12.29.2010

Home for Christmas

Peace Corps Volunteers aren't supposed to leave their sites during training, the first three months of their service or the last three months. However, I was allowed to come home to see my grandma before she passed away on the 23rd. She had a rare and aggressive form of cancer called sarcoma. We had no idea anything was wrong before I left and then all of a sudden she was in the hospital and her health deteriorated so rapidly that I just barely made it back in time to say goodbye. We'll miss you gramma.

Right before I left to come home, we had our graduation from training. It's called the swearing-in ceremony and we had to take an oath at the ambassador's residence. The oath goes something like this:
"I, (your name), do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, domestic or foreign, that I take this obligation freely. And without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge my duties in the Peace Corps, so help me God."
Two of our fellow Volunteers, one from each program, went up and gave a short speech thanking our host families for everything they've done for us. Then we all went up one by one to get our certificate saying we completed our training and to get our picture taken with the ambassador. Afterwards we had some time to take pictures with all our friends and family before we all went our separate ways to our sites. When I go back in January, I'll be close to five or six other Volunteers and the rest I'll just have to wait until our In-Service Training in March to see them.

It's surreal to be home right now, especially during the holiday season and having come home so quickly and unexpectedly. I remember coming home from Korea and it felt so weird, but we had been looking forward to it for so long... this time I got an email telling me to come home and the next thing I knew I was on a plane and back in my own home, albeit with no bed but that's another story haha. It's definitely been comforting to see friends and family during this time. As always, my thoughts are jumbled and I can never stay on one topic, but I just wanted to mention that it's really cold here. And there's snow. We had the coldest day in 15 years in Costa Rica and it still didn't get down to freezing. It was probably in the 40s or something. Usually you see old women bundled up like there's a blizzard outside when the temperature is in the 60s early in the morning, so 40 is pretty darn chilly for them. It's nice to see snow again. I missed last year's 'Snowmageddon,' unfortunately. My tico friends want me to bring some back with me, but I think pictures will have to do :)

Aside from the cold, another thing I've noticed is that we don't eat rice at every meal, or at any actually (I haven't had a single grain of rice since I left CR... and I'm OK with that haha), and we use forks here. Actually, I lied. I had a ton of rice with my Chinese the other day. The first time I got change since coming back, I thought for sure they had dumped a bunch of pennies in my hand because they felt so tiny. The coins in CR are so huge that even quarters seem really small and light in comparison.

In my spare time here, I've been memorizing the national anthem of Costa Rica, talking with my tico friends to keep up my Spanish, watching a ton of American football and eating as much food as possible. Today I created a new Facebook account since it bothers everyone so much down there that I don't have one. It's all in Spanish, but feel free to add me anyway. I'll write to you in English, I promise! It's actually under my real name this time, imagine that.

12.08.2010

San Isidro de Leon Cortes!

This past week, we went back to the training facility in Tres Rios to meet our counterparts for a two-day workshop before going on our site visits for five days. It was an awesome experience and I and everyone else in the Los Santos region feels really blessed to be where we are and for whom we get to work with. Our main counterpart is the regional assessor of English and he brought with him a few other teachers and principals from our communities. My other counterpart is the principal at my high school and I can already tell that we’re going to be good friends; he’s really cool and laid back.
After the workshop, we all visited our future sites for five days. I went to San Isidro de Leon Cortes and I already really like it there a lot. It’s really beautiful and relaxing there, ‘super tranquilo.’ My new family is pretty cool, too. I thought I was only going to have one sibling because when the Peace Corps visited their house the other two weren’t there and I suppose they just forgot to ask if there were any other members of the family living there. I have a 20 year-old sister, an 18 year-old brother and a twelve year-old sister. Their names are Viviana, David and Maria Lupe, respectively, and we already have a lot of fun with each other. Something really interesting about my new family is that they have had exchange students in their house in the past, so they’re used to us and they know what to expect and how to deal with us better than other families who have no idea. The thing about having had high school exchange students, though, is that they were kind’ve crazy and they were expecting me to be like that, also. Apparently, the other people they had had before me never woke up before 9 or 10, which sounds pretty normal for a high school student but that’s ridiculous here. People generally wake up at 6 or 7 at the latest, but my family picks coffee for a living, so they wake up every day at 5. So when I woke up at 5 with them, they were astonished and kept asking me if I needed to go back to sleep. They’re also really curious to know why I don’t do drugs because the last exchange student they had moved out of their house to a bigger city so she could buy her weed. And they also insist that weed is legal in the U.S. even though I insist that it isn’t, haha. The other thing is that the exchange students slept around within the community, so everyone is already assuming that I’ll be like that, too… Nothing like high school exchange students to provide misconceptions that I have to live with for two years! Honestly though, I think they realize that I’m older and I’m coming as a volunteer so I’m not going to be doing the same types of things.
The first couple days I was in my new site, I just tried to see as much of it as I could and get a feel for where everything was. For how small it is, there’s quite a bit of stuff, and anything I can’t find in San Isidro I can go to San Pablo for and it’s only ten minutes away. We have a supermarket, a soda (a hole-in-the-wall restaurant), a movie rental store, an Internet cafĂ© in my neighbors’ house, a restaurant and a soccer field. I’m pretty sure we don’t have a bank, a police station, a fire station or a gym but I can survive without those. I think I mentioned before that my family picks coffee for a living. Well, the first day I was there, my brother and I took their truck up the side of a mountain to where their ‘finca’ (farm or plantation) is and the workers brought all their ‘canastos’ (huge bags) full of coffee to put in the truck. They empty them out into this box and then they share the money based on the number of times they filled up the box. After all the coffee is in the truck, they take it up to one of the collector facilities in town. The truck has a chute on the back of it and they pour the coffee into this big container and they keep track of how many times they fill the container. It was really interesting to see a portion of the process and I’m excited to get to try out picking coffee when I go back in a week. The second day was Sunday so we went to church in the afternoon for a special Christmas service. They had a play which I’m pretty sure was their version of Scrooge and after the service they lit the Christmas tree and Santa appeared on the roof of the church and threw candy down.
Monday and Tuesday, we went to the high school in San Pablo for a workshop that the regional assessor had set up. It was a great opportunity for us to meet the other English teachers from the region that we would be working with and we were even given the chance to present what we have been learning in training. Although we don’t always feel like we’re qualified to be leaders, that’s what Manolo, the assessor, wants us to be and being at the workshop was a huge step in the right direction for us. We’ve already developed good relationships with the teachers that we’ll be working with and they have a sense of what we’ve been learning and what we’re going to be doing to help them.

I had a great time in my future community and I already really like it and can't wait to go back for good! I've already made some great relationships with my new family, my co-workers and a few people around town. I'm definitely excited about the next two years of my life :D