A Year in Review

So, what have I learned during the past two years? Number one: Blogging is NOT one of my strong suits. Number two through ?: a lot of other things that I am not going to write about now (refer to “Number one”).

It has been about eight months since I last documented my movements and while I can’t go back and recount everything that has happened, I can tell you that this year was incredible. I am so happy to be living in Costa Rica, in Liberia, as a TEFL Peace Corps Volunteer. While things really never went, or go, as I planned them in my head, like getting placed in urban Costa Rica instead of rural Africa, every moment has been a learning experience and a joy to be a part of.

Both of my schools ended their academic year last week with kindergarten and sixth grade graduations. And while I still have a few more months as I volunteer, I kind of wanted to get up on the stage and walk across it as a successful PCV who completed another year of hard work, successful projects, and endured great distance from family and friends. As 2013 comes to a close I am proud to say that I feel great accomplishment in the work that I have done. It definitely hasn’t been perfect, or easy, but I couldn’t be happier. Between projects realized and personal relationships developed, it is clear to me that Peace Corps was my path. 

I was able to go back to Michigan for Thanksgiving and I am kind of in a mushy mood after getting home from a graduation ceremony so I am going to share a few things that I am thankful for. I am so thankful to have family and friends, both at home and in Costa Rica, that support me in my endeavors. I couldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have their love and encouragement. I also know how lucky I am to have had so many visitors and the opportunity to share my volunteer life with them. It is one thing to write or talk about Peace Corps life, but it is a “ho ‘nudda lebbel” of understanding to experience it. Between family, Meg and Kait, and John visiting, the distance between home and here shrunk for a moment. Lastly, I could not be more grateful that I was able to make it home twice to reconnect with cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, and families of friends. To be able to go back and be a part of weddings, Thanksgivings and birthday parties is a gift that makes being away for two years a little less difficult.

I have a few more projects on the way but, with the end of the school year a lot of my work came to a close. Here is a little taste of what I was up to during 2013 and I’ll think about making better blogging habits my new year’s resolution.

I love you all and Merry Christmas!!

 Last Day of the Teachers' Conversation Club!

Basic Community Class

Intermediate Community Class

Judging the High School Spelling Bee

 My Co-teacher, Medleen, and our students who participated in the National Spelling Bee!

      John Visited!!

School Stuff

Betsy Came!

Capulin Students Graduating

Escuela Capulin Teachers

6th Grade Ladies at Laboratorio 

Laboratorio J.F.K Teachers

My Home

I thought you might want a look into my house and the place that I've called home for the last five months.

For the first seven months in El Capulin, I lived with a host family whom I love so much. They are some of my best friends here and I view the kids as my siblings. But after sharing a fairly small space with between four and six people every day, I was ready to move out on my own.

I am living in an apartment attached to the house of  my "host aunt." Her parents, my "host grandparents" both died in the last two years so it is just us ladies. She is twenty-six years old and works at the national electric company. She is awesome and it is really nice having a friend close by.

Here is a tour:

                            Looking to the left through my front door, and straight ahead.

                                                                         My "office"

                                                  My living room and workout space
                                                 

 My bedroom.... Shelves made by Megan and Kaitlin when they visited me. Super MacGyver style.

Mosquito net is a necessity. Although I still got dengue.... 

Looking into the kitchen

Bathroom off of the kitchen. It doesn't flush.

My backyard. I need to rake.

And where those flags are flying is one of my schools. They know when I'm skipping school.

Where I do my laundry, usually with the company of a horse on the other side of the fence.

I was going to clean before I took these pictures but I thought it would be a lie. So you see it exactly how it is. 

Living Life

Hi All! I’m back!

Not that I went anywhere… I’m just lazy when it comes to blogging.

JumpStart was awesome and I cannot thank you all enough for your support, encouragement, questions, and money. I had 21 sixth graders from all over Liberia join me for a four week English camp way back in January. It was completely exhausting and super hard work but it was incredible to see the change in the confidence, motivation, and language level of all the students. Sometimes I wonder, as I am sure all PCVs do, if I am really doing anything here, but after JumpStart I can truly say that I influenced those kids to be better students.

Since JumpStart ended, school started and I am back into a routine, more or less. I am co-teaching at both of my schools, organizing a monthly conversation club for 20 teachers with four other volunteers, planning district, regional, and inter-regional spelling bees, giving my community English class once a week, and teaching an extra conversational class for 20 third through sixth graders. It’s been busy but I am really enjoying it.

My mom and dad came to visit in March and we had so much fun. We went all over the country, from the Caribbean Coast, to the central mountains, and over to Liberia and the Pacific beaches. It was awesome having them here. We ate really great food, stayed at some nice hotels, went zip-lining, and relaxed on the beach. I love showing people what my life has become and I think they enjoyed their time too.

                                                          Loving Costa Rica! 

School was on vacations for Holy Week and I went to visit my friend Esteli in her site. She lives in the complete other corner of Costa Rica on an indigenous reserve. It was a major pain getting there. I took a bus from San Jose to Limon, another from Limon to Bri Bri, and another from Bri Bri to a river crossing. There, we got in a canoe made of a hallowed out tree, crossed the river, and got into a banana truck that took us to her house. We were in the jungle. It was absolutely gorgeous and the people were so humble and genuine. Her village is tiny but I loved it and I hope that I will be able to visit again.

 <-- walking to the river in Katsi, Esteli's site.

There is a new group of Peace Corps trainees that arrived in March. They are all TEFL and my group has been mentoring them through their training. Last week was their “Tech Week,” which is a week-long practicum. I had two ladies, Abby and Lauren, come and stay in Capulin and work with me and my co-teachers, and boy, did they get a true PCV experience. I planned a few different classes and two spelling bees to let them practice and observe. Well, for two days classes were cancelled without notice and our spelling bees were re-scheduled about five different times. It didn’t really shock or surprise me until the Abby and Lauren asked why classes were cancelled and why didn’t they tell me in advance. This is just the way it goes and I have come to internalize these mishaps and kind of expect them.

The one thing I realized through the week of having the trainees around is that I have been here for a year. I obviously know that I’ve been here for a year, but it wasn’t until they asked their questions, which I saw as obvious or weird, and listened to their observations, which I didn’t recognize as something different, that I realized that I'm part of this culture. Living in Capulin is my normal. My filthy house from the dust in the streets, canceled classes, the heat of Guanacaste, men on horses trotting through the streets, people I don’t know calling and asking me English questions. All of these things are my normal. And that is really cool to think about.

I miss home and I miss my friends and I miss my family so, so much. But it is cool to realize that I have adapted to another way of life and culture and I am making it. 

Back Up to Speed

Merry belated Christmas and happy new year to everyone!

I’ve been pretty busy here in El Capulin working, moving and entertaining my Christmas visitors.

Since about mid November, school has been touch and go. Students took their exams on the 18^th and after that a lot of them took an early vacation. Since there wasn’t a whole lot to be taught, I focused my energy on planning JumpStart, the month-long English camp I am leading during this month. I was running all over the place asking for donations, make sure the kids were ready to go and transportation was organized.

I know many of you donated and I cannot thank you enough. I am so relieved and comfortable knowing that my camp, and the other thirteen camps in Costa Rica, are well on their way to being completely funded. Today was the first day of the camp and it went really well. Not without its minor complications, but I am feeling really confident that it is going to be one of my favorite projects so far. I am writing short posts about my group in the JumpStart blog, http://jumpstartcostarica.blogspot.com/search/label/El%20Capul%C3%ADn. That is a link to my Liberia page. And from there you can look at posts from other camps around Costa Rica.

While I was finishing up the details for JumpStart, I came down with a pretty horrible fever, which turned out to be Dengue. I remember teasing Coco and Chris when they were getting ready to visit me about catching “The Dengue,” but never thought anyone really got it, let alone me. It honestly wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and I think because I didn’t know it was dengue for the majority of the time I had it helped. It was a nasty fever, headache, eye ache for about five days, and then a horrible, itchy rash for another five days. My platelets and white blood cell count dropped quite a bit and I had to go to San Jose for monitoring by our medical staff. But after four days in San Jose I was cleared to go back to Liberia and I am feeling, and looking, back to normal.

One of my main concerns when I was trying to kick The Dengue was being healthy in time for when Megan and Kaitlin, my two best friends, arrived. I was, gracias a Dios (another phrase that Costa Ricans say in response to everything), and they were with me from the 22^nd to the 31^st. We had a really awesome trip and it was nice to be able to share some of my Costa Rican life with peeps from home. I dragged them all over the country, from the Caribbean coast to the Pacific coast and up into the mountains. It was an incredible breath of fresh air and quite entertaining watching them observe the nutty things that have become my normal. They will be writing a guest post about their experiences, which should be pretty enlightening for people that want an outsider’s perspective on my life and Costa Rica.

Oh! I finally moved into my own house/apartment! It is really awesome living on my own. I do miss my host family, but I am right around the corner and I have already been back to eat a few meals and chat. And I am actually living next door to their aunt. So it’s all in the family.

I feel a lot more productive with my own space and more relaxed knowing I don’t have to tell anyone where I am going, when I’ll be back, or if I swept my room. Although I have found that I’ve acquired that Costa Rican habit of sweeping the house and outside patio approximately four times a day.

JumpStart is going to keep my busy, but look for shorter posts from me, more often. And keep an eye out for Megan and Kaitlin’s post too. (It’s on here ladies, you have to do it).

Peace and Love.

JumpStart!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all, happy belated birthday to my mom and merry early Christmas.

Everything is winding down here in Costa Rica. While school doesn't officially end until the 12^th of December, final exams were two weeks ago and those smart little kids know that they aren't getting tested on any more information so why go to school?  

I don’t really have any projects currently happening other than my community class, but I still have a ton of organizing, planning, and begging to do that is keeping me busy.

First, my two best friends, Megan and Kaitlin, are coming to celebrate Christmas with me! They will be here for a total of 10 days and I am anxiously awaiting their arrival. The general agenda is created and now I am trying to figure out how we are getting from place to place and where we are staying. Christmas is the busiest season in Costa Rica in regards to both outside and inside tourism, so reservations are a must.

Second, I just got approval from the El Capulín junta, Costa Rican PTA equivalent, to have an Around the World club during the summer. I am inviting students from 4^th to 6^th grade to participate in the club. We will be painting a huge world map on a wall in the school, and everyday talking about a different country. I get so many questions about the States and about other parts of the world so I thought this would be a fun activity to do during summer vacations, which are December and January in Costa Rica. I need to figure out how exactly we are painting this map, and with what paint we will be painting this map, and what kids will be painting this map, but I am working on it and am hopeful that it will come together.

Lastly, I am organizing a month long English camp for 20 students entering high school. Peace Corps partnered with Costa Rica Multilingue, a Costa Rican organization that promotes language learning, to organize and host 14 camps around the nation. JumpStart Liberia is the camp I am leading and we have 20 students coming from the three poorest barrios in Liberia.

The idea of Jumpstart is to give students who never had English before, or only the bare minimum, a chance to succeed in high school. Most of the time these students enter high school with students from private and bilingual schools, and they fall extremely behind. English is a required subject so if a student doesn't pass the class, they don’t pass the grade, and they usually drop out of school.

The camp is four weeks long for three and a half hours a day. The students receive transportation, a snack, and an English workbook. Also, as Peace Corps tries to make everything sustainable, I am recruiting Costa Rican English teachers to participate in the camp with me, so they can give students insight into high school and hopefully become so engaged in the camp that they will want to do it again next year with minimum assistance from me!

We had training on the JumpStart curriculum, which was created by other PCVs, and I am even more excited to be a part of this nation-wide initiative. And while teaching English is cool and all, I am more excited to be giving these students a chance to meet other students, learn that learning can be fun, and motive them to continue with their education. If I can help one kid stay in school, the camp will be worth it.

The one thing that is a challenge in organizing this camp is that it is completely free for the students, which means fundraising is becoming my obsession. I have identified different hotels, businesses and cooperatives in Liberia, sent them letters requesting donations, physically went and dropped off letters, and have phone numbers to follow up.

It is kind of exhausting asking for donations in Costa Rica for a number of reasons. First, if you don’t physically go to the institution, they will forever ignore you. Second, the person in charge rarely seems to be present. Which means I go to this institution four different times, explain myself to four different managers and give out four copies of the letter, which are supposed to make it to the boss but never really do, before I actually talk to the boss who tells me their donation limit is up for the year. Times this by ten or more institutions and it’s quite the… adventure? I’ve had a couple of places that seem a little interested so I am holding out hope that some help will be coming from my community.

But along with Liberia, I am asking anyone and everyone at home if they could help, even if you tell others about JumpStart. Costa Rica Multilingue made it really easy to make a tax-deductible donation by going to this link https://www.amigosofcostarica.org/get-involved/express-donation/donate?reset=1&id=30. Just make sure to specify “Multilingual Costa Rica as the beneficiary.

If you have any questions about JumpStart or suggestions on organizations that tend to donate to things like this, please let me know.

When I am not doing something related to those three projects I am back to the usual: roaming around town, reading, playing with my host siblings, and looking for a house.

Thanks in advance for all of the support, of all kinds, that you all give me. I can’t express how much of a difference it makes knowing that I have so many cheerleaders at home. 

Little Lessons

Lordy, Lordy. I am the worst. Practically two months since the last post. Forgive me.

As most of you people that read this blog know, I was home for two and a half weeks celebrating the marriage of my sister, Colleen, and my new brother-in-law, Chris. Even with a few days of being terribly, deathly sick, it was the best trip home that I could ever imagined. The wedding celebrations were beautiful and fun. And I was able to spend time with everyone that I miss so much.

Since arriving back in Costa Rica, however, I have been on the go. I’ll have to write a few posts about everything I am doing, but I promise that I’ll do it before February.

On October 16^th Guanacaste had its first ever Regional English Spelling Bee. I, along with three other volunteers, held local spelling bees in our schools and decided to organize a Regional Bee for each of our top three participants. I had three students from El Capulin and three students from JFK. We had classes outside of school about three times a week and my students went from not even knowing the pronunciation of the letters in English, to spelling words that I cannot spell myself.

The Regional Bee was in Liberia at the Regional Ministry of Education office. Our fantastic Regional English Assessor, Max, helped us to secure the venue and Taylor, another volunteer in La Cruz, and I were off to scour Liberia for donations of prizes and food. It was quite the task and did not actually work out as well as we hoped. Unfortunately, with the end of the year coming up, a lot of places already donated what they were going to donate. We did get fruit donated from a locally owned and locally grown store, which cut a lot of our costs, but we ended up buying a few prizes for the winners.

The entire event turned out awesome. We had 15 fifth and sixth graders from six different schools participating and these kids really knew their stuff. It was really rewarding to see how far they had come, and they not only learned how to spell 120 new words, but also their meanings. My students did an incredible job and they all asked when practices for next year began.

I sometimes feel like I am not doing a whole lot here and that if I wasn’t working at these two schools no one would really care. But after the Bee, after hearing the students talk about how much they liked it and wanted to continue learning, I realized that through these little events, that are stressful to organize and half the time I don’t want to bother with or don’t think the kids are paying enough attention or care, they really are learning. And they are learning a lot more than I am blatantly teaching. Throughout practices the students were consistently showing up late. And I consistently told them that they weren’t respecting my time. And every practice they started showing up closer to the starting time until one practice I arrived two minutes late and they were all there ready to tell me that I was two minutes late. And another practice where they arrived at my house asking me why I wasn’t at school yet and it was seven minutes before class was supposed to begin.

Throughout my time in Costa Rica, honestly probably every day, I have to remind myself that even if I am not doing some huge-scale event, or building a English Center, or even teaching every day, I still have influence and I can still teach what I know through my actions and everyday life. While it is always difficult, and probably always will be difficult, to feel completely useful here, I hope that through my conversations and actions I can teach my students life skills and open-mindedness. My three fifth grade students learned the value of being on time; not an easy feat in Costa Rica. Hopefully this is just be the beginning of a bundle of little lessons that I can share.

Earthquake Alert

Well if my actual work projects aren’t reason enough to write a blog post an earthquake sure does the trick.

Today, Wednesday, September 5^th, 2012, started exactly how I thought it would as I was falling asleep last night. I got out of bed, ate breakfast, dressed myself and headed out the door on my SuperPro bike. I rode into Liberia to meet up with three other volunteers and our twelve co-teachers for our monthly conversation club. We meet on the second floor of the Antigua Escuela Santa Ana to share activities for classes and to get the teachers speaking English with people other than their first graders. We were just beginning an open forum on classroom issues and solutions when I felt what seemed like a giant ogre running up the stairs or a huge train coming through town. The conversation silenced as everyone looked at each other with wide eyes. As the rumbling grew and the building began to shake the Costa Rican teachers yelled “earthquake!” as the other volunteers and I asked “are we in an earthquake?” (huh?? wuh??)

I stood up and did a couple of turns looking around the room as I tried to remember my pre-service training on earthquake protocol. I didn’t remember a thing but I noticed all of the teachers huddled in the door frame so I headed over to the inside wall of the room and grabbed hold. We were all clinging on to something as the trembles picked up and the entire building began swaying from side to side. As I widened my stance to surfing status it finally hit me that we are on the second floor of ANTIGUA escuela. Just how antique is this school?!

The entire earthquake lasted for around thirty seconds and as soon as it stopped we headed downstairs to open area, preparing for any aftershock. It wasn’t until after the event that I realized that I was super tense. I listened to the teachers talking about how strong the earthquake was, but seeing as I have nothing to compare it to, I honestly didn’t know if it was really a big deal. I did wonder if it was big enough to reach the news in the States and I was surprised when I had two emails within twenty minutes of the quake, asking if I was okay. The other volunteers and I also got a bunch of texts from other volunteers and our bosses called us to make sure that everyone was fine.

We waited outside for about thirty minutes and then sent the teachers home to be with their families as that is typical procedure for schools and companies. As I walked back up the stairs to gather my things I realized that I was still a little shaky on my feet and that I had a headache. I could just picture my brain rattling in my skull.

The other volunteers and I hung around Liberia for a bit of the day and talked about the experience. I am still shocked that it was an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude. It felt big, but 7.6 is really big! In Liberia and El Capulin, everyone is safe and there isn’t much structural damage. There are quite a few houses with damage closer to the epicenter, as well as a hospital in Puntarenas, landslides in other areas of the country and two people died, but for what we were hit with we are lucky that there isn’t more ruin.

I am thankful for all of your thoughts and prayers and I know that it made a huge difference. It’s amazing to see all the love that is sent to Costa Rica, not only today but I am sure every day.

And just FYI, I’ll be home in a week and cannot wait! See you all sooooon!