A site for sore eyes?

I have been in my site for a week now, and I feel as though I am finally settling into the rhythms of life here. Above all, it is hot. A cold shower feels refreshing at seven in the morning. Merely reading in the shade can provoke rivulets of sweat down my cheeks. Incidentally, reading in the shade has been my favorite pastime, I downed five books this week (not counting manuals on teaching English).
On Christmas we went to a long sandy beach, and had a barbecue. The tides here feel far too drastic, the mermaid statue which was 15 feet tall and surrounded by as much dry land when we arrived was only five feet fall and standing in the middle of ocean by the time we left. Also we went kayaking a deceptively long distance, and started to paddle out over what has been called the third deepest trench on the planet. I have been unable to corroborate this, but I love the story that always accompanies it: Jacques Cousteau came and lowered a sounding rope, but he ran out of rope before he touched bottom! Its really anticlimactic and fails to prove anything. I have heard this story about seven times from about five different people. The really good news though, is that whales apparently come here to give birth, and there are fantastic places nearby with sweeping vistas of the entire gulf (Golfo Dulce).
In Puerto Jimenez I finally saw Basilisk lizards (and Caimans). We tried to make them run on top of the water, but they were having none of it until suddenly one jumped off a log and ran all the way to the shore (three feet) along the surface of the water. It was incredible.
P.J. is the nearest large town to my site, and it is also 'the portal to Corcovado' a prime backpacking/ecotourist location. This means that the supermarket there is tailored to far different tastes than most Costa Rican markets. They have almost a full complement of spices, bamboo chutes, curry paste, and SPAM. I know it cannot get much more exciting than SPAM, but they also have amazing ice cream, including the amazing flavor 'Ron y Pasas'.
I'll be teaching an English class to some community members the second week of January, so I'm now deeply ensconced in planning and reading on how to teach community based classes. Hopefully it will be successful!
[This picture is of my friends from the training community when we went Christmas Caroling a few days before we headed to our sites. It was both fun and surprising for all the Costa Rican host families we visited.]

All my troubles will be out of site

I came back from my site visit on Wednesday, and not even a hot and sweaty eight hour bus ride could shake my overwhelming happiness at the place I will be living for the next two years. Glorious is too small a word to describe a walk to school where toucans and scarlet macaws flutter through the sky, while cows and water buffalo graze between rice paddies. Gorgeous does not adequately demonstrate the ocean's sudden appearance between the trees a mere twenty minute walk from my house. Gracious cannot capture a host family who are quite humble, but insist on sharing everything they have.
I am gushing, but there is little other recourse. Osa seems in many ways a land that time forgot, and then suddenly remembered just last year. There has never been a telephone system (even now), but they have free wireless internet at one of my schools, and a 3G network for the entire peninsula. The roads have always been awful, until they built an American style highway last year that connects precisely the towns I will need to go to; but not, incidentally, the rest of Costa Rica.
On Monday the school had a dinner for graduating sixth graders, and since my host mom is the school cook, and because I helped the teacher make decorations earlier in the day, I was invited to introduce myself to the community and the students. I won't say that I had remarks prepared, but it would not have mattered because the DJ disappeared and left reggaeton on full blast, so the teacher had to use the karaoke microphone to make herself heard. No one seemed phased by this in the least. What shocked them was that after shaking all of the student's hands I immediately set about helping my host mom (and aunt and cousin, who had shown up for the same days as my visit) serve food, violating apparently rigid gender norms. It was fun, and both my host cousin and the teacher had promised to teach me to dance pachata, but the DJ seemed determined to force the sixth graders to dance reggaeton, so soon two circles formed (boys and girls) and began shifting almost in beat, while the teacher danced from student to student, embarrassing them in front of their parents.
Now I am back in my training community, and the Christmas spirit has hit me in full force (as well as really cold weather, and even colder showers). I'm fighting it off with a warm inner glow, remembering the heat of the south, and knowing that soon I will be a real volunteer.
(This picture is looking down the road from the school at the "city center")

SAD day*

This last Wednesday we received our site assignments, at an event called 'Site Assignment Day', which lends itself to a rather troubling acronym, for what should be a joyous occasion. Thankfully the first thing they did was tell us where we would be sent to, in my case the Peninsula de Osa, in the far south of Costa Rica. I'll be living in a pretty small town, but it will be a very short bus ride from a larger town, Puerto Jimenez. The Peninsula de Osa is probably best known for Corcovado National Park, which supposedly contains the most biodiversity in Central America, because it is one of the few places where large amounts of North American and South American species coexist: there are apparently scarlet macaws, tapirs, jaguars, and four types of monkeys! I will be working at three elementary schools, possibly teaching in one of them, and working with teachers in the other two.
SAD took place at a country club, and since it was the day before Thanksgiving they served us an entire feast with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, hard boiled eggs with mustard where the yolk should be, and pumpkin pies. We all got sick in the middle of the night. I was terrified that it was something else that I had eaten, but in the morning the realization that it was a collective experience eased my fears.
That experience did not stop us from making our own Thanksgiving meal for our families on Sunday. I was in charge of the Turkeys, and the stuffing for inside the birds. We made two turkeys, and one was ready by the time people showed up, the other by the time people left. Luckily all the food was amazing, only my host dad complained that there were no rice and beans. After everyone had eaten, we cleared out one of the tables and the families started dancing, which quickly became incredibly rowdy. Some of the kids began using a broom as an impromptu stripper pole when the music switched from Salsa/Pachata to Spanish rap. The cleverer of the trainees snatched the broom and started a game of limbo, but that quickly devolved into less and less appropriate dancing yet again. I retreated to the kitchen to dismantle the second turkey. Both pictures are from our Thanksgiving Celebration.

*I am aware that repeating 'day' after the acronym is incorrect, but it completes a pun, so calmanse.

¡Foco!

I spent a considerable portion of last Sunday wondering if anyone would accept sopping wet money as legal tender. I had heard news reports of counterfeit money dissolving in the rain, and so when I made it to the bus station and bought a ticket back to Puerto Viejo I was ecstatic, if soaked through myself.
When we arrived on Saturday, after a frigid pre-dawn shower and a five hour bus ride, the sun was shining and all was right with the world. My group of Trainees quickly departed for the house we had rented, and found it to be spectacular. Warm showers, towels, plenty of beds, and a second floor hammock whose muted colors called out more loudly to me than the possible lumpiness of the mattresses.
Quickly making our way to the black sand beach a block from the house, I experienced the immense joy of diving into water that didn't seize up my chest. The beach was a long 'L' and I was so enthused by the warm water that I decided to swim across the corner, past a sunken vessel that lay a little ways off shore. As I got to the ship I could see trees growing between the sides, and cascades of vines and flowers falling into the ocean from the deck, set against the rusty hull the green was beautiful. I had little time to enjoy it though, because no sooner had I passed the ship than I myself ran aground. Thinking for several terrifying moments that I had stumbled (dog paddled?) upon an offshoot of the distant reef I had noted from the beach, I could only think of a shredded abdomen, so I supported myself on my arms and scurried forward on my hands through the six inches of water that lay between me and a long flat rock, like a primordial amphibian first stretching its appendages in the shallows of time. Unlike said amphibian however, I evolved rather more quickly once I realized that I could simply stand up, and need no longer fear getting pounded into the hard surface. Finding myself thirty feet from the opposite shore, near a sunken ship, standing fully upright, I could only laugh as I lowered myself from the rock and swam the rest of the way to the shore.
That night, as we went out for dinner and in search of a place to dance, I decided to bring my flashlight, which allowed to walk along the beach, but necessitated frequent calls of 'Foco! Foco!' to illuminate what seemed in the misty moonlight to be vicious dogs or roaring rapids, but once unveiled by my electric-blue foco took their true forms as stationary logs and tiny creeks.
The next morning, after I woke up to a chorus of birds and howler monkeys, and I enjoyed a plate of Potatoes in Jerk BBQ sauce, we headed to Cahuita National Park, wisely choosing the 'optional donation' entrance over the mandatory $7 fee station. The park was gorgeous. The part we saw consisted of a trail through the jungle shadowing the shoreline about twenty feet away. We alternated between sand and soil while trying to pass sloth-like groups of tourists and stationary groups of ticos in order to get deeper into the park. Our plans were foiled when a sudden rainstorm descended and caught us about an hour away from the last shelter at the park entrance. Up to that point I had seen 1 Howler Monkey, and no new fauna would enliven our trip, but that was pretty exciting. The rain fell in such quantities that I decided to take off everything but my bathing suit, and try to tuck my shorts and sun-shirt under my arm where they would get less wet. The theory may have been sound (I have my doubts), but in practice it was a complete failure. Every centimeter of everything I brought was drenched. The rain and the wind were so chilly that I had to jump into the ocean several times just to keep warm, and once we got back to the park entrance, the rain stopped. The man at the bus station didn't bat an eyelid when a gang of shirtless gringos showed up, holding their clothes and asking to pay with bills that, though wet, were surprisingly resistant to water. Waiting for the bus, I wrung out my shirt and my shorts, and produced perhaps a liter of water. Nobody could have had a better vacation
.

What goes up, moss come down

On Sunday my host uncle and his family invited me to go gather wool for Christmas decorations in a gorgeous location. I jumped at the opportunity to do so, because I have never had the opportunity to shear sheep, or to see it done and pick up the wool afterward. I asked for clarification, because they said we were going to the top of a mountain, and that seemed a rather out the way place to go to shear sheep, but who was I to contradict them? So we headed out after I gulped down coffee (I drink several cups a day, usually two at a time) driving through some of the other training communities, and stopping at my host aunt's familial compound. Many of the Costa Ricans I have met live in groups of houses around an older house where their parents live. I call these compounds, but there is probably a better word out there somewhere, since there are neither fences nor guards.

I was offered Aguadulce which consists of sugarcane blocks that have been shaved and boiled into a syrup, and then added to boiling water until they are nearly drinkable. Sugarcane blocks have roughly the consistency of stale earwax, and the dull brownish-gray of bleached khaki. Its not my favorite to eat or drink.

When we set out again I was none the wiser about our destination, and after several detours down muddy roads to avoid landslides (including picking fruit and vegetables from unattended gardens) we turned up another dirt road, which grew muddier and muddier as it went higher, until we veered off up a very rocky road, and then stopped. We had arrived. There were no sheep.

Attempting to cover my surprise, I smiled patiently while my host uncle handed me an empty sack, and then proceeded to walk off the side of ridge we had ascended in the car. I followed him when my host aunt told me to, and we were quickly descending through pretty dense vegetation. When I ran into a tree trunk with my body, the trunk simply fell away because the trees were so moist. They were explaining that the wool we would be collecting was different here because it came in different colors. I was again confused, but I was no longer expecting sheep. Soon we stopped in a flatter area covered in moss. My host uncle picked up a handful that was both red and green and shoved it in his sack, and then told me to do the same. Quickly revising my expectations, I jumped in with élan, only suffering a fright when my wiggling fingers tricked my eyes into believing they were venomous grubs. That was embarrassing.

It was much more fun than working with sheep (I imagine). There were tons of different types, and many different colors, and apparently families here cover doorways and nativity scenes with lana or musgo. It gives a very nice feeling, if completely different from the Yuletide I was expecting.

On the way back we drove on some of the roads that were destroyed by the recent rainstorm. My host uncle would stop over parts where the tarmac was hanging two or three feet in the air, and his daughters and wife would scream and scream while he turned around and looked at me with a glance of utter delight. This picture is of me standing on a portion of tarmac that had no ground underneath, and you can see the remains of the roadway several meters below.

Fanmail from some Flounder

As I write this I am watching an Atletico game, and Atleti is winning. Peace Corps has placed us on alert, and my town has been sealed off by landslides. A few hours ago we got electricity for the first time since last night, and the water is still only coming in fits and bursts, and is not potable. Its started raining heavily again, so its probably only a matter of time until we lose electricity again. All in all though, this has been a very good week.
I stayed with my mentor over the weekend until Tuesday, and I had a blast. He is living in a rural community about 7km from Panama, and about an hour and a half from the nearest semi-urban area. Time based distances are the norm here in Costa Rica, because the type and condition of the roads, is far more important than the actual distance traveled. For example traveling from our training communities to San Jose takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, whereas the same distance in another direction takes about half an hour.
[The team Atletico is playing has a player named Moldskred.] The trip was basically a two day job-shadow, but that was far more enjoyable than going to yet another week of training. The host family of my Mentor was incredibly sweet, and it was their daughter's birthday the day I arrived so we had cake and sang Happy Birthday. The next day we went to the botanical garden, where we wandered through a labeled wilderness, admiring plants and agoutis. Agoutis look like coconuts with a rodent head and miniature deer legs. They sit on their haunches and nibble on fruits and nuts that fall from the trees, and are adorable.
[Moldskred just took another (poorly called) free kick that went wide, and suddenly the picture flickered in and out, and came back with ghosts shadowing the players.] The next day we went to a coffee plantation and beneficio, and this time we walked through the indigenous encampment. Panamanian and Costa Rican Indigenous peoples inundate coffee based communities during picking times, which have three phases and last about three months. The coffee berry, I should add, is bright red, tastes like honey, and the pit inside smells nothing like coffee before it is roasted. The indigenous workers bring their entire families from the reservations and stay for the coffee season before going back. They dress far more nicely than the average Costa Rican, the men wear slacks and button up shirts all the time, and the women wear gorgeous traditional dresses, and are usually either pregnant or surrounded by very young children, or both. Their living conditions were cramped, with 200 people crushed into tiny rooms in four long buildings. The buildings were divided by canals dug into the dirt, full of trash and mud, and lined on either side with wood stoves creating more smoke than heat because all of the wood is soaked through. We talked to a large family, and everyone's eyes were red and watering because of the smoke roaring around every corner. The men were the only ones who talked, and they were, understandably, far more interested in telling us about their scars from fights the night before than talking about their livelihood or religion.
The bus ride from home was long and wet, and the day after I came through they closed road. So I was lucky the trip was scheduled when it was. This weather is causing landslides and floods all over the country, and it seems like there are many weakened bridges and landslides between us and our trainers, so events will be canceled or postponed. [Moldskred's teammates include Lustig, and Skjaelared, and they just tied the game.] This morning (Thursday) we walked up to the nearest landslide (15 minutes) and we were there while a young man decided to test whether electricity was flowing through the distended electrical cable to see if he could ride through on his motorcycle. Before we could get to the other landslides though, we received orders to stay put and wait the weather out, so now I am watching Atleti play, and rejoicing that we are safe and dry.

¡GOOOOLAZO DE ATLETICO DE MADRID!
Atleti just won the game in the 85th minute!

Hokey Smoke!

On Sunday we went to the Volcano Irazú, which was beautiful, and amazing, and now I am sunburned. We organized our own trip to another of the training communities (it ended up just being my host mother's brother, driving my family's car), and once we got there we all got on board a bus. Apparently in every town around here someone owns a bus, and rents his services out on weekends, and on weekdays, he takes kids to school, and drives people to work in odd places. Well, it was a fairly long bus ride, and it was very enjoyable, driving through mountains, and past fields, and a ton of cows. When we got to the Volcano, we had to pay the National Park Entrance fee, but we said we were PC Trainees and Trainers (not entirely true, it was several trainees and about twice as many host families) and they let us in for 400 Colones, about eighty cents, when it should have been ten dollars. That was pretty exciting in itself, but when we got to the Volcano, there were strange mammals (Coati!) eating food out of trash cans (just like squirrels). Also, there was the caldera of the Volcano, which we could look down into, and it reeked of sulphur. Other exciting things include: giant leafed plants (that is Ken's hand)! a US Geographical Survey marker at the highest point of the Volcano! At that highest point on the Volcano, we could see the Pacific Ocean! On the way back all of the Tico families had the bus stop at every roadside market to find the prices for cheese and potatoes, which was pretty hilarious by the time we stopped for the fifth time.

This week I learned that during election season, everyone puts the flag of their party on their cars (and their houses) and since the elections were in May, only the flags of the winning party are still displayed. I'm settling in more with my host family, and learning more about them and why they do what they do, which is nice.

This weekend I am going to visit a volunteer way down south near the border with Panama, so I'll be on a bus most of Saturday, and the same on Tuesday, but I'm looking forward to it (if not the cold shower at 4 in the morning tomorrow).

And now for something you'll really like

This week training is starting in earnest, but it has been pretty fun so far. On Wednesday we had our first trip to San José, which took the form of a competition to visit certain sights, and be safe while doing so. I was appointed group leader, and much to my surprise, yesterday we found out that my group completed the activity perfectly. We found out where the medical center the Peace Corps uses is, where the national theatre, cathedral, and museum are, and later how to get to the Peace Corps office. The Peace Corps office is rather a splendid building, three stories high and very open in a nice part of town. The library was pretty extensive, and almost all of the trainees took a book, reading here is probably the main leisure activity, and following soon after are walking, and writing emails or blog posts.

On Tuesday upon arriving in my community, others realized that the bus was not going to their community, but continuing on in the opposite direction. Since it was dark, and a relatively short distance, one of my friends and I ultimately decided to walk them down the hill to their locations. Costa Rican roads are twisting, and Costa Rican fog is thick, and Costa Rican street lights are few and far between. It was a nice experience though, and now I know that walking along twisting and torturous mountain roads is pretty safe, even at night. Dogs are a problem, but ignoring them usually works, and if it doesn't, crouching down to pick up a rock usually reminds the dog that I am not going to its house, and it lets me pass.

Today we observed English teachers in classrooms, and then made a Costa Rican meal at one of the trainee's houses. Five of us were in one teacher's classroom, which was a little absurd, but then again so is classroom control here. Two kids were disrupting the entire classroom (I dubbed them Crabbe and Goyle), and the teacher had little recourse. He was doing a great job teaching though, and it seemed like the students who payed attention were learning quite a bit. Crabbe and Goyle were obviously at least two years older, which means they failed the class several times, and they knew many of the answers. This is going to be a difficult problem to deal with when I go into classrooms, but hopefully we'll get some training.

Cooking was a lot of fun, it was a just a beef soup, with every kind of carbohydrate known to Central America, but it still tasted amazing. I learned how to peel Yuca (Cassava root) although when I got home and told my hmom she explained that the best way is actually to peel it by hand, not using a knife. A drink which is very popular here is a 'fresco' which is the juice of any fruit (usually squeezed by hand) with water, and sugar. Its a little like lemonade, but more easy to make. I'm thinking about finding mint or sage to mix in.

Included below (hopefully) are some pictures of my two dogs, the views from walks around town, and the view from the training center we went to first.

I miss you all very much
-Barton

C is for Coffee

Hello poetry lovers,

Well the first week of training has come and gone, and I am pretty exhausted. Adapting to life with a host family is pretty tiring on its own, and we've also be having a lot of classes. The daily schedule here is interesting so I'll delve into it for a while. It is essentially based around the sun, which rises around 5 (maybe a little before?) and sets around 6. the cloud cover however can make things dark far before their time, so that on Saturday, by 4:30 it was already evening, tending towards darkness. My host family basically operates around the sun schedule, waking up by 5:30, and going to bed around 9 (that is a household average), the teenage son and I can skew it quite heavily. My host mom is very nice, forces me to eat far too much, and is full of suggestions on how to fit in better. I think she enjoys having someone around to talk to in the afternoons, and its fun to practice my Spanish while drinking amazing coffee. The town I am staying in is right in the middle of coffee country, and today I went on a walk with some other trainees and one of their mom's down through a coffee farm to a 'mirador' and then to a 'beneficio' where they transform coffee from a berry to a powder. Almost everywhere you turn here there are extensive coffee fields, and the views from nearly every point are incredible. Bits of cloud and fog float about the area all day, and as many are below our elevation as above. The hills around are rather drastic, with sharp ridges and towns nestled around crevices almost everywhere. The coffee fields are regularly located at improbable angles along slopes that would give pause to big horn sheep. We are in the heart of winter in Costa Rica, meaning that big rain storms are predicted every day, but they have so far manifested themselves in rather paltry mists and bursts of heavy rain. I'll take this time to apologize for the complete chaos of this post, I have not yet had a lot of time to plan out or write in any order. The town I am in is of about 3,000 people, and it is becoming a center of commerce at a crossroads on the way to what were once larger towns. There are nine other trainees here, and we train in the same place but in two different groups. On other days we take the bus up to a different town and all the trainees (45) have classes at the same training center. There is a completely different microclimate up there, such that it is almost always raining when we take the bus back, and sometimes the visibility is down below one hundred feet. So far everyone here is really nice, and I am having a wonderful time.

Sincerely,
-Barton

Host Family

I'm with my host family now, and they are very nice, and so amazing. The host mom is incredibly sweet, and they have two dogs, and one of them is exactly like Sadie! After I got in today my host mom took me and her two sons (and the dogs) out for a walk through their neighborhood, and almost everyone who lives there is a relative. There are acres and acres of coffee around, and the school where I'll be having Spanish training is just around the corner. Also, the town we have to travel to do training all together is only about ten minutes away. I'm very overwhelmed right now, but I got all of my luggage into my room, and now I feel bad about using their internet (an unexpected boon) so I'll wrap this up. I miss you all very much!

-Barton

Cartago

Today we went on our first training excursion to the town of Cartago, we were given 3,000 Colones and four tasks, but my group lucked out. We bought phone cards and made calls, then learned about the ruins of a church that dominated the central plaza. The next place we had to discover was the 'Capitanía General' which had recently been turned into a museum of culture for the region. As we progressed through the museum, we found a large wall and a scaffolding where three woman were painting a mural. We were looking at the mural (scenes of natives, emphasizing women and animals) when one of the women offered to give us a tour. It turned out that she was the muralist, and that this painting was to debut on the International Day of Women as the largest mural created by women in Central America. She walked us through the images, pointing out the gods and the characters, and explaining what would fill in the blank spaces (about 3 fifths of the wall). She told us a lot of history, and it proved a very enlightening experience.

-Barton

Escuela Juan XXIII

Well, the 'retreat' location is gorgeous, although I haven't seen a glint of sunshine since I left LA, but the rain here is pretty amazing, coming in fits and spurts, yesterday it started pouring all of a sudden, and this morning it was misting, which was beautiful. It is pretty high up in the mountains over San José, and the views of the city are stunning, especially at night. There is a basketball court, a grassy green, and a soccer field. The cafeteria serves mostly Gallo Pinto with assorted meat, which is quite filling, though we are all still hungry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Also, in the wildlife report, I've seen squirrels (with really long tails), parrots (green and quite loud), flycatchers (gorgeous yellow bellies), sparrows, and at least one vulture. Not much is happening here besides classes and learning (important for me, but not really for my fanbase) so I'll probably get back to this after I move in with my 'training' host family on Saturday.

-Barton

Introductory Post

Well, I don't know how often I'll be able to update this, but hopefully it will be fairly frequently. I'm in Costa Rica at a training center right now, and its very nice. The weather is just about perfect now, at 8 PM, its humid and beautiful, it didn't get very hot, which I'm sure will change once we get out of the mountains.

I miss you all very much, and I'll write again soon!

-Barton