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")