Hello everyone! This has been a very busy week, which is great, but also very exhausting. I went to San Jose this weekend, and it was really great. I took the 7:15 am bus there because I figured that if I’m going to go, I might as well go early and get as much out of it as I can. Plus, I told my friend Maitreya that we would meet at around 10:30 and that was the best bus to correspond with that time. It ended up being a good choice because it was a direct bus, meaning that it didn’t make stops along the way and it used the new freeway to get to San Jose. When I don’t take the direct bus, they go down this crazy windy road and make tons of stops, extending the travel time to 2 hours. Anyway, so I got to San Jose and ran some errands while I waited for Maitreya to get in. I bought some shampoo and hair conditioner from one of the pharmacies. I also found some bookstores, which I found very exciting because there aren’t that many of them here. I bought “La Casa de Los Espiritus” by Isabel Allende. I figure, since I’m going through books like they will all be burned tomorrow, I might as well take my time and read one in Spanish. It is definitely much harder to get through, but it’s a good way to learn more Spanish. However, since it is challenging, I haven’t stopped reading books in English. I think I just started my 8th book since being at site.
Anyway, I met Maitreya at one of the malls and we decided to eat Taco Bell for lunch. Hahaha. That might have been a bad idea, as it didn’t really agree with my stomach later that day. Our friend Allen also met us at the mall and ate lunch in the food court. We all talked about our sites and the challenges that we face. Earlier that day, Allen helped slaughter a pig in his site. I think that it was kind of traumatizing for him. Anyway, it was really nice to talk to my friends and compare stories. It’s nice to know that even though we are alone in our communities, isolated from people who understand us and our experiences, in reality we are alone together. We understand each other.
After we finished lunch, we made our way to an art museum as all three of us are into art and haven’t been exposed to too much since we’ve been here. We trekked our way to the other side of San Jose and finally found the building. The building itself was very impressive. I would say it’s been the nicest piece of architecture that I’ve seen since being here. It was really nice because they weren’t charging people to go inside. Most of the pieces there were different Coca-Cola bottles that stood at probably 7 ft. They were all designed differently, which was cool, but I didn’t find them too interesting. I did like one that looked very hippy-ish with bright colors and such. It had the faces of Bob Marley, John Lennon, Janice Joplin, Mick Jagger and others. I’d say that was my favorite Coca-Cola bottle.
When we were done, Allen and Maitreya walked me to my bus station since I had to catch my bus back to town. I’m pretty sure that they stayed the night and met up with other PCV’s who were coming into town. If I had known that everyone was coming and staying the night, I probably would have stayed too, but at the same time I’ll have plenty of opportunities to get out of my site for a few days, so I’m not too bummed.
This week, Costa Rica has been doing a census, which means that all public schools take the week off so that teachers can go house to house and interview everyone. I decided to shadow one of the teachers as I figured that it was a good way to meet a lot of the people in the community. I wasn’t allowed to conduct my own interviews at the same time due to confidentiality regulations and such, but I have learned a lot just from observing and listening to the people answer questions for the census. For example, I’ve learned that a lot of people in my community don’t work. The men, who do work, usually work in construction and work/live somewhere else. I learned that most people stop going to school after 6th grade. A lot of people don’t know how to read. I also learned that most of the mothers are super young. Most of them have children in their teens. Also, on top of everything, a great deal of people do not know when or where they were born and do not know when their children and spouses were born. I’m not sure why this is, but I found it incredibly interesting and shocking.
On Wednesday, I had a meeting with my PANI office and I was officially introduced to everyone there. We all talked about what I was doing here and what kind of projects I hope to do with my time here. I found out what they were hoping for my community and not surprisingly, we have the same goals. I know a lot of volunteers don’t end up working with their PANI offices too much, but I think that I probably will stay in contact with mine because they seem to have a lot of project ideas and are very supportive of what I’m trying to do. However, they also think that I’m going to have a lot of work ahead of me in terms of trying to help the community and that it’s not going to be easy. Well PANI, tell me something I don’t know. I did get a free polo from them, so I’m official!
After that, I went back to my community and met up with Rocío, the girl that I met a couple weeks ago. She is the daughter of one of the school cooks, and she has agreed to accompany me on my interviews when she has free time, which isn’t very often. The thing is, everyone thinks that it’s too dangerous to do my interviews alone so I have to find people to help me out. This can be frustrating because my time is dependent on other people’s free time and willingness to help me out. Anyway, we conducted 7 interviews that day and it’s crazy because so far, it seems that people believe that 13 or 15 is the average age girls start having children here. I will have to go to local institutions and find out what the actual statistics are, but true or not, I think that it says a lot if a community believes it. Oh, thus far, it seems that building a playground might be up my alley in the future, as it seems to be one of the things people want most here. We’ll see what happens.
Last night it rained really hard. I think that a leak is forming in our roof because I found a tiny puddle on the floor in my room this morning. I’ll have to talk to my host mom about it later. Hopefully we can get that under control before the rain really starts pouring down.
Oh, I think that I’ve mentioned before that I started running again. It’s been a great way to clear my mind and use pent up energy. Also, I’ve realized that it’s become a metaphor for my time here. When I’m running sometimes I compare it to my time here and push myself to go longer and harder. Sometimes it’s the other way around. When I’m frustrated or hit a roadblock in my site, I compare it to running a marathon and think all I have to do is keep on going. In either case, sometimes I have good days and sometimes I have bad days. So, I decided maybe one day I’ll run a marathon as those 26.2 miles can be representative of my 27 months here. Maybe I’ll do that when I get back to the States where the sun isn’t quite so harsh and I can train properly. It’s incredibly hot here and there are days when you can only run for so long before you feel like fainting. Again, we’ll see what happens.
I feel like every PCV who writes a blog ends up sharing a list of things from home that they miss. The time has come that I share the things that I miss…
Family and Friends of course
My furry friends
All the amazing food of the Bay Area
Houses where the walls actually go up to the ceiling
A bug free environment
American Television
Movies
My car
Walking around downtown San Jose
Baseball/The Giants
Sleeping in
Reliable internet
Air Conditioning
English!
Road Trips
Friday Night Dinners
Privacy/Quiet time
The Rose Garden
Clean spacious bathrooms
Bookstores
Starbucks (surprisingly, I have not seen a single one here)
Paved roads
The silhouette of the Santa Cruz mountains when the sun sets
Ok, that’s all for now. Tune in next time!
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