Well today marks exactly one month since my arrival in my site and so far everything has gone pretty well. As of yet I haven’t done very much that you might consider “work” but the Peace Corps doesn’t expect us to really start doing anything significant until after the first 3 month. Our job now is to get to know our town and the people as best as we can and put together a 15-20 page typed report in Spanish that details the history, population, health, education, social issues, resources, strength, challenges and other things of that sort. It has to include pictures, graphs, and a detailed bibliography to make it as legitimate and professional as possible. It will later used when requesting money or resources for projects to give the prospective donors a thorough and personal depiction of the town.
Basically my days consist of walking around town trying to meet new people and asking questions. I’m trying to make myself visible so that everyone knows who I am or has at least seen me before. When someone invites me to their house I go. When someone invites me to a meeting I go. I go to the high school soccer games/practices and any other activity that might be going on. Other days I spend in my house with my host family and try to read books and magazines in Spanish. Usually after 30 minutes or so I get frustrated and pick up a novel in English. So far I have read three. Sometimes I hang out at our little store we have (the only place people go to besides the bar) and play foosball or pinball and talk to whoever comes. Some weekend days I play soccer and walk around with the high school kids and pick up on a lot of slang and dirty words.
Last Sunday my host brother and sister, a few of their friend, and I went for a 2 hour hike up this creek in the Jungle. The leader had to make the trail with a machete. We were going to hike all the way to the top of this mountain to try and find where the creek started. We were almost there then my sister fell face first into the mud and wanted to go back so we all went with here. It was one of the funniest things I have seen in a while.
The second weekend here we were hit really hard by a tropical storm. It rained for almost 4 days strait with very strong wind. Every room in my house was leaking pretty badly except mine. We probably have the nicest house in town so I cant imagine what it must have been like for some other families. We had a small landslide that cut off the road going into our town, and part of the roof was blown off our church but other than that the damage was minimal as far as I know. They had the road cleaned out enough the following day for trucks to get through but it took over a week for the bulldozer to come and make a path big enough for the bus. Whenever the roads are muddy (about 50% of the time during winter) the bus only can make it to the town before ours and the people, myself included, have to walk an hour to an hour and a half to get to the bus. Most of them carry a huge bag or two of avocados, beans, corn, coffee, or whatever to sell in the city so even though I may want to sometimes, I really can’t complain.
Last week I discovered a section of my town with about 10 houses that I didn’t even know existed. It is actually higher in the mountains than the center of town with an even more amazing view. From up there you can see the city of Santa Cruz and part of Nicoya. You can even see the Golf of Nicoya (the body of water in between my peninsula and the main part of the country) as well as the beach of Tamarindo on the opposite side of the peninsula.
There are three roads going out of my town. The main one goes through four other towns and eventually ends down at the highway between Nicoya and Santa Cruz. The other (more like a path) goes down into the National Park and eventually gets to Santa Cruz and the other goes up deeper into the mountains and I think eventually to the beach. Someone told me that there was another town called Los Angles a little ways down that road so I decided to go for a walk and check it out. After walking up and down these mountain roads for over 2 and a half hours I passed a handful of scattered houses and eventually came to a tiny one-room elementary school that said “Los Angeles.” I came across a family herding 6-8 cows down the road and they told me the only thing in the town is the little school and a few scattered farms. Apparently if the kids there want to go to high school they have to walk all the way to my town every day. And if people want to go to the city they have to walk to my to town catch the bus.
About once a week I take the hour and a half bus ride into Nicoya to do some shopping, use the internet and eat some fast food. It take less than an hour to get to the beach from Nicoya and I have already gone twice to Samara Beach. I can definitely think of a lot worse locations to live.
Anyways, Im in the internet cafe and I have to take off to catch the bus. Thanks for reading.
