Work, work, work

While everyone around me seems to be winding down for the end of the year (since Costa Ricans don’t celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving, they start decorating for Christmas and acting like it’s Christmas toward the end of October…), I have been running around like crazy for the past couple weeks, to the point where my host father joked it must be a holiday when I sat down with them for a meal for the first time in days.

Things filling my time:

Recycling - We are doing one last push before school gets out, which includes a big campaign at the school on December 5 with an art exposition of Christmas decorations made out of recycled materials that the kids are working on in class. Yesterday some of the women from the committee went over to the house of another woman in the community who is very artsy and has an amazing workshop with every kind of craft material you could imagine. She also makes her own costumes and is often seen dressed as a clown in various parts of the Zona Sur spreading the word of God to children, but hey. Anyways we made this gigantic yellow banner that says: Recycle, Dec. 5, the Earth needs it, except in Spanish. So our publicity is looking much better than the last campaign.

Artisan group – Roger, the president of the Quebradas Artisan Association who came with me to the Peace Corps PDM workshop, and I presented our vision and work plan to the group last week, and they were generally receptive and excited, so we chose a date for the art exposition, December 13, and started assigning tasks and deadlines. In every group I’ve worked with, it is incredible, no one will have any ideas, and then as soon as we start talking about the food portion of the event, EVERYone pitches in at once. So needless to say, the kitchen committee is overflowing and we’re a little light on logistics and publicity, but the exciting thing is that we have an event planned where the artists will have an opportunity to exhibit and hopefully sell some of their work.

Other artisan group – We finally got all the forms and receipts and photocopies turned in for the $8000 donation the women’s recycled paper group is applying for. At the last minute, when we thought we had everything together, DINADECO, the government agency that oversees the donations, told us all the receipts we had gathered had to be in the name of the local development association instead of the women’s group, and the book containing the official act where our community approved the project had to be revised as well. Oh bureaucracy…So it was a last minute push but we got it in and now we just have to keep our fingers crossed!

Greenhouse – So after spending weeks asking businesses for free stuff and helping chop and lug bamboo down to the school, I showed up on Sunday morning at 7am when a few father’s from the community were supposed to help build the greenhouse, and only one guy showed up to tell me that the others had been partying all night and were probably really hung over. Awesome. So he said he would try to find another time but it would be a lot better if we could just pay someone to do it because that is the only way to guarantee they’ll show up. I had already been shut down by the school director multiple times, as she has made it clear that they are low in funds, and anything they do raise is not going to go to environmental education since there are many other priorities. Then today she told me to make sure to take pictures of our recycling banner to send in to the Ministry of Education to show them what good work we’re doing, but that’s an aside. Anyways today I was making angels out of toilet paper rolls and wire hangers with the 6th grade girls when an American woman I had met once at the Internet Café came into the classroom and told me that every year, her nieces and nephews like to make a joint donation to different charities, and this year they had decided to give it to the environmental education program at the school. And just like that she handed me an envelope with 50.000 colones, which is about $100! God bless those wealthy gringas…Anyways this was obviously very uplifting and hopefully the solution to the greenhouse dilemma, but we’ll see.

Community Newspaper – After about 15 hours of sitting with Javier at his very slow and old computer that took 10 minutes every time it saved a version of the publication, we finished the design and I think it looks great. The cover and back cover and first page and last page are going to be in color this time, and we have more ads and more articles from more community members. The paper was sent to print yesterday, so hopefully it will be ready by some time next week.

I’m also still going strong with English classes, Chicas Super-Poderosas, technology for old ladies, and Junior Achievement with the kids that live up by FUDEBIOL. And there has been some time for fun, including going to visit Adrienne for a night in her Canaan. It was cool to meet her host family and see how she relates to her community, which is way smaller than mine, only 150 people! So she literally knows everyone and I kind of feel like I know everyone after my visit. We also took a walk down to Monte Azul, the hotel where my dad and Lynne and Liza stayed when they visited, and were fed fresh-baked English muffins with herbed goat cheese and sent home with a bag of home made cookies. Just like visiting family!

And now I am in store for even more fun and TLC. Am about to get on a bus to San José and meet my mom, and then we will head to Tamarindo, for Thanksgiving and a weekend at the beach, with visits from a few other Peace Corps Volunteers. I am yet to see a turkey dead or alive in this country, but apparently they’re out there, and it should be delicious!

AVC and PDM

Well-fed and cultured in San José

Just like being a freshman girl all over again...

Proud Peace Corps representatives

Tica'd Out


These are two of the many Peace Corps acronyms that have filled my past two weeks to the brim. It’s been super fun but super exhausting. Last week was our annual All Volunteer Conference, the only time when every single Peace Corps Volunteer in the country is in the same place at the same time. The conference is organized by volunteers but staff are there also. This year we spent three nights at a campsite/recreation center in Cartago, right outside San José. Activities ranged from project fairs and committee presentations to trivia night, a Ropa Americana (sober) dance party, talent show, and staff-performed operetta composed by our new Country Director. The food was disappointing and the weather was a little cold and rainy, but it was a really well-organized and much-needed event to bring us all together, give us a break from our sites, and inspire us with stories of all the cool and creative things other volunteers are doing. For me it was especially interesting to get to know more of the Tico 18 Volunteers, who have been here for a year longer than me, and see how they have approached their service and hear their advice and how they are feeling now that they are almost done and thinking about their next steps.

I spent Saturday night in San José with some other volunteer friends, and it was the most positive experience I’d had yet in the capital city. Previously, I really only knew the touristy area downtown and the part around the Peace Corps office. But thanks to a fantastic recommendation, we found a cute and cheap bed and breakfast in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown with lots of park space, beautiful colonial architecture, cool restaurants and a zoo! THIS is what I had been looking/hoping for and thinking had to exist somewhere in a big city with a somewhat sophisticated population. Anyways we indulged in just about everything: saw the Michael Jackson movie at the mall, found hummus and pita, frozen yogurt, South African wine, a jazz café, and bagels. It was pretty awesome and for the first time left me wanting to come back and explore San José more.

Two days after getting back to my site, I packed my backpack again and headed to a three-day INTENSE Project Design and Management Workshop. Fortunately for me, the workshop for the Zona Sur was being held at FUDEBIOL in my community, so I didn’t have to go far. Eight volunteers from my area attended with counterparts from their community as well as four Peace Corps staff members. The idea of the workshop is to introduce Peace Corps Volunteers and someone they are working with on a project in their community the Peace Corps methodology for developing, monitoring and evaluating projects. This is where we got super acronym heavy, so I’ll spare you most of the details, but it was actually the most useful and productive training I have experienced with Peace Corps so far, partly because I was with someone from my community, and partly because it was very focused and well-run and applicable to what I am working on.
It was also really fun and interesting to see my peers interacting with their counterparts and get to know people from their communities and hear about projects they are working on. There was definitely a good amount of awkwardness in that we were all staying together in bunk beds in the lodge and trying to speak Spanish to be polite but slipping into English because that’s what we’re used to speaking together. The days were jam-packed with sessions from 8am-6pm, but there were good meals and snacks in between and fun activities in the evening, including seriously competitive games of Banana-grams and a viewing of El Ultimo de los Mohicanos…

I decided to bring the president of the artisan group I am working with, and the project we focused on was their much talked about but never acted upon dream of having their own workshop to do trainings for the community and sell their products. He gets very excited about things and was fun to work with though sometimes dominated the sessions and conversations a bit, but I much preferred that over someone who would have been too shy to participate. Anyways we came out of the workshop with a vision, mission, objectives and work plan that we feel really good about. The hard part, as always, will be getting the rest of the group committed and involved. But we are going to present our work to them on Tuesday and solicit feedback and hope it gets them motivated.

Now I am finally back in my site, doing LOTS of laundry and trying to get organized and think about what I want to get done by the end of the year, which is sneaking up fast, and how I might want to reevaluate and rethink my priorities and work for next year. I am almost at my six month in community mark, and I think I have a better sense now of what I most enjoy doing and where I can have the most impact.

I also have many exciting countdowns going, including less than two weeks until my mom’s Thanksgiving visit followed by a big move to my own apartment! Now we just have to scour this country for a turkey…

High/Low-lights of the Week

Since my last blog post, I:

- Got a project approved by the Development Association, meaning enough people showed up to have a quorum, a rare occasion…
- Met up with some Peace Corps friends at a newly discovered “lounge” in San Isidro that played house music and had couches and served scallops in pesto
- Painted Christmas-themed recycled paper products with the women’s group. Unfortunately everything I touched is not sellable.
- Started and finished Season 1 of Mad Men (it’s not as bad as it sounds I had already seen the first 6 episodes)
- Planted trees with the 4th, 5th and 6th graders
- Attended a cooking class with women from my community and an eccentric chef who thought it was adorable that I am helpless in the kitchen and therefore let me be the official taster, which I was very good at
- “Lost” my digital camera
- Received my long-awaited shiny blue bike from Peace Corps
- Gave my first English test and subsequently used LOTS of red pen to correct it
- Had an excuse to by a sequined dress for a “Ropa Americana”-themed Peace Corps dance next week
- Made pad thai and hummus at the house of a nearby Peace Corps friend and then watched old episodes of Sex in the City and got my toes painted
- Went on my first ride with the new bike and lost a pedal an hour and a half up into the mountains
- Attempted to reattach the pedal with barbed wire from a local mechanic
- Cruised 5 km downhill with only one pedal, left my bike in a shop in town, and showed up at home disheartened on foot
- Spent Halloween afternoon/night in an 8-hour strategic planning session that included roasted chicken, wine, and philosophizing about the definition of “problem” but no costumes or candy
- Woke up to an ant-infested room this morning, literally the floor and walls were black with ants. Still have no idea where they were coming from or where they were going, but it was really gross...