Here safe and sound

Here and safe,

Well I am glad to say that I have arrived safely in Costa Rica.  Somehow I forgot how much traveling can really suck, for whatever reason Peace Corps decided that it would be best for us to check out of our hotel at 2am for our 7:20 flight. When we got there no one was at the airport we had to wait like an hour and a half before the airline workers got there. It sucked.

Finally we boarded the plane ready to go.  We taxied, fired up the engines raced down the runway only to suddenly come to a screeching halt. We were all super tired and not really sure what was going on. Then the pilot came on the radio explaining that we had just aborted takeoff because a window had popped open, and that in 24 years of being a pilot this was the first time that he had ever had to abort a takeoff… weird. I didn’t even know that airplanes had windows that open, for what reason could they possibly need a window that opens? To let in some fresh air? Talk to the airplane next to them?  Needless to say that after the 30 minutes needed for the brakes to cool down and have a mechanic check the window we were all quite nervous for take off.  It was a little nerve racking.

We made it to San Jose and then headed to our retreat in the mountains above the city. This place is super nice and is apparently an old convent that has been converted into a convention center, it has soccer fields and is rather quaint. I decided to take a nap in my hammock right away it was amazing I woke up though very disoriented thinking I had slept through a meeting. As soon as I had woke up this car rolled up and the people started asking me questions about the place in Spanish.  Having just woken up I wasn’t of much help I was still very confused and it was very weird sensation.

We went to bed nice and early to get a good nights rest, it was an epic sleep the kind you wish you could have every night. Before I knew it, 6 am had come and it was time to wake up, to an excellent breakfast of beans and rice, eggs and fruit, it was amazing. The day went on with many meetings about a bunch of different stuff. At one point we had to go to the medical officers and get our weight and blood pressure taken, much to my surprise I had high blood pressure. I don’t know what that means but what I do know is that I am 24 and shouldn’t have high blood pressure, and that I have never had anything close to being high. She said that perhaps the lack of sleep and stress of traveling had something to do with it, and that she would be keeping an eye on me. I don’t feel unhealthy so its kinda weird.

The retreat went very well over the next few days I got a chance to get to know my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. Everyone is nice, and interesting to talk to as you may have imagined. Another thing that I found to be cool is that everyone is uber qualified. Almost everyone has done a good amount of traveling, has a relevant education or experience and seems to be a excellent candidate for service.  The US is pretty well represented, we have people from 23 different states, a great grandmother who I believe is 75, a recently retired business man, two married couples, every sort of race and creed and a good amount of people in their mid twenties. 

There are two different programs in this training class, one is my group the Community Economic Development Project (CED) and the other is Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).  My group is the smaller of the two with 20 of the 45 volunteers and mostly comprised of dudes. I think there are only like 4 or 5 guys in TEFL.

When I first got to the site I was super excited that there were parrots just flying around.  That lasted maybe a day when I realized that parrots seem to be as common as pigeons here except they make a lot more noise, particularly at inconvenient times like when you are trying to sleep. Other cool nature things I have seen are a big beetle, a moth the size of my hand and a moth shaped exactly like a leaf that when I got to close pretended to fall like one instead of fly away. It was one of the coolest adaptations I have ever seen. 

The next few days were spent in and out of meetings with a lot of down time to talk to everyone, we also did a lot of eating. If it wasn’t breakfast, lunch or dinner it was coffee and tea with heavy snacks, it’s been nice.  My project seems to be super cool however it is still one of those deals that I don’t know what I’ll be doing until I get to my site and assess their needs.

This is a view from the retreat

Before we knew it, it was time for our pre-service training to come to an end and split up into smaller groups to live with our host families and receive language training. I didn’t do too well on my language placement. I got placed in intermediate high, which is pretty pathetic for how much experience I have, but when I read about it, they got it spot on.  I can communicate and understand but don’t conjugate too well, and have to stop often to think of a word that I used to know but have since forgot.  It made me feel better that a few people who grew up speaking Spanish were only placed in advanced low, one step ahead of me. My goal for language training in the next 10 weeks is to reach advanced mid, we will see how it goes. 

On Friday we all went on a little field trip to the city of Cartago, which used to be the capital of Costa Rica until it was destroyed by an earthquake and they decided to switch the capital to San Jose.  While there we were split into groups and given certain tasks to perform. One of ours was to go to the old military fort and get some information about it.  Since Costa Rica doesn’t have a military the old fort was turned into a museum. While walking around the museum we came to a giant mural in progress, it was huge with awesome bright colors about the history of Costa Rica.  The artist was on site working on it, and she was nice enough to put down her brush and spend the next 20 minutes talking to us about the mural and the history of Costa Rica. Apparently when it is done. It will be the largest in Costa Rica and the only one painted by a woman. It was a great experience, afterwards she invited our group to climb the scaffolding and take a picture.  Aside from being so amped for the cultural exchange, I couldn’t help but stop and think how nice she was and how something like that would never happen in the states.  The Costa Ricans or Ticos as they call themselves truly are a warm and welcoming people.

On our last night of the retreat we had a BBQ, while we were eating we felt a little vibration that turned into a bigger one and before we knew it we realized we were in a mini earthquake. It was awesome, since it wasn’t a big one it was kinda fun we all started cheering.  Apparently ones like that are fairly common its just one of the many things about Costa Rica that I will have to get used to.

Today is my first full day with my host family, the father Geraldo, the mother Miriam and my hermanita Mercedes. One of my friends Allen, this Chinese guy from Texas is right next door with their daughter and her family. We live in the town of Tarbaca, which is in the mountains outside of San Jose in a cloud forest. Where we live most of the trees are coniferous, mostly cypress.  Today we walked a few towns over and about a thousand feet down to where my friends live and the environment became a lot more tropical, its cool how here you can simply walk to a different climate zone.

My family is super nice and inviting, they don’t have that much but you can tell that there is a lot of love to go around.  I am the fourth volunteer they have hosted so I know that I am in the best of hands. My padre Geraldo is especially charismatic and you can tell that he is beloved in the community.  Today on our 3 hour walk he knew almost everyone.  Since we are in the mountainous region the hills are incredible steep. So steep that your legs get tired going down them as well as up them, and they are everywhere. When I turn out of my house I am met by a monstrous hill that once I reach the top of I’m out of breath.  Before I got here I really wanted to start running but with hills like these I wouldn’t be able to run longer than 10 minutes without dying.  I’m still gonna try but I am keeping my expectations low.

This is my padre

One other thing about my host family is that all it seems we do is eat and drink coffee… not that I’m complaining.  Every time I turn around they are offering me coffee or some sort of snack like a plate of sausage with tortillas. When it comes time for a real meal my plate is as big as at Thanksgiving.  Its crazy, on top of that today my padre told me that I don’t eat that much, all I could think of is that this is the most I have ever eaten. I have yet to be hungry, I have two modes here full and not hungry. It seems that as soon as I go from being full to not hungry is when my madre Miriam is offering me something else.  The coffee here is amazing, as you would guess, I love it and drink it a lot. I imagine that when I go back to the states, I will be a coffee snob, it’s that good.  The Costa Ricans find it weird about that I drink it black.  Coffee here comes with milk and sugar, if you say you want it black it still comes with sugar, and a lot of it. So when they offer me a coffee I have to explain to them that I want it completely plain. That’s when they look at me weird.