Site Assignment and More!

Hola! Wow, so much is going on now, where to start… today has been a crazy day. This morning I had Spanish class in the little city 30 minutes away from my town. Then I rushed back with Jenny, the other volunteer in my class, so we could give English classes at the local elementary school. I taught a 5th grade class and as they were learning about internal organs (obviously a really important thing for 5th graders to know about in English, right?!) I had them make little books entitled “My Body” and they drew pictures and wrote, “This is my brain, in my head,” etc etc. It was really cute. Then Jenny and I did our “Community Field Activity” together with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders of the school which was all about Earth Day or “Dia de La Tierra.” We gave a little talk about the importance of caring about the environment, then they made little posters about what taking care of the environment means to them, and then we picked up trash around the school. The kids got really into it and it went a lot better than I was expecting-- I can’t wait to do something like this in my town.

Speaking of which!!!!! This past Friday we had our site assignment day. I cannot describe the feeling of receiving information about the place that is going to be my home for the next 2 years—it really was indescribable, but definitely a day full of emotion. They had the whole group of 53 of us and pointed out our site on the map in front of everyone and then we got a packet of information all about our pueblos. According to PC rules, I’m not supposed to say the actual name of my town for security reasons (if you want more details, send me an email), I can say that it’s a little town of 300 people about 2.5 hours away from San Jose (I have the RCD site that is closest to San Jose which is nice since I’m really centrally located in the country and can get north or south pretty easily—and I’m not too far from the beaches on the Pacific Ocean side!). The town’s economic activities are coffee and sugar cane, as well as “animal husbandry.” I can’t wait to learn about the process of growing coffee! The little packet of information they give us says that possible projects are working with a women’s group that is just forming, helping teach people use computers (they have a computer lab, but haven’t learned how to use them), working towards building a high school (they currently give classes to the 90 high school students in the local community center), working with the sports committee, and lots more! Needless to say, it seems like there is a lot that I will (hopefully!) be able to get involved in throughout the next 2 years. This Friday we have our site visits where we will go for 5 days to our site to stay with our future host families and basically get acquainted with the place where we will be spending our next 2 years. It’s really exciting and scary, but definitely more exciting than scary. I can’t wait to meet people and just see what my town is like!

So this past weekend was Passover. While most volunteers went to this crazy Imperial concert with Incubus and Smashing Pumpkins, I ventured with 2 other volunteers to the orthodox synagogue in San Jose to attend a community seder. We were really nervous beforehand because we had heard from other volunteers that the Jewish community in San Jose is not very inviting and inclusive, but we found the exact opposite to be true. As soon as we got in (there is very high security, but we had sent in information like passport copies and our synagogues in the states beforehand), people could not have been nicer. It was funny because it definitely didn’t feel like we were in Costa Rica. People were speaking a mix of Spanish, Hebrew, and English and the Jewish people in Costa Rica mostly came from Russia and Poland as a result of anti-Semitism right around the time of World War II, just like lots of Jewish people in the states, so they all looked (not to stereotype) just like people who would be in my synagogue at home. They were definitely on Tico Time though, it was supposed to start at 6, but we didn’t get started until 8. The seder itself was really nice—the 2 rabbis leading it were really enthusiastic and made it interactive (for example, each table acted out one of the 10 plagues). It didn’t end until 12am (a little different than my family’s seder which usually goes for about 45 minutes until we’re ready to start eating!) and the family we were sitting with offered to take us back to our hotel, which was so sweet. So although I really missed my family in CT a lot, I’m really glad to of had such a positive experience with the Jewish community in Costa Rica and am looking forward to coming back for another Jewish holiday and also to see the museum that is part of the big synagogue’s compound.

On that note, I’m off to bed because I have to get up at 5:30am tomorrow to catch the bus to go to San Jose for a special Spanish class at one of the universities. I’ll definitely update when I get back from my site visit—we’ll see how it goes!

Buenas noches,
Tes