Greetings all. Rudy Becker here reporting the latest from Costa Rica. This week I spent most of my time hanging out in my town. I taught 4 more English classes this week, which turned out to be pretty succesfull. In my older group class we played Bingo. Turned out to be a fun game but definately took way longer than I expected it to take, in terms of making the bingo board and teaching them all the words and how to play. The kindergarten class continued along with their work. I have been teaching them the ABCs and they have aswell been working on their ABC book´s. This week we did the letters E for Egg and F for Fish. Pretty exciting overall.
This week was filled with meetings. I began this week with my house to house interviews. One thing I really like about my community is the fact that it really is a community. Very few places in the world can a neighbor (me) from 5 houses down the road come over to another person house (any member of my community) unannounced and just chat about your communities goals and neccesities. I have been learning alot
more about the community as a result of these interviews and as well I am making more one on one personal connections with members of my community.
My second big meeting was a meeting on monday with the development association of my town. We are right now working on getting an aquaduct system set up
in my town as of right now everyone is drinking and using water out of their personal wells on their property. With an aquaduct system in place we would pretty much get relatively unlimited access to potable (clean, filtered,free of bacteria) water whenever we wanted. As well we are working to setup a new bank account for a development association to recieve money
from the governemnt for future projects.
My third big meeting was at the school. News around town is that we recieved money to build another kindergarten classroom as well as another classroom for the school. It was only a priliminary meeting but with my spanish skills I believe that is what was fully discussed in the school. I look forward to collaborating with members of my community
in working to get these buildings built for the benefit of not only the students in the school but of the community. Hopefully with these new class rooms I can hold my english classes in them as well in the future potentially setup a mini computer lab of sorts to teach computation classes which has been requested around my town.
My fourth big meeting, not really a meeting but, on Thursday I went to the church with my family. On the last thursday of every month a pastor comes to our church to have services. I was curious
as to how the services where so I went to the church. It was an overall really great experience. I cant really pinpoint exactly what I liked most about it, but I just felt really touched about the whole experience. The pastor was interesting and it just seemed that everyone was really at peace being in the church. The church was extremely primitive, no music only singing, had holes in the cieling, ragged benches, and several smashed windows. But nonetheless everyone was happy and
everyone was able to channel themselves and appreciate God or whoever they were personally praying to. It just made me reinforce the fact that you dont´t really need alot to be happy in this life. As long as you have your family by your side, as well as good friends, and a positive appreciative attitude you can really live life to the fullest.
Yesterday I was hanging out in my house and my host sisters boyfriend asked me If I wanted to go for a walk. I was like sure why not. He said to wear pants and boots. We ended up initially walking along this trail in the property of my host mom. We walked past the cows and all of the land which my host brother cleared with his giant machete. My host brother literally cut the grass and bushes of probably 4 acres of land with one single machete in the span of an afternoon. He is a machine. Yesterday he said he killed 2 6 foot snakes while cutting the grass. Crazy. Anyways we started walking down deeper into the hillside and started to head literally into the jungle. He whipped out his machete and we were walking through the jungle with him clear cutting a path for us with his machete. We were scaling walls, sliding down mudslides, climbing 75 degee angle waterfalls it was nuts. Then we got to the river and walked down the river for like 2 kms. On the way back we walked in a different direction along the river and I smelled something fowl. It was the decomposing carcass of a goat which was probably there for over a month. It was disgusting you could see the whole bone structure as well as some rubbery pieces of skin trailing from the bones. It was crazy. So basically as we were walking back upstream the water we were wading in was at some point streaming past this decomposing carcass. Reminder : Never drink the water in a river, you NEVER know what is upstream. haha. I didnt drink it though although I think earlier my host sisters boyfriend did, but I think he refused to admit it. haha anyways that was just a crazy little midday adventure I had.
Right now I am in my usual internet spot above the supermarket in my nearest big town. It is raining and there is a festival of sorts in the town with rides and vendors all over the place. I will probably meet my family in the center square soon.
Regarding the future I am going to be spending the fourth of july on the beach for 4 days on the Caribbean coast. It should be a blast and I am really excited to spend a prolonged amount of time on the beach. It is gonna be wild. Ill be sure to snap some pics and let you know how it turns out.
Hope everyone else is well. My tickets are booked for November 19th to the 26th to come home for a week for Thanksgiving. Hopefully I can see many of you all then.
Much love,
Rudy
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