Being a tourist for halloween

First of all, Happy Halloween! Right about this time in the U.S. people are wondering the streets searching for free candy. If I was there, I would be doing the same. Even a few years ago I put on a mask (so the people with candy could not tell my age as well) and I went trick or treating. Hey, free candy people.

Most of Costa Rica does not celebrate Halloween. My host mom says that in certain places of Costa Rica some have started to celebrate because they like to imitate and learn things from the U.S. on some stuff. But nobody in my town celebrates.

This post is coming to you straight from a nice hotel! I traveled to La Fortuna today (about a 2 or 2 and a half hour bus ride from San Jose de Upala) to meet up with Howie and Diane, good family friends (they are family!). They are in Costa Rica on a tour guided trip and I got to go with them today through the jungle/rain forest on a guided tour and then we went to the hot springs! Wow, I am living it large! Now I am staying in the hotel for the night because there are no buses at night and I will return “home” tomorrow. What a great day! It was a little like déjà vu being at the hot springs because it is the same hot springs I was at over two years ago when I studied abroad here. I was so sick when I studied abroad (not sure what from—the water?) and the night we were at the hot springs, I was very sick with simultaneously throwing up and having diarrhea. At the same time. If you haven’t done it before, you should try it sometime. I mean I have heard that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Saturday I had a run in with some bats in an abandoned house. There is a protected laguna/lake near where I am living and there is a group of high school students trying to form a cooperative to reforest and help restore the area (some guy didn’t take good care of it). An abandoned house sits near the lake and so when we went in, bats were flying everywhere (we disturbed their sleep). I am learning to do what the Costa Ricans do (they live here after all and learn to survive) and they weren’t scared and just shrugged it off so I did my best to act cool. Hmmm so I wasn’t very cool about it.

I put some pictures up. They are of the two classes (Thursdays and Fridays) in the high school of the business administration class where they are taught how to start a business and be entrepreneurs. The teacher works with motivation and attitudes we should have to work with people and start our own business. This class gives students a third option besides leaving the community to work (1) or going to the university (if they don’t get in) (2). The universities here are hard to get in to.

Pictures:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/561183624nlhVvM

That is all for now. Later! -Nick

Random Life Thoughts

Life is picking up here as I get to know the people better and start doing more things in the community. I taught my first class of English yesterday to a group of about 10 high school students, and tomorrow I will teach another class. They are graduating in December (the school year here begins in February and ends in December, and their summer vacation is December through February) so we are trying to squeeze in a few weeks of English for them, although in reality it takes years to learn English. But—little by little, right?

What to say? I´m trying to balance taking care of myself by resting and reading and doing what I enjoy with running around the high school and a couple elementary schools (and also trying to write the analysis of the community).

I learned in training how in general, Costa Ricans (“Ticos”) are very indirect with their talk (not everyone—it´s a generalization!). I learned that first hand this week. The local health clinic (that´s free! Costa Rica´s system of health makes it free for everyone. It has lots of positives and negatives compared to the U.S.) in San Jose de Upala has tons of statistics (supposedly) on the community. Things like health, diseases, population, type of work, number of students, unemployment, number of dropouts, etc. are kept at the health clinic and updated every year. So my goal was to take a look at them because they are a big part of my analysis of the community.

One day last week I walked up there and spoke with a worker from the clinic who said, face to face, that he´d meet me Monday to show me the statistics (I guess they aren´t in a way I can read them so he has to help me). On Monday, I was waiting for him over 2 hours when he finally showed up, to do something else. He said “tomorrow we are meeting, right?”. I said that would be fine, although it was supposed to be today, I told him.

Tuesday rolled around, and he never showed. What I learned in training is that indirectness means they would rather disappoint you by not showing up than by telling you they can´t come to your face. That sucks! So, apparently, he would rather tell me to my face we will meet (twice) rather than tell me to my face he´s too busy. I´m working on what to do about that, but I have to remember that I am the one in their culture, not the other way around. It´s in the little things.

My host family is good. I play with the little 5 year old a lot, and she loves the new hammock I bought and put up outside my room on the porch. Livin the pura vida! One thing about family life that is hard to get used to is that they eat dinner between 7:30 and 8:30 every night. The earliest is 7:30 and the latest we start, like last night, is 8:30. I´m sort of getting used to it, but at home in Nebraska we ate around 5 and also with my family in training we ate about 5, so it´s an adjustment. EVERY lunch and dinner has rice and black beans. Included with that is a variety, depending on the day, of salad, some sort of meat, or soup, or potatoes. I don´t know there is a lot. I actually like the rice and beans and I´m not getting sick of them, surprisingly. Maybe ask me how I feel in a couple months.

Speaking of a couple of months, some people know and some people don´t that I will be coming home for Christmas and New Years! I fly into Omaha December 23 and leave again for Costa Rica January 2. Crazy!

I´ve been reading a ton about life, God, purpose, spirituality, poverty, war, and lots of other things. It´s kind of crazy how one minute I could be in a great mood and another the weight of being away from what I´ve known my whole life pushes down on me and my mood changes. I think of people back home often but something, I´m not sure what, is keeping me here. The prayers and encouragement have been amazing! Anyways, my thoughts are starting to get too random even for me so I will peace out. I was talking to Kara today and she was letting me know a little about what she might like to read about in my blog, stuff maybe I don´t think about because I´m here within it everyday. Let me know if there´s anything I´m leaving out or you´re interested in.

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.

The Poor and the Rich and Coincidences

¨Our deepest joy comes from right relationships—with God, neighbor, and the earth¨ I´m realizing that´s one reason it´s been rough here—I did just move to San José de Upala less than three weeks ago, and since my relationships, at least with neighbors and family and friends, are somewhat lacking, the joy has been lacking too. I´m reading ¨Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger¨ by Ronald Sider and he said the above quote in his book. I may have talked it into the ground but I´m realzing here how important my relationships back home were and are. Having a safe place to share your thoughts and know you will still be listened to and loved is a great feeling, and for the time being, I´m still just getting to know these people here in Costa Rica. It´s a slow process, but little by little I am finding some friends to talk to. I am already learning my lesson about small towns—people blab everything about anyone and a gringo is no exception.

I´ve been thinking a lot about the poor and rich and everything in between. For my birthday, one night my host family had their friends (the guy from Switzerland, his wife, and kid) over for a little get together. That same weekend, Paula and her friend Ennio made the 8 hour trek up to see me, and another Peace Corps volunteer that lives about 20 minutes away from me came up to the party too. So the setting is all of us, sitting outside on the porch, telling jokes and cooking food and some people singing karaoke.

They started giving me some advice. ¨If I was 24, knowing what I know now…¨ type advice for the birthday boy. One of the suggestions, from the dude from Switzerland, was to invest now. Don´t wait for my two years to be up before I buy Costa Rican property! This reminded me of accounting classes (and finance classes) where they told us how compound interest is one of the most powerful things on earth, and so we should invest now so our money can compound radically. It´s no coincidence that a few days later, in ¨Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger,¨ Sider quotes C.S. Lewis—

¨Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I made every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.¨

Some good (but crazy and full of mystery) stuff has been happening. I don´t believe in coincidences and I´ve had a couple of moments with my host dad. Okay so they may not be that big of a deal to you, but they were a big deal to me.

First, the same time I was waiting for my book ¨The End of Poverty¨ to come in the mail, my host dad happened to buy it here in Costa Rica (his copy in Spanish). It gave us some common ground and I´m starting to realize there is a reason I was placed with this family. My host dad and I can really relate and we have a ton in common.

Before this happened, my uncle Pat had recommended a few good books that I should check out. One was by Herman Hesse called ¨Siddartha¨ and I had it written down on my desk to think about getting that book. This week I was looking at my host dad´s (Fabian) books and saw that he had an old copy of Siddartha (in Spanish) on the shelf. He received that book when he was about my age. We had been talking about me starting to try and read in Spanish instead of all these books in English and so now I have started to read Siddartha in Spanish!

Despite many great experiences here, a few things I have had to get used to include Costa Ricans (Ticos) perception of the U.S. and people from the U.S. On the funnier side of things is that people often think I´m working for the CIA. They bring it up in a joking way that we are spying on Costa Ricans and people in other countries through the Peace Corps. So that is something that has put a smile on my face here. We only wish we were that important!

Something, however, that actually makes me get a little mad is that many people here think I am here because I´m avoiding the military. They think that in the U.S., we have to join the military or join the Peace Corps. I´ve had a few different people say, you´re here because you didn’t want to go to Iraq, right?

Another thing I just thought of yesterday, and it´s been somewhat on my mind today. The new slogan of Peace Corps is ¨Life is Calling. How far will you go?¨ But their old slogan was ¨The toughest job you´ll ever love¨. Anyways, the reason I´ve been thinking about that is because things have been pretty tough, at times, here. But somewhere deep inside, I know there is a reason for being here and this is where I´m supposed to be. It´s a crazy feeling, amidst sadness and some pain, to realize that you have some purpose here.

I was going to write some stuff I am learning about community and sharing and giving (some good stuff from Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger) but I´m tired. Maybe I´ll write about it later, or maybe I´ll spare people the boredom.

New pictures are up!

http://community.webshots.com/album/560948381WciwOk?start=0

Quick update and cell phone

My time tonight on the Internet is very short, so I will have to make this fast. I got a cell phone this weekend! The area code for Costa Rica is 506 and my number is 370-5068. The cool thing about the government run cell phones here is that all incoming calls are free, so when people call from the states, it´s free for me to receive it (although you still have to use a phone card to call me). I would love to hear from you. (Thanks for calling tonight grandma!)

Although I barely know the people here, they are really doing their best on my birthday and doing their best to make me feel at home. Thanks so much for the packages and letters! They mean so much. I wish I had more time but I will write more when I can.

We took some more pictures and I will put those up later. There are some great ones of the volcanoes and I went back to farm and saw the alligators again, and my host dad got a couple good shots of them.

I miss you!