Livin' La Vida Tica: Tes' Peace Corps Experience: Last Week of Training

I truly cannot believe that training is winding down. It’s one of those things where you think it’s never going to end… except that this Friday is our swearing-in ceremony at the US ambassador’s house, when we become full-fledged volunteers. As a whole, I think us RCDers are getting nostalgic (or at least I am!). I’ve really come to feel at home in my training town with my friends Sarah, Jenny, and Heath living around the corner, ready to play soccer on the cancha or just sit in the park and hang out. We’re quite a team and I’m going to miss them a lot. Though I am really sad to leave, another part of me is so excited. I did not come to Costa Rica for training, I came here to work in rural community development for 2 years! I can only hope that after 3 months in my site, I feel as comfortable and at home as I do right now. Having the 3 months here has definitely given me a lot of confidence to go into the extremely daunting situation of being the sole gringa in my town. We’ll see how it goes!

This past weekend we had our family party, which was quite a success. Each community was in charge of preparing a certain part and my group put together the games. Little did we know how much the Ticos would get into it—and the adults more than the kids! Actually, the kids did go crazy during pin the tail on the donkey. They were screaming at the top of their lungs as the poor blind-folded person tried to put it in the right place (do we do that in the states?!). Relay races were also crazy. However the icing on the cake were the water balloons we had bought with the intention of having an innocent balloon toss. Little did we know that throwing water balloon would soon lead to people taking down the balloons we used for decoration to fill with more water. When that finished, everyone moved on to throwing cups of water on everyone, which then quickly led to dumping buckets of water over people’s heads. Needless to say, we ended up completely DRENCHED! Note to self: never again bring water balloons to a Tico party. Actually it was really fun, minus having to clean up the entire party while soaking wet. It’s funny though, yesterday we had lunch at Jenny’s house and her Mom was asking if that kind of thing would happen in the states and all of us said we’d never had that happen. She said that if you have water balloons at a Tico party, a water fight is an inevitability… that would’ve been good to know beforehand!

I just finished my 10 page paper entitled “The Life and Contributions of Jose Figueres”—a truly scintillating work. Ok, not really, but it’s done! Tomorrow my Spanish class is going to the National Theater in downtown San Jose for a tour which should be really cool. The theater is one of the most beautiful buildings in Costa Rica so I can’t wait to see what it looks like inside. Then Thursday I have the day free (por fin!) and Friday is the swearing-in in the morning and a big dinner with the volunteers who are just finishing their 2 years and leaving to go back to the states. Talk about being at different points in our lives! But it’ll be cool to hear their stories and hopefully they can give us some advice for just starting out. Then it’s one last weekend here before heading off to my site on Monday morning and beginning the next 2 years of my life… who knows the adventure and excitement those 2 years will bring!

Pura Vida,
Tes

Ah, I just figured out how to add pictures, this is a major breakthrough!! Enjoy... more to come!

Families and volunteers from my training town