Mañana por la Mañana

April 23, 2009

I have developed an early morning tradition that I like very much. For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to the local stadium with my host mom and her friend to do exercise. My hurt hip struggles through the walk there, and then my host mom and her friend use the long walking path while I jump rope and do strength training exercises on a big open court that faces the mountains. The other day I got two of the other gringos from my program to come to, so hopefully it will turn into a big group thing after a while. It’s also allowed me to develop a closer relationship with my host mom’s friend, Angie, who is wonderful. She and her 4-year-old daughter, Paulina, came over the other night to get haircuts from my host mom. I was thrilled because Paulina, who up until this point had been silent whenever I asked her anything, finally decided to come out of her shell. Actually, it was more like she ripped her shell off like Party Boy, hurling it into a screaming crowd, because once this girl got started there was no stopping her. She literally asked me questions for over 3 hours…without stopping. I loved it because I rarely get to hang out with younger kids here, and if there is one thing I have patience for it is inquisitive children.

I leave for a one week site visit tomorrow and return one week later. Our schedule is going to be PACKED, so I´m hoping to return with lots of good stories to tell. Paz!!!

Whoa, Nelly...

April 18, 2009

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
-Confucius

We are expected to swallow an incredible amount of information (and starchy foods) during the course of our training, and this quote rings true with respect to what information I am actually able to retain. The next three weeks are going to be the most intense thus far, so I figured I’d try to sum it all up, at least in order to get it all straight in my own head.

Tomorrow, the 4 other trainees in my Spanish class and I will be facilitating a community analysis with an 8th grade civics class of 40 students. This would be a relatively difficult task for me in English, so I won’t lie, I’m a little nervous about doing it in Spanish. Just to add to the good times, our boss will be there to evaluate us. We still need to fit in two more sessions with this group and carry out a community service project with them before training is over, but our training schedule is packed to the brim so I’m not entirely sure how that will happen, but I’m sure it will.

Next week I will be visiting 2 current volunteers who live near Buenos Aires, in the province of Puntarenas (relatively close to Panama). We will stay with families in Térraba (a rural town with a high indigenous population) for the first 3 nights, and then move in with other host families in Santa Cruz (a more urban town walking distance from the center of Buenos Aires) for the last 3 nights. We are being matched with different groups in the communities for our nonformal educational activities that we have been planning for the last couple of weeks. My friend Jon and I will be doing a workshop on the importance of exercise, and teaching kids how to play the greatest basketball game of all time, Knock-Out (some people who are not so smart call it Lightening). If you do not know this game, you should be sad. In order to stop being sad, I’m going to have to insist that you go find a 10-year-old, or anyone who I ever went to elementary school with, and learn it…like, now…I’ll wait here.

We also have two other projects going on right now. One is a complete analysis of our training communities, which will be our largest project before swearing in, and the other is a detailed report of all of our training projects, including their objectives, methodologies, and outcomes. These are both due right after we get back from our site visits, the first week of May. After that, we are almost home free (in terms of training, that is). There are of course those 24 months of service, but there will actually be some stability in our lives at that point. By the way, May 8th is the most anticipated day of training, and perhaps the most anticipated date during our 27 months in country, because we find out our future sites. The whole day is apparently spent at this big park/retreat place with all kinds of fun outdoorsy stuff to do. A group of us decided to head to the beach the following day to celebrate, and take advantage of the one free night we get out of site during these 3 months.

After receiving our site placements, we meet our new bosses in San Jose, and then travel with them to visit our future homes for a week. When we return to our training communities we will only have about 2 weeks left before our final evaluations and swearing in ceremony. I will officially move to my 2-year site on May 30th (my birthday)!!!

Distracto Land

April 14, 2009

Disclaimer: I love my host family dearly. I wouldn’t change a thing about my life here even if I could, because everything I complain about is simply part of this experience and my adjustment to a new culture.

I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for real. When I am doing work, I need to have no distractions in order to be productive. This is a problem because I live in Costa Rica, with a Costa Rican family, and the only place I have to do work is my house. I would stroll over to the nearest coffee shop or library to do work, but those places don’t exist here. Right now, I am trying to complete a project that is due tomorrow, but there are several factors impeding my progress. First of all, there is raggaeton playing almost all day. I like raggaeton, but I also like variety, and sometimes I even like silence. Secondly, when you live in a house as small as mine, if anyone is talking they might as well be talking to you. Third, someone is always talking to you. Fourth, people here do not talk to each other across rooms. Instead, if they need to tell you something, no matter how insignificant it is, they call for you to come to them. Therefore, I never sit for more than 2 minutes without someone either entering my room to tell me something or someone calling me into the other room to say something like, “Look at this star I just stuck on my wall.” Finally, my bed is my desk, which means I typically want to fall asleep 5 minutes after sitting down to work. Fortunately, I am usually able to stay awake because once I lie down I am reminded that it is actually not at all comfortable and smells like feet.

One of my puppies (who are just now starting to walk a little bit) is sleeping on my bed, so I’m happy again. He is so cute I don’t really care if this project gets done anymore.

Scary Papa Tico

April 11, 2009

I never watch scary movies, ever. So, when my host mother asked me if I wanted to watch Disturbia with her at 11pm on Friday night, my initial thought was, “No, gracias.” Ever since arriving here, however, I have felt compelled to take part in every new experience that presents itself, so I ignored my dislike for being terrified and hesitantly agreed to join Mama Tica.

In spite of the fact that she managed to make the setting as scary as possible by turning off all the lights, and making me jump every now and then for her own entertainment, we had a really good time. Then, at the very end of the movie, when all of the violence and suspense and horror was at its peak, someone suddenly jumped in front of the window directly behind us and shook the iron bars while yelling and screaming!!!! Who else but Papa Tico, who knew we were watching a scary movie. What a jerk. I screamed an obscene phrase that he had taught me earlier in the day, and Mama Tica and I started to laugh so hard that we were both sopping with tears and could hardly breathe. That was definitely the hardest I’ve laughed since I’ve been here, and seeing as laughing or making others laugh is basically my favorite past time, I see that as a rather significant event.

Holy week is finally over, which makes me happy because it means the grocery stores will be open again and I can buy fruit. The entire country basically shuts down and everyone either stays home and does nothing, goes to processions that take entirely too long and involve walking at a pace that is so slow it hurts, or they go to the beach. I was privy to the first two of those three options. While I’m glad I had an authentic Holy Week experience, I have no need to desire to ever experience it again. This time, in 2010, I will be at the beach.

Hot, Wet, Stanky, Garbage

April 10, 2009

I would like to take a moment to talk about garbage disposals, which are basically the most amazing invention in the world, and I might miss them more than I miss my own family right now. In my house here in Fatima, the fact that garbage is only picked up once per week means the garbage in the garbage can is only taken outside once per week. This mode of thinking, combined with the fact that EVERYTHING goes into the garbage, means the entire house smells for the majority of the week. Perhaps even more disturbing than the ever-present stank is the fact that heat exudes from the can every time you open it. It is a hot, stanky, mess. I’ve offered to take the garbage outside but my host mom’s response is that the garbage is only picked up on Wednesdays, so it would naturally be silly to take it out any other time. The garbage situation is also McNasty because the only other garbage can, which is in the bathroom, is also only taken out once. This would be perfectly normal except that here we cannot put our toilet paper in the toilet, so…I don’t think I really have to explain that any further.

Here are some other things I am missing right now:

1. Choosing the food that I eat

2. Running, Swimming, Cycling

3. Spending time with people I know really well

4. Coaching soccer

5. Going to the gym

6. Sushi

7. Libraries and bookstores

8. Clean dogs

9. My Blackberry (I may be shallow, but at least I’m honest)

10. Hip Hop dance class

11. Putting my toilet paper in the toilet

12. Stores that have everything I need, for cheap (stuff here is expensive, especially when you don’t get paid for your job)

Ok, now that I’m thoroughly depressed, I’ll list some things I don’t miss about the States, which make me happy to be here:

1. Individualistic culture

2. Wasting food, materials, energy, and space

3. Living more than walking distance from family/friends

4. Not appreciating everything in the moment

5. Having more clothes and possessions than I know what to do with

There may not be as many of these, but I would argue that they are slightly more profound than the items on the first list. The stuff I miss is nice and all, but I can get along just fine without it for a couple of years. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a way to make some of those things a part of my life over here as well.

You´ve Heard This One Before

April 9, 2008

When we read or hear about experiences abroad, the stories often include the foreigner randomly being invited into the home of a native, who immediately treats the new visitor like a family. We’ve all heard this story or told it ourselves, and even though it is basically the same story just told with different characters and settings, it never ceases to fascinate us. In the States, we don’t invite random people into our homes. We don’t answer the door for people we don’t know. We use caller ID and don’t answer the phone for people we don’t know. We’re too “busy.”

Now, I haven’t had this experience of being invited to a random person’s home, I just felt like bringing it up….Sike, that would just be weird. I’ve actually had it happen a couple of times, but this was the best one so far. Here’s what happened: Last Saturday, I went with my host mom to the Catholic Church in San Lorenzo, which is a town next to ours. She teaches Catechism to 12-year-olds there each week. On that particular day, the teachers had not prepared any lessons because the kids were going to be watching a movie about Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is going on right now. Unfortunately, the open air salon where they were showing the movie does not exactly have the best acoustics, so no one in the group of over sixty children could hear the movie. Now, I don’t know a lot, but I do know that 60 children + a failed activity + no backup plan = a big disaster. Kids were talking, playing, fighting, and running all over the place, while most of the adults looked for other jobs to do, obviously trying to exempt themselves from the job of disciplinarian. As an outsider, coming in for the first time, I was not about to start giving my opinion of the situation, so I just painfully observed. Finally, and much to everyone’s relief, the adults just let the kids run around and play outside until it was time for them to leave.

I spent most of this time talking to a 9-year-old boy, named Josef. He obviously wanted to practice his English, which is pretty common here, but he was much more inquisitive and less shy about it than other children (or even adults). I could tell from the moment we started talking that this boy was different. There was intensity in his desire to learn, not just about English, but about everything. He wanted to know about American culture, history, politics, and he wanted to share with me what he knew about his own culture. After talking for about an hour, we went outside where most of the kids were playing. Josef joined a big group of boys playing soccer in a big jumbled mess, with no goals or teams. I decided to ask the boys if I could join in, and they of course thought this was hilarious and were more than happy to oblige. Once I got the ball, I figured it would be fun (at least for me and all the girls watching) to give them a little machismo antidote. In my flip flops and work clothes, I managed to school about half of the 40 or so boys before my host father came to pick me up. As I was saying goodbye I was giggling to myself because all the boys were looking at me like I was an alien, with dropped jaws and wide eyes. I should be clear and explain that this is not because I am an exceptionally good soccer player. The machismo culture that exists here gives girls no reason to play soccer, so the fact that a grown, female gringa would not only ask to play with them, but actually hang in there with these boys was pretty shocking. It was a good time, and is in fact related to randomly being invited over to someone’s house (I haven’t forgotten then point of the story…yet).

That night, I received a call from my host mom’s boss from the church. She said that the aunt of one of the students called her and wanted to contact me about possibly coaching soccer with a group of women in the town. I was very surprised but definitely interested. I called the woman and it turns out she was the aunt of Josef. Her name is Doña Zaida, and she invited me to her house that night to celebrate her birthday with their family, but I couldn’t go so we made plans for last night. Doña Zaida’s daughter, Margarita, and Josef met me at the church and we walked to their house together. In spite of the fact that I had never met them, and am still struggling in many respects to speak their language, they could not have been more gracious or made me feel more comfortable. At the house I met the rest of the family, and over a dinner of cold ham sandwiches (with extra mayo and ketchup of course), we talked for nearly 5 hours about just about everything. Doña Zaida and Margarita (who was my age) had gone to the Women’s World Cup in 2003, and were eager to show me all of their autographs and photos from the trip. It never came up that they wanted me to coach any group of women, so I have no clue how that idea ever surfaced, but they are going to help me network in the community in order to find groups for the various projects we need to complete while in training. They also invited me to a concert next week and to go to the northern part of the country to visit more of their family. Although there won’t be time for those trips during my training, I’m looking forward to making plans with them once I am moved into my 2-year site.

Today and the rest of Holy Week will be spent with my host family, and doing several PC projects that we have due next week. In our CYF program meeting last Wednesday people stated to realized just how much they are expecting us to get done in the next couple of weeks, and that it is virtually impossible. We are kind of a guinea pig training class, because they have implemented a more thorough and demanding program for us to complete before we can swear in as volunteers. In typical Peace Corps fashion, we will make things happen with what we have available to us, but I honestly have no clue how it will all get done. Right now I need to go to the grocery store because there is no toilet paper in the house, which makes me feel sad and helpless when I need to use the bathroom. Why not use paper towels or tissues, you might ask. Yeah, we don’t have those.

One month down, twenty-six to go…

April 8, 2009

I have now been in country for one month, which is strange because I definitely feel like I have been here longer. In spite of this feeling, each day passes very quickly. I only have 2 more months left in training, which is exciting because I’m eager to get to my site, but also sad because I get closer to my family here in Fatima every day. I told my host mother today that I cannot imagine being closer to another family here in Costa Rica, and that it will truly be difficult to leave so quickly.

Last week I decided to start jotting down random thoughts in a little notebook that I carry with me everywhere. Instead of making sense out of them, I’ve decided to just share them here. Here’s a little sample of what goes through my mind during a typical training week:

1. Jumping rope may be boring, but it will make your arms pretty.
2. My back patio smells like poop, baking in the sun. That is probably because there is a lot of dog poop out there, and it is baking, all day, in the sun.
3. Anyone who ever said that Peace Corps Costa Rica is “not the real Peace Corps” has no idea what they are talking about. The Costa Rica that you saw on vacation is not the Costa Rica known to its inhabitants, and the jobs we are expected to do over here are no joke. While teaching people to brush their teeth is extremely important, that isn’t exactly what we’re doing over here. Oh, and international development is hard…I learned that the other day.
4. If my Spanish improves enough, I feel confident that I can be a successful volunteer here. Anyone who knows me also knows that I don’t usually make those kinds of admissions.
5. I want to talk to friends and family at home, but it can be frustrating because there is no way to truly describe what our lives are like during training, and it can be difficult to relate to anyone that is not here.
6. Our medical officer (i.e. the doctor for all PCVs in Costa Rica) led a session on common diseases the other day. She is completely adorable and brilliant, and her broken English often produces my favorite quote of the day. While showing us a frequency chart of diseases contracted by PCVs in Costa Rica compared to PCVs in other countries she said, “You will see that we are winning in the gina-cological conditions.” I would be perfectly happy listening to her all day long.
7. The houses here have a lot of doors. There is the first portón, which is basically a big cage outside of the house, on the other side of which you can park your car. Then there is the second portón, which is another big iron cage directly in front of the front door. Then there is the front door. A separate key is needed for each, and you need to turn the key around twice to double bolt each one. My point is that when I arrive home and really have to pee, none of the other challenges faced that day can compare to the challenge of making it to the bathroom in time after unlocking and relocking all of the doors.
8. My host parents took me to the Férria last weekend, which is like a huge farmer’s market, so that they could buy fruits and vegetables. I was so excited about the prospect of eating fresh produce that I got a little teary eyed.
9. There is a Will Smith movie on TV here every hour of every day here.
10. Our Malaria medication gives us the best dreams ever. It tastes like poo though.
11. I have now seen the mouse that lives with us twice. I think he has every right to live, but I would like for it to be somewhere else.
12. I became buddies with the guys who work at the mechanic shop that is on the way to Spanish class. I’ve decided that having big, strong Tico men on my side in this town is definitely a good thing.

PCV Site Visit

April 2, 2009

I need to wake up to go to Spanish class in about 4 hours, but I can’t go another day without writing about my first volunteer site visit, which was better than I ever could have anticipated. I’m wide awake right now because Costa Rica just beat El Salvador 1-0, and Mexico (who just beat Costa Rica) lost to Honduras 3-1. Everyone was over at abuela´s house to watch the game, which was actually not very good, but it´s always a big party when all the family and neighbors are together.

On a much sadder note, I found out today that my best friend here has to return to the United States. I´ve known she´s be my closest friend here since we arrived met in DC that first day, so I was pretty upset when I heard this news. Now that I’ve been able to speak with her, I understand that she has to leave, and I know she will go on to make this world a better place wherever she ends up. I love you and will miss you so much, J!!!! Hasta la proxima! Another trainee also has to leave, but again it is for a reason that is really out of her control, so I wish both of them the best. We are all a little jealous that they get to go see their families and friends today (and take hot showers and eat good food and have wireless internet and cell phones and about a million other things), but I know they both wish they could stay, and so do we!!!!

Ok, now to tell about my site visit. Saturday was filled with adventure, beginning with a walk to the San Jose bus terminal, which is always a good time (and by “good time” I mean “kind of scary”). My host mother, as always, was very worried about her gringita daughter going into the city, so I tried to explain to her that I could rock a mean mug and a gangster-fabulous hat in a way that no one would mess with me. This was a lie of course. I can work out a pretty mean mug but gangstafied hats should definitely be off limits for this girl. Now we’re just getting off topic…try to stay with me here.

Much to my surprise and delight, Carmen, a trainee from one of the other PC programs, ended up arriving at the terminal shortly after I did. This was good for two reasons: 1) We got to catch up, which was great because we never see each other and 2) She is a native Spanish speaker from Peru, so all I had to do was talk to her in Spanish, and it looked to everyone else at the Terminal like I was totally in the club. This was key, because there were definitely some shady characters around there who, up until that point, I feared might try to eat me for dinner. Carmen is a few decades older than the other 50 of us from Tico 19, but lives a more active lifestyle and most of us combined. She is a mother and a grandmother, and before arriving in Costa Rica she was running her own business, working for a consulting firm, and doing hundreds of triathlons and marathons. My favorite thing about her is notorious reputation for not being wherever we are supposed to be as a group. Sometimes we get to play “Where in Costa Rica is Carmen [San Diego]?” which is super fun because we always find her (and therefore win) in the end. Ahh, I am never going to get to the story about my trip! Seriously, do NOT let me get sidetracked again, there isn’t time for this!

The bus ride to Nicoya was beautiful. I would tell you what mountains we drove through but I have yet to find a Tico that knows when I ask, so you can look it up on your high speed internet in the confort of your own home (I’m not bitter or anything). They’re just mountains. At the halfway point we stopped in a little town and an elderly man saw the book I was reading and began talking to me about Peace Corps. Our chat led to the fact that I had yet to try Costa Rican pipa, which is the milk from a coconut that is not yet ripe. Here, pipa is often served in a plastic bag with a small slice of the fruit inside. The nice man thought it was unacceptable that I had not yet been introduced to the pipa, so he ended up buying one for me. Most of the people with whom I interact here have very little financial means, and their generosity never ceases to amaze me. It was much more important for this gentleman to introduce me to part of his culture than to have the money he spent in the process (although I’m sure he could have used that money).

I arrived in Nicoya Saturday afternoon, and was so thrilled to be out of the chaotic Central Valley that I hardly noticed the oppressive heat and exponentially greater mosquito population that greeted me as I got off the bus. Once I spotted the only other person with skin as pasty as mine, I had no doubt that it was Meghan, my mentor, and the volunteer I would be staying with for the next 4 days. After meeting her host family and eating some good ol’ gallo pinto (rice and beans), we set to a nearby church to attend a youth group event. The theme was “traditional games,” so we jumped rope, played jacks, and then ended up playing soccer. In Peace Corps sites, soccer often becomes an extreme sport, because the spaces we use as fields are often more like obstacle courses. This “field” was the hill behind the church, which was full of deep holes and large bumps. Basically, whichever team was going uphill was out of luck. The conditions did not help my ever-worsening hip injury, but I was having such a good time with the kids that I decided, “vale la pena.”

The next day we took a bus to Playa Samara, where I got my first glimpse at the coast. It was, not surprisingly, the most beautiful beach I had ever seen. Aside from being relatively touristy, the atmosphere was calm and there was plenty of space even though the beach itself is quite small. We spent the day sitting in the shade, swimming in the ocean, and boogie boarding as I asked Meghan one million and one questions about life as a PCV. We then ate at a little restaurant right on the beach, which was only my second time eating out since I arrived. I (of course) chose the dish with the most vegetables, in order to take full advantage of being away from my malnourished (albeit wonderful) life in Fatima.

After a long day at the beach, we took the hour-long bus ride back to Meghan’s town, and spent quality time with the family. She was tired after dinner so she went to bed and I stayed up talking to her host parents for about 3 or 4 more hours. I talk to my own host family a lot, but this was my most thorough and in depth Spanish conversation to date, and it certainly boosted my confidence with regard to language ability. We discussed family, culture, religion, race, politics, sports, food, and Tico slang. We spent a lot of time discussing the healthcare and university systems in the U.S. and C.R. The fact that I could barely afford to go to a doctor in between leaving my job an coming here, and that I will be paying for my undergraduate and graduate education for decades were concepts that were foreign to them. They had sent all three of their children at least through the university, one of their daughters to graduate school, and their youngest is now finishing up medical school, and the sum of their tuition bills were close to the equivalent of a semester’s worth of books in the U.S. Ridiculous.

On Monday morning I knew beach time was no more, and that it was finally time to experience the real life of a volunteer. Business time. I woke up early to do my dreaded exercise routine of jumping rope and resistance bands (instead of running), and when Meghan’s host mother came outside and saw me, she immediately went back into the house to get everyone else to come and watch. I have never wanted to run so badly in my life. That day I followed Meghan to a meeting with the director of a local high school and to meet with an interdisciplinary committee at the elementary school. The high school was a daunting experience for a number of reasons. There were more students in the hallways than in the classrooms, and the ones in class might as well have been in the hall. Picture the scene in Sister Act 2, when Whoopie Goldberg first walks into the music class she is supposed to teach…it was like that but with about 2,000 students as opposed to the 20 in the movie. It was pure chaos. When we first arrived, I figured it was during the exchange of classes, but we were there for over an hour and witnessed no change in the number of students loitering in the hallways. The alarmingly high teenage pregnancy rates sadly started to make sense to me, as there was no one in the halls controlling the raging hormones of the students. Babies were practically being made right in front of us. We then met with the director of the school for over an hour. Every time he began another sentence his phone would ring or someone would knock on the door. It was no wonder the students weren’t in class, because the system (or lack thereof) was completely dysfunctional.

My last morning there I woke up dark and early at 4am to walk with Meghan’s host parents at the local track. Meghan passed on the invitation (weird, I know). We had a nice time, and they said I have a room to stay in anytime I want to come back and visit, which was nice. Although I don’t like Fatima so much itself, it is nice to be back with my wonderful Tico family here.

I have a lot more to say but I would be amazed if anyone made it this far in my post, so I’ll leave my other stories for another time. Hasta la proxima, ciao!!!!