The Bulldawg has landed! (okay, about 6 weeks ago...)

Pictures to the right under the "Tarbaca" slideshow.

The last month has been pretty busy. I know its taken me awhile to get something posted, but the internet access is not so great. Hopefully once training is over I’ll be able to post things more regularly.

I’m living with a family in a small town called Tarbaca in the mountains to the south of San Jose. Their are three other volunteers living with other families here in the same town. This is our training community for the next six weeks or so.

During the week we usually spend at least 2-3 days in language classes all day. The other days we are meeting with our full training group in San Jose or meeting with local officials here in the community as part of our training projects – principals of the local schools, chair of the development association, owners of businesses, and other community organizations. Our training coordinators keep us pretty busy.

On the weekends I and the other three volunteer trainees usually hang out with our families here in Tarbaca. The families we live with, as well as the other three volunteers, are all buena gente (good people).

My training family is made up of the parents (Pablo and Teresita) and their three kids (Paola, Pablo, and Sharon). There ages are 14, 13, and 7, respectively. The dad works at the local telecommunications station as a security guard, but also grows and sells tomatoes and some other vegetables on the side. Between the two jobs he probably works at least 60 hours a week.

The last two weekends on Saturday we have gone to la feria, which is basically the local farmers market, to sell his tomatoes. We get up EARLY (think 3:30am) to load up the tomatoes in the truck, drive them to market, and get set up. These are long days but it is a hell of a lot of fun! Plus I get to meet plenty of locals through Pablo and brush up on the language skills.

The other three volunteers in my training community are great people. Two of them, Marcus and Kayla, live about 10 meters (that’s right folks, we are using meters now, part of the integration process) from my house. The families are all related. Marcus lives with Teresita’s father and Kayla with her sister and family. The other volunteer, Brittany, lives about a kilometer away with another family. We all still hang out with Brittany all the time though.

Marcus is from Arizona and went to UConn and then Alabama, where he ran track at both schools. He has a great sense of humor and spends about all day laughing. He greets just about any person on the streets with a booming “Como le va!” or “Pura vida!” He generally spreads joy and good humor wherever he goes. You can’t miss Marcus in Tarbaca.

Kayla grew up in Roswell, GA, where we were only a few miles from each during high school (but never met prior to Peace Corps). Kayla went to Valdosta state, where she studied Business and Spanish. In total I think she spent about a year and a half in Spain. About six months in study abroad, and a year following school teaching English in Malaga. Kayla enjoys watching movies and shaking her booty to some salsa music.

Brittany is from Florida (Tampa Bay area) but spent a lot of time in Montreal where she went to school. She studied philosophy in school and served as editor-and-chief (and founder) of a bilingual publication produced by philosophy students at Canadian universities. Brittany enjoys selling eggs at la feria for Marcus’s dad and confounding all the Costa Ricans by responding “I’m agnostic” to questions regarding her religion. A long explanation usually ensues.

These are the three people I spend the vast majority of my time with at the moment. We get along great and have a lot of fun. Together we are el equipo!

Tarbaca is a sleepy little town. There is no internet café or access to daily newspapers (which always kills me). Since our family is kind of campo (country), we seem to wake up early and go to bed early. Any time not in class or on training projects is spent with our families. We are generally the center of attraction at home. Between my house and Kayla’s, there are six kids in our little barrio, and they have a lot of energy.

While I’m not usually that crazy about kids, these kids are great – very happy-go-lucky, not spoiled, and overall good-natured. It’s been a lot of fun to hang out with them.

How do you live as a volunteer? Do you get paid? Some of you have asked me this. For the entire time we are in training, or about 12 weeks, each volunteer receives Э130,000 colones!!!...or about $260.

That may seem like an incredibly small amount of money, but it seems to be working out just fine (surprisingly). This money does not include the money given to our host families for lodging…which is about Э80,000 colones a month!!!....or about $160.

Note: From now on all amounts in colones will be followed by three exclamation marks, followed shortly by … and then the amount in U.S. dollars. Please see the two previous examples. This is done for dramatic effect.

Once we becomes volunteers we will be paid more, but not much more, and we have to negotiate our own rent in the sites.

What else can I say? In a few words – I eat rice and beans with every meal, the roads are terrible, and the showers are cold. That is my life in a nutshell. No great hardships right now…just a few quirky things to make life interesting.

As for work, there are roughly 50 or so volunteers here in training in my group. 18 volunteer trainees are in my work project – Community Economic Development. I will get into the specifics of my work project with a later blog. Basically it involves lending a hand to small business in communities, with emphasis on women and youth.

In about 2 weeks I will be assigned my work site. This is a big deal! It is where I will be living for the next two years. It is pretty exciting. I will let you all know what happens.

This is my world for now and for the next six weeks or so. I know it took me awhile to get a blog entry up. I had to go through a process with Peace Corps to make sure this conformed to their policies (note the disclaimer). Hope to have more for you soon and hope you all are doing well wherever you are. I posted some pictures to the right under the "Tarbaca" slide show. Hope you enjoy.

This blog is dedicated to my Mom who recently had a birthday. Happy birthday, Madre.