July

Today I had a free day. The English teachers are in a regional meeting and English class was cancelled. They are meeting up in an effort to contextualize the curriculum to life in Upala. I tried to get in on the action, but the person organizing the meeting didn’t think that a foreigner would be of much use contextualizing the curriculum to local culture. So, instead of helping revamp the English curriculum (I’m a little sour about being excluded) I spent the morning reading and doing laundry. The book I’m reading right now is called Into Thin Air. It’s about a deadly attempt to summit Everest. Its really got me captivated, although it may be more about the fact that reading about snow and ice has an extreme allure as I sit in a tank-top and shorts in front of my fan. As I was reading about Jon Krakauer searching for oxygen in below freezing temperatures there was a troop of howler monkeys playing in the mango tree outside my room. Its amazing how reading lets you escape into another world. Reading has been a consistent pleasure in my Peace Corps life.

This past month I have had a bit of time to work on secondary projects. There is a two week break from school in July. It marks the transition between semesters. Another PCV who lives and Upala and I had been scheming up ways to make a 4 day long summer camp possible for 40 kids. We’d been busting our butts running around getting donations (shout out to Aunt Maureen for the embroidery thread!), getting kids signed up, soliciting youth to help be counselors, and roping in other nearby PCVs to help out. After a few months of planning, it was finally time to put the camp into action. The concepts of summer camp, day camp, and overnight camp, are well woven into the fabric of US culture, but not so much in Costa Rica. We told all the parents that it was a day camp, from 7-11, and that the kids would go home in the afternoon. It was all very confusing that the camp would be held locally, that the kids were not spending the night, and that we would not be having a camp fire. These were points of contention that no one really believed until after the first day of camp was over.

The first day of camp, about half the counselors did not show, but it was just as well because about half the kids that signed up didn’t show either. Its not a surprising statistic, Costa Ricans are notorious for agreeing to participate in events (dinners, outings, etc) knowing very well that they have no intention of showing up. It’s a reflection of a societal need to give positive answers to their friends and to try to please. (Its better to make Julia happy now by telling her that I am going to her camp, she can be sad later when I don’t show up). But, being the hopeless, stubborn, optimist idealists that we are, we planned for all 40 kids to show up to camp. Next year we will invite twice as many kids as we are prepared to handle, lesson learned (yet again). The good news is now we have planted the idea of seed of what a summer camp is, and we have a bunch of extra materials for crafts. Next year can only be better.

Despite the lower than anticipated number of children, camp went really well. Everyday we did arts and crafts, so they had something to take home and share with their parents. For one craft we painted plastic bottles in half, painted them, and used them as flower planters. Mine is being used as a holder for basil – I have hopes of slowly introducing spices to my community via my own spice garden, I really hope it catches on. There was a reoccurring theme of reduce, reuse, recycle during our camp. Later in the week we had a lesson on trash decomposition and the value of reducing/reusing/recycling our waste. We also made wallets out of old milk and juice boxes—these are awesome and kids love them, a PCV taught me how to make them awhile back, I wish I could say the idea was my own-- We also made friendship bracelets and macaroni necklaces. Everyday we did group building activities. Everyday these proved challenging. Working in groups with new people and trusting the same new people are not things that these kids from small communities have had to do much experience with. I’m gald we got to work through the activities though; at least it gave them a taste of how it might be to work with new people in the future. The last activity every day was a big group game. The games were always competitive, and the kids had no problem with learning new types of competitive games. The group games were a hit with the kids, who spend most of their active time playing soccer and were excited about discovering new games to play. And so went summer camp- playing games, making crafts, doing group building activities, and making new friends. It was exhausting but totally worth it. We’ve already had requests to bring camp back next year.

I’ve also started spending time teaching some youth how to dance bachata and meringue. I’m not sure how it all got started. I think I was dancing by myself to bachata music that was playing in the house and a friend asked if I could teach him to dance. Now I have five students. They all really want to learn how to dance, but are incredibly shy and reluctant to do the footwork. I’m being patient with them, though, and taking class slowly. Their first chance to dance at an actual dance will be this Saturday. There is a benefit dinner to support seniors being held in the community center, and a band is coming to play. We’ll see if my students are brave enough to take their moves to the dance floor. We may have an emergency practice session on Friday before the dinner. Saturday I will be busy baking 200 cinnamon rolls for the dinner (I’ve made them a few times here and they are a huge hit, the committee really wants them for the dinner, too) then I’m supposed to help the ladies cook the meal. I am all about this community event. We are going to have good food, good music, and good dancing, and raising money for a good cause.