We are now in the thick of the Costa Rican winter, or invierno, which basically means the days are filling with rain, strong North winds, the constant threat of berrancos…or mudslides. At least that is the Tico side of the story.I can tell you from my experience that is not really completely accurate. Take the last 4 days for example. We haven’t had a drop of rain and almost no wind. Great weather. Everyone once in a while we have spells like this during the so called “winter months” and you will hear people saying things like puro verano hoy, or its summer today.
I’m very confused with the seasons at this point. We have had some cold spells, but it hasn’t been nearly as noticeable as I was told to expect by the Ticos. I guess it is all relative. December is almost here, supposedly bringing the fiercest North winds. They keep saying things like “you haven’t seen anything yet…wait for December.” Well we shall see soon enough.
My rant on the weather is almost finished. To be fair, the additional rain does soften up the ground quite a bit, leaving pieces of terrain that seemed to be firm one day, sliding down the hillside the next. Just a few weeks ago we had a perfectly good piece of highway wash away in a matter of days. First it showed a few cracks, then dropped about 5 inches a couple days later, and then after a week se fue!...it went. The picture should be above at the start of the blog if the file uploaded correctly.
So what is new?
Mom, Dad, and Matt will be here in 1 week!!! That is the biggest thing going on right about now. They are flying in on Monday, November 24. They will stay here with me in my town for 2 nights, then we will head to Playa Manuel Antonio for about 4 days to celebrate Thanksgiving. About 20 volunteers, mostly from my program, are meeting up there and renting a huge house to enjoy a few days of R&R. I can’t wait! It should be a complete despiche…use your imagination to translate that.
After Manuel Antonio, we will spend about a week exploring a couple of different cloud forest reserves, as well as the Arenal Volcano in the interior of the country. It should be relaxing and a lot of fun.
My parents will leave to go back to the States on Monday, December 8. Fortunately my brother will then be sticking around for another week or so with me in my town. Matt has been studying Spanish, so I think he is interested in the language practice and also experiencing daily Tico life. He takes off on December 15th.
Since the fam is coming down for Thanksgiving, I will not be returning to the U.S. for Christmas. I don’t have any plans to come back at the moment, but am thinking maybe July 2009 will be the right time for me to come back and visit. Will keep you posted.
As for work…business is good.
I am the proud new teacher of 45 English language students in my community! Actually, about 20% of them are coming from surrounding towns to take advantage of the classes. Since my last blog update, I’ve had class sign-ups, acquired the books and teaching materials, and started classes. I’ve been teaching now for about 3 weeks. Managing 45 students probably sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but fortunately Peace Corps has an agreement with a respected English speaking program so that we can use their materials and bring high-quality English teaching to rural communities. Having the program saves me a lot of time and I probably only spend about 15 hours a week on English classes, which includes the 8 hours of in-class time each week.
A picture of one of my English classes. We use the town elementary school.The San Cristóbal Norte Boys and Girl Scouts Troop (here the Guías y Scouts de Costa Rica) is well on its way to formation! We went through some rocky times at first trying to drum up support for this program, but seemed to have turned a corner. We now have a Committee of 6 parents in place, 4 scout leaders on-board , and more than 30 kids signed up. At the end of October the Committee members, scout leaders, and myself attended the Introductory Training, which helped solidify and motive our team. I ended up as Vocal, a minor role which I was happy to take on. It has been an unexpectedly fun project!
The Boys and Scouts committee before we started the introductory training course.In other projects I am almost finished with my Community Analysis Tool report, or CAT. I hope to be done with that this week and push it out the door. I continue to work with community leaders on an organization to bring more union to the town, which has a history of groups working independently. The result as been the formation of the Civic Union San Cristóbal Norte or Unión Cívica. We have been meeting monthly for several months now. The group still has a lot of internal strengthening left to be a sustainable project, but we seem to be on the right track.
I’m almost finished with the Junior Achievement class mentioned in the last blog. With the completion of the Junior Achievement class and my CAT I hope to have a lighter schedule for a little while once I get back from vacation with the family…that is the plan anyway.
Other important events.
The 2008 Presidential Election!
Obama won. How crazy is that?! I was able to watch the election night coverage with a large group of Peace Corps volunteers at a bar in San Jose before we started our All-Volunteer Conference (AVC).
I am no Obama nut, but it was an exciting night. As you can imagine, the Peace Corps crowd is about as far left on the American political spectrum as the U.S. military is to the right. That only made things more interesting. Even still, I found McCain’s speech, as well as Obama’s speech that followed to be very moving. With the bar dead quiet in rapt attention, it was a special moment.
All-Volunteer Conference.
We had our All-Volunteer Conference, a once a year event, from November 5-8. It was great to finally see all the 95 or so volunteers together. For some reason to me it felt like the last step in truly becoming a Peace Corps volunteer.
Sometimes the money is not in the budget for an annual AVC, and that was nearly the case this year, but our inventive Volunteer Advisory Committee was able to put together something on the cheap. By cheap, I mean to say we camped out for 3 days in the mountains north of San José. To be fair, it was a nice pre-prepared camp with tents, a chow house, meeting room, wi-fi internet, and pre-constructed tents on platforms. (Okay, so we didn’t exactly rough it.)
The meeting was basically 3 days of teambuilding, best practices exchange, program meetings, and social events. There was a Halloween party and costume contest…in which myself and two other fellow volunteers, Matthew McMillan and Clinton Glase, cleaned house! At the last minute, Matthew came up with the idea of going as Bernie from Weekend at Bernie’s. We slapped sun glasses on Matt, then Clinton and I spent the rest of the night dragging Matt’s limp body around the costume/dance party. Due to Matt’s dedication as a corpse, not moving for nearly 3 hours that night, we won Most Creative and Best Group costume…2 out of the 3 events. Sadly, I have no pictures for you.
AVC also featured a talent show the final night of the meeting. Having no "talent-show” worthy skills that I could think of, I decided to just sit back and watch. A number of volunteers performed on the guitar, sang, did stand-up comedy, played the drums, acted out comedy skits, or demonstrated other abilities. Suffice it to say that I have never been in the company of such a gifted group of people. It was also a very memorable night and made me proud to be a PCV.
That is about all the major updates I have for you right now…or want to continue typing, that is. It is 2pm at the time of this writing. Time for a cafecito! If you read this and I have a few minutes, drop me a line and let me know what is going on back home…I always love to hear updates. I will come back with a full report on the family visit. Best-
I want to dedicate this blog entry to my friend Brian Gandy who recently got engaged. He is living in Augusta, GA managing an organic produce farm. Gandy (the old hippy…as he describes himself) seems to be in a good place right now and I am very happy for him. Best of luck to him and his fiancé.
