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.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
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 5th and 6th 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 6th 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 5th 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 27th, 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 28th, 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 29th, 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 5th 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 3rd 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 3rd, 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 5th 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 5th graders had a meeting with the 5th 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 5th 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 4th, 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 4th 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 5th graders. This includes my host sister, Kimberly, and 25 others.
Wednesday, July 9th, 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.
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