A couple days ago we found out where we’re all going for our two years here and I couldn’t be more excited! I’m going to a small community that is close to my training community and I’ll be close to several close friends of mine. I think I’m moving one county over or something like that because I’ll be living in a region called ‘Los Santos’ and I’ve heard a lot about it since I’ve been here. All the names of the villages in Los Santos are San . San Marcos, San Pablo, San Carlos, San Isidro, San Lorenzo, San Antonio, etc.; they’re all names of saints. The streets here don’t really have names, so they just refer to them as where they take you, and one of them is called ‘A Los Santos.’ I think it’s only an hour away!
The TEFL program got placed in clusters around the country and I really like all the people in my cluster. The CED program got dispersed fairly evenly around the country and I’ll be close to a couple of my friends from that program as well. My program coordinators were telling me that my site is one of the best because the teachers at the schools are really excited to work with me. They wouldn’t send any of us to a place where we weren’t wanted, but I think my community especially is excited to have me there. I think it will be similar to the community I’m in now, which is great because I love it here. I won’t be able to experience living in a different part of Costa Rica, but I will have plenty of opportunities to visit those places. At least I know that I will enjoy the climate and the scenery for two years.
The day we were told where we’re going, we had a party at a really nice club outside of San Jose. We got to play basketball, soccer and tennis and there was a pool and a hot tub, also. For lunch we had Thanksgiving food. Obviously it wasn’t as good as the food my mom makes every year, but it was a nice touch and way better than whatever I ate last year in Korea on Thanksgiving. I don’t recall where Katie and I went, but I imagine we probably wanted to get something as close to home as possible and had to settle for cheeseburgers or maybe pizza, haha.
My good friend O Tyler will be living in Frailes, where I am now, so he is coming here today to see what it’s like, meet his new family and visit our houses. Today is also the confirmation of my little brother, Brandon, at the Catholic Church, so I’ll be headed to that in about an hour. Tyler should arrive right as the mass is ending and then we’ll eat lunch at my house before we start visiting his new family and as many other families as we can get to today. Everybody wants to meet the new gringo so I doubt we’ll make it to everyone’s house.
The past two weekends were a lot of fun. During training, we’re allowed to spend two nights outside of our communities, but they can’t be taken consecutively and they also can’t be taken until after the first month of training. For our first weekend out, the roads all over Costa Rica were really messed up after all the rain and landslides and whatnot, so the only place we could get to safely was San Jose. We found a really nice hostel for $12 and spent Saturday and Sunday shopping and sightseeing in the capital. My favorite part was eating foods I can’t get in Frailes; i.e. pizza and burgers mainly. For our second weekend, we went to a beach on the Caribbean side in the Limon province. We found a hostel there where you can sleep in hammocks for $5 and it’s practically right on the beach. The beach out in front of the hostel was a little rocky but we walked about fifteen minutes to get to a really nice part that was sandy and had good waves. I think sleeping in a hammock is pretty cool but I had trouble simply because it was so hot. It reminded me of the hotel room in Ghana without air conditioning: tossing and turning until it either cooled down or I was just so tired that it didn’t matter anymore how hot it was.
It was really nice to be able to get out of our communities and explore the country a little bit, especially after we weren’t allowed/able to leave for the better part of a week during the national emergency. However, now that we know exactly where we’re going, it’s starting to sink in with us and with our current families that our time together is growing very, very short. Next week, we all visit our future sites for four or five days and by the 18th of December we’re gone.
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