Sunday, December 26, 2010

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.]

Friday, December 10, 2010

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")