Thursday, April 22, 2010

Tech Week

This week half of the CED group went to the province of Alajuela to visit another CED volunteer, Brigitte. Her site is absolutely beautiful. Its in a biological corridor between 2 volcanoes. The view of the volcanoes is amazing, especially at dusk when their outline is contrasted against the dark blue sky. Another cool thing is that every morning you wake up to the sounds of howling monkeys. Its a little different than the roosters that are normally outside my window, and I like it.

Saturday was traveling (about 7 hours) and meeting our host families. On Sunday we went to Rio Celeste, which was amazing. Its a big tourist spot where people come to hike, see the waterfalls, and swim in the rivers. We did one hike for about 4 hours, stopping along the way to swim in the river and sit by the waterfall. We ate lunch and then went to another river to cool off and swim. It was an awesome way to spend the day. Afterwards we played soccer for about an hour and a half with some people from the town. Talk about tired. I went to bed at a whopping 930 pm.

Monday through Thursday was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We had to prepare lessons for and teach an English class and a computer class. The computer class was especially cool because another volunteer and I helped a women set up an email account and she was able to send her first email. It was cool seeing how excited she was to be able to do this. We also attended a meeting with the local ECC (Empresa de Credito Comunal), where we had a question and answer session to get to better know the process or forming and maintaining an ECC. The ECC in the community was actually started with the assistance of the prior Peace Corps Volunteer so it was cool to see how it had grown in the past 2 years. The final activity was for Earth Day, where we went to a grade school and did a talk/activity on recycling. The kids were from 1st to 4th grade and were really enthusiastic and absolutely adorable. We started off by introducing ourselves and naming our favorite animal, and after each person said an animal the kids liked to share their thoughts on whether or not it was a good favorite animal. One little boy seemed to have pets of all the animals we were listing. It was a lot of fun and I hope to be able to work with a grade school in the future.

Overall it was a great week. I really enjoyed seeing the life of another volunteer and learning more about projects that Im interested in. We had our final interview about site preferences and we find out next Friday where we will be living for the next 2 years. Yay!

Ill be posting pictures from Tech Week on facebook sometime soon.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

VAC dinner and more

Last Saturday I went to a CED project fair. There were about 10 current volunteers there from CED, who talked to us about some current projects in their community. Some of the things we heard about were community newsletters, ECCs (empresa de credito comuntario) <-- I hope to get to work with this, chicos/as poderosos/as (camps and workshops for youth), environmental projects, teaching english, teaching ICT, starting computer centers, and more. It was great getting to hear from current volunteers and get a better idea of what our next 2 years here could be like. I especially liked talking to some of the volunteers about ECCs, which is something that I am very interested in. I really like the idea of starting a community funded credit union and the potential that this project can have.

After the project fair we went to San Jose for VAC, which is a get together of all trainees and current volunteers. The night included spending time with Tico 20, meeting some volunteers from Tico 18 and 19, dancing, eating, and disfrutaring (disfrutar = to enjoy).

On Tuesday we were given our assignments for Tech Week. For Tech Week, they split CED in half, and each half goes to different sites in Costa Rica to learn more about volunteer life/our preferences for our future site, learn more about current projects, and help work on some projects relating to ICT and teaching English, among other things. Myself, and 8 others from CED are going to a current volunteers site in Alajuela. It should be a good week.

In 2 weeks we receive our site assignments. In 5 weeks we move. Good times.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Semana Santa

This past week is known as Semana Santa in Costa Rica, or holy week. Ther have been lots of celebrations and masses going on at the church every day. I attended mass a couple of times with my family. There have also been a lot of processions, which is a sort of parade. We had classes Monday-Wednesday, then were off on Thursday and Friday. Having days off has been nice. There is a pool at my house, which was just filled this week. We have been playing a lot of pool volleyball, and there is a basketball hoop so I taught some of my siblings how to play Horse. I really enjoy just hanging out at the house with my family, I feel like I am always laughing (and sometimes being laughed at for my Spanish failures)

Next week is sort of a mid-way point for training. We have our next Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) to see how we have progressed in our Spanish in the past 5 weeks. In order to swear-in as a volunteer you have to be at a language proficiency level of intermediate-mid. I tested in as intermediate-low. The LPI is basicallya 30 minute conversation with one of the language facilitator. As far a my Spanish goes, I am definitely learning a lot, and feel that I can have conversations more fluidly and with greater ease. I especially like learning Costa Rican pachuca, slang. Heres a goodie I learned while playing cards the other night, tome chichi. It means take that sucker. Good stuff to have in my Spanish vocab. At the 5 week mark we also have to turn in all of the work we have done for our classes in the past 5 weeks. So I have been putting that together and making sure that I have everything.

Nothing too eventful going on next week besides classes. Next weekend there is something called VAC dinner, which is a get together for all volunteers and trainees in Costa Rican (there are about 150 total). That is in San Jose so I am going to that and they most of us are staying in town over night, which will be fun.