Winter break in CR

The past two weeks have left me sun burnt and bug-bitten but content. After Dan left, I decided to try to focus more seriously on my CAT (Community Assessment Tool), our principal assignment from Peace Corps in our first three months of service. It’s basically a report we have to do on the history of our communities, demographics, health, social institutions, social problems, education, productive activities, etc., all leading up to our work plan for the next door years based on opportunities for development identified. So we are supposed to do formal interviews, surveys, document research, FODA’s, and general observation to write the report. It kind of feels like I’m doing my senior thesis all over again, except this time it all has to be in Spanish. Anyways it is kind of intimidating to start but it provides a good excuse to talk to people and explain a little more about my role as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I ended up having some really useful interviews and getting some good ideas for projects. The frustrating part is that I’m yet to identify anyone who’s really willing and able to work with me on those projects. Everyone says, “we need a youth group” or “FUDEBIOL needs to do more for the community,” but no one wants to be the one to lead the charge. So I can tell a big part of my task here is going to be as a motivator, slowly but surely…

Then this week was the beginning of soccer camp, an idea I had proposed to Ritchie, the Spanish volunteer who was a soccer coach in Spain, to do together during the kids’ “winter” vacation. I had made flyers two weeks before and a bunch of kids signed up, but come Monday we had zero equipment. So I went on a mission to the house of a man I had heard used to coach some of the kids in the neighborhood and to another house where the coach of the current men’s team lives and came up with three balls, three cones, and a whistle, which was a good start. The camp was Tuesday through Friday, from 7 to 11. Kids 9 and under were from 7 to 9 am and 10 and up were 9 to 11 am. No one was there at 7, and I was worried that everyone had forgotten about it, but Ritchie reminded me that we were on Tico time and they’d make it eventually. Sure enough, we had about 10 little tykes in the first session and 20 in the second! I was a little intimidated by the older group at first because it was mostly boys, many of whom were bigger and better than me at soccer, but they were all well-behaved for the most part and all seemed to want to be there and to like the organized nature of the camp, as otherwise they would probably be watching tv at home or just kicking the ball around with no real purpose. So we tried to do a mix of teaching technique and conditioning and discipline and playing games, and I think it went pretty well. Ritchie ended up only being able to come the first day, but some of the other volunteers helped the other days and Adrienne, another Peace Corps volunteer friend who lives nearby, came and helped on Friday, which was really fun. Anyways being out in the sun on my feet for four hours straight four days in a row was super exhausting, and I definitely got frustrated with the kids and spent a lot of time screaming with my voice which I think gets even squeakier in Spanish, but I was really happy with the turnout and enthusiasm, and it turns out that school in all of Costa Rica got canceled next week because there were a few more cases of the H1N1 virus, so we are going to do the camp again! Oh man. But today when I was running I passed a couple houses where some of the players were and they all screamed my name and waved, so I was excited to know that I had at least made some new friends.

This weekend was the VAC (Volunteer Activity Committee) reunion for all the Peace Corps volunteers in the Southern Zone. Every three months, we get a free night out of site and reimbursement for travel and one meal to have a “meeting” with all the volunteers in our region to discuss projects and go over Peace Corps-related news and announcements. But it’s also just an excuse to get together in a cool place and have fun for a weekend, which is definitely where the focus was. We all met up at this mansion in the mountains on the road to Dominical that a gringo rents out to groups, and it was pretty ridiculous. There were 25 of us, a pool, a Jacuzzi, a home theater, and a human-sized chess court. Enough said. It was cool to meet some of the older Peace Corps volunteers and hear about their communities as well as to see the other Tico 19ers from my group and hear about their first month and a half in their sites. And yesterday afternoon we had brownies fresh out of the oven! It wouldn’t be a complete blog entry without at least one food reference…