Exploring Costa Rica!

Wow, it feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve last updated, but no fear, I have returned! Training has been crazy busy and seems that it will continue that way until the end, so I haven’t had too much time to write since I’ve barely been online. For example, this past Monday I had Spanish class in the morning, then helped with an English class at the local elementary school (we are teaching an “official” class in a few weeks that will be observed/evaluated by one of my bosses, eek!), and then led a community meeting with the other volunteers in the evening. The meeting was awesome—basically it was preparation for the kinds of meetings we’ll give in our towns in order to assess the wants and needs in the town to develop the projects that we’ll work on for the 2 years. So for this meeting, we split the members in 2 groups (men and women) and had them discuss and write down the resources, accomplishments, needs, and dreams of our community in 4 boxes. It’s really interesting to do this in groups in order to see group differences. While most of what they discussed was the same, the women talked about a need for an EBAIS, a health clinic, while the men did not. This makes sense since it’s the women who have to care for the sick children (they did not hesitate to point this out to the men, either!). So it went really well and it’ll be even more great when we get to do this in our actual communities because we’ll be able to take this information, do a priority ranking and then get started on projects!

A funny cultural note: we’ve been told that having cafecito and snacks is an essential aspect of any community meeting so even though our meeting was at 7pm, we bought coffee/milk/sugar and made a HUGE pot. So at the end of the meeting, we asked if anyone wanted coffee and only one person did. So although Ticos do love their coffee, apparently they don’t love it at 8:30pm (which makes sense!). Now we know for next time to ask who wants coffee before making a gigantic pot of it. We also made popcorn to have as a snack and a “little piece” of the USA and they all loved it which was really cute.

The other weekend we went on our very first PCV Visit to visit current volunteers who are out in the field. The RCD-ers split into 2 groups and my group of 9 went to Guanacaste, a province in the northwest area of the country bordering the Pacific Ocean. It was really nice to get out of the San Jose area and see a new part of Costa Rica and the two sites we visited, albeit very different, were both really cool. We went way up to the border of Nicaragua (we could actually see it from one volunteer’s site) and visited two volunteers who, although not very far away in distance, had totally different sites. One site was reminiscent of a Wild West cowboy movie—pretty dusty and flat, but with a beautiful view of a nearby volcano. The volunteer there, who is about to finish his 2 years, was absolutely awesome. He was the perfect example of an integrated volunteer—we literally couldn’t walk more than 3 houses without him stopping to chat with one of his friends. In his 2 years, he’d worked with a women’s panaderia (bakery), helped reinvigorate the town’s water committee when the town went 6 months without a steady water supply, among many other projects. We helped bake pasteles at the panaderia and later sold them door to door which was quite hilarious—our selling point was hechos por gringos (made by gringos) and I must say, we sold out quite quickly! We also went to a nearby river which was (as my mom would say) positively delightful and relaxing.

The other site was way up in the mountains—we had to take a 40 minute ride from the closest (quite small) city in the back of a big truck to get there. He was telling us that 5 years ago there was no road to his town and you could only get there on horseback and 2 years ago there was no electricity (some of us stayed in homes that did not have electricity—needless to say, they went to bed around 7:30!). The volunteer there was working to get deeds for the land, because as of right now, nobody has official deeds recognized by the government and in order to be eligible for governmental money to build things like health centers, these kinds of documents are necessary (therefore the work he is doing is incredibly important). The trip overall was really great. It was awesome to get an idea of what puts the rural in “Rural Community Development,” since my training pueblo is nothing (in terms of rustic-ness (rusticity?!), proximity to a city, and concentration of people in the “center” of town), compared to these sites. I truly cannot wait to find out where this adventure will continue for me, where I will be for the two years. We find out a week from Friday, ¡qué emoción!

This weekend we’re going on PCV visits, again, but alone. It’ll certainly be interesting navigating through Costa Rica by myself to find the volunteer’s site, but that’s what I’ll be doing for the 2 years, so I guess it’s best to get started. The difficult thing is that San Jose is not an easy city to get around. Perhaps it is that I am not very direction savvy (as Jess my trusty navigator can attest…), but it does not help that in Costa Rica, they don’t use road names. At all. Instead, they give directions using a given place’s proximity to a specified landmark. For example, the address for the bus stop that I need to get to on Saturday morning is: “La Coca Cola (which is an area of town, not a street name), 50 meters norte de la Mussmanni.” Mussmanni is a Costa Rican panaderia chain. It gets worse: many times, an address can include a landmark that is no longer there, that you just have to KNOW where it is. So how does that work?, one might ask. I will tell you: not very well! It’s fine for the Ticos, who know all the landmarks and somehow have an internal compass, but for yours truly, it is a recipe for disaster. The good news is that I’m not afraid to ask for directions, so hopefully I will figure it out (or else just stay in San Jose for 5 days…!).

Alright, my updates have begun to feel like mini-essays, so I will leave it at this and go read. I’m starting Snow, by the Turkish author Orham Pamuk, which was recommended to me while visiting Istanbul. It’s very well written and an interesting story, so I’m looking forward to having some time to read this weekend on my PCV visit!

Mil besos a todos,
Tes

PS I would like to dedicate this post to Alessandra Colia, one of my loyal readers(!), who gave me the incredible news a few nights ago that she is coming to Costa Rica to work this summer. I cannot describe how happy I am to know that I will 100% be seeing her this summer and it’s such perfect timing because she finishes in August, which is when I’ll have been at my site for around 3 months, so I’m sure I’ll be ready to see a familiar face (not that I wouldn’t be happy ANY time to see a familiar face, but it really could not be more perfect timing, so yay Ali— I can’t wait to see you!!!!)