La Escuela Del Oriente...

I have been working at a new elementary school since March. I felt like last year was a constant struggle working at the elementary in the center of my town (where I did the world map and the read-a-thon). The crappy principle and uncooperative teachers just really wore me down. I heard there was a small school located on a farm at the edge of my town, about 4 kilometers away in a place called El Oriente (the orient). I decided that at the beginning of this school year in February I would go introduce myself and see if there was anything I could help with. I was going to wait a few weeks after school started to visit to let the beginning-of-the-year excitement die down and let them get into the swing of things. However, during the first week of school a man in my town told me that the principal of the elementary had sent him to ask me to come out there to talk about possible projects. I thought, “YESSS!!!! WOOOO!!!! YAY!” It was a great feeling to know that I was thinking of them and they were thinking of me!

It’s a school of 3 classrooms, a kindergarten room, and a cafeteria. There are 40 students from kindergarten through 6th grade. Kids come from various small communities in the area. Some walk for an hour to arrive at the school. The majority of the students come from very low-income families. Some are children of migrant workers in town for the coffee or sugar cane harvesting season. The school is located on a farm owned by a rich Costa Rican. The owner has sugar cane, cows, and high-class horses that are bred and sold. There are about 10 families that live on the town and are employees. The owner is hardly ever there, I met him once and he seems rich and nice enough.

The principle also teaches the 4th 5th and 6th graders in one room and the other teacher is with the 1st 2nd and 3rd graders in another classroom. Once a week they have PE, Music, and Religion. These teachers are ones that are assigned to give classes in all the schools in a district. In the district of Pejibaye there are 4 schools (Pejibaye, the one in the center of my town, the one up the hill in El Humo, El Oriente, and one in a place called Las Vueltas which is about 4 km away in a different direction). So, for example, the PE teacher teaches in Pejibaye Monday and Tuesday, then in El Humo on Wednesday, El Oriente on Thursday and then Las Vueltas on Friday. The principal and I talked and he mentioned that they want to paint something on one of the walls that faces the road in front of the school with the name of the elementary and a symbol of some sort. We would need to raise money for this to buy the paint etc. The school is in pretty bad condition; in one classroom parts of the ceiling are falling down, there is major paint chippage going on, and there is hardly anywhere for the kids to play during recess. As time has gone on, I have really come to regret not going out there earlier in my service. I could have used the few resources that Peace Corps provides to fund projects to help them out. Now its too late and the deadlines for the grants have passed because I have so little time left.

It just so happened that the volunteers in the Central Valley had decided to coordinate an event called Arte Por la Paz (Art for Peace). This consists of volunteers working individually giving anti-violence and pro-peace art workshops in their schools. Then, the volunteer selects a group of students to prepare different kinds of art within the same theme of peace and anti-violence. Then, all the volunteers and their groups come together to share the art, etc. I started working with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders from El Oriente in the beginning of March and after doing 3 or 4 workshops with all 20 of the students I selected 10 students for my group. There are 3 doing visual arts, 1 doing poetry, and 6 doing dance. They have been preparing their art for the past month and on May 15th we will attend the “Arte Por la Paz” event together with the groups that the other volunteers are bringing.

Well, I know its been a while….I’m not going to make any excuses.

The 5th graders raising money to paint the lines on the basketball court was a success. We raised all the money by December and then had to wait for the climate to cooperate with us. During December and January we had a lot of rain and the court was saturated so it was impossible to paint. In February we finally had a week full of sun so we took advantage and painted.

The mini-company project with high school students went fairly well. They chose to make greeting cards. There were 19 students in 8th grade. Ideally, there should have been a professor from the high school to work with me for supervising purposes and also to become familiar with the program to continue it later on after I am gone. No professor could be convinced to sign on but I decided to do it alone anyway. I think the students learned a lot but we ended up losing money in the end. Selling shares to community members financed the company for $3.00 each with the idea that at the end we would have profits and be able to give more than the $3.00 they had invested. We ended up giving about $2.50 back to each shareholder. The program finished in late November.

In March, I started the same program with a different group in the high school. This time, I selected 12 students after conducting interviews with about 60. There is one student in 11th grade, six students in 10th grade, two in 8th grade, and three in 7th grade. We have decided to make a candy called “cajetas” which is a fudge-like candy made principally from milk and sugar. We are focusing on 4 flavors: coconut, peanut, milk, and Pejibaye (which I think is beach nut? I don’t know I’ve never seen it in the US. But my dad knows what it is! He tried them!). Anyway, this program ends on June 30th and then it will be up to us to see if the group or at least some of them would like to continue to make cajetas.

Another thing I´m working on is an event called Arte por la Paz or Art for Peace. I am working with 11 students from a small elementary school on the outskirts of my town. I really like working at this school because its smaller, the children come from households that are more rural and they have never really had contact with someone from a different country. Also, the administration is more cooperative than the elementary located in my town where I did the world map. So, Arte por la Paz is an event being organized by the volunteers in the central valley region of costa rica. There are 12 of us who are all working in schools giving workshops on peace, anti-violence, and conflict resolution. At the same time, our students are preparing art (visual arts, poetry, theater, or dance) within these themes. I have 2 boys doing poetry, 2 boys and 1 girl doing visual arts, and a group of 5 girls and 1 boy doing dance. We have been practicing and preparing our art to take to San Jose the day of the event where it will be shared with the kids of the other 11 groups. We will do workshops there, possibly listen to guest speakers, there will possibly be prizes, face painting, etc. It will be a great celebration of art and peace. The hardest thing has been trying to coordinate transportation to and from san jose. It costs about $100 to contract a mini-bus for 14 people which is a lot for a community/school to try to raise. I asked the local municipality for funding and was rejected. Now, I have asked the owner of a local bus company and he ¨said¨ he would lend us a bus for that day but since nothings written down I´m nervous....

March was full of visits. My dad came in the beginning of the month. Manuel Antonio, my site, and then Playa Flamingo.....it was a fabulous trip. I think we set a record of 1,600 miles put on a rental car. AND as far as I know we got away with putting a huge scratch on the back bumper because I was clumsey and backed into a ditch....
Then my brother came for his spring break at the end of March. We enjoyed time in my site as well as Cahuita. There were many girls, ladies, women, and grandmothers who were in awe of his presence and I have since received many bribes if I am able to convince him to come back and be a boyfriend to them.

Only 4 months left in my site....time has gone fast.....there are parts of me that are really ready to leave and get on with my life....however, the state of the economy scares me and makes me nervous to search for a job.....also I dont really know what I want to do. I´m glad I have a degree in Marketing but I feel like this experience has really changed my priorities. I would be interested in working with international aid or sustainable international development. Finding a job where I would be speaking spanish is key. Maybe working with immigrants....but i dont know if my studies qualify me for that. Its tough...

More to come later....hopefully sooner than later!

Much Love, Hope everyone is well.

Emily

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Woke up at 7:00, ate breakfast (empanada with cheese inside and coffee). At 8:30 I went to the elementary school to try to film some of the fifth graders saying introductions and greetings to send to the class in the US. However, I had some technical difficulties (battery wasn’t charged), so we decided to postpone the idea until next week.

On Saturday and Sunday, I used some of the paint that is leftover from the map project to paint a hopscotch on the ground in the school. I brought my host sister and two of her friends to help out. I was rather disappointed with them because they weren’t really motivated and just wanted an excuse to play around in the school. I guess I assumed that they would be super stoked to do it with me and so I just kind of told them to come along without even asking. Anyhow, the hopscotch turned out good – I finished it on Sunday – and today when I went to the school it had been used so much that the paint is already wearing away!!!

I’m also still working on the whole Read-A-Thon idea to do in the elementary. I’m not exactly sure how psyched the teachers are to try to promote it with me but I’m going to keep up the enthusiasm.

I also went to the High School to try to make some copies but the copy machine wasn’t working. Next week I am starting a Junior Achievement program with a group of 8th graders where they will pick a product to make and learn about Finance, Production, and Marketing at the same time. They will basically be forming their own company, selling stocks, electing a board of directors, doing a marketing plan, production plan, etc. There are many other groups throughout the country participating as well and there are three times that we will all go to San Jose to meet. Once, to do a product launch fair, then to sell the product at a product fair, and finally to have the closing/awards ceremony.

In the afternoon, I went to the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Elementary to ask their permission to use the computer lab in the elementary to give my computer classes. I had also asked permission of the High School but they said no. Their reasoning was that the computers were very old and that there was no security guard in the high school at the hours that I wanted to give the class. I wanted to use the high school computer lab because it has a video beam which makes it easier to teach the classes because I can connect a computer that I work on to the video beam and the students can see what I do before they try it themselves.

Later on I attempted to make donuts to have with afternoon coffee…they turned out pretty well!

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Woke up at 7:30 and ate breakfast (empanada with beans inside and coffee). I headed out to ride my bike for exercise and ended up stopping by and visiting the womens group that makes bamboo souvenirs. They are preparing products for the church fair that starts this Friday and lasts two weekends. I helped them out for a while painting. After finishing the world map I have really started to miss painting. They gave me lunch (rice, black beans, noodles with canned corn, fried banana, and lemonade). At about 12:30 I headed off to finish my bike ride, which took me through sugar cane fields and over two rivers before arriving home. Took a shower. Then headed to the high school to see about making the copies I had wanted to make yesterday. After waiting about a half hour just standing there looking stupid the lady finally made my copies. Then I went to the elementary school to introduce the World Fair activity to one group of the 6th graders. They formed pairs and chose their countries. They seem fairly interested in the idea. Tomorrow I will go to talk to the other group. They will be able to look for information about their countries in Encarta during their weekly computer class and I also think there are some Encyclopedias in the library they can use.

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Today woke up at 7:00 and took a cold shower. Now I am used to the cold showers we have here…..its the same temperature as the river which is pretty cold. I feel cleaner and more refreshed with cold showers. Besides, its too hot here to be taking hot showers because you would leave the bathroom sweating just like you entered. I ate breakfast, which was an arepa with mashed up banana mixed into it and coffee.

I went to the Center for Nutrition to talk to the lady in charge. This is a place where new mothers go to learn about taking care of their babies. The center also offers meals to little kids and a kind of educative day care/pre kindergarten. The kids who frequent the center are between 2 and 4 years old. There are also times when the center gives out powdered milk to the mothers for their little kids. To be able to work at the Nutrition Center, the lady in charge needs me to write a letter asking to be able to participate that she has to turn in to her boss. I went to find out her boss’ name to get the letter done and turned in. I know she is interested in me doing some paintings on the walls of some of the rooms inside the center. Like just about everyone else here, she thinks I am a painting expert after she saw the world map and doesn’t know that I had to rely religiously on my grid method to not mess up! But I think things will be fine because whatever kind of thing we decide to paint can be applied to the wall using the same grid method. I would also like to do some kind of activities with the little kids…..maybe some arts and crafts, sock puppet hour, or read to them….who knows.

Later on, I got an ice cream and sat in the plaza. Two girls who are in 6th grade and participated in painting the world map came over and sat with me and we chatted. One girl lives way up in the surrounding mountains and it takes her about an hour to walk from her house to school. She has to leave her house at 6:00 am to get to school here in the center by 7:00 am. We watched as some guys came in a big truck and started putting together a big tent that will be used to cover the dance floor for the church festival that starts tomorrow.

I visited the elementary school later on to talk to the librarian about the Read-A-Thon. We finished up the description/outline of the activity and asked for permission from the director to be able to introduce the activity to the rest of the teachers at their staff meeting on Monday. He said yes, and has seemed to have forgotten about trying to limit the read-a-thon to only first through third graders, which is great because we are going with the idea of including second grade through sixth grade. So, on Monday the plan is to introduce the activity and ask the teachers to arrange a meeting with the parents of their students to give them information (because the kids will be reading in their houses and the parents will need to be monitoring them). We will also pick a start date and figure out what kinds of awards we want to give out. The librarian had a different take when it came to awarding the prizes and I found it kind of hard to communicate with her. I had planned on giving each kid that reads the number of pages assigned for his/her grade a prize (a book of course). This way, the kids have a specific number of pages they are shooting for as a minimum and they know that if they reach it they will win something. However, the librarian wants to have a test for all of the students that supposedly reach the goal. She wants to have them read out loud to evaluate if they have improved enough and to judge if they should get the prize. I think this is ok, however, I would imagine that most of the reading the kids will be doing is silent so judging them on how well they read out loud would not be a good way to test if they have gotten better. On the other hand, my host sister cant read silently because she hasn’t developed that skill and I think there are many kids that are the same way. If this is true and the kids would be reading out loud then the test would be fine.

At 2:00 I went to the high school to help out with the group of kids that are working on making the community newsletter. When I got there the professor in charge said that most of the kids had left because they have an exam tomorrow. However, I saw a bunch of them just sitting at a pick nick table in the high school. I think the professor didn’t want to have the newsletter session because he was working with some other kids on something else. A lot of the professors here are like this, the projects are run almost entirely by them and if they don’t want to have class they just cancel and the kids don’t do anything about it. In the case of this newsletter, the sessions need to happen regardless of whether the professor can be there or not. I find these kinds of subjects hard to approach because I don’t want to seem like I am telling the professors what to do. But seriously, in the end this professor will eventually end up leaving the high school and if the group of kids making the newsletter depend too much on him then the project will never survive.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Woke up at 5:00 am with a terrible sore throat. I have had a bad sore throat for the past couple of days. I think my tonsils are flaring up. I stayed in bed and dozed on and off until 7:00. I ate the usual breakfast (arepa and coffee) and went to the elementary school to talk with the other group of 6th graders about the World Fair. This group seemed equally enthused about the idea. The elementary school kids had classes only from 7:00 am until 9:00 am and then were going to march in a …..ahem…..Pro-Life March throughout the town……ahem. Yeah.

At 8:30 I stopped by the high school to coordinate the schedule of the Junior Achievement class I will give to the 8th graders. We decided on Thursdays from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm and Fridays from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm. The classes start on September 4th and go until November 18th.

Today started off really hot and sunny until about 1:30 when it started to rain and cooled down a bit. That is the usual weather pattern during this time of year. I like it because we get the hot during the day and then at night its cool enough to sleep with a blanket. There is nothing I hate more than feeling all hot and sticky at night while trying to sleep so I feel lucky about my situation.

After going to the high school I didn’t have anything else to do and didn’t want to just hang around my site for the rest of the day so I decided I would go to Turrialba to use the internet, go to the bank, and mail a card. I ended up getting a free ride there AND back from the Catholic Priest here in town. As soon as I got in the car the priest started scolding me (more or less) because I had not helped out with the church festival. This frustrated me because I had tried to help out! He had told me about a planning meeting for the festival about 3 weeks ago and I showed up but there was no meeting because not enough of the members showed up to be able to make formal decisions. Then I asked the lady who is in charge of one of the main activities if there was anything I could do. She told me she would get back to me and then never did. This is something that I deal with a lot….people or groups say they want help…..I go to help them….they aren’t there or aren’t prepared to tell me what it is they need help with…..and then they get mad and put the blame on me when I don’t end up doing anything with them. I think there are a lot of communication errors still and with time this will get better. So, anyway, we went to Turrialba. It took us 15 minutes when it usually takes an hour in bus. We got there at about 10:45 and left at 1:30 to come back.

Later on, I went to the town center where everything is set up for the church fair. There are mechanical rides, trampolines, food stands, crappy toys stands, a bar, and a dance floor. I sat on a bench along the soccer field and watched my little host sister play soccer for a while and then gave her a ride back to the house on my bike.

Saturday 30 / Sunday 31, 2008

This weekend was the start of the church fair. I helped out in the kitchen serving food and cleaning. I was surprised at how many people from outside Pejivalle came to walk around and buy things. There were a few stands of local producers selling things. I was happy to see that one lady who I worked with and convinced to rent a stand in the last community fair had rented a stand for this one as well. She makes clothes like pajamas, shirts, curtains, etc. It’s great that she is having success and I hope she continues participating in other fairs in the future. The women’s group that makes souvenirs out of bamboo also had a stand, as well as women who are taking a class being put on by the International Institute of Apprenticeship on how to make fruit concentrates, jams, and marmalades. In this fair, all of the proceeds from the sales of food in the kitchen go towards fixing the church.
Monday, September 1st, 2008

Today I woke up at 7:30 and ate breakfast (arepa and coffee). At 8:00 I went to the elementary school to sell some ice creams that the group of 5th graders in the project to repaint the basketball court made. At 10:30, I went over to my host mom’s mom’s house because my host mom’s sister and her friend had asked me if I could practice English with them. At 2:00 I went to the staff meeting at the elementary to talk to the teachers about the Read-A-Thon. The idea was that each teacher would organize a parents meeting that I could go to to introduce the parents. They all raved about the idea but then when the time came to tell me when their next parents meeting would be they all told me they would let me know which isn’t a good sign in Costa Rican culture. At about 4:00 I went up to talk to a parent who had asked to talk to me about starting a Boy Scout group. She had worked with a group of Boy Scouts that her son was participating in for about 10 years. Then their family moved here about 3 months ago and she wants to start a group here. I think it would be a great idea because a big problem in my town is that there aren’t enough things for kids to do here. We left off in that we are going to go talk to the director of the elementary school (my best friend!) to see if he can help us promote the idea to kids and parents. Afterward, I headed back to my house and stopped to buy a deodorant along the way and to check to see if the Development Association (DA) has a meeting tonight. I have been going to their meetings with an elderly man (named Manuel) because we are interested in trying to put in a small post office in our town. The DA is the association that needs to send official cards asking the national post office to put an office in our town. We have been going for about 2 months now and the project has not moved along. The DA has a pretty bad reputation right now because they hardly do anything. Manuel and I (and everyone else in our town) know the DA isn’t going to do anything any time soon so we want them to let us form a committee to do the work. They are basically the local government, which means that the people here should be able to look up to them and go to them with their ideas, comments, and concerns. Right now they are not setting a very good example for the community. Anyway, their meeting ended up being tomorrow at 6:00 so I will go with Manuel to see if they have done.

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Today I went with my host sister and host mom to work at the greenhouse that is owned by the women’s group my host mom participates in. They mainly have sweet peppers planted, but they also have cilantro, green beans, beans, lettuce, chives, mini squash, and hot peppers. I was working with my host sister and two other members of the group to prepare a patch of dirt and then plant lettuce.
I got a call from the secretary of the board of directors of the elementary school saying that I could start my second round of computer classes!!! YAY!!! I’m going to be teaching pretty much all week long from 5 to 7 pm starting next week.

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Today was weird. I woke up with a kind of sore throat. The sore throat I had had faded away yesterday and now this is more of a beginning-of-a-cold kind of sore throat. I went to the elementary to sell more ice creams at the 8:20 to 8:40 recess. I sold 8 including one that I ate. How barbaric…eating ice cream at 8 in the morning! Then I had to go back to the school at 10:00 to meet with the director and the lady who is interested in starting a boy scout group here. When we entered the director’s office, the director decided to address a conflict that had happened between the woman’s daughter and the daughter’s teacher. They ended up talking/fighting for a good half hour during which I sat there not really knowing what to do….sit there…go outside and wait for them to finish….how awkward! I ended up more or less sitting there. While sitting there, I started to feel my cold getting worse because it was so hot inside the office. I sneezed about 8 times in a row, was sweating, my nose started running, and my soar throat intensified. We finally started talking about the Boy Scouts idea. The director seems all for it and we left off in that we will start promoting the idea to the students and their parents. I went home and immediately took a shower and then lay down on the couch, which helped a lot.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Today woke up at 8, ate breakfast (bread with butter and coffee). At 9:30 I went to the school to talk to the director about planning a Read-A-Thon. This is an activity that was always put on by my elementary school together with the local library. Its simple; the student who reads the most pages in a certain period of time wins a prize. I want to do the activity here because the kids in school hardly ever have homework, are always running around in the streets or doing nothing, and have terrible reading skills. Sooo, as I said, I went to talk to the director of the school (who after 10 months of me living here still can’t get my name right). I must say he isn’t one of my best friends in town. Whenever I am able to get him to sit down with me for a minute he always looks for the worst in things, goes on the most ridiculous power trip, and is just unpleasant in general. So, I proposed my idea to him and gave him and immediately he says, “yeah…..well….the thing is…..you would have a problem….how are you going to make sure that the kids that say they are reading books actually read them?” After trying to convince him that there exists such thing as honesty and suggesting that we require a parents signature after the kids finish each book he agreed, but only partially. My idea was to have this competition and include all the kids in the elementary that can read and want to participate. However, he is only willing to do it amongst the first, second and third graders. His reasoning is that the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders have too much work to do (which is a complete lie because they are the ones that run around doing nothing the most). It frustrates me so much when people use the power they have to make things difficult for people. And the worst thing is that from now on in the process of planning the activity the director probably wont do a damn thing because he’s so lazy. So what does he even care about what grades we do it with! We left off in that I will coordinate the activity with the librarian to see what kind of books they already have and if there are enough to do the read-a-thon.

At 11:00 am, I had a meeting with 11 of the fifth graders to try to plan a community project. The meeting was to decide which project to do. We did a brainstorm and they had a ton of great ideas (plant trees, paint benches, make new trash cans, paint a mural, and more). However, the project they ended up choosing was to paint the lines on the basketball court. Right now they are completely worn out and the court is really dirty. They were so excited to start that right away we went to talk to a woman who is in the Sports Committee to ask if we could propose the idea at their next meeting. She told us that going to the meeting was not necessary and to just go ahead and do it! Woo hoo! Tomorrow we are going to meet again to plan fund raising activities for the paint and other things we will have to buy.

Later on I went to the school to put some finishing touches on the world map that I am painting with the sixth graders. We are almost finished and I am starting to put together a presentation of photos that I have been taking throughout the process to play at the inauguration of the map. All that we have left to do is label a few more islands and countries and then it will be done!

It is 7:00 right now. I just finished watching some TV and now I will probably just hang out in my house for the rest of the night.

Until next time,

Emily

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Today I woke up at 7:30 and ate breakfast which was coffee and an “arepa;” a pancake-like thing consisting of flour, baking powder, sugar, and water and cooked in a frying pan. At 9:30 I headed off to the elementary school to sit in on a charla that my counterpart was giving to a group of students about the basics of recycling. The kids were in 5^th and 6^th grades. They pretty much didn’t pay any attention so throughout the charla I wrote down quiz questions on little slips of paper and at the end we formed a circle and played hot potato. When the music stops, the person holding the item (in this case a scrap piece of ceramic) has to answer a question. To my surprise, they were able to answer many of the questions. Maybe they are all little experts on recycling and I underestimated them!

After the charla I talked to the 6^th grade teacher to coordinate a day and time to take a group photo of the world map painting and the students. That is set for next Wednesday morning. I also wanted to talk to the teacher to propose an idea for a world fair kind of activity. The idea is that we put the map to use now that it is finished. In pairs, the students will choose a country and do an investigation to find all kinds of information about it (size, population, replicate the flag, name of capital city, natural resources, political system, tourist attractions, weaknesses, founding date, typical food and clothing, etc). Then, during the world culture day, which is in October, they will put on displays for each other and the rest of the school. The teacher liked the idea so we will continue to meet to start planning.

Then I talked to the librarian about coordinating the Read-a-Thon idea. She likes the idea a lot and is on my side that all grades should be included. We left off in that she is going to try to convince the director to change his mind about only wanting to include grades 1-3. We also talked briefly about the idea of making a garden behind the school to use the vegetables and herbs within the cafeteria and then use the organic waste produced in the cafeteria to make a compost pile to fertilize it! How exciting!

Then at 1:00, I had a meeting with the group of 5^th graders that want to repaint the basketball court. According to the local hardware store, we will need about $30 to buy the paint, the masking tape to make the lines, the brushes with rollers, and the tools to clean the court before we paint. We decided to do a raffle of a basket of staple food items like rice, beans, sugar, coffee, etc. We left off in that we will meet on Tuesday to put the basket together (each kid will bring something to contribute) and divide up the raffle numbers to sell.

After this, I ran some errands with my host sister. Her grandma who lives right next door is ALWAYS screaming for one of my host siblings to go to the supermarket to run her errands for her. We went to the supermarket and bought a packet of instant soup and delivered it to her. Then we went up to the other grandma’s house in the next neighborhood over just for the fun of it. They just put asphalt down a huge stretch of the road in this neighborhood, which I don’t like. The dirt roads were not that bad and were far more charming. So, we arrived at the other grandma’s house where the members of my host mom’s women’s group were meeting with people from the ministry of agriculture about trying to obtain a donation or loan to construct a second green house to plant mini-vegetables. After the presentation was over at about 6:30 pm we headed back to the house and got caught in a downpour about half way there. None of us had brought an umbrella so by the time we arrived home we were all soaked. It was the first time I had really been soaked by a downpour in a long time so it was surprisingly refreshing!

Friday, June 27^th, 2008

Today is my 1-year anniversary in Costa Rica! It really seems like it’s only been 6 months or so, I can’t believe its gone by so fast.

Today I woke up at 7:30 and took an 8:30 bus to the nearest big city which is a 45 minute bus ride that costs about $1 each way. I went to check my mail, to the bank, to buy some pens, and then to do a crap load of stuff in Internet. I had to send a work report that documents all the work I have done in the past 4 months. I also looked for maps of certain areas of the world that have been difficult to label in the painting I’m doing in the elementary. I had to find the names of the Hawaiian Islands, the Aleutian Islands, and those of the Islands in Polynesia, Micronesia and Indonesia. I finished at about 1 and wandered around trying to fill time until 3 when the bus left to go back to my community. I bought some Pejibayes, which are probably in the nut family but are hard to describe. They are red or dark orange golf ball sized and grow in trees in all zones of Costa Rica. You have to cook them and then peel them. Many people eat them with a little bit of mayonnaise and lemon juice or with cream cheese…they are sooooo good. When I got home it was raining and I was starving so I broke out the Pejibayes right away. Within about 30 minutes they were all gone. I estimate that the bag had about 20 and I ate 3….needless to say my host family isn’t shy about digging in, haha.

Saturday, June 28^th, 2008

Today woke up at 8:00 and ate breakfast (bread with coffee) and then at 10:30 I went door to door with my host sister to sell the newsletter that I make every 3 months or so. I sell them for 100 colones, which is about 20 cents. I use all the money from the sales as well as the placed advertisements to make copies of the next newsletter. This time around had enough money from the last newsletter to make 185 copies. First, I put as many as I can in stores around my town so that the people buy them there. Then the owners of the businesses pay me according to how many newsletters they sold. Then, with the amount that is left over, I go door to door. I don’t really like doing this because I feel like people are going to think that I am making money off the newsletter because they are paying me directly. This would be really bad because it’s a cardinal rule of Peace Corps that I can’t make any money on the side because I’m a volunteer. I would just rather be able to sell all the newsletters through stores in my town. So, at 10:30 we started going door to door and had 73 newsletters to sell. We finished at about 2:00 after selling every one of them.

I must add a note here about some terrible bug bites that I have. I don’t understand what kind of insect it is, but I have been getting these mosquito/spider like bites that are painful and end up leaving scars. It either happens when I am sleeping in my bed, or when I put pants on that have been stored in my closet. I always check my bed before I get in it to sleep and never find anything and shake out my pants before I put them on but the bites keep coming. Now my million dollar legs are ruined because I have a ton of bug bite scars all over!

Later that night, I went to a dance in the local bar/salon with my host cousins and some of their friends. We danced cumbia and merengue for about 3 hours. It is such great exercise because the salon is really hot and you sweat a lot. I am usually not a dancing fan, but I really do like the rhythm of the Costa Rican/Latin music and the fact that you dance in pairs instead of by yourself.

Sunday, June 29^th, 2008

Today I woke up at around 7:00 am and ate breakfast (bread with coffee). The day started off really hot and sunny but then at around 1:30 pm it started raining really hard. At 2:00 pm I went into the town center for my first day of “English help.” From now on (or for a while at least), I will be in the community building from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm receiving people who have questions about English, want help with translations, students in the elementary or high school that have exams and want to do a review, etc. I decided to do this because a TON of people want me to give them individual English lessons or want me to come to their houses every week to help their kids with English. This isn’t something that is really appealing to me and I honestly don’t have the time to run around to different peoples houses helping individually. Because of this, I decided to start a help session where people can come to me and I can define in advance exactly the amount of time that I want to dedicate to being “the town English translator.” Today one girl came to ask for help preparing for an exam she has this week. I’m hoping more come next week…

After “English help” I went with my family over to the next neighborhood to my host mom’s mother’s house. Every Sunday night my host family visits her and I like going too because it’s a nice tradition. Families here are definitely 1) bigger and 2) more united which makes for great family gatherings. I like my family a lot but there are definitely times when I wish that I could walk over to my grandma’s house every weekend instead of having to take a 2-hour plane ride.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Today I woke up at 8:00 am and ate breakfast (arepa and coffee) and went to the elementary school to hand out little announcements about the beginner computer classes I am trying to organize. I handed out about 100 of them for the kids to take home to their parents (because it’s the parents I want in my class). Then I went up to the nearby community El Humo to hand out more and to talk to the director about doing the read-a-thon. He was MUCH more receptive of the idea than the director of the elementary in my community. I am going back on Thursday to talk to him more about it and so that we can plan it in more detail.

At 12:30 I had a meeting with the 5^th graders that are going to paint the basketball court to collect the food items they are contributing to the basket of staple foods we are going to raffle off. It started pouring buckets 10 minutes before the meeting so unfortunately only 5 of the 14 of them showed up. And of the 5 that showed up only 3 brought their food items. We left off in that we will meet again on Thursday to turn in their food items. I am also writing a few letters to businesses in town asking for donations of things like brushes for painting, bleach and soap for cleaning the surface before painting, and a broom to scrub. On Thursday I will have them sign the letters and then we will take them to the businesses.

Every Tuesday at 1:30 I teach English to a group of women that make souvenirs in bamboo. They work in a part of my community that is pretty far from where I live. Usually I ride my bike out there but it was still pouring when I had to leave so I took the bus instead. Today was the 3^rd class I have given to them. So far, they have learned how to say “I am” “You are” “She/he is” “they are” and “we are” and are able to present themselves to others and introduce other people. We also learned the days of the week and are now finishing with the English alphabet. Today we practiced spelling the names of the women in the group. They learn pretty fast and are having a lot of fun…so far so good!

After we finished with English, we talked about starting to do activities from the Project Development Workshop that one of the group members attended with me two weeks ago. Right now, the two of us have everything fresh in our minds but we need to teach the things to the four other women in the group so that together they will be able to plan projects better. We decided that from now on, on Mondays from 1:00 to 2:00 will be English class and from 2:00 to 3:30 will be activities from the workshop. The workshop was about the process of planning projects and putting them into action. We learned about establishing a vision, objectives, goals, doing priority rankings, feasibility studies, looking for resources within the community, monitoring projects, evaluating, and more. I really enjoyed the workshop and learned a lot of things that will be useful when working with groups and planning projects for the rest of my life.

I got back to my house at about 5 and watched a soap opera called Patito Feo or “ugly duckling.” It comes from Argentina and is SUPER popular here. Its about a girl in high school who is the ugly duckling. She has braces and big glasses and is nerdy, and then there is the gorgeous guy she likes….and then there is the dream guys terrible girlfriend. Within the high school there are two main cliques; the Divinas (made up of the terrible girlfriend and more terrible people) and the Populares (made up of Patito and all the nice people). These two gangs battle it out through dance and singing. They sing the same songs over and over so now everyone here has them stuck in their heads (smart marketing tactic). Because the show is filmed in Argentina where there is a really strong accent I hardly understand a word they say but I get by more or less.

After the show was over I met with my counterpart to review my quarterly work report and then returned home, ate dinner, and went to bed around 10:00.

Thursday, July 3^rd, 2008

Today I woke up at 7:30 and ate an arepa and coffee for breakfast. Then at 9:00 I rode my bike up to the nearby community “El Humo” to talk to the director of the elementary school more in depth about the read-a-thon idea. He is very enthusiastic and wants to start planning immediately after the two-week vacation they have that starts tomorrow.

After I talked to the director I came back down into my community and went to visit a lady that sells ice creams out of her house. This is a micro-entrepreneur that I would love to help out because she’s got a great reputation and makes good quality ice creams that people come out of their way to buy. She lives on the outskirts of the community, which is kind of a disadvantage because people have to go to her to buy ice cream. I have tried several different approaches in trying to suggest things that could improve her sales and each time I get shot down by her pessimistic husband. One day, I proposed that she contact various supermarkets or snack stores within the community to sell her ice creams in their stores. Her husband, who is always slumping around the house, said that the idea would never work because the owners of the supermarkets and other stores only want to rob their money and would never agree to buying the ice creams at a price that would be profitable for them. I tried my best to ask them questions to find a solution to this problem but they were so focused on the negative that nothing came of it. The lady that makes the ice creams is super friendly and outgoing, but her husband is such the extreme opposite that when it comes to subjects like this she takes his side and turns negative as well. Another time I suggested that they rent a stand in the town fair to sell ice creams and they said no because they said they don’t like leaving their house to go into town because if they do people will come in and rob them (which is totally not true, there are hardly any cases of robbery here). Its frustrating because I want to help them and they are always complaining that they are poor and stuff but then when I try to suggest that they do something they shoot me down completely. I have realized that I can’t force anyone to do something they don’t want to and that some people just like wallowing in their misery.

Now when I go to their house I just go to buy and ice cream and to talk. They are perfectly nice people as long as we don’t talk about their business.

I came home to eat lunch (rice, black beans, and cut up platano).

At 1:00 pm I had a meeting with the 5^th graders about the basketball court project to collect more food goods to put in the basket we are raffling. My host sister is in the group and after we met, all of the mothers of the 5^th graders had a meeting with the 5^th grade teacher to talk about various things. When my host mom arrived home she told me about the meeting. She said that some of the mothers were mad and thought that I had excluded their kids (because only about ½ of the 5^th graders are participating in the project). This makes me mad because when we first started with the project I went to the kids class and made a general announcement to all of them that those who were interested in doing a community project could come and sign up with me. Now, I’m going to have to do some sort of damage control.

After the meeting I came home at around 3:00 and had coffee and made a crown out of construction paper for my friend here who’s birthday is tomorrow. Later, I watched Patito Feo and ate dinner (rice, black beans, and noodles).

Friday, July 4^th, 2008

Today I woke up at 6:45, ate breakfast (bread with homemade cheese and coffee), and ran over to the high school to give my friend (who is the English teacher) his fabulous birthday crown. Then at 8:30 I caught the bus to go to the nearest city, Turrialba. A volunteer friend of mine and I had made plans to meet at the university satellite campus and swim in the pool. We finished swimming at around 12:00 and went to grab some lunch. Then she had to take a bus back to her community while I stayed longer to run errands. I had to hit the bank, then internet to print out some things, then run to an office supplies store and then finally went to check my mail. It turned out that the care package that my parents had sent me arrived! I was soooo happy and couldn’t wait to open it and ripped right into it the second I got home. It had a pair of jeans that didn’t fit me before and now do (yay for losing a bit of poundage!). Among the other things included were peanut butter, a swimsuit for my host sister (who didn’t have one), magazines, a shoulder bag, a belt, plastic popsicle maker, and a plethora of chocolate candy!!! Needless to say, right now my host family and I are on an incredible sugar high. I think the package was just the thing I needed right about now to have a taste of home.

I also received a package from the class of 4^th graders in Duvall that I am doing a culture exchange with. They sent pen-pal cards as well as a group picture. Although right now in the US everyone just started summer vacation, the school year here is only half way over. Right now they just got out for 15 days of vacation celebrating the half way mark. As soon as they go back to school I will bring the cards and the photo to share with the kids here. The class in my town that is participating in the culture exchange is the 5^th graders. This includes my host sister, Kimberly, and 25 others.

Wednesday, July 9^th, 2008

Today is my host mom’s birthday. Everyone forgot…but birthdays here are not really a big deal. I, however, felt terrible because for my birthday they got me a cake and a present. I decided to bake her a cake last minute. I used brownie mix, nuts, and caramel sauce for frosting. We sang happy birthday and all was glorious.

My host father has finally let my host mother work with the womens group again. He had not let her go for about 6 months because he says that she is wasting her time and doesn’t make any money for the family when she works with the group. I guess its not important that she be doing what she loves. Anyway, for now she is able to work with them. They plant and sell sweet peppers. They have a big greenhouse (800 square meters) and sell their products to an intermediary in a nearby city who sells to supermarkets, hotels, and restaurants. I have found it hard to find ways to help them because all of the technical help that they need is provided by the government. Because they are a womens group and have been together so long (13 years), the government pays a lot of attention to them, gives them donations, trainings, etc. Some of them were in my computer class and started out in my English class, but because they have so much help from these other institutions they are kind of lazy. They didn’t want to come to class but want me to give them the certificate of completion….weird. Today, I went out to see how everything was going and to hang out with them. The pepper plants had grown really tall since the last time I had been there. They were picking peppers and weighing them and then putting them into bags according to size.

At about 1:00, I came back from the greenhouse and ate lunch (noodles, rice, and beans). Then, at 3:00, I went to have coffee at a house where a girl from Seattle is staying temporarily. She was an exchange student in Costa Rica in 2001 and has been back several times since. She is a high school Spanish teacher near Mount Rainier. Right now she is working on her masters in Spanish at the University of Washington. They are on vacation so she is here visiting and is staying with her old host family. We talked about general stuff and I told her about some of my projects here. It was interesting to hear her talk about what my town was like in 2001 when she first came here. No pavement, fewer houses, smaller in general.

Thursday, July 11, 2008

Today I woke up at 7:30 and ate breakfast (arepa and coffee) and hung out at the house for a long time. Eventually, I went with one of my host brothers (Diego Armando) to the abandoned coffee processing plant. I had never been inside and he knows a lot about how it used to work. It’s always been one of my favorite places in my town and I think its got a ton of potential to be turned into a museum and tourist center if they preserve it and do it right. However, its owned by the town cooperative, which is focusing on a livestock project and doesn’t consider the plant to be an asset much less a priority. The plant would require a lot of money to restore it, but it still has a lot of artifacts inside it and is really interesting to just walk around inside and imagine how it must have been when it was functioning. After the plant, we rode around to different places until about 4:00. Then came home and spent the rest of the day here.

Some photos of mom´s visit


Us on the couch at my house


Canopy tour in Monteverde



Bulls on the beach in Playa Samara

Hellooo,

This past month has been SUPER busy. Started off with a 2-day visit from 8 trainees who came to observe my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer and to get to know an actual Peace Corps community and how it varies from where they are living right now (in bigger communities for training). Then my dear mother came for a fabulous weeklong visit! We went to Monteverde and then Playa Samara and then came back to my site for about a day and a half. Monteverde was fabulous apart from the treacherous drive up which gave us a flat tire thanks to the unpaved river bead like roads. While in Monteverde we went to the serpentarium, took a tour of the Monteverde cheese-making factory, ate Monteverde brand ice cream 2x a day, and went to visit the women’s artisan cooperative CASEM. This is a cooperative of about 150 women artists who all have united to sell their products in the same store. Perhaps the thing that Monteverde is most known for is the canopy tours, which is a series of zip line cables strung through the forst. Monteverde is great for this because it is up high in the cloud forest and there are plenty of mountains and valleys. We did a canopy tour that included 15 cables, a brief rappelling experience and a torturous tarzan swing (of which mom and I were the only two to opt out thank you very much). The longest of the 15 zip line cables was 750 meters long and felt like 5,000 feet up. In all it was an amazing experience; I recommend that everyone do a canopy tour once in their life and all the better if you can be in Monteverde to do it.
After Monteverde we continued on to Playa Samara, which is in Guanacaste out on the Nicoya Peninsula. The beach was exactly what I needed, relaxing and beautiful. We stayed in a great hotel across the street from the beach and spent the days just laying on the beach reading and swimming. One day we went to the nearby Playa Carillo which was also breathtaking.
Finally, we headed back to my site so she could see where I live and get a taste of what my life is like. The first night here was the last night of the environmental festival that my town has each year. We went to see an event with bulls. We thought it would be a bull riding competition but instead it was more like a bull torturing event. A bull would be released into the ring without anyone riding it and whoever wanted to mess around with the bull could jump down into the rink and kick it, pull its tail, try to touch its horns, etc. There were only about 6 bulls that were released with people riding it. I think just about everyone and their mother commented about how little time my mom was going to be spending in my site. ¨Just two days???!!! Why cant she come for a month!!??¨ hmmm…
After my mom left I received another visit from a trainee but this time it was just one girl. The objectives of her visit were the same as those of the bigger group. The only difference was that she was here for more time and it was on an individual basis….the idea is that it was a more intense version of the group visit.

Project ideas are continuously coming to me but I have to be careful about which ideas to pursue. Everything here just seems to take so much more time. Not only economically and resource wise but also just culturally. Realizing that 7 months has already gone by makes me freak out a bit because I don’t feel like I´ll be able to accomplish the things I want to before I leave. When an idea comes to me I have to calculate the amount of time it would take to do it in the US and then add about 2 months and see if it still seems worth pursuing. Not EVERYTHING is like this but for the most part.

As of right now, some new things I am doing are:

- Starting a new English class (this time with a different program and stricter classroom rules and attendance policy dammit!)
- Starting a basic computer class for adults where I will teach them how to use Word.
- Painting a map of the world on the outside wall of a building in the elementary schools with the 6th graders.
- Doing a cost analysis with the womens group that makes souvenirs out of bamboo. They have been setting their prices using only fairly educated guesses. We will be calculating what it costs them to make their different products so that they can start to add the % of profit they want to make as a group.

Ok, must go!

Love you all!

Emily

Aarghh! Sorry I have been so bad about writing updates! Im really trying to get better...

Everything is going pretty well. I love living here more and more every day. My spanish is continuing to get better and my work is coming along.

I just ended my beginner spanish class that was going since november because I only had 3 people and it just really wasnt working out. They werent motivated, didnt study, and didnt come to class regularly so it wasnt a good use of my time. I am still giving one-on-one classes for one girl who is a bit more advanced than the others were and is really motivated. She learns super fast and is studying in the university. I have hope for starting future classes though...there are pllllenty of people who say they want to learn english...I just need to find those who have the time and are willing to put in the effort.

I just went to San Jose to get training on how to teach basic computer classes (the basics of microsoft office and internet). All of the kids have computer classes in school so they know how to use the programs but the adults dont so I would love to offer classes for them. Mom - I wonder if you have heard of the Funcación Omar Dengo...this is the program we were trained on and all of the manuals that we received were made by microsoft in redmond so this foundation and microsoft are definitely linked.I also got trained on how to do Junior Achievement programs. There is one program that teaches kids in the last grade of elementary school about the benefits of staying in school. There is another that teaches kids in 8-10th grade about the basics of how businesses work. Then there is one more that I could do with 8'10th graders again where they actually form their own business for 18 weeks and learn all about how to run the business. I would love to do all 3 of these programs sometime during my 2 years.

School just started up again so I am all full of ideas for projects to do with the escuela and the colegio. I want to do a world map project in the escuela. We would paint a map of the world on a wall, side of a building, or on the ground (cement) and incorporate various activities to promote knowledge of geography. I would also like to do this in the colegio eventually.

Still working on the community newsletter. Im about to publish the 3rd edition in the beginning of March. My community has responded really well to the newsletter. People and business owners constantly approach me asking if they can place advertisements and suggesting topics for articles. This is great but I still havent been able to find a group of people to work with and train so that they can continue with the newsletter when I leave. I figure I still have a year and a half to find people.

My counterpart (the chamber of tourism) is still working on the project they have with the United Nations Development Program. They received the first installation of funds in september and were supposed to have spent the funds and presented a report to the UNDP by the end of November but they are still working on it. They have all the activities they need to do laid out for them and the amount of money they have to do each thing but they just cant seem to focus and organize themselves well. Meetings can be frustrating because they get off topic really easily and gossip a LOT. They are finally letting me help more and are taking my opinions and suggestions seriously. In the budget we have for promotion with the project we decided to make postcards with pictures of the nature that we have in Pejivalle. The idea is that they sell these postcards to nearby hotels, souvenir shops, restaurants, tourist agencies, etc. and generate enough funds to make more as well as fund other projects.

Members of my counterpart as well as members of the ecological group and environmental professors in the colegio (high school) are on a comittee and are planning an environmental festival for the end of march and beginning of april. This is basically like regular festivals with food, bull riding, mechanical rides, etc but also with an environmental emphasis. There will be tours of the community, workshops on environmental topics, expositions by community groups and local microenterprises. I have been working with some of the individuals that live in the community that have paid to rent a stand in the festival to sell things that they make. One lady makes pijamas and clothes that she will be selling, another lady will sell wall decorations, another lady wants to sell caribbean food and deserts, and there are others as well. The objective of the fair is that it promotes tourism, environmental education, and the community groups and microenterprises in Pejivalle. I will work with the individuals who have decided to rent a stand and help them prepare for the fair...decide how much materal to buy, how much to make, what prices to charge, how to decorate their stand, making business cards, etc.

Thats all im into right now....

I turned 23 on the 10th of February and my host family surprised me with a cake and a necklace. Also...one of my host dads cows had a baby girl on my birthday and they named here Emilita (see above pictures). awwww!

My mom is coming to visit in the beginning of April and we have tentative plans to go to Monteverde and Playa Samara as well as my community. I am soooo excited as these are places I have wanted to visit and have heard that they are amazing. Im really looking forward to spending time with my mom too!!!

Hope all is well! Talk to you all soon!

Emily

Not addicted to Cable TV anymore!!!

Hey All!

Todo tuanis aqui en Costa Rica. Ahorita estoy en In Service Training en San Josè. Es un placer ver a todos los voluntarios en mi programa y parece que todos se estan integrando en sus comùnidades muy bien.....Ok....so I just said that things are going well in Costa Rica....Right now I am in In Service Training in (beautiful....not) San Josè and that it is really great to see all of the volunteers in my program and that it seems like all of them are integrating into their sites pretty well.

In Service Training is something that all volunteers have after about 4 months in site. We receive charlas about different things/ideas that we could start for projects in our communities. So far, we have learned about Rainforest Alliance which is an organization that certifies hotels and organizations as being environmentally friendly and that also offers a kind of database (free publicity) for smaller eco-tourism groups that many of us are working with. This is great because there is an opportunity to basically have your own website put up on this page for free....this is a lifesaver for the groups that want to be on the web but that dont have the $ to pay for their own websites. We also learned about different Junior Achievement programs. With this, we have a few options. We can work with elementary school kids on teaching them why it is good to stay in school. There is also a different program that allows us to work with a group of high school students in which they develop a product and start a business. It is a 14 week course and in this time they learn all about the different areas that have to do with running a business....at the end of the 14 weeks everything is liquidated and the profits are split up among the group.

Lets see...we have also been having spanish classes every day. We FINALLY learned a bit about how to use the subjunctive form....which is a vast world in itself or so I´ve heard. This is used to express desires, reccommendations, and to talk about things that are uncertain among other things (pretty broad, right?). Other than this, we have been taking full advantage of the free....yes i said free...wireless....yes i said wireless....internet here in the hotel as well as the cable TV. I must admit that I am now used to having just 1 channel of TV in my life. Good old TeleTica. Re-entering the world of cable just puts me over the edge....I want to watch everything at the same time! How can you keep tabs on what is going on on each channel!? You cant! Ahhhhh!! My uncle, Barry, mentioned that I seemed less addicted to television when I was visiting for christmas vacation. I now realize that this is true....however pitiful this may be....but breaking the cable addiction is probably the first, biggest, personal change that has happened to me since I came here. Thanks Peace Corps!!!

I want to give a re-cap of my FABULOUS christmas vacation which was spent in both Huntington Beach, CA and Seattle, WA. I had a great time relaxing, catching up with family, decorating christmas cookies, going to movies, getting starbucks, sleeping in my bed, eating christmas food, consuming my weight in chocolate and pie, and just hanging out. I couldnt have asked for a better vacation. I was definitely scared that I would not want to return to CR after being tempted by all the comforts of home, but when the time came to leave, I was ok with it. I got back to my site and definitely flubbed my spanish for a good day or so and felt completely out of whack but after a few days I felt back to normal. Costa Ricans are still on summer vacation mode and will be until the end of February. Instead of fighting the system and trying to get people to do stuff I have decided to go with the flow and just kind of hang out until things get going again in February.

There are always an endless amount of ideas and possibilities for projects that I have. It is seriously overwhelming. Pejivalle (aka: Pejibaye or Pejiballe....we really need to decide on an official spelling) has so many formed community groups with a good amount of history to them and has a surprising amount of pull with the government that we are much luckier than a lot of other peace corps communities. It just feels as though sometimes we take the attention that is given to us for granted and just let it slip away. This is such a weird and unexpected concept for me. I assumed that I would be working in a community that is completely ignored and would be taking part in a fight to receive things that had been denied. I hope to change the current patterns that are going on....or at least make a dent...in my two years so that when I leave the community will be prepared to better handle the attention that it is given.

I took a bike ride the other day....usually I do the same loop that is about 12 km....and I always pass by this spot where you can see this HUGE tree off in the distance. So the other day I decided to veer off my path and go for the tree. It is up on this hill where you can see an incredible view of sugar cane fields for miles with a few dirt roads cutting through them and the Rìo Pejivalle. There is a plaque that is nailed to the tree saying what species it is and how tall it is (43 meters) but not how old it is. There was one guy that I passed on my way back down the hill and when I asked him he said that he was 45 years old and had always remembered the tree being exactly the same as it is now. I have to take a picture of this tree and the view that you can see from it to give you guys an idea of how cool it is.

My boss Felicia called me on Monday to tell me that the new volunteers (who start their training at the end of February) will be coming to visit me on their first field trip. How exciting, right?! I will be hosting half of the trainees from the community and economic development program for two days. The purpose of the field trip is to observe what kinds of work volunteers are doing, practice spanish, and visit new areas of costa rica. I could not be more excited and I have a million things that I want to organize for them. I also feel really lucky to have been picked to host them as only 4 volunteers have this opportunity. I am also a bit nervous because my site will be the first actual peace corps site that they will be seeing in costa rica and I want to make a good impression and hope that they leave excited and enthusiastic rather than scared and nervous. I am sure I will give many more updates as far as this goes....

We have two more days of this In-Service-Training and then on Saturday morning I am going to Puerto Viejo (southern caribbean coast) with two other volunteers from my group. I think the plan is to stay in Puerto Viejo and then rent bikes or something and go exploring all of the other small beaches that are near there. I have heard that Manzanillo, which is near there, is a really beautiful beach and national park so I would like to check that out too. Im sure I´ll take far too many pictures and hope to post some for your viewing pleasure asap.

Much love and best wishes,

Emily

Happy Holidays

Im coming home to Seattle for Christmas in less than a week! I am definitely excited to come home and see my family and have a vacation.

Things in my site are going pretty well...the biggest thing at the moment is trying to promote a community recycling program that will be starting in january. The municipality will be coming around each week collecting organics, non organics but recyclables, and non recyclables, each in a separate bag. This past week we had different charlas to explain this program to the community members. I went door to door in different neighborhoods of the community inviting people to these charlas. We had different charlas specially for the people who live in the different neighborhoods. One of the neighboorhoods I visited had about 75 houses and I went to every single one with a member of the development association to invite people to the charla and only 10 people showed up.... I went around in another neighborhood with about 50 houses and only 4 people came to the charla.....

We knew that this would be difficult to get the community members to do. Many people burn their trash either because they are lazy or because they havent been educated on the bad effects this causes. Other families throw their trash in the river or in other places in the community. This is terrible because the river is the number one tourist attraction here and if people continue to pollute it the town´s reputation will be at stake. We definitely have our work cut out for us, but we also have the resources to work with. There is the Grupo Ecologico whos members are educated on recycling and are prepared to give more charlas. There is also the Colegio which is an Environmental high school....all of the students receive mandatory environmental education classes. Using high school students to motivate the rest of the community to recycle would be key. The problem is that these kids receive environmental classes and then continue to throw their trash on the ground....it must be that using the garbage can is "uncool" just like in many high schools in the US.

Still working on the community newsletter. I sold 120 of the publication for November and December. I am using that money as well as what I have charged for placing an ad in the next edition to make the copies for the next one which will be ready for January. The idea is to make one every 2 months. I am still looking for a group of community members to take over this project so that it can be sustainable. I would love to turn it over to a student organization in the high school. This way if there are people who are interested in studying journalism can get some experience while they are still in high school.

The weather is getting hotter and dryer, we are heading into summer (the dry season). Highs are around 30 degrees celsius....which is about 90 degress ferenheit (if my calculations are right).

I took a spill on my bike a few days ago. I was going too fast down a hill full of big rocks. I hit the front break on my bike at the same time that I went over a really big rock and ended up flying over my handle bars. My hands, knees, and elbows got scraped up pretty bad but nothing serious. And nobody saw me crash and burn which I consider to be the most important thing!

Hope all is well and Happy Holidays!!!

Emily

Two months in...

Hey All -

I have now been in Pejivalle for two months. Much has happened and I feel more integrated into the community every day. People are starting to recognize me as someone who lives here and is not like most of the other gringos they are used to seeing here for only a day or just a few hours. I am spending most of my time attending meetings of different community groups. Each of these groups has their specific meeting time once a week or once every two weeks. Although I am not necessarily working on projects with each of these groups I think it is important to be at their meetings to get to know how the group functions and to get to know the members better. It is common that the members of these groups are the most important and influential people in town, therefore it is a good idea that I get to know them! The groups I am currently meeting with in Pejivalle are the Camara de Turismo (the Tourism Board), Grupo Ecologico (the Ecological Group), and Coopejivalle (the town cooperative).

Currently, the Camara de Turismo is working on a project that is being partially financed by the Programa de Pequeno Donaciones. They are being given a total of $5,200.00 in three different installments. They have had the first portion of the money for several months and they have to present a report at the end of this month stating what they have spent the money on, what progress they have made, what they plan to do next, in order to receive the next chunk of money. A big problem with the organizations in Pejivalle is a lack of motivation and procrastination. Proof of this is that as of the beginning of November they had only bought two flash drives and were spending their meetings talking around what they had to do but not really accomplishing anything. My instinct was to yell at them to get moving, “You guys have the money! All you have to do is go out there and freaking spend it!” But this is not a good idea because I haven’t established a solid enough relationship with the group to start saying things like this without being viewed as someone who is coming in to try to take over rather than work with the group. Thankfully, around mid month they realized on their own that they needed to get a move on and have started focusing more on the project and have spend more of the money on things. I honestly don’t know if they will have completed enough and have a good enough plan to receive the second and third parts of the grant. We shall see…

Grupo Ecologico is a group that is dedicated to educating the community on ways to protect the environment here in Pejivalle. The community is part of a program called Bandera Azul Ecologico, a program that awards communities based on the level of cleanliness in the water and other areas in respect to the environment in general. The program is divided into schools, beach communities, regular communities (like pejivalle), and protected areas. The program uses a three-star system to designate each level of cleanliness. Right now the community of Pejivalle has two stars and the high school has the maximum of three stars. Grupo Ecologico works to give workshops to the community members about recycling, trash pickup, prevention of soil erosion, the effects of agrochemicals, etc. Right now the group is preparing to start a community wide recycling program. Starting in January the Municipality will be coming around house to house collecting recyclables. The group is collaborating with the high school to plan workshops to teach people how to recycle and to educate them about how this recycle program will work. The high school is participating because since it is an Ambientalista high school and the kids receive environmental education all of them know how to recycle they will be able to lead these workshops along with members of the Grupo Ecologico. The Camara de Turismo is also participating because one of the requirements of their project is that they help with educating the people here on the subject of recycling. So far the main thing I am doing is trying to coordinate times and places for meetings that work for all of these groups. Grupo Ecologico is also planning a BINGO to raise funds for the group. We have secured the location, date, and time. Now we are working on getting donations for prizes to award the winners. Each member of the group is going to bring some kind of food to sell as well (I am bringing chocolate chip cookies).

I am also meeting with the town Cooperative but I am sorry, I don’t have the energy to write a description of what they do right now as I am still in the process of trying to figure that out.

One rather strange issue that I am dealing with is that these groups are not giving me much to do and I kind of feel like there is a lack of trust on their behalf. I am being given tasks that are small and often people feel the need to either tell me how to do them in great detail or insist on helping me do them. I was not expecting to deal with things like this as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I was anticipating that people I work with depend on me to help them get things done and that they would need me to guide them. But right now it feels like the opposite, like people here know what they are doing and think I dont. How strange, right? For example, I was asked to help out with activities that were going on all day one saturday to raise money for a kid. I am generally all up for helping out in whatever ways are usefull but as long as I feel like I am doing something worthwhile. I went to the activities and asked how I could help and was told to go around with a can and approach people for donations (fuuuuun). Then after this I didnt have anything to do so I hung around and watched the events taking place. I approached a community member who was in charge of the activities and told them I was going to go home. They responded by pleading that I stay and that they really needed my help with a BINGO that was going to start. Of course, I stayed thinking oh great! they want more help! I was assigned to the task of collecting the money and handing out BINGO cards as people entered. This was fine, except they thought that i needed help doing this so they sent over a guy who was basically just in the way because it was crowded and the job was only enough work for one person. I guess I am just frustrated because I have an education but the people I am working with are treating me like I dont know hardly anything. I am going to chalk this up to being new and that people dont know me well. But this is definitely something I am going to be working on. I wanted to get this out there so that hopefully in 3 months things will have changed and I will be able to look back on this entry and say, ¨look how silly you were emily, you just needed to be patient with people.¨


And now, I have received strict orders from my mom to document a dream (more like nightmare) that I had just about every night for the first month and a half I was here. The setting is a pitch-black room. I am sitting in on a meeting with a community group. I have introduced myself as best I can with what Spanish I know and have attempted to explain what Peace Corps is although I am sure I have completely butchered it. Now the conversation has moved on and the group members are talking. They are talking so fast I cannot understand what they are saying, if they are talking to me, if they are making statements, or if they are asking questions. In the Spanish language I have found that it is hard to tell if someone is asking a question or just making a statement because they don’t really vary their tone of voice like English speakers do. Everything comes out as a statement. Anyway, this dream is terrible because all of the sudden there are all of these awkward silences and I have this feeling that I need to respond or say something to break the silence and to prove that I am a worthy group member but I have no idea what they were talking about, where the individual voices are coming from, or if they were even talking to me because I cant see anyone because the room is pitch black. So I to fill the silence I end up making this “mmhmm” sound or just saying “si” or something stupid. Then eventually the group continues talking again, obviously growing uncomfortable with my awkwardness which makes me more nervous. Then the dream repeats as all of the sudden there is a silence and damn it I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying because I couldn’t understand anything and now I feel obligated to say something to prove I’m alive at least. So again I make the “mmhmm” sound or say “siiiiii” in a pensive manner to try to make it seem like I know whats going on. This dream repeats and repeats until I finally realize I’m dreaming and then I stop. Just about every morning for my first month and a half my brothers, who sleep in the next room over, would comment that I was talking in my sleep and making a sound like “mmmmhmmmm” and “siiiiii.” Finally this dream has stopped. I think its because my Spanish is better and I can pretty much understand what people are talking about and can respond somewhat more intelligently if prompted. I must say this is the first re-occurring dream that I have ever had in my life and its probably the only one I am able to retell completely. Usually I remember that I had a dream about something but I cannot describe it.

Hope all is well! Much love.

Emily

Here are some pictures of my site, Pejivalle de Turrialba!

It is hard to believe I have been in my site for more than a month already! It feels like much shorter. I encountered my first ¨hard¨days this past week. For the most part everything is going great, however, I think the language barrier caught up to me a little bit. I just got frustrated because I would be sitting in meetings that community groups have and at times I would have no idea what they were talking about. I have a hard time getting myself to say, ¨wait a second! I dont understand!¨ because I dont want to hold the meeting up to explaine things to me. However, I realize that this is absolutely necessary and I am working on getting better at politely interrupting for clarification.

I finally got matched up with my old 4th and 5th grade teacher, Miss. Feller, for the Paul D. Coverdell program. This is a correspondence program where I can mail letters, artowrk, photos, etc. to her current class in the US. This program is in place to help achieve the third goal of Peace Corps which is to promote exposure of Americans to foreign cultures. I am really excited about this program and plan on mailing a letter to her class each month covering all aspects of my life here and exploring the similarities and differences between the US and Costa Rica. I also want to involve kids from my community that are of the same age as those in Miss Feller´s class. This way they can have actual contact with someone who is similar to themselves yet so different.

I am definitely loving all aspects of my community. It is incredibly beautiful. I have found a ¨happy place¨(for you, DAD, haha) which is sitting by the river (I took the picture at right titled Río Pejivalle from this spot). I love to go here, sit in the sun, put my feet in the water, listen to the river, and think.

I will be getting a bicycle soon from the Peace Corps Office! This will be great because there are a few other communities that are technically located in Pejivalle but take a long time to walk to. I will be working in these communities so having a bike will make it much easier to get around.

Hope everyone is doing well! Much Love!

Emily

Hey all,

Things are going pretty well. I am still working on getting around my community and meeting all the different groups. Some of them meet only once or twice a month which is kind of difficult.

Projects that I have been working on are a community newsletter which has advertising from business in the town as well as articles written by community groups about what they are doing or activities they may be having. I am working on the first publication right now and hope to have it done by November 1st.

I am also in the process of starting my first english class for adults. I planned my first meeting to give more information about the program we will be following as it is through an organization called IPEA and the students will have to pay $5.00 for the book. The other volunteer who was in my community, who has since finished her service, told me to expect about 50 people at the meeting. Only 10 people came.....I attributed this to the fact that it was raining cats and dogs on the night of the meeting. However, since then the class has grown to 23 people. I am now working on getting everyone to pay me before I actually order the books.

I have to go because I need to catch my bus back to my site! More to come later!

Much Love!

Emily

All is well!

Hey Guys!

This has to be short but I just wanted to say that everything is great! I officially moved to my site on Sunday the 16th. So far I have been working mainly in the escuela and colegio (the school and the high school). I will be helping out with english classes in both schools and the environmental conservation projects that are going on in the high school. I am going to try to start an english class for adults by mid October. The current volunteer who is going to be leaving in about a week has been really great. She has introduced me to a lot of important people and has shown me around Pejibaye. Right now we are in the nearest big city called Turrialba and she has been showing me around. I bought a hammock today which I am so excited about! Now I can sit in it and read in my spare time! I will upload more pictures soon I promise. I wanted to mention that my mailing address will remain the same for now. I can make it into San Jose to pick up my mail from time to time. There is a post office in Turrialba but I dont know if I will get a PO box here just yet.

I miss everyone at Penn State! I have heard that the football team is doing pretty well, we beat Notre Dame which is awesome and I bet the place was bonkers. Jean and Barry, I am excited to receive your next letter! Thanks for keeping in touch! Miss you and hope all is well.

More to come soon!

Emily

Site Visit

Hey All!

I just got back from my final site visit. I went to my future site (Pejibaye de Turrialba) and stayed with my future host family and got to check things out. I don´t think things could have gone any better than they did. I met with my counterpart organization which is the Camara de Turismo and they seem really nice. They are responsible for pretty much all things having to do with tourism in my town. There are two national forest reserves as well as many rivers that are great for rafting in the community so there are some pretty big draws for attracting tourists. The camara just received a grant to develop a community rafting project so I think this will be the main thing to work on right off the bat.

I also went to the colegio (the high school) which is a colegio ambientalista meaning that students take classes on the environment and learn about conservation and other things. I met with the youth committee which is comprised of one advisor and then several teenagers in the community. They have a band that many of the colegio students play in and is part of the youth committee. They play at all the parades that happen on holidays...they dont have very many instruments (only some drums and recorders) so right now we are going to work on planning a talent show for the community so they can raise funds to buy more instruments.
I also got to talk to some of the english teachers in the colegio about helping out in classes and possibly teaching some myself.

I went on a field trip with a class of 7th graders to one of the national reserves (called El Copal). We got to walk all around the forest and hopefully see some wildlife. However, knowing how 7th graders are, we were wayyy too loud and scared every animal away. Still, it was INCREDIBLY beautiful, unlike any kind of forest/jungle I have seen before. Just the number of different plant and insect species was immense. There is an organization that has a lodge that accommodates 20 people that is the headquarters of this reserve. I talked to the people there and hopefully I will be able to work with them to bring more groups (tourists or costa ricans) to the reserve to walk around and stay. One thing I observed while being with the 7th graders is that they are all friends. There is no cliques or a popular group or anything which is awesome. I have always said there is no amount of money you could pay me to go back to Junior High because it was awful. But here the kids are all friends, some are more popular than others but nobody is mean to anyone. They were also really nice to me...I wasn´t sure if they would see me as a stupid Gringa who can´t speak Spanish or what. But instead they were all curious about me and asked lots of questions and included me in everything.

Now, about my family, I arrived on Friday in the pouring rain and only my two brothers (Luis Carlos, 17 and Diego, 16) were home. I thought it might be awkward at first because it was just me and them and they are teenage boys - not people that I have much in common with. However, just like the colegio kids, they had a mountain of questions for me and we had a pretty good conversation. Later, my mom (Rocio) and dad (Carlos) and sister (Kimberly, 10) came home and we had dinner. They are all really nice people and so far we have gotten along great. I had to confront them about the amount of food they would give me for meals....they gave me so much food it was rediculous and I had to tell them about 4 different times that I wanted to be served the same amount as the 10 year old girl. Finally they got it and now all is good for now. One night I went to take a shower immediately after dinner and they would not let me because they think that if you shower after you eat you will die. Apparently this is some myth that many people in Costa Rica and maybe other places in the world believe in. I had to wait exactly 30 minutes before I could shower.

One day I went to a local waterfall (biological reserves, rivers, waterfalls....what more could a girl ask for?!) with my host siblings. This waterfall was so beautiful and clean and it is perfect for swimming. I took pictures which I will upload next time.

I also got to talk to the current volunteer who is living in Pejibaye. She has about a month left and then she will go back to the US. I found out about the projects that she is working on that I can continue and also got a lot of advice and information about the community in general.

Other than this, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the house getting to know my family and going to their families houses to meet more people. Both my host mom and host dad have many brothers and sisters who also live in Pejibaye and my host dad´s parents live right next door.

Now I have about a week and a half left of training and then I will move to Pejibaye and be there for the next two years!

I want to send a shout out to my badass parents who both have birthdays this week! Happy Birthday Mom and Dad! I love you! Look for my package in the mail!

Pura Vida!

Emily