Waterfalls everywhere!!!

Waterfalls everywhere!!!

Making empanadas with a women's group

Making empanadas with a women's group


Training community

Training community

My Puppies!

My Puppies!

My Training Community

My Training Community

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

My Site...

I’m here, I can’t believe it. It’s hard to imagine that I am going to live here for the next two years of my life. It’s overwhelming to think about at this point. I haven’t written in so long because I was so busy during training. Training consisted of three months of Spanish, technical, medical, cross-cultural, safety and security and medical training. Everyone said that training would suck but I enjoyed it and miss it now. I had so much fun getting to know the other volunteers in my training group. I have made lifelong friends and feel fortunate to have them as support for the next two years. But now I am all alone in my site that is about 3 hours away from the closest volunteer, whom I don’t even know. I am not quite sure what the population of my site is, the information I received said there are 300 people and in another place in the same packet said there are 350 people and when I ask around my site the people tell me there are 1000 people. I have a feeling the number is closer to 1000. I am about 5 hours away from San Jose and have to take 3 buses to get here. It is quite a journey because for about 2 ½ hours of the trip I am on unpaved, very rocky roads. This is going to sound really funny but the bouncy roads make me fall asleep, its like I’m two years old again, and the other day when I was going to meet my counterpart (for the first time) I feel asleep on the bus and missed my stop and ended up in city 2 hours away from where I needed to be. As I continuously say… it’s all part of the experience. Ok so back to my site, I am in the north about two hours away from the Nicaraguan boarder in the middle of the country. It is mostly flat here but there are a few mountains in my view. It is very hot but the best part is I have two rivers really close to my house and I can go swimming any time I want. I am still eating rice and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When I tell the townspeople that in the US we don’t eat a lot of rice beans they are confused and then ask me what we do eat. The main economic activity here is pineapple. We have pineapple farm after pineapple farm. This is great because there are jobs for everyone. The people here are very hard workers; they wake up at 4 a.m. and don’t get home until around 7 p.m. I spend my days going to the school. I help the teachers and get to know the students. There is no English teacher and the students want to learn English so bad. I am not allowed to teach during school hours so I am thinking of holding classes after school. I have also been going to my development association meetings. I plan on working with them and helping them with projects. Right now they are in the processes of getting funds to build a fence around the soccer field to protect it from animals. Soccer is definitely the favorite pastime around here. Twice a week about 40 men play rain or shine. Speaking of rain, it rains and it rains and it rains everyday. This causes major problems in the roads and makes travel virtually impossible. This does not help my mindset at this time thinking that I am stuck here. I already feel completely excluded and I just like knowing that if I need civilization I can get to it but without buses it can’t happen. AHHH… I just saw the biggest, grossest spider on my bookshelf. My host family thinks it’s hilarious that I am afraid of spiders. It’s horrible. I have completely lost my train of thought now, so until next time which will be soon because I really don’t have anything to do at this moment. I mean sure I could be working on my Community Assessment Tool (The CAT) but who wants to write a 30 page report in Spanish.