Home, sweet home

Things are winding down at my schools. By the second week of November we should be done teaching new material, and then we just review until exams. Only the kids who are in danger of failing have to take the final exams, so we will only be reviewing with a few of the students, everyone else gets to start their vacations early. The last day of school is December 16^th; we start back up in mid February.

I do have a new project to keep my occupied during the break from school. I moved! Into my own house!! I live all by myself!!! I cook for myself!!!! This is big news for me as a Peace Corps volunteer, and for me as Julia. This is the first time in my life I’ve lived alone. I’ve always had roommates, housemates, my own family or host families to live with. I was a little apprehensive at first, wondering how I manage in a house all by myself. I thought I might get lonely, or scared, or become a hermit and never leave. I’ve only been in my house for two weeks now, but so far I’m loving it, and I think it was great decision. I feel extremely safe in my community. Everybody knows me, everybody looks out for me, and I know that they all have my back. The reality is that there isn’t much crime that happens in Chimurria, either. There is really only one person in the whole town I need to look out for: Alfonso.

Alfonso is an old homeless man who goes around and takes peoples clothes that are drying on the line and then tries to sell them to people. He takes things people leave out in the yard or on their porches (toys, doormats), and carries them around on this sack on his back. He wonders around the entire county of Upala, but he grew up in Chimurria, so he comes here often. People tell me that he was born to one of the richest families in town and that he lost his fortune when he got addicted to cigarettes. He spent all his money trying to buy cigarettes and eventually lost his house and his family to his addiction. I’m not sure if it’s just a tall tale that people tell about Alfonso, or if any of its true. But I do know that he doesn’t drink, just smokes like a chimney. I’ve never seen him without a cigarette, and every time I see him he’s asking for another. Another fact about Alfonso is that he’s mentally ill. His family basically abandoned him once he started stealing in order to buy cigarettes. So he doesn’t have a home or family that will take him in. I know in the United States there is a kind of fear of the homeless, but in Chimurria there is an intense fondness for Alfonso. People call him, Alfonsito ( an endearing way to say Alfonso). They always offer him food, try and give him new clothes and a bath. But no one really wants to take responsibility for him, and it seems that Alfonsito doesn’t want to be anyone’s responsibility either. He actually hates taking showers, and if you offer him the use of your bathroom he usually gets offended and walks off. Alfonso and I have an odd relationship. He has a really bad memory, but I talk to him sometimes so when he sees me he knows that he knows me, he just doesn’t quite know how. But he does remember my last name, and usually yells it at me as we pass on the street. He likes knowing peoples names and the origins of their names. I think mine must be the only non-latino name he’s ever heard and he really enjoys saying it out loud. Alfonsito is also a mumbler, so I can’t understand much of what he says, but we get along alright. I suppose he would steal my porch mat if I left it out, but I’m not sure that I would get all that upset about it. It is somewhat of a relief to know that he is the biggest security threat to my community.

Monkey in the Middle

It’s official; I’ve been living in Costa Rica for over a year now. I flew into the San Jose airport October 5th, 2010. It is hard to imagine that a year ago I didn’t know any of the people who now I feel closest to. A year ago I had never even heard of Chimurria, I had no idea what a rainy season would be like, and I only had the vaguest idea of what I was about to get myself into. But here I am, one year later, in the thick of things. I’m smack in the middle of the time-line of my Peace Corps experience. It’s fun for me to think back on what I’ve experienced, and impossible to guess what lies ahead of me.

For example, last night, I almost walked straight into a giant spider that was dangling from the ceiling—impossible to guess that that was going to happen.
Or last week when I was traveling on the bus from San Jose, I sat next to an organic chocolate bean farmer who gave some free organic chocolate made by a women’s association in my region. Impossible to guess.
Or two days ago when no one showed up to my English class because everyone was at church for a special mass for the patron saint of Chimurria. Impossible to guess.
Actually, that last one would have been easy to guess if I went to the Catholic church.

In honor of our 1-year anniversary in-country, some Peace Corps friends and I got together to celebrate. We went to a fellow North Carolinian PCV’s apartment in the Los Santos region of Costa Rica. Los Santos is in the mountains, and it is a different world from Chimurria. It’s cold, hilly, coffee plantations everywhere. It is a sneeze away from San Jose, so the communities have more resources and people tend to be more open with each other. Costa Rica is a tiny country, but it never ceases to amaze me how diverse it is.
All of us PCVs have become obsessed with food (one of the side effects of only ever eating rice and beans) and our get together was centered around the most amazing cake I have ever seen/eaten. It was a 4 layer cake with cream cheese icing, and sprinkles! There was a red velvet layers, a carrot cake layer, and 2 German chocolate layers. It was delicious and we completely devoured it.


So here’s to year one, it’s gone by faster than I would have imagined. And here’s to year two, and all the adventures that lie ahead.

*The people in the picture are some of my PC friends- Nicole, Bryson, Brian, and Angela*

Peace Day

September 21st was international Peace Day. Personally, I think that having just one day out of 365 being devoted to peace seems absurd (I also feel this way about mother’s day, international women’s day, African American history month). But, if Peace was getting a day, I was going to jump on the bandwagon to do something extra-special for Peace. When September started I had a vision of evolving Peace Day into Peace Month. I was inspired by one of my best PCV friends, Kelsey, who was planning something similar in her site.

I give a weekly English class in my community, and I thought it would be a great vessel to execute my Peace Month plan. The English classes are a little less than 2 hours long. So my plan was for the entire month of September to devote the last half of each lesson to an activity that promoted and encouraged peace. I’ve been in somewhat of a Peace Corps rut these days, and I was going to use Peace Day as a way to introduce a new series of activities, a new short lived project, into my life. I needed a way to reenergize myself, and I had found my metaphorical cup of coffee.

The first Monday of September I go to my community center ready to launch my first Peace Month lesson. Wrong. I go to my community center only to find it flooded from the day’s downpour. A few of my students and I spent the entire class time sweeping water out of a giant building.

This is not the first time we’ve had to do this, so I’m only a little surprised. However, I am pretty bummed that my shiny new project literally got rained on. I save my lesson plan for another day, and head home to eat my rice and beans. At least I taught the value of respecting community space and pride in community through the cleaning of the community center. Right? Well, that’s how I spun the evening to myself in order to go to sleep a little less sad about the postponing of Peace Month.

Enter the second Monday of September. I had my same lesson plan all ready to go, I was a little less excited, but still looking forward to the opportunity to talk about peace. So I get to my recently cleaned community center early. I always get there a little early to give myself time to prepare. I started setting up. I set up. I wait, and wait. My students collectively show up over a half an hour late. Because we missed last Monday we had to review a lot, there were more questions, we had less time, and we never got to the Peace Month activity half of the lesson. I put the lesson plan back in my bag, and went home to eat my rice and beans. At least my students still came, even if it was half an hour late. I went to bed a little sad that Peace Month was dwindling down to Peace 2 weeks, but satisfied with the material we had covered in class.

Enter the third Monday of September. I arrive at the center. It’s not flooded (good sign). So I unlock the doors, turn on the lights, and set up for class. And wait for my students to arrive. Only three students show up. This is the lowest turn out I’ve ever had for a class. I have a solid group of 8 that come to class regularly. I was a bit disheartened that my students had decided to skip, but glad for the ones that showed up. Low turn out rates is a common phenomenon in Peace Corps land, especially in small communities like mine where there are only 500 people to work with. Not everyone is interested, has time, is brave enough to leave their house, etc. I’ve become less bothered by numbers, and try to focus on the quality of my programs. If I have a really great class with three students, that means that I got to reach three different people. (But sometimes it is hard to quiet the over-achiever voice that demands higher numbers-- tragically I’ve found that I have internalized the “more-is-better” mantra of US culture, as much as I wish it wasn’t so, and it is something that I constantly battle with.)

So, with my three students, we sat down and had a discussion about peace. We talked about what it meant to have peace for the world, for their country, for their community, and for themselves. They were quick to point out that their country doesn’t have an army. Costa Rica solves its international problems diplomatically, without arms. We talked about how that could be a lesson we could each apply to our lives as individuals, that we could learn to drop our weapons and talk about our problems. The discussion went over pretty well- especially considering the participants were a 4^th grade girl, a 6^th grade boy, and a 10^th grade boy. After the discussion we designed “peace doves.” I had cut out the outline of a dove a flying, and asked each student to write a peaceful message on each dove, and then decorate it as they wanted. I had over estimated our “peace dove” needs, and had extra doves. The kids loved decorating their doves, and each wanted to do multiple doves. One of my student’s parents came in the class towards the end and got pretty excited about the doves. She made three different ones and started talking to the kids about peace, and what peace means to her. It was the most parent involvement I’ve ever had in any of my classes. It was so awesome and spontaneous, I was grateful for her input. It was neat to see this mother participating and giving life to my Peace Day activity. After the class was over I had wanted to hang the doves in the community center, but the kids really wanted to put them on their notebooks—and our community is hosting a dance in the center next week—so they pasted their doves in their notebooks. It was a short and simple activity that was delivered two weeks late to a group of three students. I had something completely different planned in my head that what happened. I was satisfied with the activity, but in a different way than I had anticipated.

In a way, this story could be a metaphor for my entire Peace Corps experience. I signed up for this journey with a plan. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I thought I knew what I would be doing. Wrong and wrong. I had no idea what was ahead of me and I’m still getting the hang of things. Yet, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.

Independence Month

Costa Rica celebrates its independence on September 15^th (officially) but the Independence Day activities happen all month long. Today for instance, the 16^th of September, there is no school. Why? Why not!

The month starts with “civic week” where schools across the nation have morning assemblies under certain patriotic themes. These assemblies are called “actos civicos” or, you guessed it, “civic acts.” Teachers talk to the students about what it means to be a Costa Rican, how to be a good citizen, or whatever occurs to them. My favorite “acto civico” speech was about the dangers of cyber-bullying delivered to a group of 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders—out of the whole group only one 1^st grade girl has access to a computer (without internet). At the “actos civicos” there is a salute to the flag and 3-5 patriotic songs are sung. These songs are long, and the Spanish is so formal and antiquated that I can’t make sense of them, I just hum along.

After “civic week” is over “civic month” begins. There are still “actos civicos” every morning, but now there are nationwide holidays to celebrate, as well. The first is the “running of the torch.” Every year on September 13^th the “running of the torch” begins. The run starts up on the Nicaraguan border where a torch is passed from the Nicaraguans to the Costa Ricans. The Costa Ricans take the torch and the torch travels from town to town until it reaches the Panamanian border. The torch represents the light/hope/knowledge of independence.

September 14^th there is a lantern parade at night. School children and their parents make paper lanterns. Everyone gathers at the school grounds for an “acto civico” and then they all light their lanterns and walk around the community.

September 15^th is the official Independence Day celebration. In Upala there is a parade! Everyone meets up at the high school for the mandatory “acto civico” and then the parade begins. School bands and dance troupes, police officers, and fire fighters march through the city. The parade ends at the park (which is where I went to watch it). In the park gazebo a man with giant speaker announces each group that walks by. After the groups reach the end of the parade route they go to the basketball court to perform their act one last time.

Independence Day/Month is a huge event. Groups practice intensely for the parade, kids work hard on their paper lanterns, and teachers work hard on trying to find relevant things to say for all the “actos civicos” that take place.

Food

Breakfast: rice and beans, avocado, coffee
Lunch: rice and beans, cooked plantain, fruit juice
Dinner: rice and beans, tomato, fruit juice

Repeat for 11 months.

My diet is that of a typical Costa Rican living in the countryside. Rice and beans are the main event at each meal and they are generally accompanied by a third item, which varies. Usually all the food gets mixed together in the same bowl. Some of the more interesting combos include: rice beans and spaghetti, rice and beans and mashed potatoes, rice and beans and milk soup. Another cultural side note: there is a belief in the Costa Rican country side that spices are bad for your health and are therefore are rarely used.
I try my best to integrate into my community and live and eat as they live and eat. But, sometimes, I get bored of rice and beans. This is incomprehensible in Costa Rica, but I’m sure my US citizen readership will appreciate the sentiment. When I explain to my Costa Rican friends that most people in the US don’t eat rice and beans everyday, they get very confused. But what do you eat???? What fills you up? How do you make sure you are getting a nutritious meal? These are the typical questions that follow the state of disbelief that a person can sustain themselves without constantly eating rice and beans. A meal is not a meal unless it includes rice and beans. I made a pizza for my host family- and for dinner we had rice and beans and pizza.
The elementary school once decided to vary what they served in the cafeteria and cut back on the rice and beans. They wanted to try serving more fresh fruits and vegetables and give the children a more varied diet. The experiment didn’t last for very long. When the children came home for school and the parents asked them what they ate at school, they would respond: nothing. In their minds they hadn’t eaten because they hadn’t been served rice and beans. Parents got upset that their children “weren’t eating” and everyone went back on the rice and beans diet.

In a world of culinary monotony and limited access to ingredients, I have been pushed to become very creative in how I supplement my diet to include flavor and variety. Here are some of the things I’ve learned to make from scratch while in Costa Rica:

Bagels
Yogurt
Greek yogurt
Peanut butter
Granola bars
Salt water taffy
Lemon Bars
Cinnamon Buns
Brownies
Creamy garlic salad dressing
Black bean burgers
No-bake cheesecake

Among others

I usually make snack foods and deserts because I want to eat my meals with my host family. But I’m on the rice and beans breaking point. I don’t know how much longer I can do it. Soon, I’m sure, I will crack.
I friend suggested I start a recipes tab on my blog to add different Costa Rican and US recipes that I’ve tried and enjoyed. It’s not a bad idea and I’m going to try and figure it out. Keep your eyes peeled

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.

Road Rage

The water’s out right now. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Upala region, but its frequency doesn’t make it any less annoying when it happens. Last night there was an accident on a bridge over the Chimurria river and a car hit the water pipe that runs beside the bridge. The bridge hasn’t had guard rails for the past year and a half, and has always been a major safety concern for the community. One of the guard rails was taken off during a flood and the other was taken off during a car accident. About a year ago the elementary school organized a petition to the municipality to fix the bridge, but the petition was basically ignored, and the bridge has remained guardrail-less. People are talking about using this accident as motivation to write another petition. I hope this time the municipality listens.

There was another accident earlier this week on the same stretch of road. A student from the elementary school was riding his bike home from school and he got hit by a motorcycle. He experienced some serious head trauma and they had to airlift him to the big hospital in San Jose. At first we weren’t sure if he was going to make it, but it looks like he is going to pull through. The stretch of road that he was riding on was the 1km of highway between the elementary school and the entrance for the pineapple plantations. Along this stretch is the guardrail-less bridge. About half of the students in the elementary school have to walk or ride their bikes down this stretch of highway in order to go to school. There are no school busses for elementary school, just high school. The highway is the biggest safety concern that my community faces, and I worry about my students that have to walk on the highway to get to school. I would love to see a sidewalk here, but I just don’t know where to begin to start up a project of that scale.
My secondary projects that I’m working on right now are much less grand, but are still taking up a lot of my energy. Some of the women in the community and I have started up a workout group for women and children. We do it twice a week for one hour sessions. For me, the class is important because there is no other organized effort to encourage fitness in women or children. The men have a soccer team, but the women’s soccer team disbanded a few years ago. At first there was a lot of interest in the workout group, but participation has started to drop off. We’ve been going for about two months now and I need to find a new way to get the momentum going again.

Another project I’m working on is organizing a summer camp. There is a two week break from school in July, and the pcv in Upala and I are working together to create a free summer camp for 40 kids. We’ve been working hard at figuring out crafts and activities that we can do that are entertaining and super low budget. We’ve also been writing letters asking for donations, and we walked around the town of Upala going to certain businesses asking if they could donate materials to our camp. I’ve also been writing letters trying to get snacks donated. We have been pretty successful so far. Some businesses were not interested in helping, but there were quite a few who were willing to help us out. We are still working on collecting materials- paint, thread to make friendship bracelets, and a few other small things. We are getting local youth to volunteer to be camp counselors, and some of our pcv friends want to help out, too. It really looks like we are going to pull this off. The camp will take place the second week of July, so we still have time to tie together all the loose ends. I am really looking forward to camp and seeing how it all turns out!


I have a lot of work to keep me busy, which is good because it is helping distract me from a big wave of homesickness that just struck. Three of my very good friends from college came up to visit me a few weeks ago. I had a blast hanging out with them, and they brought out parts of my personality that I mostly have to abandon while in my site. In my site I am always in bed by 9, no one thinks I’m funny, I’m always taken very seriously and I always take myself very seriously, all the other twenty-something’s are married with children and I don’t have a peer group. Loneliness is my biggest struggle as a PCV. It was nice to hang out with my friends from home and remember who I used to be. It was nice to have people laugh at my jokes and to have a social life again.

While my friends were visiting, I had an excuse to go traveling around Costa Rica! For most of my time as a volunteer I have stayed in my site and gone to San Jose a few times, but I haven’t really seen much of Costa Rica. It was great to go travel around this country like a tourist. We went dancing in San Jose, we went to Manuel Antonio- a national park along a beach, we toured the pineapple plantation of Upala, and we went to see the Arenal Volcano. The Peace Corps stipend I get doesn’t allow for me to do a lot of touristy things, but I got to see the sites and spend time with my friends. It was a really fun week, and it has been a little hard re-adjusting to life in my site. I miss my friends.