The First Month of Peace Corps

Today is a beautiful and sunny day. I love road trips, preferably with friends and family, but my road trip on bus today was still good. The scenery calls your attention and it´s sometimes hard to take your eyes off the greenness and richness of nature here. My favorite is to listen to some reggae music, usually Bob Marley or 311, and drift off looking out the window. I left this morning at 4am to catch a bus from San José de Upala to Upala. From Upala at 5:15 the bus left for the capital city San José, and I arrived here a little after 10am.

We get a couple days each month that we can be away from our sites, and so I´m using tonight and tomorrow night to stay with my host mom from training. Today I will go visit her and her grandkids, who I grew pretty close to in the three months that I lived with them. Part of my trip´s purpose was also to visit Paula, but now I don´t think I will see her because we broke up Friday night. I learned a lot from our relationship and needless to say, my first cross-cultural relationship is over.

Now that I´ve been at my site for about a month, things are moving along in some ways. On Thursdays and Fridays I go to the high school where I sit in on a class on business administration. I really enjoy this class because the teacher focuses on knowing yourself, attitudes, and values first and then moves into more technical business stuff. We have decided that I´m going to try and teach English to these two classes on Mondays and Tuesdays, but I really have no idea what I´m doing or how it´s going to work. I think I´m starting next week! I have to come up with my own lesson plan and how to fill the two hours.

Another project, of sorts, is on Friday afternoons. I have been going to one of the local elementary schools and meeting with some of the mom´s of the students (sort of a women´s group—men are invited but no men come). I´m not sure where the group is going, but we´re talking about small businesses and I think we might throw some workshops in on values or relationships or managing money.

In addition to these projects, I have to work on my community analysis. This is a slow process but I´m trying to do it little by little. When it is finished I will know a ton about the community of San José de Upala.

On Wednesday, I went out to a kid named Luis´ farm. I met him one day at the elementary school and he is sort of an outcast so I was immediately drawn to him. I have since visited him a couple times and am getting to know the family. Their family is very poor. They have an old style house made out of some old 2 by 4s and their house is just a dirt floor. They don´t have potable water but do have a well out back, but I´ve heard it´s very bad for your health because the water is contaminated. They have an outhouse out back along with the “shower,” which is really just three pieces of tin standing up and a bucket you have to fill with water to wash yourself. They are a nice, humble family and I would love to do something with them, but I don´t know anything about agriculture and their dad just tries to farm his land.

Anyways, on Wednesday me and Luis went around and picked some apples and oranges and some other strange fruit that we ate along the way. A river runs through San José de Upala and runs through the backyard at Luis´s house, and so we went fishing. It´s a cord with a hook on the end and you throw the cord in the water by hand and just pull it in by hand. It was a ton of fun!

Overall, the first month was filled with ups and downs. Many days, I still don´t know what to do but I´m hanging in there. This is a crazy experience!

I want to say thank you so much for everyone who has been supporting and encouraging me! I have truly learned so much from you guys, about sacrifice and love and prayer.