Pictures!

Ok, let`s see here. Here are some pictures from the past few months...

my lovely home-made birthday cake from the surprise English class party
my whole English class at the party
party-goers eating cake. please notice the Mambo #5 video in the background.

the girls and I
the guys and I

the arte por la paz kids in all their t-shirt, nametag, and peace tattoo glory

peace!

my kids up on stage--- the boy with the P and cape is "peace man"

this is my new little puppy Coco who is definitely tico-- he loves mango!
Coco otra vez, isn't he adorable?!

Arte por la Paz

The word proud doesn’t even come close to how I felt today at the “arte por la paz” event in San Jose today. As I wrote in my last post, today was the culmination of a month’s preparation with a group of 5^th and 6^th graders in the elementary school. Kids and volunteers from around Costa Rica came to San Jose to show off their plays, dances, poetry, and art work. It was an all-around wonderful day, but by far the best part was watching my kids do the play we had worked so hard on throughout these past weeks. I think I was probably as nervous as they were, especially because in our rehearsals we really had yet to get it 100% right, but I was totally blown away by their performance and when they were finished was practically bursting with pride. They even won the silver medal in the play category which was like the icing on the cake. All in all a truly wonderful day: as I was telling my Mom, certainly one of my top 5 days in PC.

Speaking of counting days, May 16^th marked my one-year as a volunteer. It’s strange to think: is this where I thought I’d be after being in my town for a year? I guess the answer to that question is that I really had no preconceived notion of where I would be after a year, especially as it wasn’t like I was coming in with a specific goal of improving “health education” or “agricultural practices” or something more specialized and specific like that; community development is quite broad which certainly has it’s advantages and disadvantages: I can involve myself in any project that I want in my town and that can be considered developing the community, however then it comes down to, is what I’m choosing to do in the community the most worthwhile? Is it sustainable? What kind of an influence am I having?

As I have mentioned before in my blog, doing Peace Corps truly epitomizes the “live life one day at a time” motto that of course is adaptable to life in general, but particularly so here. Something I’ve talked about with fellow Peace Corps friends is the intrinsic need to have some kind of quantifiable achievement: “I built a community center” or “I started a women’s group.” The first problem with that is that it is never just the PCV who is doing a specific project (or at least shouldn’t be, as that defeats the whole purpose of a sustainable community-driven endeavor). Second, so much of what we do as PCV’s is plant seeds for ideas that may not take place until the future (ie recycling), but the work is cut out for us in terms of at least beginning the process of changes in mentality or conscientiousness about issues.

For example, in terms of working with youth, while it may not be easily quantified, seeing those kids up on stage performing for the first time in their lives and doing an excellent job, I was confident of the positive influence this experience has had on them. I know that the self-esteem of each of them was soaring today, especially when our town was called for the silver medal. On the way home, they were already asking about next year and kvelling over how cool their medals, t-shirts, and even the name tags were. It was so sweet that something so seemingly insignificant as a laminated name tag meant so much to one of the boys. But long after the medals are lost and the t-shirts don’t fit anymore, I hope that they will look back on this day as a time when they did something completely out of the box that they didn’t think they had the confidence to do, but did anyway and did it well, learning that hard work and dedication does pay off in the end when you put your heart and mind to do something. And so, certainly for today, I feel really good about what I am doing here.

Here’s to having even more days like this in the coming year!

Finally, an update!

It’s funny now looking back on what I thought would be my projects for the two years when I first arrived to my town.  As they say here, “nada que ver”: they have nothing to do with what I am involved in right now.  As I said in a previous post, one’s projects are really ever-evolving and my host Dad once joked that I at least had my foot in with just about everything going on in the town, which I suppose is the idea, although I hope in the coming months that several of these projects really take off (which is what I have heard happens in a volunteer’s second year).  In terms of what I’m doing right now, it would be the following:

 Lots with the elementary school which I have found to be really rewarding. 

• Last week I started back up the Chicas Poderosas from last year who are now 3^rd and 4^th graders.  They are absolutely adorable and I missed working with them.  This week we are going to talk about nutrition and the importance of a balanced diet and then make  whole wheat pancakes—yum!  I am thinking of continuing with them until the school vacation in July and then starting up a new group with the 1^st and 2^nd graders until the end of the school year in order to spread the Chicas Poderosas love around a bit.  
• These past few weeks I’ve been busy with “Arte por la Paz” which is a nation-wide PC initiative to promote peace and touch on issues such as war and domestic violence using the medium of art.  In different regions of the country, volunteers work with groups of kids to develop a skit, dance routine, poetry, or paintings related to the above-mentioned themes to bring to a conference consisting of other groups in the region where they can show off their talent.  I am working with a group of 5^th and 6^th graders on a play about a superhero named “Peace Man” who interrupts precarious situations (two friends fight about a soccer game bet, a father gets fired and takes his anger out on his family, and a girl whose parents are getting divorced and wants to try drugs to feel better) to offer a more peaceful alternative.  The group of 6 kids is really awesome and it’s always interesting to get involved in new activities that reveal different facets of their personalities.  Speaking of which, uncovering my “director” facet has been quite the experience– who knew all the roles I would be playing when I signed up to do Peace Corps!
• There is a really fantastic organization called “Kids to Kids” through which kids in the states do fundraising for projects for kids in developing countries.  Kids to Kids works (I believe exclusively) through Peace Corps volunteers and their local counterparts in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Belize on educational, athletic, and artistic projects (http://kidstokids.org/).  With my elementary school’s principal, I sent in an application for a grant to expand the recreational opportunities in the school. Last year they built a multi-use concrete field whose only multi-use is by everyone in the town, not just the kids for whom it was intended.  However, that is about to change!  Our grant was approved and we are going to put up basketball and volleyball nets and purchase a ping pong table for the less athletically-inclined (or perhaps Forrest Gump hopefuls).  It’s perfect because this year the school has a gym teacher who comes once a week, so he will be able to teach the kids to play these new sports.  The scope of recreational opportunities is slowly but surely expanding in my town from soccer, soccer, and more soccer to something NEW!

In the high school, the principal and I have been working with a group of kids to start up a recycling project in the town.  This is not as easy as it sounds, as there is a total lack of consciousness when it comes to littering, let alone recycling.  I am trying to help us not get too ahead of ourselves and focus on improving the trash situation at the school and then move on to spreading the word on a town-level.  A difficulty that tends to happen a lot is that people get really excited about a project, make all these lofty plans, and then don’t follow through on any of it.  I am trying to be realistic and know that the concept of recycling will never be an over-night phenomena that will have instant success in rural CR.  If one has lived his whole life throwing trash out the windows of buses and in the road of his very own town, it will be difficult to explain the benefit of collecting and separating one’s trash and then bringing some of that trash to the large city so that it may be recycled.  However, as with everything, it’s “poco a poco.”  I have to be happy with the ever-increasing spread of consciousness in terms of littering and recycling on the part of the students, in the hope that down the road they will think twice before burning their trash and think instead of how they themselves can recycle products to be used in their homes and maybe even on a more organized level.

In non-youth work, the biggest project the development association and I are working on is improving the roads.  This is the #1 priority according to essentially everyone in my town, especially as the rainy season quickly approaches.  Slowly but surely the project is getting more focused and an engineer came last week to make a blue-print and from there he will create a budget of what we want to do, which is create concrete ditches on the sides of the road and put in some large sewers in places where water often overflows onto the road.  In the past year (yes, this May 16^th marks my one year as an official PC volunteer!), I have certainly learned that working on a large-scale project such as this one is a slooooow process with entirely too much bureaucracy, but I do believe that with hard work this project will happen-- I will keep you all posted!

Two possible future projects that are also slowly taking form (and which I barely want to write down here for fear of jinxing them!) are the expansion of the aqueduct and the creation of a playground in the soccer field.  The aqueduct project has always been intriguing to me as potable water is such a basic necessity that some people in town do not have easy access to.  There are two parts of my quite spread out town that do not use the aqueduct system put in place about 15 years ago.  These families use systems of hoses connected to nearby streams for their water.  The problem is that during the dry season (summer), which has progressively been getting dryer and dryer in the past few years, the water is drying up.  Then in the winter, the water gets all sloshed around with the mud so the water that reaches them is all dirty.  The playground idea is another possibility with a lot of interest in the community.  The youth committee I was working with last year just changed members, so we’ll see if this year’s members are into the possibility.  A playground, like the improvements to the elementary school field, would offer a new recreational opportunity, particularly for the younger kids in the town which would be a welcome addition to the current soccer field.  

Alright, I think that’s a good update for the moment!  Hopefully some of these projects will epitomize the saying “slow and steady winds the race” as I really want to accomplish these very worth-while projects, though I know I also have to accept that sometimes the best of intentions does not a project make.  The PCV's role in the development of projects is to help guide the group in the right direction but not do the actual work for them.  It’s like the quote, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”  However the simplicity of that quote does not delve into the challenging reality of sustainable grass-roots development as it is quite a balancing act that involves many factors, but I am doing my best and we will see what happens!

Birthday Wekend Pictures

Ok, so I have yet to get the pictures from the English class party, but the following are from my actual birthday. Costa Rica`s national soccer team played Mexico to see who goes to the world cup, so we had a big party with neighbors in the rancho. After the game (which CR sadly lost), we blasted music and danced and sang karaoke (tìpica fiesta tica!) and enjoyed some delicious birthday cake. It was a lovely party and I could not have asked for a better birthday celebration. Also attached are pictures of the trash clean up I did with some neighborhood kids and Georgina, the super sweet PC trainee who came to visit for the weekend. We quite successfully cleaned up a huge part of the road and soccer field, and now we have to spread the word so that people do not continue to litter-- no small task, but poco a poco vamos!

Ok, here are the pictures!

my host parents
some of the lady party guests
me cutting the delicious birthday cake

after singing happy birthday, everyone was chanting for me to bite the cake. thinking that is must be some CR tradition and not wanting to offend anyone, I proceed to bite a little corner. imagine my surprise when one of the neighbors dunks my face into the cake! needless to say, I think I will be endlessly teased and reminded of my gullibility, but at least they got a kick out of it!

picking up road-side trash

garbage collected in a span of about 300 meters of the road and the soccer field (insane!)

enjoying a much needed boli-helado break at the pulperìa
after 3 tiring hours of trash pick-up, we celebrated with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (the kids´first time trying my favorite American snack!)
the cutest little puppies I have ever seen (about 3 weeks old)

¨The Best English Class Ever¨ 3/26

I just got back from my English class and, as one of the high school boys said, “that was one of the best English classes ever!” Here’s why:
As the course is 3 hours long, we have a break ½ way through where the boys play soccer and the girls chat. Today, one of the guys came in and started talking with me, telling me he wasn’t in the mood to play soccer (strange as he always plays). We were chatting when all of the sudden I realized I didn’t hear anyone outside the classroom which was also strange because they are always quite noisy during the break. Then one of the other boys came in, telling us that one of the girls in the class who lives next door to the school was inviting everyone over for a snack. Yet again strange since she had never done this in the 6 months we’ve been having class. We get to the door and everything’s quiet so I told my friend, “maybe we should go in the back” and he says, “no, no, let’s knock.” So the door opens and there inside is my entire class singing Happy Birthday (in English!) with a big cake---- I was in shock! It was so beyond sweet and unexpected that they had been planning a birthday party for me—complete with balloons. They also made cheeseburgers (an all-american meal for the gringa’s birthday, of course!), which I hadn’t eaten in years but was actually really good. It was so cute that they made it like a birthday party in the US. As I mentioned in the post on Thanksgiving, many of my students said that the class has been a wonderful way to get to know other people in town and for me it has been equally meaningful for the friendships that have developed with people I probably never would have gotten to know if it hadn’t been for the class. The birthday party was all the more sweet knowing that for the most part, people in my town don’t usually celebrate birthdays for economic reasons, so it means more than I can describe that they wanted to do this for me. I was so upset not to have my camera but someone ended up getting a camera from a neighbor, so I will post pictures ASAP because they are absolutely adorable. One of the boys made a really sweet speech saying how great the English class has been and how we’ve all gotten to know each other and that they will never forget me and hope I will never forget them. I almost started to cry, because I know I will never forget the kindness of this very special night (aka “the best English class ever”).

Also: special thanks to the TONS of birthday cards that I have received (and it’s not even my birthday yet!) in the mail. I love getting mail down here and birthday cards are especially wonderful to receive. I’m waiting for my actual birthday to open them, but want to say MUCHISIMAS GRACIAS to the family and friends (and family friends!) who took the time to write--- it means a lot! I love and miss you all more than words can express!

Pictures!

I cannot believe how fast time is flying by. It feels like we were just celebrating Christmas and New Year’s and now it’s almost April. May 16th marks one year in my site. One year down, one to go—incredible! Last week the new batch of volunteers, 52 in total, came down to Costa Rica to start their training. In a way, it is reminiscent of college and feels like the “freshman” have arrived. I must admit, it’s nice feeling (at least somewhat) old and wise, at least in Peace Corps terms. This weekend I have a trainee coming to visit to experience a few “days in the life” of a volunteer. I’m really excited for her to come, as I remember how much it meant to visit someone this time last year. Visiting a current volunteer during training is quite a big deal, making the whole process a lot more real--- the reality that in a few short weeks, one will be in a similar situation in his or her own town. Peace Corps is very good at transitioning between the various stages of one’s PC experience. We started all together spending a few days in D.C., flew down to Costa Rica together and headed to a 5 day retreat outside of SJ, then were sent off to our training communities for 3 months. Training includes three visits: a group visit to a current volunteer, a solo visit to a volunteer, then a visit to one’s future site, and then we’re off to our sites for the 2 years. I look forward to sharing my experience with the trainee and hopefully making a new PC friend in the process.

I realized that I haven’t posted pictures in a while, so the following are some pictures from the past few months. A highlight was my little brother Austin’s visit. He came down for his spring break and we had a fantastic visit. He came to my town and we ended up going to a “tope” (a horse parade which is a typical event for a town’s annual festival) in my closest city. Upon our return he had the opportunity to talk to a bunch of guys his age from my English class, which I know meant a lot to the guys and was eye-opening for Austin. Then we were off to Malpaís, a beautiful beach town on the southernmost tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, where we zip-lined, Austin surfed, and just relaxed and enjoyed the Costa Rican sun. It was a really nice visit and as we were realizing, we have seen each other for just 3 days during the entire past year, so it was nice to have time to catch up and spend time together.

The pictures are a somewhat random assortment of events since December of last year, but I have little captions to explain each one. I will be sure to write another post soon detailing my current projects.
Enjoy the pictures and happy almost spring to all!

this picture is the cover of my community diagnostic which I finally handed in a few weeks ago. any spanish speaking readers who are interested in reading a document that includes everything you could ever want to know about my town-- past present and future-- send me an email and I will gladly pass it along!

the school in my town

community center in my town, also current home to the high school

some chicas poderosas and I playing around with my camera while we were watching a soccer game

no joke, that little colt was born the day this picture was taken-- isn`t she adorable? I named her Miel which means honey in Spanish because of her coloring

Ross, a friend I worked with in Barcelona a few summers ago, came to Costa Rica and visited my town-- a really great visit!

my host brother and host niece on Christmas

some chicas poderosas at a Christmas portal (see Christmas/New Year`s post for my details on what a portal is). we are next to a Christmas nativity scene.

Christmas dinner celebrated in the rancho

horse parade

surfer dude Austin

preparing to zip!

view of Malpaìs/Santa Teresa from way in the mountains while zip-lining

a la the Fisher clan`s pictures in Dominical, me ´touching´ the sun

view of the beach at sunset


the little plane Austin and I took from Malpaìs to San Josè-- 30 minutes (in a somewhat claustraphobia-inducing plane) instead of the 6 or more hours it would have taken by bus

framed Costa Rican sunset, gracias a Victoria-- love it!

Being a ¨Connector¨

I think one of the most challenging aspects of being a “rural community developer” is forming my own definition of what exactly that entails. As I’m sure any RCD PC volunteer would agree, it is a constantly evolving definition that is highly dependent on the nature of the community. The work that I’m doing in my town might have nothing to do with what another PCV is doing in her town. And that’s ok. While I imagine this, too, will be an ever-evolving aspect of my job, what I have come to realize in the last month or so is that a huge part has been that of a “connector” (or CONNector, as befits a Connecticut College alum). Allow me to explain: ever since I’ve gotten to my town, I’ve been meeting people left and right, from community members to the mayor of the county to leaders of various governmental organizations. It is sometimes to my embarrassment that someone comes up to me asking how I am and I don’t recognize him or cannot place him for the life of me (this only happens in my closest city as I know pretty much everyone in my town). As my career-counselor Mom has always told me, “it’s not just what you know, it’s who you know” and during my time here, I have been able to widen the circle of people who know about my town and the projects we are doing, as well as people of the town who are getting to know each other better. Here are some examples:

I believe I wrote about this when it happened, but a few months back, I helped coordinate a visit of a really awesome group facilitator for the women’s group in the neighboring town. The woman, who is affiliated with a religious organization, does anything and everything group development-related, came to give a charla (talk) on personal development. She did a very simple activity, but the women loved it and were so happy to add this woman to their ever-expanding “net” of contacts. It is great to know that these contacts, at the end of the day, will remain with the woman so that they may program activities for themselves in the future.

As the seasons here are reversed, kids are just heading back to school this week from summer vacation. During the break when many kids weren’t doing all that much, I had an English class for kids ages 10-14. The initial idea began because the elementary school in the town next door (also home of the women’s group) does not receive English classes— there are only 6 kids in attendance! When I was there for a meeting with the women’s group, a few girls in the school asked if I could teach them English, thus spawning the idea to have the class during the vacation. Therefore the class had kids from both towns which, though just 4 km. away, don’t have too much interaction. One of the girls from the town next door just graduated from 6th grade (the only one!) and is thus the only person heading to the high school from her town. Therewere several girls her age from my town in the class and she became friends with them during the past few months. It has been really sweet to see their friendships developing and know that it probably isn’t quite so scary heading to high school, now that she has a bunch of “compañeras” in her grade.

On what is basically the next mountain away, but still part of my town, a few Canadian builders are developing a housing complex of some quite large homes. The other day I was outside the pulpería waiting for the bus when I heard some people struggling to communicate with the owner, asking for a telephone card. I stepped in to translate and the people came out of the pulpería, surely curious to see who their fellow English-speaker was. Turns out they were a lovely Canadian couple who built a house to come down a few months of the year to escape the cold Canadian winters. I ended up telling them about my (adult) English class and inviting them to come and help out. A few weeks later the woman came and was a total hit with my students. They were really excited to have someone new come in and speak English and it was really cute to see them using what we’ve learned in the class to communicate. Following the class, many class members have gone to their house to practice English (it’s funny because they come back and tell me how hard it is thinking and speaking only in English for an afternoon and I tell them: welcome to my life!). The other day my host family invited the couple over for lunch and it was sweet because they were so touched to come and see what life is like on the “other side of the mountain.” It is a good feeling knowing that as a result of the English class, these connections are being made and friendships are beginning to flourish, which in turn are bridging language, cultural, and socio-economic barriers.

There are many more examples, but I will leave it at this. I think one of the huge challenges of volunteerism is the idea of sustainability. How will I make a “lasting mark.” In addition, what can I do so that my 2 years away from my family and friends are “worth it?” I think this remains to be seen and (gracias a dios, as they say here), I still have over a year to work on it, but I do believe this idea of being a “connector” is one way in which the work and collaboration of these two years will continue after I leave and provide peace of mind that there is a certain amount of sustainability in the human relationships that are formed during these 2 years.