Hello. It’s been a while since my last blog. Honestly, I just haven’t had that much time to sit down and write because next week, I’m going to San Jose for 9 days of In-Service Training, which is really exciting, however that also means that the diagnostic I’ve been working on for the past 3 months is due. The good news is that today I just finished my draft of it. Now it’s up to my Tico friends to read all 40 glorious pages with their Spanish-speaking eyes and figure out where I went wrong and fix it. Hahaha. Anyway, a lot has happened in the past couple of weeks besides the stress and massive effort to finish this crazy research paper, and I say “research paper” because that’s exactly what my diagnostic felt like.
So last week my boss, Carolina, came for a run of the mill site visit. It was super awesome getting to see her and show her my town. It was pretty cool hearing other people tell her what I’ve been up to and she said that she was pleasantly surprised at my level of integration. So I consider that a small victory. Along with my counterpart, Don Carlos, we decided that it was time to make some big changes. I won’t get into it here right now as the blog is pretty public and if some people found out what’s going on before the appropriate time, it could make life a whole lot more complicated and uncomfortable.
Ok, remember how a few weeks ago I reported how one of my bandannas mysteriously disappeared into nothing? Well, lets just say that a pair of my boxers has also gone missing. Where to? Apparently nobody knows. All I know is that it went into the laundry never to return again. Since I can’t do anything about the situation now, besides be bitter and suspicious, I am now keeping a listed inventory of everything that goes into the laundry and everything that comes back. I’m not sure how this will help in the instance that something else goes “missing,” but at least I will be able to keep track of my stuff better. Is this crazy and paranoid? Maybe so. I am now embracing my paranoia because sometimes there’s reason to be paranoid.
Speaking of paranoia, an incident happened last week that I’m now kind of kicking myself for being such a sucker. Basically, I’m pretty sure I was conned out of 2,000 colones. Which, if you bring some perspective into the picture, it’s only worth 4 dollars, so it’s not such a great loss, but I’m sticking to my guns and saying it is the principle of the matter. So, I was walking home after a super long day at the school and had a lot on my mind to say the least, and all I wanted to do was get to my room where I could be alone and relax. On my way there, I ran into a host-aunt. She started to make some small talk and I was on auto-pilot just nodding and small talking back. Then all of a sudden she’s starting to talk about milk and the store and I definitely was not following what she was saying. Then I had her tell me exactly what she was trying to say and she said that she needed money to buy her grandson milk. At that point, I just wanted to be rid of her and said “All right, will 1,000 be good?” and she says, “No, that’s not enough. I need 2,000.” She told me she’d get me back the money during the weekend at my host-brother’s birthday party. So I give her the 2,000 and went home. As soon as I walked away I knew that I had just been conned. I was fairly certain milk does not cost 2,000 colones. I got home, put my stuff in my room and saw my host-mom in the kitchen. At that moment I decided that I needed to get out of the house or risk going ape-shit. So, I went to Manuela’s, one of our school cooks, house to relax a bit. While I was there, I decided to ask how much milk cost. I was informed that a small bag of milk (yes they come in bags here) only costs about 500 and a box costs around 1,000. So, my suspicions were right, I was conned. I really should have known better. Firstly, I knew milk doesn’t cost that much. Secondly, she passed by my house, her other sister’s house and was going to pass her mother’s house on the way home, so if she really needed milk or money she could’ve asked one of them. Oh man, lesson learned.
So after that, Luca, the Italian exchange student living with Manuela, asked me to go on a walk with him and some friends. I jumped the opportunity to hang out with people and be out of my house. It wasn’t very exciting, but I did meet some kids who go to the high school in Orotina. It was cool because I don’t really get to meet many teenagers since the high school is in Orotina and it’s tough just meeting teens on the streets. They were really cool and were super interested in my projects. So, I’m taking that as a sign that the youth will be willing to participate in my future projects.
Earlier that day, I was at the school and was invited to participate in a faculty meeting about educational quality. It was actually really insightful. Firstly, it’s really amazing to see how much these teachers care about their students and how frustrating it can be to work with not so many resources. People in the States can complain all they want, but we really don’t have it that bad. The kids here don’t even get textbooks. To get information, they basically just copy information from the chalkboard. This takes up class time from their already limited day (they only go to school half the day). Also, many parents don’t really care about the quality of education so they don’t encourage or motivate their kids to do homework. Naturally, this results in kids not doing any and thus not really learning much. However, it is uplifting to see that the teachers are making an effort, and they want to improve the quality of education. The kids deserve it.
So over the weekend, my host-family threw a big party on Sunday for my host-brother. He’s the one that lives with his dad. It was originally supposed to be on Saturday, but they changed it to Sunday because my host-mom had to work. Um, thanks for telling me ahead of time, lady. So I had to sit through another weird an uneventful party on the porch. This time, I socialized with some of my host-mom’s friend’s sons because they seemed as uninterested an bored as I was. Also, my host-mom’s boyfriend literally ran over Stevie, our blind dog. Luckily none of the tires got him, so he made it out alive. It was actually quite horrifying. There was Stevie just sleeping on a pile of gravel when this crazy guy comes full-speed, not looking and tries to park on him.
After people went home, I went into my room to work on my diagnostic when a few hours later, like the previous party we hosted, people came with speakers and all sorts of electronics and karaoke began. It was like a whole new party. It probably was. I think that they were celebrating my host-mom’s boyfriend’s birthday. Or perhaps mother’s day as well as it was the next day. All I know, is that I stayed in my room and tried to block out the noise with earphones and my own music and worked all night. Seriously, if you’re going to have a party, maybe you should let people who live in your house know about it. I’m fairly certain, “We’re having a party at lunch for Luis for his birthday,” does not translate into an all night karaoke festival hours after the original party died. Again, thanks for the heads up lady. I don’t have my own plans or anything. Oh, I feel that this is a good time to mention that I never got that 2,000 colones back.
So, Costa Rican Mother’s Day was the next day and unfortunately, it also happened to be my dad’s birthday. Bam! Double whammy! That was a bit miserable. For one thing, I really didn’t want to celebrate mother’s day, and for another I was naturally feeling down about everything. It was just a perfect storm of misery. On the bright side, I did get to skype with my family that afternoon while they got together to celebrate. It was good to not feel completely isolated from them. However, before our little skype date started, everyone in my house decided to go to bed before 7:30. Yes, that’s right. They went to bed before 7:30pm. So, normally when they go to bed early, I try to be respectful and stay quiet. However on this day, I figured that they had found a time that was just too absurd and that it didn’t matter to me on that day so I decided to stick it to the man, give them the bird and swear under my breath as I signed on to my skype account. It was glorious. It was so worth it just to talk to my family.
Yesterday, I was still feeling a bit of the blues when I found out that Coy and Melissa (a married couple) have quit Peace Corps and are going home this weekend. What a blow! Our group is dwindling! No, the reality is that they had finished a full tour of Peace Corps in Belize when they decided to go another two years here. They said that they lost their spark. It’s understandable. 4 years is intense. Not to mention that Melissa had previously done Peace Corps in Africa also. It’s still a sad loss to our little group. Coy was Mr. Sensible and was generally very calming for us and Melissa would just tell it as it is. They were kind of like our “parents” helping us get through training and managing the quirky things that come along with Peace Corps. So, to see them go is very sad. Also, the fact that they are leaving this weekend and we won’t have a chance to see them is sad. Que lastima that IST (In-Service Training) is so close, but not all of us will be there.
Well, that is all for now. Hopefully next time I’ll have better things to report.
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