnecessary but a nice gesture.

Sunday morning we went to the 9am meeting at another fisherman’s house at 9:30 to be on Tico time(Ticos are notorious for being late); where there were 8 people discussing different upcoming projects. The most interesting was a project that will help the community with tourism. They are receiving 4 boats that have been donated to put into use as scuba diving and snorkeling tour boats. I had heard about these Costa Rican meetings where people just sit around and talk for a few hours over coffee and snacks but don’t get a lot accomplished except for planning another meeting. So it was a good experience to see first hand.

Afterwards we made it back to Rob’s house where we where trying to cool off in the shade of his front porch (Guanacaste is also one of the hottest regions in Costa Rica) when a truck pulled up looking for us. It was a man named Alvero (but he said I could just call him Al, lol) He has to be the funniest Tico I have met. He reminded me of Ed Brower for those of you that know Ed; you probably get the idea. Al and his wife own the one hotel in town that is a nice little bungalow kind of thing that specializes in snorkeling, kyaking, and other tours. He had a busy night the night before at his hotel but all his clients had left that morning so he was looking at it like a day off. His wife had left to go hike the tallest pike in Costa Rica Mt. Chirripò where on a clear day you can see both the Pacific and Caribbean seas (A goal of mine). We didn’t have much planned for the afternoon so it wasn’t to hard to convince us to come back to his hotel and sit outside in the shade to watch the Brazil vs Ecuador soccer on his flat screen tv game and drink Casique with him. It turned into a very enjoyable and needed afternoon with some delicious shrimp pasta, sediche (a lime cured fish platter), and guaro. Al even tried to get us to stay in one of the air-conditioned rooms, although tempting in the 90-degree weather, we elected not to. He also wanted to take us out snorkeling the next day but we had work to do. So we said our goodbyes and walked back to the house I was staying at to take a cold shower before trying to sleep in the blistering heat.

Monday Morning we had to take some blue prints for the community center into Liberia to the DINADECO office. DINADECO is the national development association that gives money to a lot of development projects in Costa Rica. They will be my counter-part and a very good resource to get to know for my own experience. So needless to say I was happy to go to the office and get some sort of an idea of how things work. We brought the plans that Rob has be working on and just got the money approved to start the construction. I enjoyed learning about this sort of infrastructure project, and could see myself helping on a similar project if necessary in my future community.

Around the heat of the day we arrived back in Cuajiniquil and took the employee at the DINADECO office’s advice and made our way to the beach! It’s about a half hour walk so we were very ready to jump in the ocean once I saw it! The beach we went swimming at was another beautiful Costa Rican view of a national park and an island that would have made a great picture. I even brought my camera this time but realized when I went to take a picture that although I had brought the camera I left my memory card in my lap top back at my host family’s house so that was a disappointment. After swimming a baking in the sun for a couple hours we decided to make our way back to town to prepare for and English class we were supposed to teach. The walk back made us pretty thirsty and we were looking forward to chugging some water when we got back to the house, unfortunately this rural town has some problems and one of them is that sometimes you cant count on having running water. And that was the case when we got back. Luckily there was a bottle in the fridge, but we would have had a couple more glasses if there was more. Hydration is a concern for me, it seems like the locals in Costa Rica don’t drink any water only coffee and refresco, or agua dulce (a sugary water drink that I’m not a fan of). And personally I drink a ton of water and I think my host family thinks this is weird that I would rather have water than a sugared down refresco, lol. Anyway the point being, I’m trying to stay as hydrated as possible.

So Monday evening as we were preparing English class with no running water, when power went out. So some of the problems that plague the poorer parts of Costa Rica are unstable power and water systems. I have seen power surges at my host family’s home and at the retreat center but this time it was more like a long nap than a surge. The lights went off around 5pm and didn’t come back on till after 9pm. Needless to say we weren’t able to teach an English class, when the lights go out people don’t really do much of anything, so we sat around Monday night talking to some locals in the dark.

Tuesday morning I woke up and made my way back to San Jose by about 2:00pm. I stepped out of the bus terminal and thought to myself, “wow, it looks like it might rain”. And sure shit, it did, hard! Luckily for some reason I packed a light rain jacket that was easily accessible and that came in handy. It didn’t help that I was wearing shorts and Chaco’s. I had about 15 blocks to walk from the bus terminal to a different bus stop that would get me back to my community of San Juan Sur. It rained the entire walk and my shorts were soaked, but my jacket did its job and my backpack got its first passing test in a tropical rainstorm. I did learn that standing in soaking wet shorts for an hour and half packed bus ride is not fun. But there happened to be about 10 other trainees who had made it back from their trips to different parts of Costa Rica who were just as uncomfortable as me. It was interesting to hear how they liked their visits to other volunteers as well and I think the consensus was that the majority had positive trips, so that was reassuring.

All in all, I had a great weekend! I traveled by myself to a rural community to see some positive things that the PeaceCorps does. Not to mention I saw a community who had completely accepted a gringo, which is comforting and a future concern of mine. As well as got a chance to relax and have a little fun, which was really necessary since they have been keeping us real busy in training. I just hope that when I get my assignment I will be accepted and help make a difference with my community. Ok, I have rambled on enough…
-Hope you enjoyed it!