From left to right in both pictures: Raffa(my sisters boyfriend), Cintia(my sister), Natalia(my brothers girlfriend), and Mauricio (my brother). There should be an awesome view behind us but there is too much fog.

Hola amigos,

Right now I’m in my usually internet café in Desamparados, and figured I’d write a quick update. The last few days I haven’t had any training because of Semana Santa (Easter) so I have just been hanging out with my family. Yesterday I went with my brother and sister and their boyfriend/girlfriend to a volcano in the province of Cartago, a little less than 2 hours from where we live (not too far from where that concert was). We were super high up in the mountains and there was so much fog we really couldn’t see anything. It was probably about 38 degrees and really windy... it felt like wintertime in NY. It was funny seeing American tourists there, in their shorts and sandals freezing their butts off. Basically there is a huge, deep crater with a bright green lake at the bottom of it, and from the pictures I saw it’s a really amazing view from the top of the crater (we probably had only about 100 meters of visibility, but it was still pretty cool).

On the way home we stopped at this really creepy abandoned health complex way up in the mountains. There was a hospital, dormitories, a church, offices, etc…pretty much a whole little village all fenced in and abandoned. I guess a long time ago it used to be an isolation facility for people with leprosy and then there was a tuberculosis outbreak and they contained the infected people there and later on it was converted into a camp for juvenile delinquents and now nobody uses it but they won’t tear it down b/c it’s considered a historical monument or something like that. Apparently there are all kinds of ghosts that live in there, including a headless security guard, a crazy nurse and a little girl with bloody hands, and its really scary to go inside at night.

Well not too much else is new, I still have a long way to go with my Spanish. I can’t really understand what people are saying to me unless they talk to me like a 4 year old child and use hand gestures (most people just talk super fast though and expect me to understand them)…I have gotten pretty good at just nodding my head and smiling and trying to pick up on a key word here and there. My life is really awkward most of the time…but I’m trying to get better. Hopefully in a few months I will be able to look back on this whole experience and laugh.

For anyone who has been sending me emails to the gmail address I apologize, I had to create that address in order to start this blog and have forgotten to check it until today. I will definitely keep checking it for now on. I have pretty much gotten into a routine here and things are settling down. We have Spanish class the first few days of the week and Thursday and/or Friday we all go into San Jose for a fun-filled day for technical, cross cultural and health training. Most of the time I am in bed by 9pm and usually wake up 6-7ish in the morning.
This Thursday was pretty interesting, all 54 of us were sent into San Jose to the main police/immigration office or whatever it was to get our fingerprints taken and all kinds of other stuff to allow us to stay in Costa Rica for an extended period of time. After that we divided up into small groups and walked/took busses all around the city with our language instructors to locate important places and places of interest. I’m glad we got to do that but I definitely need more practice before I’m comfortable getting around the city on my own. After walking around the city all day many of us went to a nice little restaurant/bar on the main street to relax and share experience. After that a few of us went to Wendy’s and then eventually found our bus home.
Friday we had training all day which included even more shots and a long lectures/ slide shows about Costa Rica geography, history, and politics. We then spend at least an hour and a half learning about all the diseases we can possibly get from mosquitoes including malaria, dengue, dengue fever, and papalomollo and what to do if we think we are infected. After that we got to talk to some current volunteers for a while about their living situations and how it is adjusting to their rural sites.
After that a bunch of us from RCD went to that same pizzeria on our way home from the city… the place has reggae theme and the music/atmosphere is very chill (Bob Marley, candles made out of old Jose Cuervo bottles, incense, couches etc.) and again we were the only ones there. It looks like that might become a Friday night tradition.
Pretty early on Saturday I went with Sarah and her host brother to some “music festival” in Tres Rios (about an hour and a half away buy bus). All I knew about it was that there was supposed to be a pretty popular band for England there and we were supposed to be back by 5-6ish. (I wanted to get back for the salsa dance class at 6 in our community center... I went last weekend and it was pretty fun). After an excruciatingly long bus ride (standing room only) we finally got dropped off in some pretty remote area way up in the mountains of Tres Rios. For 500 colones each (about $1…and well worth it!) we got a ride in the back of a pickup truck for a few kilometers up this steep dirt road. We got off at the end of a long line of people waiting to get into the venue (a cow pasture). It was definitely a different crowd of people then what I have seen here so far. Most people seemed to be Caribbean with long hair/dreadlocks, tattoos etc. and I definitely didn’t fit in. We eventually made our way in and got a seat in the grass (trying to avoid cow poop). I was surprised to see a really big stage, t-shirt vendors, food vendors, and the event was sponsored by Imperial so you know what that means… I really wonder why they picked such an obscure field in the mountains for a big concert but it turned out to be really cool. Everyone who sat around us was really friendly and we even met a few other Americans here on vacation so we got to talk to someone who we could understand for a little while. The music didn’t really get started until mid afternoon and I guess was supposed to go all through the night until noon the next day, and the main band (Steel Fuse) wasn’t going in stage until 1am. Since we are not allowed to stay out anywhere over night (and didn’t even want to) at about 8:30 Sarah and I walked down to the main road and eventually caught a cab back to our town (super expensive but there were now more busses).
Yesterday afternoon (after stopping some random 9 year old kid on his bike and making him draw me a map of our town for my Spanish homework) my host brother had a BBQ outside and his girlfriend and a bunch of their friends came over and hung out for a while. The other 3 girls from my town came over too and it was pretty fun. After all my brothers friends left for another party we went over to this others persons house I don’t know and played Uno for a while.
I guess next month there is going to be a really big concert here with Incubus, Smashing Pumpkins, Duran Duran and a bunch of other bands. I know my brother plans on going and a few other PCTs so if we are still able to buy tickets that would be awesome…I still have to ask around more and find out all the details. I know a Smashing Pumpkins concert isn’t really a Peace Corps things to do haha but I want to take advantage of the leisure time I have now b/c when I get to my site I know I will have very limited opportunities to do these kinds of things.
This week is Samana Santa (a holy week here) so there is no class/training Thursday-Sunday. The busses don’t run to our town during the holiday so most people just hang out at home and eat a lot of food and stuff. My sister said something about her and her boyfriend going somewhere for one of the days (he has a car) and I was welcome to come so I might do that…I’m not really sure where/when though. Well that’s pretty much it…right now I am sitting in a stuff internet café in Desamparados (a city in between my town and San Jose) and have to catch the bus back home pretty soon. If you took the time to read this whole thing then thank you…I know it was really long. I will try to update next time I get online.

Update

Our little store on the left and our church strait ahead.

My room....decorated with punk rock postes and stickers. (My host brother loves old-school american/british punk rock.

My house is back in the trees you cant really see it in the picture

I would post more pictures but it takes forever.

Sorry I haven’t written in a while, it has been pretty hard for me to get to an internet café. There is no organization to this post, I have just jotted down a few random thoughts and experiences.

Basically, I have been living with my host family for a week now and everything is going pretty well, accept for the fact that I can only understand 35% of what they are saying to me. I live with an older couple and their 32 year old son and 29 year old daughter. They are all very patient and try to help me a lot. I wish I could talk to them more but I’m sure that will come in time. We live in a very small town way up in the mountains about an hour for San Jose by bus. It’s a very beautiful area and is actually pretty chilly, especially at night. The food is different but really good, it´s not all rice and beans everyday yet. The house its actually really nice and even has a hot shower.
Our town has a small pulperia (food store) an elementary school, a church, bar, community center, and soccer field. There are 3 other trainees in my town, two are in the “advanced” Spanish class while myself and the other are in the “beginner.” The two of us have our beginner classes about 2-3 days a week from 8:30am until 4:00ish with an hour break for lunch. The classes are right in the community center, which is only a few minutes walk from our house. The other days of the week we get together with either the 14 other Rural Community Development (RCD) trainees or all 54 traineers from Tico 18 (our training class) for technical, safety, health, and cross-cultural training. Its great to see everyone again. We all became pretty close during the first week and now we only see each other once in a while.
By the way there is a gang of renegade cows that roam the streets of my town at night causing trouble. The other night they got through the gate of our house (I think I left it open by accident) and started eating all my host mom’s flowers. We had to go outside and heard them back out onto the street.
Friday night most of the RCD trainees and I (about 12 of us) went to a pizzeria close to my town for dinner. It is right on the side of the mountain (like most of the house in the area) and has the most amazing view of San Jose at night. Everyone had a couple slices of pizza and a couple beers and it was only about $6 each. It seems like most things are a little bit cheaper here (not much) but during training we only make about $4 a day so we still have to be careful.
Yesterday afternoon myself and 2 of the girls from my town took the bus into San Jose with one of the girls host brothers. He showed us around downtown and took us to this really cool music/dance festive. There was all kinds of entertainment: Celtic music, break dancing, Samurai fighting, belling dancing, Caribbean music, and venders selling every you could think of….and this was only during the couple hours we were there, I guess the festival went on for the whole weekend.
At about 6:50pm we were on our way to the bus stop to get the last bus to our town, which came at 7:00pm, when we stopped on the street to meet a friend of the host brother. This was a disabled man in a wheel chair who was blind and didn’t have complete use of either of his hands. He was at least in his 70 and was sitting in the street in his wheelchair with an accordion and a trumpet. He was very friendly and seemed extremely happy. After helping him for about 5 minutes to get his accordion on and get everything situated we gave him 300 colones (about 60 cents) and he played us a song dedicated to “Sarita” (Sarah, on of the girls). It was one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. When he finally finished the song we hurried to the bus stop just in time to see the taillights of the last bus driving away. The host brother hailed a taxi and we had to race the bus to the next stop about 10 minutes away. We took a shortcut and made it with literally 5 seconds to spare. It would have been a very expensive taxi ride all the way back to our town. There is a lot of other cool stuff that has happened but i dont really have time to wrete eveything down.

Some observations so far:

-All the houses I have seen, even in the smaller towns, have big metal fences (many with razor wire) and bared windows. People are very friendly but don’t seem very trusting here.
-A lot of women like to wear tights jeans and very revealing tops (not that Im complaining)
-I have never seen so many motorcycles´/ dirtbikes in my life.
-It seems like everyone ownes at least 3 dogs and there are even more strays wandering the streets.
-There is barely enough room for a single bus on some of the mountain roads yet motorcycles still pass the busses on blind turns going uphill.

-People will always help you if you ask, even if that means giving you the wrong information.

Thats it for now. I will post more soon.

Here are all 54 of us sitting on each other's laps.

I have a lot of other pics I'm trying to upload to this site but it's not working right now.  The training has been extremely thorough and we are very busy...but we still find plenty of time for ultimate frisbee, basketball, hackysack,  and plenty of other activities.  We are all getting very close, very fast. We are leaving our AMAZING Camp/Resort/Training center (or whatever it is) tomorrow to move in with our host families in our training communities.  Im excited but also a little nervous.  Myself and 3 other trainees will be living in a smaller town outside of San Jose, hopefully we are close together and dont have to take the bus to visit....we will see soon.  We were all set loose in groups of 3 in the city of Cartago today for a few hours and had a had some tasks to complete to practice interacting with Ticos. Everyone was very friendly to us and willing to help and it was a lot of fun....even though it made me realiZe how much practice i need. (MUCHO!)  

We start spanish classes in our training communities monday and there is only myself and one other girl in my class so we will be getting a LOT of attention which we both need desperately. That's it for now, time to go sit around the camp fire and play guitar/sing songs with everyone (i feel like I'm in a mix between summer camp and college right now....its great but will be over tomorrow).  Oh yeah, im sitting in a filed with my laptop right now...this will probably be the last time i find wireless internet for a long while.  I will update next time i find internet. Thanks for reading!

Heath

PS  Here is my address if you want to send mail.

Heath Boomhower PCT

Cuerpo de PaZ 

Apartado Postal 1266

1000 San Jose, Costa Rica