First Days

I moved to Comte Sunday May 23rd. My host brother picked me up from the bus stop and during the dark, rainy ride to the house I kept thinking, wow. Here I am.

These past few days have been a bit of a reality check. I´m realizing that I´m here for 2 years, it´s going to be hard, but it´s going to be great. I can´t describe how welcome I feel in the town, and it´s only my first week. The few days that I´ve gone to the grade school the kids love to yell my name (those that don´t remember my name endearingly refer to me as ¨the new Katherine¨) and give me hugs. Walking up and down the street, everyone says hi to each other. It is something about the town that I already appreciate. There´s another family in town that is super kind and have already designated a rocking-chair on their porch to be ¨my chair.¨ Each time I´ve passed their house they´ve waved me down to sit, drink fresco and talk. They´re on my walk to the high school, so I feel that I´ll be spending a bit of time at their house.

The first 3 months here I plan to get to know everyone, better my Spanish, and complete the CAT. The CAT, which stands for Community Assessment Tool, is something that every volunteer has to complete in there first 3 months. It´s basically what it sounds like, an analysis of the community with details such as history, population statistics, education, crime, needs, opportunities, etc etc. From that, we should be able to see potential projects.

In the meantime, I´m going to start on some small things that I know I´ll be doing in the future. The volunteer before me taught English classes at the grade school and HS. Since there are already English teachers at both schools, I felt that it would be better for me to work with the English teachers to help them with pronunciation, fluency, etc. The teachers are really happy about this, and therefore so am I. I also someone became a pseud0-leader of a women´s exercise group. They asked me if I was interested, and of course I said yes, and today found myself leading everyone in stretches before going on a run. Aftwards they had a Zumba tape that they wanted to do. If you have seen this before, picture me and a room full of 40 year old women rockin out to Zumba exercises. It was a lot of fun.

Pura Vida!

Pura Vida

Pura vida is a phrase you hear a lot in Costa Rica. My best translation of it is a mix between "live good" and "chill." If you are walking around town and pass someone you know (or don't know), you can say, "pura vida." You can refer to a person as being, "pura vida." You can refer to an event as being, "pura vida." The other day someone in my town refered to another person as pura vida and I decided that is the ultimate compliment in Costa Rica, and I hope that one day someone refers to me as pura vida. That being said, one day Edwin (a volunteer in my town) was sitting outside when I dog came up and peed on him. This can be referred to as "dura vida."

Focus. The point of this post is my site visit. Yay! There's a million things I could say, so I'll try to hit the main points.

Comte: This place is the Campo.. capital C. The town has about 600 residents. It's about 8 hours of traveling from San Jose, and the closer you get, the hotter is gets, and the more rural is gets. It's pretty much 1 main dirt road. Maybe 20 min walking from 1 end to the other. On the main road there's a grade school, high school, soccer field, 2 pulpereias (small mom and pop store), 2 bars... that might be about it. There is sort of a pseudo-square of houses, where the majority of people live.

Host family: The house I will be living at isn't located in the main cluster of houses. It's on the other side of the main road, surrounded by trees, so it's a nice and peaceful location. There are 9 members in the intermediate family, mom, dad, 2 daughters, 5 sons. The daughters and sons are all in their 20's. 2 sons live elsewhere, and the wife of 1 son lives in the house. I spent the first night there sitting in rocking chairs on the porch, chatting with the 3 girls, I felt very content. I'm looking forward to living in the house.

Gente: The people that live in Comte are amazing. Everyone I met was so warm and welcoming. It's a little intimidating because it's obvious that everyone loves the current volunteer, but I felt the same warmth and love when I met everyone. I am really excited to be a member of this town.

I'll leave this post at a final comment. During my site visit, the current volunteer and I went to the high school, and when we arrived, the entire school was sitting outside waiting for us. They did a goodbye bit for Kathrine, and a hello bit for me. Then the director called me over to introduce myself in front of everyone. It was a really gratifying moment because I stood in front of over 600 people (the high school has 600 because kids from other towns attend it) and talked for a bit in spanish. It was great. Yay Spanish.

Site Assignment!

Friday we were given out site assignments. I am beyond excited about my placement. My site is located in the province of Puntarenas, if you look up Golfito, I am in that area. Its right by the coast and by the Panamanian border. I will be taking the place of a Peace Corps volunteer from the CYF program (the program involves working with youth and families), so my counterpart is the director of the local school. The town is small, about 600, but it seems to have a lot of resources. Among programs I will be involved in are teaching ICT classes, helping to form a development association, helping with hydroponic systems (very cool), possible doing some summer camps for kids, and more. I am really happy about the location and nature of work and feel so lucky to have been assigned exactly what I wanted. I am very grateful. There´s a lot more to say about everything, but I am going to visit the site next weekend so I will update after that. On Thursday and Friday we have counterpart workshop where we meet out counterpart and begin working with them, then on Satuday we travel to our site for 5 days. It´s about 10 hours of traveling from San Jose to my new site. Oy!

So to celebrate site assignments, most of Tico 20 went to the beach this weekend. About 35 of us went to a beach town called Puerto Viejo. The weekend was perfect. We have beautiful weather, the ocean was amazing, and we all got to spend time together before heading out to our new sites. The town was very tranquilo. We stayed at a place called Rockin J´s, where one sleeping option is to rent hammocks. The day involved laying on the beach, playing in the ocean, listening to a live band, dancing, and spending quality time together. I am going to miss spending time with Tico 20.