Spanish, Hippies, Beach, and Bamboo

Greetings everyone. Still living my life here in Costa Rica. Things have been really good and as usual really fun. It is amazing how much better my Spanish is getting day by day. I usually have Spanish class at least 3 times a week, but every second of everyday I am using Spanish. I have gotten to the point where I can definitely speak and be spoken to with relative ease. I am working more on getting my conjugation of verbs perfected but for the most part things have been really good and I am glad to be speaking the native language.

This past week of classes has been relatively uneventful. I had my Spanish classes in the morning with invididual attention in the afternoon. As well I have continued having classes at the local high school. Those classes this week mainly focuses on learning about the Costa Rican Education system, Safety and Security matters in Costa Rica as well as Medical Information dealing with Sexualy Transmitted Infections. Another big event was on Friday we had a community meeting with the development association of our training town. Lindsay, Andrew, Bre, Bill and I ran the community meeting of about 20 people. We had been preparing for the meeting all week and it ran really well. Our Technical trainer as well as a language facilitator was there to evaluate as and they both said we ran the meeting successfully. We spoke about the strength, resources, community groups, and future of the community. It lasted for about 1 and half hours and of course was entirely in Spanish.

The next day we had class on Saturday for the first time. At the high school we had a project fair where we got to learn about 6 different projects Peace Corps volunteers are/have been working on. There were presentations on Sexual education talks in the community, setting up kids camps, the creation of a micro enterprise ice cream store sprouting from a women´s group, organizing band instruments for an elementary school, setting up an art festival centered around peace, and organizing the construction of a fence to a surround a school which is near a crocodile reserve. All of these projects are really interesting and a clearly only a small taste of what over 100 peace volunteers in Costa Rica are doing right now. I can´t wait to start up my work in my community and see how I can help them best. I will of course share my latest progressions in whatever projects I am working on in this blog. The project fair helped me reflect upon my dedication to being a peace corps volunteer and the work that will be ahead of me. Training so far has been very demanding and always on a tight time schedule that we haven’t really been able to do much of what we want to do necessarily.
Although I still have been able to squeeze in time to hang out with the other volunteers on the weekend and nights.

For example this past Saturday night we went to this ULTRA chill bar located on top of this mountain overlooking San Jose. The bar had a live classic rock cover band playing everything from Janis Joplin, to Steppenwolf, to the Doors. It was absolutely amazing. It was also a pizza place which sold really good pizza. The people there were also mega chill. There were some people decked out in full tye dye attire, with peace sign necklaces, and long long 80´s haircuts. It was like travelling in a time machine and chilling, listening to incredible music with tons of hippies. I shared some Imperials with the other volunteers as well as my new favourite drink called ¨Bamboo¨. Which is basically rum and coke in a can with a 7.5 % alcohol content. One can imagine that with a few of those things can get pretty crazy pretty fast. Haha. Anyways a lot of the time I feel that I am writing a lot about the partying aspect of being here in Costa Rica but it is not like I am partying all the time. I just enjoyable to write about, as most of the time I am either in class, eating rice and beans, or sleeping. So the few times we get to go out are an absolute blast.

After the crazy night at the hippie bar we took the last bus back to our training communities and promptly went to sleep to wake up at 3 AM to go with Lindsay, Bre, and Andrews family to the beach. My family couldn’t go because they had other engagement, but I was lucky enough to squeeze into Andrew´s family car which consisted of him, his host mom, and his two host nieces. We finally left our training community at 4:30 AM to drive 4.5 hours to the beach. We drove through the most Rocky terrain, up and down mountains, literally through 2.5 foot deep rivers, while narrowly avoiding millions of other animals and cows that are just hanging out in the middle of the jungle ¨road¨. Bottom line it was a crazy and very long uncomfortable ride. But we finally made it to Playa Manuel Antonio and It was really really beautiful. Many people think that I am in Costa Rica just chilling by the beach all the time but after almost 7 weeks this is the first time I even saw the coast! So Bre, Andrew, Lindsay and I had an amazing time at the beach with the families. We spent maybe 6 hours at the beach and then started the ride back which was another 4.5 hours. On the way back the car broke down temporarily because the connection to the car battery was loose after travelling through all the rocky terrain. Another event happened where Andrew needed to cross a one lane bridge to stop traffic going through the bridge so that cars from the other side of the bridge could finally move across after a 30 car back up. As well on the way we stopped at Bre´s host dads brothers house where I forged a really wide fast running river with some of Bre´s host dad´s friends to ¨borrow¨ some Papayas from their friends huge 1,000 papaya tree plus papaya plantation. We finally made it home around 10:00 o´clock, tired, hungry, and incredibly sun burnt. But overall we had a lot of fun and I am really glad to have finally made it to the beach.

Right now I am in Desamparados with 8 other volunteers and I am writing this email from the JUMBO supermarket again. We just ate at pizza hut and tomorrow we have classes again. We found a sweet villa near the beach where we might spend our next out of sight night and In 2 weeks I will find out my actual site where I will be working for the next 2 years. Things are really great here and I miss everyone a lot. Everyday is a new day for me, Everyday is a new learning experience. It has gotten to the point where I don’t even remember what I did three days ago because everyday is filled with new things and new adventures. I am really grateful to be here and this is definitely an adventure of a lifetime. I look forward to the future and as well having any one of you come over to Costa Rica to come over and live life with me. Anyways life is good, I miss you all, and I hope to hear from you all soon !