Beach, Beer, and Books

Life in Costa Rica lately has been pretty great. I am more and more slowly getting adjusted to my life here in my site. Slowly building some routines and definately taking in all the amazing weather. Right now we are in the rainy season here, but for a majority of the day usually in the morning and early afternoon it is bright and really sunny. I have gotten the routine down pretty well of waking up having breakfast and sitting on my hammock every morning and getting a good hour or 2 of reading in, under the bright Costa Rican sun.

Although it hasnt all been rest and relaxation, I have continued my English classes in the local school these past weeks. I have recently started class with the Kindergarten class of 9 students. They are really young, and cannot read or write as expected but are loving the classes and embracing my efforts to teach them new words and songs. I am teaching them new words half the time and then the other half we are focusing on learning a new letter each session and coloring a sheet of paper with the letter, a picture of an example of on object starting with the letter, and the word spelled out (i.e C, picture of cat, CAT). Anwyays after they are done with the whole alphabet I am going to make a book with them with all the pictures they drew. Nice little project to start off. My first through sixth grade class is doing well and they are overcoming the initial nervousness of having a new teacher, and all are participating more and very excited to learn. When I get home I hear my host sisters speaking the new words we learned in english class, so it looks like it is sticking. But overall a great experience that I am having in the community.

Books. I am definately reading alot now. I finished Shantaram a while ago which I strongly recommend and has become my favorite book. Read 2 more books and now I am on Michael Crichton´s Lost World. It is interesting because it references alot of places in Costa Rica and it talks about dinosaurs. I think my next book will be Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. So yeah I have been clocking some good time in my hammock getting things done.

My Community Analysis Tool aka The ¨CAT¨ has been working out well. Like I said before I had that large community meeting in my time which brought out alot of information about the community and potential projects they would like to start work on. As well I have begun the individual one on one interviews with members of the community. I will ramp up this effort more beginning this week which should bring some great new information to me, and also allow me to get to know more people in the community in a more personal setting.

This past weekend we had our regional VAC meeting (aka the student council of Peace Corps Costa Rica) where we got together and spoke about issues relating to our job as well as issues in the field. This meeting was conveniently located on a beautiful beach 3.5 hours away from my site in the small pueblo of Dominical. I had a great time and met up with four other fellow Tico 16ers. It was awesome we swam in the water, ate great food, drank some Imperial, and partied it up in this Disco nearby till 2 in the morning. Absolute insanity. Being in the campo for extended periods of time you tend to build up this pent up energy to party and just hangout with other English speakers. I dont know about everyone but that is just me. Overall amazing time at the beach.

This coming week I will continue work as usual at my site. This Friday I am meeting up with some other Tico 16ers in San Jose, which should be a blast. I recently opened up a mailbox in a city close to me here is the address :

Rudolph Becker
Apartado Postal 61-8100
Buenos Aires, Zona Sur
Costa Rica

PLEASE send me something anything if you can. I have recieved some packages already from some people and I am extremely grateful. Being down here alone and isolated from my family, friends,and US products is difficult and any message or packages from the states or abroad would be awesome. Haha anyways that is my little and last plea for people to send me stuff.

Anyways that is the news from here. I would love to hear more from all of you in the States and abroad and thanks already for all the support I have recieved. I hope life is treating everyone well. Pura Vida.

Rudy