More mangos

The week before Easter, holy week, is a week of prayer, reflection, mass, and if you work in the public school system: vacation. A PC friend came to visit me during holy week. She lives in the mountains, where they have coffee and apples. She is deprived of mangos, and since in Upala we have mangos coming out of our ears, we went to town and bought ourselves a bag of 10 perfectly ripe and extremely delicious mangos. Here is what we did with them:
3 mangos went into mango/orange juice popsicles.
2 mangos went to regular mango eating.
5 mangos went into a mango pie.
Our mango pie- while a great idea- ended up a little overcooked. So it turned into mango slop, but it was still delicious. We made a homemade cookie crumb crust (there are no graham crackers here) but we still ended out with a delicious crust. That was the only part that came out normal.
The filling: 4 mangos, sliced, and cooked down. A little bit of cream cheese, cinnamon, orange juice, cornstarch for thickener, and some nutmeg. We cooked the mangos down, and ended up cooking them into mush. Oops. But we added chunks of another ripe mango and 2 cut up bananas to add some texture back to it. In the end it was a sloppy mess of delicious flavors, and I could have eaten the entire thing by myself.

Another day that my friend was here we went on this ridiculous adventure. Her parents were Peace Corps Volunteers in Costa Rica in the 70s. Her Dad worked in a community called Los Chiles, which is in my neck of the woods. To get to it from Upala you have to go about 2.5 hours down a gravel road. From my site there are two busses that go to Los Chiles, one at 4:30 am, and another at 11am. The thing is, the last return bus leaves Los Chiles at 12 noon. In order to get there and come back on the same day we had to catch the 4:30 bus. We got to the bus stop a little early, in case the bus cam early. Nope. It came at 5:20, almost an hour late. So we got to see the sun creep up over Chimurria and listen to the howler monkeys wake up. The early morning, as painful as it is to get myself out of bed, is always worth it. It is easily the most peaceful time of day, and more importantly, the coolest. After about 8am the sweating starts.
So, we waited and waited and waited, got on the bus, rode down the dirt road, and arrived in Los Chiles just in time to get a typical Costa Rican breakfast from a little soda. Soda’s are small food serving establishments that offer typical Costa Rican food and have the low prices. The atmosphere is always plastic chairs, plastic table, plastic table cloth. The menu is just as predictable as the plastic decor. Breakfast: rice and beans, a coffee, and an egg. Lunch/Dinner: rice and beans and a plantain and a piece of meat.
Breakfast rice and beans are called “gallo pinto” roughly translated as “painted rooster.” They are different from lunch rice and beans because they are cooked together with onion and garlic, usually cilantro, and some salsa Lizano. Salsa Lizano is to Costa Rica as Ketchup is to the United States.
Lunch and Dinner rice and beans are served on a mixed plate called a “casado” or “married man.” A “casado” is a plate consisting primarily of rice and beans accompanied by a plantain and a serving of a third item (a piece of meat, some chopped veggies, etc).
That is your basic “soda” menu. It might vary a little from establishment to establishment. But you can’t find a soda that doesn’t offer “gallo pinto” for breakfast and a “casado” for lunch or dinner.
So, we got a gallo pinto at a soda in Los Chiles, and began our adventure. Our goal was to find the house that her dad had lived in, and maybe find some old friends. We got to the street where he had lived on, and knocked on doors asking people if they remembered a US citizen living there about 30 years ago. Addresses in Costa Rica are vague and never involve numbers or street names. So, we supposed that we found the street her dad lived on, but we weren’t entirely sure. We knew he lived in the middle of the street, but we didn’t know which house. The town of Los Chiles has exploded since the 70s, meaning now it has paved roads instead of dirt roads, and the population has grown substantially. All the people now living on that block had only lived in Los Chiles for about 20 years, and didn’t know her dad.
Then we went to the Red Cross, where her dad had worked, but the lady there had also not been there long enough to remember her dad.
Our last stop was the Catholic church. The priest had changed, but he talked to a secretary who did remember her dad. She referred us to another secretary, who went out and randomly asked a woman who was getting ready to attend a service if she knew of the ex PCV. And we had success. The woman we ended up tracking down was the sister of her dad’s best Costa Rican friend. They were the best of friends, and he ended up naming his youngest daughter after my friend’s mom. They had lost contact about eight years ago and we helped reunite them. It was such a good scavenger hunt.



In other news, teaching in three schools remains a daunting task. I feel like I’m spread too thin and I still have a hard time with all the kids names. But I am working on it. However, I have had some successful moments over the past three months since school has started.
1) This is the one I am most excited about. I have managed to get my teachers one day a month where we can sit down together and plan. English teachers aren’t given any planning time. They teach 8 straight hours a day (minus lunch and recess) and have to plan and grade at home. They all have families, and two of the three teachers I work with go to night class at universities in other towns. As such, it has been a struggle for me to find time to get together with them to plan. Additionally, amongst themselves, the English teachers never have time to share ideas, activities, or materials. They work different schedules and are never in the school at the same time. So, I went down to the regional office and proposed to the Ministry of Public Education wanted a PCV to work with the English teachers in their schools, that we needed time to plan together. So, now, once a month, we can get together for the entire day to lesson plan, bounce ideas around, and practice English. It is great. Our first “teacher work day” was a few weeks ago, and it was a total success. My teachers got to share successful activities and lesson plans with each other for the first time. And we were able to create some really great lesson plans together. It was the beginning of building a teacher network. I left school that day exhausted but so happy that we finally had some time to sit down and work together.

2) Songs. I have yet to bring a song into the classroom that the kids do not go crazy about. We did the hokey pokey for the 5th graders who were going over body parts. They loved it, told everyone at recess about it, and then the 4th and 6th graders wanted us to do the hokey pokey with them, too. They all LOVED they hokey pokey, especially the part when you “turn yourself around.” Every time they were in fits of giggles. In another school we sang a song about the days of the week. It is a simple song with simple lyrics. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders all learned it when they learned days of the week. Now, when I walk around town, the little kids stop me to sing the song to me.

3) Community class. I started a community English class that has been going on for about two months now. I intended the class to be for adults. A lot of the adults in my community had asked me to start up a class, so I wanted to start one for them. The adult attendees pretty immediately dropped out, but most of the younger attendees have stayed. Right now the youngest student is in 4th grade and the oldest is in 12th . I love teaching that class. There is complete freedom in curriculum, I don’t have to co-teach, and all my students want to be there.

IST

I haven’t updated in almost a month. Honestly it is because I haven’t been inspired to write anything. Not that things are going poorly. I think what is happening is that I am starting to feel more like what I am experiencing is actually my life, there is less novelty about it. I am not sure what report back on. I think over the past day, week, month, and can’t come up with anything particular. But, in the spirit of blogging, and on sharing my peace corps experience with everyone back home, I write.

What has been happening?

1) I made it over the three month mark.

This is great news. It means that I made it through what is typically the most emotionally challenging time in my service. It also means that I got to go to San Jose for a two week training. In PC lingo the training is called IST (in service training).

2) IST

The PC put us up in a hotel with hot water, a gym, and a pool. I was shocked at how nice the hotel was considering how much PC Costa Rica’s budget has been cut this year. Apparently we get some crazy discount with the hotel, but still. So I got to have two weeks of AC, hot water, working out, cable TV, a pillow. It was luxurious. I also got to spend two weeks talking with my friends listening to their stories and sharing mine. It was such a relief to discover that all the things that had been frustrating for me (teachers not having time to co-plan, me not having time for non-English projects, school constantly being cancelled, lack of resources) were also issues with other volunteers. It’s not so much that misery loves company – but a realization that my biggest problems weren’t really a reflection of me or my site but were a systematic problem that could be more explained by holes in our project framework coupled with cultural differences.

I also got to learn from my peer’s success stories, and solicit their help/ideas in how I could improve my projects. There is no better/more creative/inspired group of people than my PCV friends. I love bouncing ideas around with them, and seeing what happens. To give a silly example: What to do with 15 mangos.

In Upala it is mango season. It is a glorious time of cheap mangos and howler monkeys on the prowl. The monkeys are always in our mango tree in our backyard, and I like to listen to them bark at each other. But, the other day in Upala, a PCV friend and I were joking about a sign advertising 15 mangos for less than $2.00 (imagine the price after bartering). What would you possibly need 15 mangos for? Then we starting coming up with ideas on how to use 15 mangos:

1) obviously – eat them with your large extended family

2) mango jelly

3) mango chutney

4) mango ice cream

5) mango yogurt (homemade yogurt is apparently easy)

6) mango/coconut curry

7) fruit salad

8) mango milkshake

9) mango juice

10) mango popsicle from leftover mango juice

11) mango pie

12) the list goes on indefinitely

At the end of mango discussion I was left thinking: “what can’t you do with 15 mangos?” Let me know what you would do with 15 ripe delicious local mangos. It is fun to think about. Especially given that most people in the US don’t usually think about how to use excess mangos. The topic of discussion is usually how to best utilize one mango. Mangos are never in season in North Carolina.