Crazy Life in Costa Rica

Hey!

Well I´m here at the usual place, an Internet café in the nearest town with Internet. I was thinking about being home for Christmas, and how it will be weird to be back in a house where we can use fast internet anytime we want. Crazy!

At the high school, we have been planning the new school year, which starts in early February. It looks like I will be teaching a few classes—a business class and a couple English classes. The business class is the one I have been sitting in on to get a better feel for it and how the schools work, and to get to know the people.

I feel like it will be very weird to be teaching at all. I already have been teaching English, a few times, more informally, with lesson plans made up from my head. And before joining Peace Corps, I knew that I may have to teach some English. So I´m still trying to avoid that or settle the people down that I´m not going to be teaching ton of English, hopefully. I have never felt a calling to teaching, and I don´t really like English.

I am, however, excited for the business administration class/starting your own business. This class is based not just on technical aspects, but on motivation that it is possible and what kinds of attitudes and behaviors to have. This is more what I thought I´d be doing when I joined Peace Corps, although not in a formal setting. I thought it´d be more with groups and cooperatives. I am working on one project with a women´s group, so the high school class will just be a little more formal.

Here it is very hard to determine how much time to put into these projects. I really have to learn how to balance many different things at once and manage my days. “Free days” sound really nice, but it´s so difficult because a lot of people see a volunteer and all they see is free labor. I am having trouble figuring out who is sincere and honest and who isn´t.

One thing that really gets me down in life is that it seems there are so few people who are authentic, honest, and passionate. So many people talk and promise. We are bombarded from all over with advertisements showing the best food, tv, computer, and beer that helps you get really hot women. We are pushed on all sides by people selling their religion, their view on life, their product.

And yet what it seems there is so few of is people who are living out what they believe, what they sell. We are all doing our best, that I have no doubt. But the narrow road really is hard to find, it seems. I know truth is out there, but so many people have hidden agendas it´s hard what to believe.

Having a good conversation in Spanish is hard…it takes somebody with patience and knows how to speak clearly. I find myself even avoiding certain people because they just get so frustrated with me. Then there are other people who I understand very well and they understand me! I try to spend more time with these people.

Even though Peace Corps started engraining it in my head from before I left, I still struggle with feelings that I´m not making a difference. Especially early on, they say, it´s hard to see progress. But apparently helping people is harder than I thought. We were taught not to do things for them, that we support and encourage and help along with them, and yet this process is slow.

In addition, many people don´t agree with this process. They don´t want a process. They want results. They see a volunteer who may not have an appointment on Monday, so why aren´t you teaching or getting something “done”? Why are you doing an analysis of the community? What a waste of time, they say.

Well I hope I´m not wasting my time here. Maybe I´m in that transition phase because it´s still early on. I´ve been in the community over two months now, so it´s just hard when on the surface, it seems I haven´t done that much.

Soon I will be finishing up my analysis and heading home for Christmas! I am so looking forward to seeing everybody!

Please pray.
-Nick

Mystery

“With every step you take, remember that your footsteps fall where the presence of God has already gone before you, so you can step forward with confidence and faith. Even though we are miles apart, we are united in the oneness of God´s Spirit.”

That is from an email my grandma sent me a couple months ago that was from a daily devotional. I had written it down because I thought it was very beautiful and I just came across it in my notebook, and it gives me hope. Although I may be in a different place far away, it has been such a blessing to keep in contact with some great people that I am so fortunate to know and have in my life that live back home.

As many people may already know, I began thinking about the Peace Corps around March 2006, over a year before eventually getting invited to Costa Rica and actually leaving for the Peace Corps. That whole year I was in constant debate whether to go or not to go, what to do after graduation, where life and God may be taking me. Anyways, as I had a feeling I´d be going abroad for a while, I began preparing mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

This is all to say that I think I was more or less ready for this experience when the time finally came to leave. One thing people I respect and trust taught me was this experience would be very difficult (and super rewarding), so I had been preparing for this. I knew this would be difficult. So why is it so hard to accept that it is difficult now?

I suppose one reason is that although I knew it would be difficult here, being away from the comforts of family friends and living with complete strangers and trying to help them, is that I never knew how the difficulties would present themselves. I just thought, oh this will be difficult and stretch me and teach me much, but I never thought what that would look like exactly.

My idea for being here, among many, is to help people. I´m trying to learn service to others, following an example of a radical dude named Jesus. Maybe really I´m not serving, I don´t know. In any case, I feel like I´m here to learn service and to help people here in San José de Upala. What has been so difficult is people (okay really just one person, maybe a couple others) who don´t accept my work. They don´t agree with the way I do things, or want me to do things their way (maybe be their personal volunteer?). Without going into too much detail, this has been SO hard. I had some really rough days because after getting critiqued for “not working enough,” I was also laughed at for not understanding somebody’s Spanish. I can´t say who because people here do know some English and have internet—but it´s a daily battle against negative people who don´t understand the U.S., me, or learning a new language.

I know why I´m here. And it hurts so much when I´m told to my face that the reason I´m here is to avoid the war in Iraq. As if I´m not here to help, to serve, to learn, to share experiences, to grow.

Okay time to step down from that soap box (is that what it´s called?). Maybe I´ll describe the town a bit, where I spend all my days and nights.

I did have to walk everywhere, but Peace Corps is lending me a bike to use while I´m here. The problem is that it´s a very nice bike and everyone in town seems to be eyeing it. I have to be careful where I ride it, so sometimes I still walk. I still walk to the high school because the high school is full of kids and there is no good place to lock my bike. The roads are all a mixture of mud and rocks, except for a main highway running through the center of town, which is paved. This highway is about 15 kilometers (I don´t know, 9-10 miles?) from the next big town. I go to this next town in bus or catch a ride to use internet (where I´m at now) and go to the post office to send letters and check my P.O. box for letters (thanks for all the letters!). Because the bus stops everywhere and drives slow, it takes almost a half hour to get there, so I like going in car where it takes about 15 minutes—but this means I have to wait for a ride.

The animals I see are little lizards, birds, sometimes monkeys, and rarely snakes. Most of the day and during the night I can hear lots of birds singing and enjoying. Also there are a ton of chickens all around town, and sometimes they think it´s time to start making noise around 1am. Crazy chickens! The high school is doing a study on sloths and has a couple that remain there at the school, up in a big tree. This town has lots of fields of rice and beans, as well as some corn and farms with cows. The fields make me sad because there is a lot of deforestation to clear room for crops and animals. I´m very bad at describing things so when I have my own camera again I will hopefully keep posting pictures so you can see for yourself!

A few days ago I was returning from one of the elementary schools. I was riding my bike along the road, which parallels the river, and so I found a little spot to sit down and enjoy. I sat long enough that in the corner of my eye I saw something moving and I saw a sloth moving up the tree! I thought they mostly only moved during the night, and so this was really cool to see it move in seeming slow motion to a different part of the tree to do who knows what. Sleep?

Some things are so difficult to describe. Living in the country for the first time, in a small town, is very different for me. This is especially true in a different country. Being a volunteer is crazy crazy. I am meeting some truly great people, and some people that honestly, I can´t stand.

Life! What a mystery.

Here are some pictures that Howie and Diane were nice enough to send me of their visit to Costa Rica a couple weeks ago!

http://community.webshots.com/album/561499218hetTHc

Livin the Pura Vida

I just returned from the all volunteer conference (it was four days) where all 98 volunteers in Costa Rica met up in the mountains surrounding the capitol. We had some workshops and a fun time to hang out and meet some of the other volunteers that are also serving alongside us but all over Costa Rica. It was a very good time because I met new volunteers, played in a poker tournament (for candy—we cannot gamble! Apparently volunteers cant make money—who makes these rules anyways?), and watched the different talents of other volunteers in a talent show.

After the four day conference, two other volunteers and I had planned on taking a two day vacation to the Caribbean coast to enjoy the beach. We found out there was flooding and heavy rains, so the day of the trip we changed our plans and found some buses to the pacific coast. We found a nice little hotel (really just a house with an upstairs to ourselves—a kitchen, two bedrooms, cable tv! Whoo!) and stayed there two nights. The beach was so beautiful and it was nice to get away and also hang out with some good friends that I had met in training. Today me and one guy I was with went snorkeling and I was about 10 feet from a sting ray! This was my first time ever snorkeling and I was really scared at first. We saw some really colorful and bright fish and the guide took us to a secluded beach for a while afterwards.

Last night we went out late and had a bonfire on the beach. I love bon fires and sitting around talking. The only thing we did not have was smores and hot dogs…but hey, I am not gonna complain. It was a nice little two day vacation.

Tomorrow at 8am I have another English class, and the rest of the week I will continue gathering information for my community analysis paper. Thursday and Friday I will be up at the high school again for the business class, where I am learning more than helping. Its a really good class and feels a bit weird to be sitting in on a high school class. It also feels really weird to be teaching high school seniors.

The all volunteer conference was great because I love to see the different perspectives and experiences of the other volunteers. For example, a group just left at the end of September because they completed their 27 months. It was really helpful to have gotten to know some of them while I was in training, because they are where I will be in a couple years and they survived. They more than survived. I also like talking to the volunteers that are newer and are just a few months ahead of me (there is a group of volunteers that arrived here 3 or 4 months before my group). So last night my friend Ren and I sat around the bonfire (okay laid on the beach next to it) talking about life here and all the good (and hard) experiences.

Well tomorrow is back to the real world after a nice little vacation. Its good to be back in the hot weather (I couldn’t stand the cold mountains—mostly because everything is wide open and there aren’t heaters) and Im realizing how I do like the hot weather. Christmas in Nebraska will be a little crazy change, but I cant wait to come home!