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