What Am I Doing Here?

Sometimes my new entries come from a happier, more content and peaceful place, and sometimes they come from hardships I may be feeling. Today comes from a rougher patch I´m going through, so this is just to let you know where I´m coming from (in case my thoughts seem a bit crazy).

Today it really hit me how much I miss talking to people about life, about love, about God, about how to actually live what Jesus talked about so many years ago, about how He speaks to us in our culture and time today. It´s a struggle here because I am not very close to anybody here in Costa Rica. A place deep within me longs and misses spontaneous and random (but full of life and passion) talks with mom, Jeremy, people from challenge and CSF, and my good friends. There´s something about connecting with people in a safe place where you can really be yourself and talk about what you are feeling deep within.

Last week a friend of my host family visited them. He invited me to see his farm and eat lunch with him, so the next day he picked me up and we went out to his farm, a couple miles from where I live. The man is from Switzerland and speaks Spanish and French. He has a huge, beautiful farm and a really nice house. Running through his farm is a creek and so he took me down there, being careful to watch for snakes. He said there are a number of poisonous snakes around, but I didn´t see any, that day. What we did see were a couple baby alligators (crocodiles? I don´t know the difference) and a bigger one, about 15 feet in front of us. I think it´s the first time I´ve seen a live one outside of the zoo!

Yesterday I had another first time. It was the first time I´ve seen a snake in the house. I will try and put a picture up on here but they are also up on my webshots.com page. I also uploaded some new pictures I took with my host family´s camera. They are of the host family, their house, my room off to the side of the house, the elementary school next door, and the street where I live. Here´s the website again--

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/560825722dUvlqd

Tons of geckos run around at night all around my door and around the house. The other day when I was walking up to the high school I saw some monkeys playing in the trees. They make really loud noises, so when you hear the noises you think they are big gorillas, but the ones I saw were pretty small. Anyways, for those that come to visit we will hopefully get a glimpse of these, and hopefully not a glimpse of scorpions or tarantulas! Luckily I haven´t seen a tarantula yet, but I´m guessing within two years I´ll probably see one.

One thing Peace Corps as us all doing the first few months is called a CAT—Community Assessment Tool. We write it in Spanish, anywhere from 20 to 100 pages of an in depth assessment of the community. It´s one way to get integrated because we have to learn everything about the community. I started that today but it will be a long process.

What is really hard is that the high school principal wants me ¨working,¨ in the traditional sense of the word, right away. Also, my host family is asking me what I have been doing all day. Lots of my training focused on getting to know the community and the importance of this. The training focused on sustainable development, meaning that the work will continue in the community after the volunteer leaves. This focuses on helping the people help themselves and empowering them to take control of their own lives. Peace Corps emphasized that the process is just as important as the end result, and it´s important we don´t rush into projects without first knowing the people. So this has been a challenge for me because I am trying to get to know the people. For example, having coffee at someone´s house and talking about life, the community, family, and culture is considered getting to know the community, and an important part of work. This I love, but it´s hard figuring out how to do this and get to know the community.

My family here is super humble and caring and my host mom cooks great food. I am already used to eating rice and beans at every meal, something I didn´t think I´d ever get used to.

I am realizing how much I took for granted connecting with people and how I need other people to put me in my place. I am realizing, also, how selfish I really am. C.S. talked about how he never had an unselfish thought in his entire life. That´s how I feel. Everything seems to come back to me. It´s like Donald Miller wrote—I am starring in my own movie because I am in every scene. What interests me is trying to get away from this, but the more I try, the more I just think about myself.

Tests are everywhere here, and I am only beginning to realize it. This selfishness one is just one of many that is trying to get me down. I´m not really sure where I´m going with that thought but it´s just something I´ve been thinking about lately.

Friends and family, you have shown me how caring and giving people really can be. I have felt so encouraged here by everyone back home, and I want to say thank you and I miss you tons. You are showing me love and service in new ways.

Brokenness, Hope, Joy

“Brokenness is the realization that life is too much for us, not just because there is too much pain but also because we´re too selfish. Brokenness is realizing He is all we have. Hope is realizing He is all we need. Joy is realizing He is all we want…

“I have spent so much of my life hearing that sort of teaching and thinking of it as true but not immediately necessary to grasp. I now see it differently. I am beginning to understand that the loneliness I have for so long tried to relieve by marrying, by developing friendships, by writing books, by thinking of funny things to say at parties, is really a hunger for God.”

Larry Crabb writes this in his book “Becoming a True Spiritual Community” (thanks to mom for sending it to me!) and as I have been reading it, this is just one of the things that really hit me. I love him as a writer and almost all his books impact me greatly, and this is just one of the things I have been thinking about lately.

Four days ago I arrived at my new site. In Costa Rica the people often end their sentences with “Si Dios quiere” which means “if God wants it”. For example, I say “See ya tomorrow” and they answer “If God wants it”. So we from the U.S. take that to mean that it may or may not happen. Like, hey I´ll be there tomorrow, unless God doesn´t want me to do the work, then I won´t show up. Naw, but I don´t think they mean it that way. It´s interesting because they don´t have a separation between church and state here so people talk about God much more here.

So I tell people I arrived four days ago and will be staying for two years, “Si Dios quiere.” I gotta throw in little things like that so I can try and fit in with their culture.

It´s really hot here and I walk around all day with drops of sweat on my face. I don´t think it´s any hotter than Nebraska in the heat of summer, but they don´t have air conditioning here.

I am settled in to my new room. It has a single bed and a single shelving unit with three shelves. Also, I have little neighbors all over one wall—ants. But they don´t bother me and for now haven´t entered my bed. It´s amazing how I´m not as scared of bugs or spiders anymore. The people live with them here and they survive, so I figure I can do the same. I bought a string to try and hang up in my room so I can hang up some clothes, and I bought some tape to put some pictures up on the walls since everything is bare. If anyone has posters or pictures or anything cool to put on the wall, I´d love you to send it!

Monday I visited the high school. The high school has four main project ideas right now. First, the entire town of San Jose de Upala has no trash pick up. This is supposed to be the responsibility of the nearest town, Upala, but apparently in many rural areas they don´t have the funds or resources to pick up trash. Therefore, every household and school has a pit in the backyard where they throw everything and either bury it after a time or burn it. It´s very bad for the environment. So we are going to try and start a recycling project, but it´s very hard here because people grow up their whole lives throwing trash wherever. It´s hard for people in the U.S. to imagine because we grow up, mainly, throwing trash in the trash can.

The second project is possibly teaching computer classes to the high schoolers, and the third project may be teaching English, although they already have four English teachers. The fourth project is really about 50 projects in itself. Pedro is an agriculture teacher and wants to plant a ton of crops and start a student run cooperative to teach them business and hopefully keep them in the community to start businesses or their own. I talked to a couple kids today and there just isn´t work in San Jose de Upala and so they all want to leave after high school, if they even finish.

Tuesday and today I visited the elementary school that is located right next to my house. I´m actually writing this from the house of the principal, because she invited me over to Upala to her house to use her internet. She´s really nice! I may be teaching computer classes at this school or possibly English.

I´m trying to take it slow and get to know the people. The Peace Corps stresses getting to know the people first. Why do they want to do this project? Will it be sustainable so after we leave the people can continue? After a few weeks are they still talking about this project? For this reason I´m taking it slow and trying to get to know everyone. It´s a little overwhelming but so far, I´ve met a lot of people. My host mom cooks really well and I think I´m going to be fat by the time I return to the states.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with a different elementary school. I think I mentioned it before but San Jose de Upala is made up of about 20 smaller neighborhoods or communities, all very spread out. So tomorrow I will go to the elementary school in La Unión and visit with the parents. They are interested in starting a business. A few mentioned a bread store because they don´t have one in the town. I´m pretty scared for this meeting!

I have to keep reminding the people I´m not here to DO the things for them but to share experiences and learn from them and do the things WITH them. A challenge will be motivating them and empowering them to take ownership of the projects. It´s a bit overwhelming and with so much on the plate, it´s sometimes hard to know where to start eating.

I was thinking today about how overwhelming it can be. But I realized that I am here because I believe one person can make a difference. A teacher I met at the high school talked about Alyssa, a Peace Corps volunteer that lived in her town (Upala) in the early 1990s. This teacher told me all about Alyssa and her projects. This teacher made me realize how much impact one person can have, that 15 years later this woman is still talking about what she learned. It gave me hope.

The Big Move, again

When I left the states on June 25 I was fairly mentally and spiritually and emotionally prepared to come here. I had been thinking and talking with people for over a year about it, so when the time finally came, I was ready. What made me realize how anxious I was when something came up at the last minute where I thought I might not be able to come, so in that moment I realized how sad I would have been if I couldn´t have come.

This is all to say that I was not prepared for this move after these three months of training. I knew it was coming but hadn´t given it that much thought—I didn´t think that moving within Costa Rica would be that big of a change, but it is. My mind has been scrambling lately and I am really nervous for this move. I am trying to enjoy my last few days here in Vuelta de Jorco with my family, other Peace Corps trainees, and friends I´ve met here.

Saturday was a much needed day of rest for me. The past few weeks we have been running around all over doing visits and finishing up training, so this weekend was nice. I had been waiting to write about the girl I met here because it was so new (I suppose it still is) and I didn´t know if it´d be working out or what not. Anyways, we talked and we are going to stay together and try and make it work out when I move away. More then anything, she is a much needed friend here to talk to and she has become one of my best friends here in Costa Rica. Her birthday was Friday and we went to see a play (comedy)—I understood most of it, I think. Anyways, I feel like Paola (not with a “u” but with an “o”) was an answer to prayers because in my previous blogs I had been writing about a lack of connection here with people and I´d really been feeling it. There are four other trainees I will miss a ton too, people that I really connected with. Also I will miss my host mom and her family tons.

Tests have been numerous here. I knew that things will sometimes be hard, but I could never have imagined the specifics, because everything is so new to me here. It has been interesting finding these out and going through these ups and downs.

Wednesday is my last day of Spanish class. Thursday we will all be in the Peace Corps office in San Jose finishing up training and last minute interviews with all our bosses. Friday, my host mom and her grandson and I will head to the U.S. Embassy where the 35 of us (we hope) will swear in as volunteers. Saturday and Sunday will be spent travelling and getting adjusted to San Jose de Upala!

This last week has been hectic and until I get settled in, things will be a little hectic. I will be sure to keep you posted on what´s going on and I am loving every minute of hearing everything going on in friends and families lives! Thanks for keeping me posted.

New Address! (and sickness)

I just opened up a P.O. box here in the next town over from where I will be living. Another volunteer and I opened it together and we´re hoping that Peace Corps will reimburse us. What do we look like, rich gringos? Anyways, this town is about 15-20 minutes away from my town, so I hope to come in once a week (maybe a little less than that, we´ll see) to check my P.O. box and to use the internet. Unfortunately, there are no landline phones in San Jose de Upala where I will be living. There are three payphones and the people have cell phones, so I will have to figure out what I´m going to do. Here is my new address where you can send me letters and packages from now on-

Nick Norton
Upala apartado postal 33-5707
Upala, Upala, Alajuela 21301
Costa Rica
Centro America

Today finishes up my site visit. Tomorrow I will take the six hour long bus back to the capitol city and from there catch the other bus to my training town, another hour and a half. Buses, buses, buses. Some things I am getting used to, like cold showers. Somehow, they aren´t so bad anymore and I can handle them. But as far as waiting an hour for a bus that drives slow and is hot and stops all the time and half the time there are no seats so I have to stand—that will take some getting used to.

My new family is very nice. The parents are almost 40 and they have three daughters. The daughters are also very nice and I have been playing some with the five year old as she is home during the day, while the mom takes care of the three month old baby. My room is like an apartment and is off to the side of the house in a different building. The family has four other bedrooms that they rent out to people. I met my neighbor, who is a 22 year old school teacher and he´s really cool.

Most people in San Jose de Upala are school teachers or they are farmers. Of the school teachers, most only leave there during the week in rented houses and they return to other towns hours away on the weekends.

It has been a bit overwhelming since last Thursday when I started counterpart day and then came here to my site. Two high school teachers showed up for counterpart day, where Peace Corps drilled them on the rules (I can´t ever be caught on a motorcycle or Peace Corps sends me home!) and what our roles are in the community.

We arrived here Friday night where I met my family. Saturday morning, the town priest (who is also the principal of the school) brought me to a meeting and introduced me. Sunday I went to church with him where he introduced me and I had to stand up in front of the church and stumble through in Spanish who I am and why I´m here.

Yesterday and today I have visited the high school a couple times and I visited two elementary schools. The people here have huge ideas and keep introducing me as an economist. It´s crazy. The good thing is that they have great visions and there are big opportunities for me. The bad thing is that they are looking to me to do some huge stuff, so that´s why I feel overwhelmed.

At the high school, one of the teachers is really pushing some big agriculture projects. He wants to produce most of their food there for the cafeteria, like rice, fruits, and veggies and eventually, he wants that the students start a cooperative and business to sell to the community.

Also at this high school there is a high dropout rate. The kids, so I´m told, aren´t very motivated and don´t have visions for the future so we may be working on that.

In one of the elementary schools we already have a meeting set up for the week I move here, the week of September 17. There is a women´s group that is interested in starting a small business so we are meeting to talk about options and what they would like to do.

Crazy huh? I am very excited for all this but hopefully I won´t get too overwhelmed. The weather is very hot here and I am sweating like crazy most of the time. The town is very beautiful with the view of two volcanoes in the background and a river runs through the town also. The people have been very nice to me!

The day after I arrived here I starting coming down with a sickness, and they are saying it´s because of the climate changes. Whatever the cause, I have been feeling like crap because of my throat, head, and my body has been hurting, so I hope when I return here September 16 I don´t get sick again. Where I have been living these past two months is a bit colder because it´s in the mountains, but here in San Jose de Upala is it much hotter and very humid.

I would love to write more but I´m not feeling too good. I can´t express enough how awesome you guys have been in encouraging me. Things here are very up and down here and all the support, letters, encouragement, and prayers have given me so many boosts and it´s been great to here from you. I miss you and look forward to talking to you soon!

New address coming soon (hopefully)

Tomorrow I leave for a week long trip. The first two days we are at a retreat center (I think) with our counterparts. If I understand correctly our counterpart is the person who helps get us started at our site, although volunteers usually branch off and work with other people and other groups during their service. So I will (hopefully) be meeting my counterpart, who is a teacher at the local high school in San Jose de Upala. On Friday, I will travel with him and all the other trainees will travel with their counterparts to their respect future sites for a five day visit.

I will meet the family and get to know the area, among other things. I am 15 KM west of the town of Upala, and in Upala there will be another Peace Corps volunteer. Today we talked and we are going to try and share a P.O. box in Upala where we can receive our mail.

Right now and during my service here, you can still send mail to the current address in San Jose (the capitol city). However, this means the mail goes to the Peace Corps office. As I mentioned in my previous post, the office is about 10 hours, or a day long trip, from my future site, so I will not be traveling there very often at all. It will be best to send mail to my new address, which I will hopefully have in a couple weeks.

This is all to say that this weekend I will try and open up a P.O. box in Upala where I will hopefully go once a week or so to get mail and maybe use the internet. So for now, it may be best to hold off on letters or packages until I get you that new address, because I will only be living at my current address for about two more weeks, and then I move up by Nicaragua.

Monday my first time ever teaching English went really well. We did some fun activities. I ended up getting thrown into a class of 25-30 seventh graders. Things went really well and I got a good evaluation, so that helped with my confidence a lot.

After I get back from my site visit next Wednesday, we have less than a week and a half before we swear in (cross our fingers) as official Peace Corps volunteers. The next day we move! As all these crazy changes are occurring, I appreciate so much your prayers. I think it will be like starting all over again here in Costa Rica, about how I felt in late June/early July with everything being new and scary.

I hope all is well there with you and you are in my thoughts.

The Wait is Over...

Yesterday we all found out where we will be living starting September 16 of this year through 2009. I received a whole packet of information and I will let you guys know some of the exciting and scary info. below!

My site is called “San Jose de Upala” (it´s not the capitol city of San Jose but has the same name). San Jose de Upala is way up in northwestern Costa Rica, right next to the Nicaraguan border. Some maps may have the city of “Upala” on them if you want to try and find it. I am about 15 KM (what´s that like 9 miles or something?) west of the city of Upala. It doesn´t say but I think I am within 10 miles of Nicaragua.

My “counterpart,” or the person I will be working with a lot, is a professor at the high school, so it looks like I may be working much with kids.

San Jose de Upala is very far from the capitol city of San Jose—226 kilometers. Right now for training, I am in Vuelta de Jorco, which is about an hour to an hour and a half SOUTH of the capitol city of San Jose. So I will be about 8-10 hours away from where I am living now.

The new site, San Jose de Upala, has about 5,000 people with warm temperatures and high levels of humidity. My information says their main source of income is agriculture, like beans, corn, and cattle. I will be located fairly close to three volcanoes!

This site is very near, if not on, a river. Sounds like flooding is common. The info. says there are earthquakes and there is a risk of volcanic activity, but they always say this stuff to be safe. Costa Rica is so small anyways! Everybody is at risk but it hardly happens.

My new host family have three daughters that are 13, 4, and 1 month old. Two brothers are older and don´t live in the house.

Anyways, I will have to tell you more information when I move there. I´m excited and anxious and scared! But first I have to make it through training.

Monday I have to go to the high school here in Vuelta de Jorco to teach an English class. My boss will be there to evaluate me and I have to use non formal education principles and everything I´ve learned. I am scared because I have to be able to keep control of the class and keep things running smoothly. I still am not sure what topic I will talk about.

My visit to Caño Negro was great. Caño Negro is way up north too, a little east of San Jose de Upala. Me and the volunteer there really got along and I learned a great deal. He lives right on the river where fishing is big and we went fishing a little. I wonder if my future site will have lots of fishing? I´ll find out soon enough. I found a scorpion in my room the first night, and he talked about bats and tarantulas around. Since my future site is near where I visited, I think I will be having these kinds of visitors at my house too.

These last few weeks of training are going to be really hectic. I am teaching English Monday, hopefully without getting kicked out of Peace Corps, and Tuesday and Wednesday we have more training together. Thursday I leave for a two day retreat with my future counterpart, the person I will be working with a lot. Straight from there he will take me to my future site for five days to meet the family and get to know the town and what I will be doing. That is a week long trip and I will only have a few days left of intense finalization of training after that before we all move to our new sites!

Things are overwhelming, crazy, mysterious, but I´m hanging in there. Sometimes it seems the culture and life here are very similar to us in the U.S., and other times it seems drastically different. It´s difficult to get used to.

Hopefully this post wasn´t too boring with me talking about my future site, but it´s where I will be spending two years of my life, so I got a little excited! I hope all is well at home and thanks so very much for keeping in touch. It really means so much to me to hear from so many of you that I was and am so close to.

Penguins?

Although I have had tons of changes lately, it feels as if the big one is to come. Or at least one of many big ones. On Saturday I leave for Cano Negro, a little town in the north central province of Costa Rica. It is very close to Nicaragua in about the far north central part of Costa Rica. I will be there from Saturday (whenever I arrive) until Tuesday. I am not looking forward to the bus trips, where I will change buses three times and it will take about 6-7 hours to get there. I heard it is really beautiful there (okay where isnt it beautiful in Costa Rica?). A few other volunteers have been there and they said there is a big river and lake, where you can swim and take boat rides. Apparently alligators are in the water so I doubt I will be getting in, but we will see.

All 35 of us trainees are going to different places, alone, so I just happened to get assigned this site. We are each visiting a current volunteer who has been here at least a year. I think mine has been here two years. We get to hang out with them for a few days, see their work and projects, meet the people they live with and around, and ask any questions we want. It should be really cool to see another volunteer hands on and ask some questions of an actual volunteer, as opposed to the Peace Corps staff here.

But this is not the big change I am talking about. I am still waiting to find out where I will be living, starting September 15. I get back Tuesday from the trip to Cano Negro, then have a couple interviews with the business staff, and on Friday, we all find out where we are going. I am super anxious and excited to find out where I will be. Probably by my next post I will know where I will be for two years! My stomach is kind of churning thinking about it.

It feels weird to think that the school year and all that comes with that will be starting soon. For the first time in my life I am not going back to school in August (first time since before pre-school?) but yet it does not feel like work to me here. But this is good, to me, because I still feel like I can make a difference, so I hope that it continues to feel like a great, mysteriously awesome thing where it is a "job" but does not feel like one, if that makes sense.

From the other posts you probably know I have been reading much. I am even going back through some books I have read in the past couple years that were my favorites and I always wanted to go back and read them, but never took the chance. I am now going through "Blue Like Jazz" by a guy named Donald Miller, and I love it the second time around too.

In one of the chapters he talks about how he saw (on public television or something like it) a program on penguins. He explains to his friend, over coffee, that the penguins have this big pilgramage (spelling?) to far away from their homes, and they start making these noises. The noises are to find a mate. So, they find their mate and have their penguin sex (this is the title of the chapter) and then the mom lays the eggs and leaves. I guess she just leaves for a while and the men stay and take care of the eggs, their kids.

The crazy part, he goes on to explain, is that a few months later the mom randomly comes back, right before the eggs are hatched. So they take this long hike to this place, mate, the mom leaves, and then finds her way back miraculously right before her kiddies are born. What a good mom (and dad).

So Miller talks about this internal radar the penguins have to just get there and back, a radar that cannot really be explained. Earlier in the book he talked about love, and light, and beauty, which are all rational things people believe and feel, but cannot be proved scientifically. But they are real. He used this to describe his faith, and I really like how he talks about it. He says that these penguins have this radar to mate and find their kids, so maybe he (or we?) have this radar towards our Creator, to God, that many times we cannot explain.

I really like that.

Before I go I wanted to say how awesome it has been to hear from you. Yesterday was the influx of mail (the first time in a week and a half--so sorry if it takes so long!) that Peace Corps brought us. So you can send a letter, two weeks later it gets here, and a week later Peace Corps gets it to me. But I still love letters. Again thanks so much for the support. I will talk to you soon!

Also, my camera is dead, I think. I had it in my backpack during a downpour of rain (which happens practically daily) and it got wet, so it does not turn on anymore. This is to say that I hope you enjoy the pictures that I have posted here and on the webshots.com because it may be a while before we get anymore. At least over 100 are on webshots!

I miss you guys and I hope to talk to you soon. Until after the trip, Nick.