Exito!

After some lessons in communication and miscommunication, today was a more successful week. On Monday, Team Tarbaca completed our service learning project at the local elementary school. We decided to do a "charla" about the environment and recycling in honor of Earth Day on Wednesday. We had a captive audience of 37 students, grades 4, 5, and 6, and presented for about a half hour on why picking up trash and recycling is important, what you can and can't recycle, what happens to the materials after you separate them, etc. At first it was a little tough to get people to raise their hands and participate, but then we broke out the candy, and every hand shot up. Another important lesson learned: ALWAYS bring food if you want people to stay, listen, and participate. After the talk we all went outside and a bunch of the students were given garbage bags or transparent bags for recycling and were assigned either cans, plastic, or paper and we collected trash on and around campus. Everyone was excited to be running around and getting their hands dirty, and we found some interesting things, including a LOT of dirty diapers. But in general I think they got the point and enjoyed the activity and we pointed out after how much cleaner and prettier the campus and the streets looked. The school principal invited us into the cafeteria after for a cafecito and homemade tortillas with cheese (which are NOT called quesadillas here), and she was really happy with how it went as well.

Today we FINALLY did our SWOT analysis with a new organization, the Organic Cafeteria that we volunteers already frequent almost every day to use their wireless Internet. We were worried about having to start over again, but because we had already had so many informal conversations with the manager and employees and because we were customers ourselves, it turned out we knew a lot about their business, which was really helpful in identifying strengths, weaknesses, and future opportunities. They were pretty engaged in the conversation and came up with a lot of interesting ideas about marketing their products, educating people about the value (both environmental and health-related) of organic food, and of course teaching English to their employees so they could better serve the tourist population. We got pretty positive feedback from our Training Director, who was there observing, so after all that, I think we learned from our (two) mistakes and the third time was indeed the charm.

This weekend I leave with half of the CED group at 5 am for Guanacaste, which is the northwest province of Costa Rica. We are going to visit a volunteer in a site called Los Angeles for six days and attend community meetings with him, observe his projects, and do some of our own mini-projects, including helping teach English and technology classes. We are each going to be living with different families in the communities, which should be interesting. We are also encouraged to "integrate" into the community through playing pick-up soccer games or attending evening social events. It should be a fun and interesting week, and I am looking forward to seeing a different part of the country. 

Not much else to report except that my friends back home have notified me that, unfortunately, Rod Blagojevich will NOT be joining me in Costa Rica to appear on NBC's "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" due to a court ruling. Apparently he still has some business to take care of in the states, but hopefully some other corrupt politicians or B-list celebs will make it down here in the near future. I think they'd especially love the cold showers...