Back to School 3/17/09

I am two days into my new life in Tarbaca and already feel very removed from life in the fast lane. Yesterday was my first Spanish class, which goes from 8 am to 3pm-ish with an hour lunch break. I got up at 6 to go for a run and soon found that since we live on the top of the mountain ridge, there is no way to go but down, meaning the way back is all up. We are also at 1800 meters above sea level, and I felt it with every breath. So it was a shorter run that usual, but BEAUTIFUL views all along. There are no sidewalks here, so you have to be really careful with traffic while also watching your footing, since the sewers in some parts are deep and open. Just a few new obstacles to keep things interesting.

We met our teacher, Carina, who is also 24 and has a gringo husband from Minnessotta. She is really fun and expressive, speaks slowly and clearly, so I’m a big fan. Yesterday we spent the morning introducing ourselves in Spanish and then wandering around Tarbaca and mapping out the “places of interest,” which include the church, the school, two restaurants, two pulperias, and an organic café. There are no doctors offices, police stations, post offices, supermarkets, or internet cafes in Tarbaca, so for any of this you have to take a bus to the nearest town, Acerri. The best part of our exploration was stopping at one of the pulperias and talking to Hugo, the owner. He let us try all sorts of sweets and spent about a half hour welcoming us to Tarbaca and describing the town and its history and its people. So far, everyone here who we have stopped to ask a question ends up giving us a tour or offering us coffee or just chatting forever. I have this inclination to want to move on more quickly because I imagine they are busy or we are bothering them, but that’s not how it works here. Everyone has time, or makes time, to help.

On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays my host mother teaches at night at the high school in Acerri, so my host father cooked us dinner. Last night was spaghetti, and tonight was omelets and rice. There is also always an afternoon snack waiting for me after school, which is coffee or tea and some kind of pastry. I don’t think the low-carb diet will ever be adopted in Costa Rica.

This afternoon we took the bus to Acerri to use the bank, post office and Internet. It is more of a town than Tarbaca, with a plaza in the center and a high school. We went to the high school to introduce ourselves because next week, our assignment is to observe an English class and a computer class at a nearby high school, and what do you know we get a tour of the entire school as well as an exclusive view of some of the class projects going on. A lot of the projects are around the environment, either recycling or growing things or harvesting butterflies, which is pretty cool. After that the director of the school took us to meet a woman who works for the health department in Acerri who oversees some micro-enterprise initiatives in the area, and they were both so excited that we were interested in their projects that they started talking very fast about all that they were working on and it sounded really interesting but between the four of us, we probably only caught every other word. Speaking and listening in Spanish all day is EXHAUSTING when it doesn’t come terribly easy, so afterwards we took a coffee/fruit juice break and spent an hour reading and writing in English on the Internet.

Tomorrow is our first technical training class with the entire CED group. We are convening in Tarbaca so our group gets to sleep the latest. I look forward to exchanging stories of our new homes and host families and struggles with Spanish, cold showers and hill-running,