This is Becoming Real

Alright it took 25 minutes just to upload this one picture...I had planned on putting a couple more up, but for now, it will have to wait. The picture on the right is of the three others who live in my town and our facilitator. Our facilitator-teacher is the one in the yellow, second from the right. We only have her until next week, than another one comes in. In total, we will have 4 facilitators. I´m told Peace Corps does this so we have opportunities to hear different forms of Spanish and they all have different strengths. This is where we learn Spanish a few days a week. Sorry I didn´t get some better pictures up!

The picture on the left is taken out my bedroom window! You can see the tiny houses in the town and the mountains where I´m living. I had planned on uploading a picture of my house, but it´s taking too long.

I´m super excited for a free weekend. The schedule had us going into San Jose today, but they changed it, so we have today and tomorrow (Saturday and Sunday) free. We need it badly after a busy week. It´s truly amazing how in the matter of three weeks I have adapted to going to sleep before 9pm every night, including weekends, and waking up at 6am everyday. Today I had nothing to get up for and my body still woke up before 6.

Yesterday all 18 of us trainees who are in the business sector (called Micro Enterprise Development or Community Economic Development) were in one of the other training communities. It was really nice to hear from four current volunteers. Two have been here two years and the other two have been here about a year. Although training is helpful, I love when current volunteers are brought in. We ask lots of questions and learn from them and find out how things really are, although everyone´s experience will be much different.

The volunteers focused on training. They talked about how hard training is with the long days, bus rides, and seeing the same people for 9 hours a day while you are already frustrated…so it was comforting that everyone seems to go through some of this stuff I´m going through. With 35 (18 in business and 17 in children, youth, & families) of us training, not everyone is bound to get along with everyone, and we all have some annoying things about us. Even the little things like eating when our families do, waiting for the bus for an hour, or trying to talk in Spanish all day can get to me. Not to mention this internet…I´m not even going to go there. How is it possible to have a slower connection than dial up? I want to own an internet place like this…you charge by the hour, but half the time the internet is down and when it´s working, the pages load once every 7 minutes! Okay enough venting. At least the people that have already gone through training explained this is all normal!

Time here seems to be going very slow. I can´t believe it´s only been three weeks so I left the comfort of home. It seems like it´s been a couple months. The current PC volunteers explained that training seemed forever for them too. Thank God for current volunteers who show us this is possible!

I have been excited and happy to learn about the projects that current volunteers are doing. The one near the beach that I visited last weekend has started a couple cool things. First of all, he helped start a micro lending program. The interesting thing is that they have no outside help or support. All the funds come from within the community. Rather than getting loans from banks to help start their entrepreneurial dreams, they have started a community organization. You pay 5000 colones to join (about 10 dollars) and than you can buy shares of their stock for 5000 colones. No one person can own more than 25% of the company. So, with the money to join and the money with the shares of stock, they loan the money out, only to people they know in their community. This way, if somebody doesn’t pay back the loan, they can use social pressure to get the money back. Also these are small loans that they can afford to lose if one or two don´t pay it back. But also they know the people in the community and know their character, so they don´t loan money to people unless they think they´ll pay it back. So they loan at a lesser interest rate than the banks would, and so the loanee gains in this respect, but also the owners of stock gain because they are gaining the interest. The community members who are part of the organization gain interests while entrepreneurs get money at low rates to work on their businesses within the community. They key thing here is the money stays within the community while simultaneously benefiting individuals who start businesses within the community. It´s a really cool program, and I hope to help out with something like that in my community.

The volunteer near the beach also helped a guy with 3 surf boards who was trying to start a business where he teaches surfing lessons. Now the guy has 25 boards and is super busy and making some money to support himself. These projects are cool to hear about!

The volunteer in the mountains (I also visited last weekend) works in eco tourism. They try and bring high school or college students from around the world into their community to learn about organic gardens and organic coffee.

So anyways, that´s a little taste of what I may be doing in a few months. Although, these volunteers have been in their sites for over a year and they say it takes a long time to get projects going, so I may not have any cool stories like that for a year!

Monday we have a 9 hour EFL (English as a foreign language) session. They will teach us how to teach English to both kids and adults. In addition to working with small businesses, one of our jobs, most likely, will be to teach English to the ticos (that´s the name for Costa Ricans) here. So I´m not really looking forward to such a long day, but it will be nice because I have no idea how to teach anything, especially English.

Tuesday all 35 of us will be together for some general learning. What we usually do during these days is learn about medical precautions and how to stay healthy, security issues and how to be safe, how to teach using a non formal education approach, and so on.

Then Wednesday through Friday of this week (I think) I will be staying in the community where I live to have some Spanish classes (with the three other trainees who live in my community). So that´s my week!

Last weekend I started getting a little sick…only those closest to me probably could handle the details. But, I´m doing okay now, but not 100%. Lots of the other volunteers are sick with stomach stuff or colds, so it´s hard not to catch it when we´re together so often. I am just happy I have gone this long, so this little sickness isn´t getting me down just yet.

I´m trying to learn how to just sit and be. The volunteers yesterday said we think we know how to relax and just sit, but we don´t. Here in Costa Rica people sit and don´t worry about having a list of things to do for the day. Lists can be so helpful and getting things ´done´ is good, but even reading to some of the ticos is seen as odd…we always have to be doing SOMETHING! Apparently ill have plenty of time to just sit and be when I get to my site. I´m looking forward to that. Right now Im really stressed out! My host mom here had a quote I wrote somewhere, i´ll see if I can remember it.

´La vida no es algo que necesitamos resolver. La vida es algo para vivir.´ Okay so i couldnt quite remember it. But it goes something like ´Life is not something to resolve or figure out. Life is something to be lived.´

I´ve said it a couple times before, I think, but I want to express how much your support has meant. Letters, emails, comments, PRAYERS, etc. have encouraged me so much. Please continue! I really want to hear what´s going on in your lives too, so write me some letters! You guys are truly awesome. I miss you! Until next time. ¡Pura Vida!