Rice n Beansssss

Hola! Sorry it has taken me this long to post something. I´ll start at the beginning...

On June 25th all of the costa rica volunteers flew to miami for two days of ¨staging¨ where we completed paperwork etc. It was fun but we were all just anticipating our arrival in Costa Rica.

On June 27th we all flew to San Jose and took a bus to a mountain retrat about an hour away from the airport. We stayed here for four days and participated in various activities to get to know eachother better and to introduce us to the basic things we will be doing. We also took our last hot showers for possibly two years. There are 18 volunteers working in community and economic development aka CED formerly known as micro enterprise development. There are also 17 volunteers that will be working in the children and yougth development aka CYD.

On July 1st we all left the mountain retreat and were dropped off in various communities about an hour drive outside of San Jose. I dont think i can say the name of the town that I am in for privacy reasons....sorry about that. Anway, I am with 5 other guys that are in the CED program and that are at about the same level of spanish as me and we all live really close to eachother in the community.

My family is awesome! My host mom´s name is Blanca and she is a housewife, my dad is Jimmy and he is an auto inspector. My brother who is 13 is Jimmy Henry which I misunderstood at first and thought was Jimmy Hendrix because its pronounced kind of like that. Haha, anyway, I have a 16 year old sister named Fiola and a 5 year old sister named Fiorella. Fiorella is so cute and she follows me around everywhere. Unfortunately I cant understand a word she says so most of the time I just end up smiling and nodding and laughing. I bought two coloring books before I left the states and gave them to the kids when I arrived. Fiorella has had one of the books, hello kitty themed, attached at her hip since I gave it to her.

Most of the food we have been eating is what I expected. For breakfast we have rice and beans and maybe a fried egg, for lunch there is rice and beans again with platanos which is a variety of banana that is fried and is really quite tasty. Then for dinner.....more rice and beans! I have also had arroz con pollo once which is rice with chicken and that was good too.

4 days a week we have spanish class from 8am to 12pm and then 1pm to about 230. It is pretty intensive and the teacher only speaks in spanish but does a really good job of making sure we can understand her. Once a week we have to take a bus to another town where all the trainees from both the CED and CYF program meet and we receive lessons together. The bus ride is about an hour from my community and costs the equivalent of about 70 cents one way. The buses are really crowded and the roads are really windy because we are up in the mountains so if you arent feeling well before you get on the bus then your in trouble for sure.

The town that I live in is bigger than most of the other training communities but I have not been able to tell how many people live here yet. This time of year is called the rainy season because it rains for about an hour every day. The day starts out sunny and hot, then at some point it cools down and rains, and then it gets sunny and hot again. Two days ago, the 6 of us were at the soccer field chalenging some local kids to a game of futbol, by the way they kicked our asses and were probably no more than 12 years old. Anyway, while we were playing the clouds started to roll in and since we are at such a high elevation being in the mountains, the clounds came in like fog.

I am having a really awesome time here so far! I will try to keep the updates coming but the internet here is not great so we will see.....

I hope everyone is doing well! Keep me updated on things that are going on in the US and what you guys are up to!

Much love!

Emily