Friday, July 27, 2007

Life

Let me just say that sometimes I have to catch myself. Whatever I´m doing—eating rice and beans, sitting in class, playing with the little kids, thoughts racing through my tiny head—I sometimes realize, WOW, I´m in Costa Rica. It´s a really cool feeling. A crazy wacky feeling. So much is going on here it´s easy to get caught up. I know things will settle down in September when I get to the site I´ll be at for two years.

Can you believe I´m finally here? As many of you know, I was going through the application and interviewing and medical stuff and waiting…and waiting for over a year. It´s crazy to think that I´m finally doing the Peace Corps! Well right now I´m just in training. But I´m here.

I wanted to say thanks for the support through this whole process. The past year was filled with emotion and I appreciate so much everyone who supported me in this sometimes crazy decision. I miss you guys!

I must say I´m a little tired of talking about myself so much. It´s so good to hear from people through letters or anything so I can hear about you guys too. But for now, I´ll write a little about what I´ve been up to, hopefully without boring anyone too much.

Wednesday was a national holiday here. Guanacaste is the name of the northwestern most province here in Costa Rica, and Wednesday was a celebration of the day that it became a part of Costa Rica. I´m a little fuzzy on if it was a part of Nicaragua before this, or if it was it´s own country, or what. Anyways, Wednesday our class visited the elementary school in Vuelta de Jorco. The kids did traditional dances and had a huge ceremony. It was really, really fun and I was amazed. These kids had so much fun—everyone did. The kids are fascinated with us gringos. Somebody got the idea that they wanted our autographs, and so for about 20 minutes the four of us, plus our teacher, were signing our names on paper for the kids. I don´t think we´ve ever felt so much like celebrities (or ever will?)—all for what? Simply for being ourselves. It felt pretty nice. This is why I love kids—they look up to you no matter what. Even if your Spanish isn´t good, or if you are nervous, or don´t know what to say. Kids are awesome.

Yesterday we visited the technical high school in the next town over for a presentation from Banco Nacional (one of the banks that the Costa Rican Government runs). They have academic high schools and technical high schools here. Do we still have technical high schools in the states? I think we used to. I guess there wasn´t enough room for all us 18 business students at the bank, so they held a presentation at the high school. In each Peace Corps program, they have what they call “counterparts”—organizations that work with Peace Corps volunteers in their communities. Banco Nacional is a possible counterpart for us. For example, they help us with loans or with general community development. So I suppose that´s why they put on a presentation to us over micro businesses. Then they fed us lunch! Yum.

Today a local came to class to talk about the history of the town. What was most fascinating was his passion. I´ve only seen a couple people in my life with this kind of spark in their eye—that´s the only way I know how to describe it. It´s that glare, that look in their eyes like they are about to cry. All because they are so passionate about what they are talking about—life. He is in his seventies and talked to us about the history. Costa Rica has changed so much! It was really cool to listen to this guy.

Tomorrow I´m taking a little road trip to visit my host mom´s son. I´m going with my host mom´s grandkid (the son of her son) about three hours to a national park, where the dad works. He invited me a couple weeks ago, and since we have the weekend free, we´re leaving tomorrow morning and coming back Sunday morning. I don´t know what awaits for us there, but I heard it´s beautiful.

Monday is a holiday here too! So if I understand this correctly, in Costa Rica when a holiday falls during the week, employers and the government in general give the people the free day the following Monday. This way everyone has a three day weekend with their families. So, although the actual holiday was Wednesday, everyone gets this Monday off. So Monday I´m going hiking with some people I met here, some locals! That should be fun. Maybe some other gringos will go too. All us trainees are planning different stuff for our three day weekend, so we´ll see if anyone is around to hike with us.

Okay so that´s some stuff I´ve been up to and will be up to. But, although it´s great to keep people updated, I love so much having a personal relationship with everyone. Although I haven´t been able to respond to everyone individually through internet, I´m looking forward to some letters that people said they were writing! I am already having fun keeping in contact with some people I love. Don´t hesitate to write me! I love letters and I love writing letters.

I´m looking forward so much to when people can come visit. I can´t remember if I wrote this already—but one day one of the current volunteers was talking to us and we realized his family was here visiting. I teared up because I can´t wait to see everyone, or at least the ones who can come visit. I know it will be worth it!

The last couple nights I have been waking up in the middle of the night. I look out my window and see the bright moon and some awesome stars. I love looking out at the sky, especially at night. It reminded me of star gazing with grandma in Colorado! Man I love Colorado. Also, I love the movie “Joe Dirt.” Do you remember when he looks at the moon and says he often looks at the moon and wonders if his parents (who he hadn´t seen since he was a kid) were looking at it too? He was comforted by the fact that everyone in the world, no matter where they are, sees the same moon. I was thinking about that with you guys. It´s cheesy but hey, that´s life.

Before I go, I have to tell everyone something. I´m reading this book called “Sex God” by a guy named Rob Bell. I can´t do it justice by trying to explain it. But, I read a lot and I have a huge list of good books—but I must say, this book is amazing. Maybe it´s because I´m in the middle of it, but I can´t recommend it highly enough to ANYONE. It´s what, $10-20 and you won´t get those hours back of your life that you are reading it. But it is well worth it. I think it´s a life changing book. Please read it, share it, or write me about it. It´s really leaving a lasting mark on me. Hey, you´re on the internet now, so at least read a description of it online. But that can´t do it justice.

That´s my little plug. If anyone has any prayer requests (how can you not? We all have hopes, aches, scars, love…) please write me or leave a comment or something so I can start thinking about others for once. I´m trying to do that more. Okay I have to go! I miss you!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

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!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Back from visiting two volunteers in action

Alright I´ll have to make this fast...I´m waiting for the bus back to San Jose (3 hours) and then from San Jose to Vuelta de Jorco (1 hour 30 minutes). Saturday we left for a town near Rivas (SW Costa Rica) that is in the mountains. There were 50 houses in this town, and half were family. It was a cozy town and I got some good pictures! We stayed there until Monday morning. We met a volunteer who has lived there for two years and is almost done with her service. We learned about some of her projects there and what she has been doing with peace corps. My family I stayed with was super nice and had a kid of 18 months who was so awesome! He reminded me of Lily and how much I miss that little babay.

Monday we got on a couple more buses, and a few hours later we were near Uvitas (should be on a map--it´s a beach town in SW Costa Rica). There was another current volunteer who had also been there two years. We learned about micro credit and how they work small loans for community development. It´s basically a small bank run by the townspeople. They use their own money and therefore get to keep the internet on loans rather than paying that to banks. It´s really cool but I still don´t understand it all. The volunteer there helped somebody start a surf shop also. He did a lot of things there! Both these towns will have another volunteer filling their shoes when they leave in September, so we´ll see. There are also a lot of towns that don´t have a PC volunteer that I could go to. It would be hard to live in someone else´s shadow.

Near Uvitas we hiked up a mountain and got a great view of the ocean. Then we hiked down and went to the beach! I got my first taste of Costa Rican beach and it was pretty great. How could it not be? It rained and rained and we played in the water. Then, still in the downpour, we returned to town and had a 5 on 5 soccer game in the pouring rain. It was fun!

My health has been pretty good but for some reason I´m still struggling with some crankiness. It can get a little depressing, somehow, admist all the awesomeness that is here. I still havent found somebody to really connect with, somebody with the same passions as me. All 35 other trainees are really awesome--it´s overwhelming! But I long to connect. I guess it´s only been 3 weeks or so, so I can´t expect to connect after barely knowing somebody.

Sorry I can´t write more but I have to catch the bus accross town soon. I will try and update next when I can! Also gmail wasn´t working so I couldn´t check my email. I want to get busy writing some letters and Ill be looking forward to keeping in touch! I really am looking forward to hearing from lots of you about what´s going on in your lives. Hope to talk to you soon!

Monday, July 9, 2007

Today for class we took a tour of San Jose. So, me and the other three peace corps trainees who live in my town took the hour and a half bus ride into San Jose. This morning we visited el mercado, the supermarket, and just got to know the city a bit. My group got here an hour early, since we didnt know how the buses worked. So I decided to go to the post office myself, but then I got lost. I was lost for over an hour when I finally found my gringo friends! So that was an adventure.

This afternoon is free and so I walked to the university where I studied two summers ago here in San Jose (ULACIT aka latin american university of science and technology). Jose Miguel is still working here and he is the nicest guy I have ever met. He still remembers me, which is pretty cool. When I was studying abroad here I went to the hostpital 3 times and Jose Miguel stayed with me all 3 times, often for hours. Now he is letting me use their free, fast internet! Its supposed to be only for study abroad kids, but here I am. So lucky me, Im updating sooner than I thought!

So saturday hiking was good. Actually, it was awesome, but I was dead tired. It was good to get a different taste of costa rica, walking through the jungle and a small trail. We hopped over a river a couple times--it reminded me of colorado when me and Scott were doing some daring jumps on the rocks to past over the river. After that, we played a soccer game with some of the kids around town. Its hard to find a place to play because they have all the fields locked up so they dont get ruined. Come on! We found ways to get in and play. Yesterday I went to church with my host mom. It was super hot and it was a little long, but it was a good experience. She is christian, so thats a little against the norm since most here are catholic. Or at least thats what they say. Kind of like most americans say they are christians, but it pretty much ends with that. Im one of them most of the time. Its sad to say, but not many are living out their faith. Im on a quest to find out what that looks like.

This week will be busy. Today we are in San Jose, and tomorrow I will be in another town for more training. Wednesday Ill get to stay in Vuelta de Jorco for class, but then thursday we come back to San Jose. Friday Ill be back in class in V. de Jorco. Saturday we leave for a site visit. I have no other info except we visit (in small groups, i think) a current peace corps volunteer in action. Ill be in a different part of Costa Rica doing that little camping trip from Saturday through Wednesday, so it will be a long time before I get to internet again. I hope we can write letters!

After church, there was a housewarming party for my host moms son. I met a lot of their family there, so that was nice. Ive been pretty tired lately as we have such packed days. My host mom is one of 8 kids and she has 5 kids herself. I think 5 kids here is a pretty small family!

Sorry this is random but Im writing fast and dont really have a plan of attack. To answer uncle Marks comment (i dont know how to reply or im too lazy, one of the two), Im not sure if they have fishing here. Im pretty sure but im not really very close to the coast right now. Maybe I can do some investigating and let you know some good local spots and how it works.

Thanks everyone for your comments and prayers! These past couple days Ive been kind of burnt out and honestly, Ive been pretty cranky. So if you want, you can pray for my crankiness and what not. Its only been a couple weeks here, so imagine what is to come. I miss you guys! Later!

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

In the mountains of Costa Rica

Hey guys!

I´m here safe in Costa Rica. I appreciate so much all the comments and emails. This experience so far has been very exciting and it is going really well. So far, everything has been well beyond my expectations. I was preparing for the worst, but everything has been good. I know that all the prayers being sent my way are helping so much. I can´t really explain it but I know that God is looking out for me. I can´t express how grateful I am for all your support, prayers, and friendship.

I know lots of you have sent me emails. Unfortunately, the internet here is very slow. Also, there is no internet in my current town. Right now I´m in the next town over where they have an internet café, but the internet is very slow—I´ve been here 45 minutes already and because it takes about 5 minutes for any given page to load, and many pages don´t even load. So, I will not be in this town with internet (Acosta) very often, and when I am, it would be nearly impossible to send out individual emails.

Because of this, I would love to keep in contact through regular (snail) mail. This seems the best option at this point. Some have asked for my address here—it is in my first post in June—so check there so we can start writing! I´m looking forward to keeping in contact through regular mail—how often do we get to do that anymore?

I was in the mountains sort of near San Jose from Wednesday through Sunday. We were in a hotel going through orientation. On Sunday, we all moved to different communities with our host families. I am in a town called Vuelta de Jorco. I think there´s anywhere between 500-1000 people there. I really like the town a lot.

I live in a house off of a dirt road with a lady in her 60s or 70s. Although it´s just me and her in the house, the two houses below us (we´re on the side of a mountain) are her kids and their kids. So her grandkids are over a lot and I really like them. Yesterday we played soccer and today, all us gringos are meeting up after we´re done with the internet to play a good old 4th of July soccer game. Happy 4th of July! It´s crazy to be spending my first holiday away from everyone. I can picture everyone in Ralston at the parade having fun. I wish I was there! I know you guys are having fun.

The days are pretty intense here. Yesterday I woke up at 5:30, took the bus for over an hour to a town for more training, and didn’t get back to Vuelta de Jorco until 7pm. But, it´s worth it. I am meeting a lot of people in my town and they are all so nice. The other volunteers are super nice too and we all have so much in common.

Wow the view from my bedroom window is amazing. I am near the top of the mountain and so I can see really far. Many times I am above the clouds and can see them hovering over the mountains in the distance. The mountains here aren´t like Colorado where there are rocks and snow. The mountains here are covered in lush green vegetation. These computers are ridiculous, but sometime I´ll try to put some pictures up, but who knows if I´ll be able to.

Let me be quite honest—this internet/computer is pissing me off! Letters will make me much happier, although I´ll try to update this blog from time to time also.

Anyways, I´ll be here until September 14. That day, we swear in to be official Peace Corps volunteers and then we move again to a smaller community for 2 years. For now, I´m in some intense training—but the training is awesome. They call it NFE-non formal education. For example, this morning for class (its just another day here—not a holiday!) one of my assignments was to walk around the town and ask about their families. We were learning vocab on how to describe people—faces, hair, jobs, etc. and then we got an hour to go talk to people about it so that was really cool. I´m so glad I don´t have to sit in a classroom all day. They do lots of fun activities like that for class and training, so it couldnt be a better blessing for me and how I learn best. They are really focusing on relationships here, both in class and in our communties--that is our focus! Ït´s such a blessing that Peace Corps does that.

I could go on all day. I have so much to tell and talk about and I can´t wait to hear from you guys. Again, the way to send me letters is on my first post. Also, my phone number until September 14 is 410-0390. They don’t have area codes here, but the country code is 506. My host mom doesn’t speak English but just say my name or something and wait to see if she goes and gets me…that is if anyone wants to try calling!