All the bright faces of Tico 18 during our second day in Costa Rica
Tico 18 RCD before the adventure began.
Tico 18 RCD 2 minutes after swearing in as VOLUNTEERS!!!
Tico 18 girls plus Maria Eugenia
US ambassadors house
Family party site in Rio Conejo.
Getting ready for the family party.
Jericò and Jericò moms.
We had a pretty intense waterfight for at least an hour.
Some RCD girls with their pants off. 
Getting son love from Tes and Sarah
I dont remember what song this was but it must have been a good one.
RCD saying goodby to Jake )-;
Some pics from my new site:
More to come soon.
Swinging on a vine in a Jungle
This big dead tree I found.
The universial tool of Costa Rica.
The view from my house
Another view from my house.
My sister and cousin playing with my camera. I think they took about 30 pictures of eachother.
Sorry for writing such a long post. I know from experience that people usually stop reading after the first paragraph and just look at the pictures but I have a lot to talk about and it is therapeutic for me to write it all down.
For those of you who have been checking my blog and waiting for an update I apologize. It has been a pretty crazy last couple of weeks finishing up training and getting ready to go to our sites for 2 years. We are all pretty excited but I know most of us are in agreement that we’re just beginning to feel comfortable and at home in our training communities and it is a little scary to take the next step. I know it will be especially hard for me to leave the support network of my “Jerico family” and other RCDers who I have come to be so close with over the last 3 months. At the same time I also welcome the excitement, unpredictability and certain awkwardness of the adventure that lies ahead.
During the last couple of weeks we have had several “going away” parties with a few different significances, along with our swearing-in ceremony. There have also been a few other random adventures and get-togethers. Also, because of Jenny we had the opportunity of enjoying a super classy night, which definitely clashed with our current lifestyle. Thank to her connections the 5 of us (Jerico and Rob) got to visit the house of her Costa Rican friend who she met working in India. He is probably the smartest person I have ever met and lives in what is by far the nicest house I have entered so far in this country. We got to wine and dine, go to an art gallery, watch opera on a huge TV, and have very interesting conversations.
Last week we all had to go to the Peace Corps office in San Jose for our final interviews with the country director, training director, and medical officer, to see if we were ready to become volunteers. Some of us were a little nervous but it was completely painless. This was our first time there and I was glad to finally be able to see our home base, since as of then the whole thing was just a figure of my imagination. There is quite the bank of resource materials compiled by volunteers throughout the years along with a pretty impressive library of reading books, so everyone stocked up for the next few months. We even had our bicycle training so we can request a bike after a month in site. I don’t think a bike would serve me well though. It will probably be much safer and easier to walk in my site, but we will see.
This Friday we all got dressed up and had our swearing-in ceremony at the US ambassadors house, which was all around a really cool experience, except it was weird saying goodbye to our training staff who we have worked so closely with over the last few months. After the ceremony Jenny, Sarah, Tes and I took our host moms out to dinner at this fancy little Italian place and had some really good pizza. We also visited what is probably the nicest mall in Costa Rica and for the day I felt like I was in America. In fact the mall was nicer than Cross Gates and most other malls I have ever been in and had just about anything you could have wanted from the states. Since we are poor Peace Corps volunteers, instead of going to the movies we set on a couch in the Sony store and watched the entire showing of X-Men 3 on three huge plasma screen TVs for free. Surprisingly, nobody cared. Afterward we went to this bar where there was a party for all of Peace Corps Costa Rica, since Tico 14 just finished their service and is leaving for the US and we from Tico 18 have just finished training and are about to embark on our two year journey the same day. There were probably close to 60 other volunteers there and I got to meet a lot of new people from the other groups. Most of us had a hotel in downtown San Jose with a casino and dance club so after the bar we went back there to hang out and dance the rest of the night.
Among other get-togethers we had a goodbye lunch with our RCD Spanish teachers at Nicole’s house in San Juan Norte and a mini Jerico family party at Tes’s house and all our host mom’s brought good food. I’m just noticing that it will take me forever if I try to recap everything I have done the last few weeks so I am going to stop there with all the details. Basically training is over, it ended well with all things considered and now I am lying in bed at my new house in Guanacaste preparing this blog. I can hear nothing but the therapeutic sound of rain on the tin roof and the buzzing sound of June bugs and other unknown insects around my bed as they are attracted by the alluring glow of my computer screen.
The rainy season has begun…and will continue until November/December.
I have been here in Esperanza for a few days now and have already spent a day in the high school observing English classes and have attended a meeting with my local development association. I have also found a shortcut to the center of town that cuts about 10 minutes off my walk. Rather than walking 30 minutes around this little mountain I can walk 20 minutes strait up it (plus there is a little more shade than walking in the road). I also get to walk past mango, star fruit, banana, cashew fruit, avocado, guava, and a bunch of other fruit trees that I still yet don’t know the names of. Yesterday I went on a walk in the Jungle with my sisters to go inspect the water source to our house. We have a pipe that runs to our house from a spring up in this mountain a couple miles away. There are quite a few Howler Monkeys here and they sound like they are about 12 feet tall and want to eat me, but when you get close enough to see them they are only about the size of a dog. You can here them growling or howling or whatever it is from miles away.
I wrote all of that about 4 days ago but here I finally am in the internet cafè posting it. Since then I have gone to watch a big soccer tournment, bought a cell phone thanks to my sister(which was a big adventure in itself), and just hung around town with my brother and his friends learning spanish swear words. Hopefully I will be able to update agan in a week or so.
