A Change in Pace

One thing I am learning about, appreciating, hating, and loving is the pace of life here in Comte, and Costa Rica in general. An important key to success for being a volunteer, and not pulling your hair out, is to maintain the mindset that you are here to work at the pace in which the community wants to work. If you arrive at your monthly meeting with the development association and they decide that on that day, they prefer to relax and drink coffee, you relax and drink coffee. If they want to work, you work. If nobody shows up.. well that happens too. Like I´ve mentioned before, "a productive day" has taken on a different meaning for me. And I enjoy this aspect. I am often asked if I miss the United States, the answer obviously being yes, which is followed by the question of what do I miss. I usually explain that while there are things that I prefer about the U.S., I appreciate the tranquility of my day to day life in Costa Rica. I appreciate sitting on my porch and reading a book, or walking over to the neighbors to bake, or riding my bicycle down to the beach with a friend. I appreciate that I spend my days with people who are content to spend the afternoon at a family members house, laughing and sharing stories. No cell phones, no televisions, no computers (I realize the possible irony, seeing as I´m typing this post on a computer). My point is that it´s good to change your perspective every once and while and look at life from a different angle.

To those are my deep thoughts at the moment.. onto a minor update of what I´ve been up to. As I´ve mentioned, I´ve been finishing up my community diagnostic while continuing work with some smaller projects in town. The diagnostic is pretty much done.. it only lacks an interview with an employee at the local health clinic, which it turns out, is extremely difficult to do! One of these days... I will be traveling to San Jose in about a month for my first in-service training session. I am hoping that the town meeting relating to the projects I will pursue can take place before this, so that I know which training sessions to attend. The past couple of weeks have also been pretty busy with lots of activities in the school. I started computer classes and library time, helped cook and decorate for a culture fair, helped to clean up the property, and more.

On the topic of the culture fair, it was a really cool activity. They had schools from the area come to Comte, where each school represented a province of Costa Rica (there are 7). Each school had to share typical food, dance and clothing of the provice, among other things. They also had a section for "extranjeros" (foreigners), because there are a lot of foreigners that live in the beach communities. So it turned out that nobody came from the beach communities.. leaving me to be the only foreigner at the festival.. and therefore when the time came for the extranjeros to present, I am finding myself in front of a hundred or so people with a microphone in my hand. I was asked to speak about my experiences in Costa Rica as a foreigner. I still feel like I can´t properly describe my feelings on this subject in English.. so here I am trying to do it in Spanish, not an easy task. But I reflected on the question before I spoke and came to the conclusion, which I shared with the room, that it´s a beautiful experience, because as seen in the fair, many cultural differences existed not only between the States and Costa Rica, but in Costa Rica itself, from the provinces, to the communities, to individuals. And while yes we are very different, we are also very much the same. We are people who love, who care, who laugh, who cry, and who fight on a daily basis to better our lives. And it´s a beautiful thing.

Sitting on Peoples´ Porches Drinking Coffee

I have been informed that I am being a bad blogger.. so I will try to pick up my game. Things have been pretty relaxed these last few weeks. The schools are currently on vacations, which is their mid-year break. In Costa Rica, the school year begins at the end of January and ends early December (though I´ve heard that November is the unofficial end of the year). So my last week in town has been relaxed, as will the next.

I have been continuing to get to know people in town, and have been enjoying spending my afternoons in the houses of neighbors and friends. I can´t sufficiently express how friendly the town is. I especially adore the kids from the grade school that run to give me hugs whenever I´m out walking around town. One thing in particular that I am enjoying about this experience is that by spending an afternoon on a neighbor´s front porch, I am essentially doing my job, because I´m learning about Costa Rican culture, sharing my culture and through general conversation I am learning what types of projects interest people in my town. I particularly love the aspect of learning about culture here, because everyone is so excited to share their lives. People are particularly amazed at the common things I have never done in my life, such as killing snakes and milking cows. All in due time...

For the 4th of July weekend I traveled to San Jose to celebrate Independence Day with the other volunteers. We found out that their is an annual picnic (50th year this year!) in San Jose, which was a lot of fun. Normally I am not a fan of corny typical holiday celebrations but I think 4 months outside of the States has made me start missing some of the things that I love about the states. We enjoyed an all you can eat/drink, live rock band, traditional games and sports kind of day. Though I have to note, that after being around 4 months of energetic latin music and dance.. the optional square dance lesson wasn´t my cup of tea. But it was good to be back in the city, see close friends and visit my host family.

8 hours by bus later and back in Comte... I am looking foward to the next month from a work stand-point, because I will be starting computer classes in the grade school, finishing up my town diagnostic and holding a community-wide meeting to discuss potential projects that we can work on over the next 2 years. I see a lot of potential and looking foward to the meeting as a jumping-off point for larger projects.

As always, much love to friends and family in the states. Pura vida.