Living in Costa Rica: Heath's Journal

Done

2010-06-14T08:30:00.005-06:00

Well I'm finally done with the Peace Corps and have been back home for a few weeks now. I wanted to thank everyone who has checked my blog over the last 2 years even though lately I haven't been doing a good job about keeping it updated.

I have posted some before/after pictures of the computer project I did. Thank you to those of you who donated.

Before

After

Thanks for the Support

2010-02-11T16:49:00.002-06:00

Thank you everyone who donated to the computer project. We have risen all the money (over $1600) thanks to your generosity and will soon begin the fun part; actually fixing up the building and buying/installing the electrical system and computers. Hopefully it won’t take longer than 3 month since I am done in the middle of May. Plus I would like to have time to teach a few classes and organize some lesson plan ideas for the teacher to use after I leave.

In other news I spent 3 day in San Jose at the luxurious Crowne Plaza hotel for the Peace Corps Close of Service Conference. We basically learned about the administrative/medical procedures necessary to officially finish the PC and leave country. Sometimes I can't believe it's almost over.

The day after the conference my grandmother came and brought me on an 8 day all-inclusive tour around the country. We toured around San Jose and the local mountains then went to Tortugero, La Fortuna, and the JW Marriott south of Tamarindo. It was definitely the most luxurious week of my life.

We stayed only in 4 and 5 star hotels and were given what seemed to be an unlimited supply delicious food and drink. We were transported in a nice air conditioned tour bus and brought to all kinds of preplanned activities and adventures. I definitely saw what I guess you could call “the other side of Costa Rica.” Thanks Grammy if your reading this!

Anyway I’ll post some before, during and after pictures of the computer project once things get underway so keep posted.

Your chance to help out!

2010-01-05T11:37:00.008-06:00

I hope everyone has had a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I am just getting back to Costa Rica after spending a very cold but enjoyable couple weeks home. Now I need to get back to work on my computer lab project.

For those of you who don't know, I'm helping the elementary school in my town build a small computer lab with internet, and we need your help! Please click on the link at the right hand side of the page under "Computer Lab Project" -------->
or copy and paste the link below in your web browser to read a thorough description of the project and donate if you can.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=515-166

I know Christmas has passed but don't let go of that altruistic spirit!
I will post pictures of our work as soon as we get the money and start the project.

Rafting

2009-12-15T13:26:00.007-06:00

Here are some pictures from when I went white water rafting a couple months ago on the Pacuare River, which runs from the mountains of Cartago to the Caribbean coast in the province of Limon. This is one of the top 5 rivers in the world to go rafting. Not only was the river impressively raging and exciting, the scenery was beyond beautiful. For the whole of the 4-hour trip we passed through completely undeveloped indigenous territory with beautiful waterfalls and rock formations. The weather and conditions were perfect, the wildlife was rampant, and I have to say it was one of my coolest experiences here in Costa Rica.

I'm the one in the middle on the right hand side with the blue shirt.
Me jumping from the waterfall.

Im Back

2009-08-14T09:35:00.007-06:00

So what have I been doing the last 6-7 months? Well it would take too long to write about everything so here are some random pictures I took before my camera died when I took it snorkeling (it was supposed to be waterproof).

Other than what´s in the picture...I went home for 2 weeks, went to Nicaragua for about a week, got my appendix taken out in San José, went white water rafting in the fifth best rafting river in the world, had an amazing thanksgiving dinner at the beach, and a lot of other stuff I can´t think of right now. Rafting pictures coming soon.

Tico 18 saying goodbye to Chris

Soccer Game
Rural Bridge
Bamboo
Normal houses
Cute little girl playing with a machete.
Birthday Party
My cat eating dinner.

Trip to the zoo.

Fruity drinks on the beach
Rodeo in my town.

A Miracle

2009-05-02T09:57:00.018-06:00

The most spectacular and beautiful event occurred last week. A truck came to my town from the government’s ministry of communication and installed a big satellite next to the school. Now I have free wireless internet 200 yards down the road from my house! I just have to walk a little ways down the road with my laptop and I can receive a wireless signal anywhere within a fifty-yard radius of the school. This is of such a monumental benefit to me in so many ways and improves my quality of life in such a way that I cannot express. It’s so hard for me to believe that in such a small, rural town like mine there can internet.

I greatly appreciate this gift from the Costa Rican government, which I can’t help but believe was built exclusively for me since nobody in my town (or in any other towns around me I would imagine) has a computer. Nor are there computers in the school. And if there were computers nobody would know how to use them. There are many things the government could have spent this money on that would have been of much more benefit to the people of my town. I can’t complain though because now one person within 15 miles has internet, me. I guess it would be a good project for me anyways; try to get cheap or donated computers for the school and teach people how to operate them.

I’m trying not to get too excited because due to the destructive nature of the youth (and adults) in my town I fear it won't be long until the equipment is either destroyed or stolen. Oh yeah, they also installed two more payphones which was nice but also unnecessary since we already have one payphone and people are never lined up to use it. It might get used 2-3 times a day if at all. Well, not we have two more. All this was donated without any solicitation from anyone in my town. I really don’t understand the priority ranking techniques of the government but oh well.

Well else is new? Not a whole lot. Last week I visited my friend Rob’s town with my other friend Heather and camped on the beach with his host family and other people from his town for a couple days. It was pretty fun and good to see there the other volunteers live. See the pictures.

According to my landlord in the rainy season mice usually invade my apartment so I decided to acquire myself a kitten. I walked to a guy’s house who I heard had a litter of kittens he was getting rid of. He wasn’t home so I talked to his neighbor and she said he was out hunting. Two days later I went to a different guy’s house who had a bunch of kittens and brought one home. When I got home there was a kitten in a sack waiting on my doorstep. Now I have two. At least they can keep each other company.

The rainy season is starting again. It just rained for about a day and a half strait. Everything looks a lot cleaner without layers of dust and the flora is starting to turn green again. I’m not really looking forward to 5-6 months of perpetual wetness but its important for the farmers and the animals.

This Sunday the local development association, which consists of 4 old men and 2 old women from my town who get together twice a month and complain for 3 hours but never do anything, is reelecting executive members. I attend every meeting but the redundancies of the conversations and complaints is really wearing on me and I feel like the entire group is a huge waste of time. They are supposed to be the governing body of the town and plan activities, events and projects for the betterment of the community but I have been here for a year and they haven’t done much at all. I can tell they are just not into it and don’t want to be there. I don’t know why they joined in the first place. Hopefully we will get some new member with more motivation and fresh ideas. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Well I don’t really know what else to talk about. Here are some pictures. Thanks for reading.

My new best friend

The house you can see up the hill a little ways behind the trees in mine. My commute to the internet went from a 90 minute bus ride to a 3 minute walk.
The 2 new telephones also installed.

Maroñón aka "Cashew Fruit."

Most people don't know it but cashews come from the nut at the bottom of this fruit.

You can see the pile of discarded cashews in the background. The fruit itself tastes disgusting. Honestly one of the most awful things I have ever tasted in my life. Some people like it thought... I guess its an acquired taste.

A kid in a tree picking mangos. He has a long stick with a metal loop and a bag at the end.

A bunch of mangos not quite ripe yet.

These mangos are big and delicious. Fresher and better than the supermarket

A horse eating mangos

This tree grows grapes. They're pretty tasty.
Another sunset picture. I like how this one came out with the little girl and the boats.

Going out to sea in a kayak.

Rob and Heather. We're on our way back in from kayaking around the bay.

Getting a ride across the bay with Rob's friend.

A boat graveyard

The early morning view from our campsite.

Rob with a couple old guys from his town.

Our campsite on the beach

I forget what these things are called but you break them open and there is a little round nut that tastes like coconut.

Working hard in English Class (The older people have a tougher time keeping up)

Bored in English class. (The younger students sometimes get bored waiting for the older ones to catch up)

Crossing the Gulf of Nicoya on a ferry.
Another view from the ferry.

My kittens.

All over my town it looks like the aftermath of an atomic bomb. The farmers are going through the land cutting everything with machetes and burning it to get ready to plant beans and corn for the rainy season.

Jose Luis...my neighbor/landlod.

My Palace

2009-04-21T11:35:00.006-06:00

Well things are looking up. I finally moved out of my host family's house into my own little apartment in the center of town. It's going to be great having my own place and also not having to walk so far all the time. Now I'm only a little way down the road from the soccer field, community center and school. The bus also passes right in front of my house which is a huge plus. Its going to feel great having some privacy, cooking for myself and being able to come and go as I please without constantly being judged and scrutinize by my host family. Basically, I'm gonna finally feel like a big boy again.

The place is nothing fancy. The left hand side of the building used to be the little town store, which is now closed up. The right hand side is my little two room apartment. My neighbor, the single 30 year old former store owner is my land lord. I am paying a little less than $60 a month which isn't a lot but is a significant amount when you consider that I only get about $350 a month from the Peace Corps.

Here are some pictures I took. Hopefully they will give you a good idea what it's like. It looks kind of empty I think but that's because I don't really own that much stuff. Anyways, enjoy.

This is what my house looks like from the road.

My house from the back. My neighbor/landlord's house on the left, mine on the right. I only live in the closest half of the building the farther half used to be the town store but now it's closed. The wooden thing sticking out of the side of the house is where the sink is.

Where I do my cooking

My front door, which interestingly enough also doubles as the bathroom door when it's open.
My bathroom. The shower is behind the toilet.

My little refrigerator. The bedroom is through the doorway to the right. and the bathroom is directly to the left.

The view of the kitchen standing by the refrigerator.

The beds...from standing in front of the desk.

My desk and clothes shelf...from standing between the beds.

This is the view from my front window. Basically just the main road that runs through my town. Now I only have to walk about 5 steps to get the bus instead of 30 minutes up a steep hill.

This is the view from my doorway. You can see the school, community center, and soccer field about 300 meters down the road

More Pictures

2009-04-16T10:08:00.004-06:00

A Costa Rican traffic jam.
A guy selling pottery on the beach

Grammy with a cocktail
Me waiting for the bus.
The supermarket I do most of my shopping at.

Me dreaming

Pollo Campero....my favorite Nicaraguan fastfood restaurant.

Me not getting any mail

The fancy wiring job at the local market.

Visit from home.

2009-03-09T09:02:00.016-06:00

Here are some new pictures, most are from when my grandmother and dad came to visit. Enjoy.

Sailboating

The inside of the sailboat.... what you see here plus 3 bedrooms, bathroom, and control station. Pretty impressive

Scuba diving off Coco Beach

My dad getting a quick pep talk.

Going on an all day horse riding adventure with Alejandro

The old church in Nicoya. It was built in the 1500s by spanish settlers... making it the oldest building on this side of the country.

Some more sugar related photos.

The big male howler monkey that tried to pee on my dad.

Walking around my town

Coffee beans drying

Me picking oranges

This is how most people get aound my town. Walking up and down steep little dirt trails.

A typical little diner in Santa Cruz where we just had lunch.

A normal bus ride...stannding room only.

2009-02-09T10:50:00.007-06:00

Martín pealing rice the old-fasion way

Alejandro and is team of oxen ready to work.

Bringing the oxen to the sugar cane field.

Cutting sugar cane.
Loading the oxcart

unloading the cane. this is the machine that squeezes the juice out. The oxen are attached to one end of the wooden beam and walk in circles for hours while the cane is fed through the machine and the juice draines out into a big plastic bucket.

Boiling down the cain juice in a cauldron held in place by dry mud and rocks

Cleaning up from a morning of juice making. You can see the it boiling in the background.

My friend Matt who lives by the beach is friends with a really nice german woman named Erica who owns a horse riding tour company directly on Junquillal Beach. She generously invited us over for dinner and to go riding last week.

Notice how dry and brown everything is this time of year. A lot of the trees have even lose their leaves due to a lack of water.

Me trying to look like a cowboy.

Matt and Erica staging some photos in a mangrove swamp.

Matt and Erica running down the beach.

Sunset on the beach.

This was a little tornado traveling right down the main road in my town. It started out a lot bigger but by the time I got my camera out it had pretty much gone away. I think the horse was getting ready to run if it got any closer.

Quick update

2009-01-31T09:38:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone. Sorry not too much new. All last week were the national fiestas in Santa Cruz. To my surprise the city was totally transformed into a giant fairground with a big wooden bull-riding arena, erected out of nowhere, dominating the center plaza. The event was televised throughout the nation with bull riders from all over coming to test their skill and bravery on some of the biggest and meanest beast known to Central America. There were rides, games and venders of all kinds along with live music throughout the streets and concerts in the city park. Even multi floor dance clubs were temporarily built for the occasion. There were parades of horse riders and oxcarts and most of the locals were wearing in the traditional Guanacaste cowboy/cowgirl garb. With a host of partiers from around the country and around the world, the people-watching was definitely at its prime.
The Imperial was flowin, the reggaton was bumpin, and the sound of Guanacastecan gritos filled the cool night air. The people who didn’t have anywhere to stay in the city just partied all night and took the early morning bus back to wherever they came from. The parties went on like this for 9 days. I was able to experience two of them but unfortunately neglected to bring my camera.

In other news…we finally got a police officer in our town. We had one until a few years ago when he retired and since then the police station has sat empty. There have been occasional burglaries, thefts, and random acts of vandalism ever since. Hopefully with the new presence of authority, some order will be restored to the area.

They weather has been getting really hot and dry. Every time I leave my house now I have to carry an extra t-shirt with me. Even though I’m in good shape from walking so much I still end up sweating profusely and have to change my shirt before I get to wherever I’m going. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago it was raining every day and I was carrying an umbrella everywhere.

Anyways, not too much else is new. I will try to take more pictures for the next post.

Christmas/New Years and More

2009-01-06T10:11:00.003-06:00

So…what’s happened since last time a wrote? Hmm…well I guess I’ll start with about three weeks ago we had a BINGO event in out community center to raise money for the high school. They were giving away prizes like a coffee maker, electric frying pan, CD player, and a mattress. We had pretty official bingo cards and everything sponsored by an electronics and home supply store in Nicoya and it was actually kinda fun. Unfortunately I didn’t win anything.

There was a dance afterward but I didn’t feel like hanging around and watching old drunk men and teenagers trying to dance with the handful of young girls that exist in my town. I heard the next day that I didn’t miss anything. Everyone got drunk and there ended up being some fights like usual.

We’ve had a few soccer games in my town against some other towns in the area. It’s pretty informal, usually if one team doesn’t have enough players they borrow them from the other team, and most of the players are half drunk so it can be pretty funny.

Two weeks ago was Christmas week so that was somewhat eventful. Well first I’ll start by saying that the local highway association is working on our roads, making them a little wider and smother. This of course is a very good thing and much needed, except right now, since everything is very dry, the roads are pretty much just loose dirt and dust. They look perfectly smooth but if you don’t have a 4x4 it’s really hard to get up and down the mountains leading into my town. Our bus driver also got a “new” bus, which seems to have half the horsepower of the last one and even balder tires. On several hills along the bus rout the people have the get out of the bus and hike up the hill while the bus gets a running start and tries not to die while puttering and to the top of the hill at 5 kilometres an hours.

Anyway, due to this combination of bad roads and an incompetent bus there have been a several instances when I would be sitting along the road waiting for a bus that never shows up. This can be very frustrating, especially when you have a full day planned in the city. Usually I just start walking a hope that somebody decides to give the poor dust-covered gringo a ride. The locals are very accommodating; the problem is that there is almost no traffic.

At any rate, this is my Christmas story: Two days before Christmas I helped Carmen’s family make tamales. In case you don’t know, they are pretty much my host family except I don’t live with them. Anyways I guess tamales are the typical Christmas food here and throughout most of Latin America and almost everyone makes them, or at least eats them. They are pretty much made of grinded corn mush with spices, rice, potatoes, carrots, peppers, and pork wrapped up in banana leaves, tied tightly and boiled in a big pot (see pictures). We made over one hundred in one day and I still have blisters scars on my hands from cutting so many peppers, carrots, and potatoes. I kept getting sent out with a machete to go look for more big banana leaves, which then had to be stripped from the stem and burnt over a fire to make them softer, and more fabric-like and therefore less likely to crack when wrapped tightly. Since they don’t have electricity all the work was don’t by candlelight which made it all the more interesting, if it wasn’t for the little battery-powered radio we were listening to it could have easily been a couple hundred years ago. It was fun listening to Christmas Carols in Spanish and putting together tamales until 12:30am but I have to admit, I was pretty tired by the end of it and ready for bed…especially since I’m usually in bed and sleeping by 8:00pm.
The following days, Christmas eve and Christmas, most people kept up with their normal farm work. Besides visiting family members in town and eating tamales there was little variation from a routine Wednesday and Thursday. Nobody really exchanged gifts and I only saw one house in my town with a Christmas tree. I guess in the cities the Christmas tradition here is very similar to ours in the states, but in the rural towns where most people struggle economically, Christmas is by no means a material holiday.

For New Years I had the amazing opportunity to spend 2 nights at Flamingo Beach. My friend Kelsey´s parents are renting a condo on the beach for a couple months and they let her invite a bunch of other volunteers over for New Years. The condo was beautiful, directly on the beach, and with a really cool swimming pool. After a very ¨different¨ Christmas in my town it felt good to hang out with other Americans for New Years. We grilled burgers, drank some beers, played some games, and traded a lot of stories. There was even a really good firework show at midnight. It actually felt more like the fourth of July than New Years. It´s not the same without the cold and snow (not that I miss it).

Here’s a little story of an interesting day. I’ve had many days like this one but since I wrote about this in my journal I actually remember some of the details. Its kinda long, you can skip it if you want. Anyway, here we go:

The day after Christmas my friend Andres and I decided to go to Nicoya for the day to hang out. We met at the bus stop in the morning and both immediately realized the bus would not be coming. It had rained for an hour or so in the morning (the first time in about a month) and the once dusty, dry road became a 4 inch deep mud road. Usually the road is packed down enough from traffic that the rain runs right off into the ditch, but since the road had just been worked on, the water soaked right in and instantly made it a muddy mess.

We decided to start walking anyway and see what would happen. After about an hour we decided to stop at this little store to have a coke and some plantain chips. Some guy with a truck who was there said he would give Andres and I, a ride to the highway, along with 4 other people who were there still waiting hopelessly for the bus. After about 5 minutes in the truck the driver and his friend stopped by this little trail entrance and got out with machetes. They said they had to go cut some plantain to load in the truck. Andres and I and another guy offered to help. We hiked about 10 minutes back into the jungle until we came to this little farm with about 50 or so plantain trees. The guys from the truck started going around chopping off the bunches (I don’t really know what else to call them) of plantains and we started carrying them back to the truck. They were pretty big, probably weighing an average of 50lbs apiece. After lugging these things out of the jungle for an hour or so my nice, clean clothes were covered with mud, sweat and plantain sap. I got back into the truck, nestled myself into the pile of plantains, and tried to avoid the bewildered giant spiders that kept emerging from their nests within the bunches. I sat comfortably knowing I had earned my ride to the highway.
Along the road, on the first hill after leaving the main road we saw our bus abandoned in the ditch, covered in mud. It was obvious that it wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.

We waited along the highway for about a half hour until a bus finally came for Nicoya. By the time we got there we only had a couple hours until the bus left to go back to our town. I did my usually stuff; went to the post office, used the internet, ran some errands, got some food then went to the bus station to wait for the bus. Since it had been really hot and sunny all day the roads had definitely dried back up and we knew the bus would be able to get up the hill to our town. We also knew that the owner of the bus company has extra busses he could send in case of an emergency to pick the people up, so we waited in total faith that the/a bus was on its way. After waiting for almost an hour the rest of the crowd had given up hope gradually dispersed, looking for other ways home, or someone to stay with in Nicoya.

We decided to take a different bus along the highway and get off at the road that heads up toward my town and just start walking. When we got off the bus we heard a loud music coming from down the road. We walked to the center of town and saw a big party getting under way. There was gonna be bull riding and dancing and all kinds of fun and though we were tempted, we decided not to stay. It was getting dark and we knew we had at least 3 hour walk ahead of us, all up hill, and that the earlier we left the better chance we would have of getting a ride. We started our hike up into the mountains, weighed down by 10lbs of rice and a big bottle of cooking oil for Andres’s mom. Within 30 minutes it was dark, but at least the moon was fairly bright. It wasn’t too long before we ran out of thing to talk about but we kept up a good pace for about an hour and a half.

Not a single car passed us going up into the mountain only a handful of people coming down to the party. One car coming down the road stopped and said the driver said he was a “private taxi” from Nicoya and he would be willing to give us a ride back to our town for $15. Andres and I looked at each other, drenched in sweat, out of breath, knowing that we had at least another hour and a half to go, the majority up hill. He shrugged his shoulders and I offered the guy $10. He turned around his car in the narrow road and off we went. Upon getting into the car I realized he had a buddy in the passenger seat and by the way they were talking and the manner he was driving, it was obvious that they had been drinking. A new bar had opened up that week at the top of this one hill and apparently his uncle was the owner and he was on his way to home from there. He insisted on taking us up to meet his uncle, who we already knew since he’s the bus driver for the high school in my town. It was actually a really nice place, all open with a thatched palm roof and an amazing view of the Guanacaste flats. As we were enjoying the view we actually saw an airplane land at the Liberia airport…I never realized the airport was so close.

He eventually took us back to our town where we still had a 35 minute walk to Andres’s house. By the time we go there it was almost 8:00. His mom made us a dinner of rice, beans and coffee then with his siblings and crazy uncle we watched the first Lord of the Rings which for some reason didn’t have Spanish subtitles. I spent the next 3 hours trying to translate everything that was going on into Spanish. The younger kids kept asking outrageous questions that I would have had trouble answering in English. Since I hadn’t seen the movie in over 5 years I kinda forgot what it was all about myself. I explained things the best I could and ended up making most of it up.
It was definitely a humbling experience because even though I’m getting comfortable with my Spanish, I realized how much vocabulary I’m still lacking. After the movie I went to bed with visions of Orcs and Hobbits dancing through my head.

Well if you´ve made it through this whole thing without falling asleep I congratulate you.
Keep checking back for more. Enjoy the pictures!

Christmas & New Years Pics

2009-01-06T08:41:00.006-06:00

Putting together a 1000 piece puzzle. aka rompecabeza (head breaker) in Spanish. Notice the happy faces =)

Thanks mom.

Making Tamales for Christmas

Adrian giving himself bunny ears.

Carmen and Jessica cooking tamales

Cooking more tamales

Flamingo beach with Kelsey and here parents. Its 10 pm and Rob is already passed out.

Imperial

Me with a little Costa Rican man on my back.

Hanging out on the beach

The sunset from Flamingo beach.

Trying out the waterproofness of my camera. Matt is ¨cutting it¨

New Years eve at Flamingo Beach. The streets were so crowded we could barely walk.

My new desk...already cluttered. Thanks Grammy!

Alejandro and I coming back from picking oranges. He had to go get that hat especially for the picture.
I´ve actually never seen an orange orange here. They are all greenish yellow on the outside.

The way you eat oranges here is to cut the outer skin off with a knife and then cut a hole in the top and squeeze/suck the juice out. I´m not really sure where they got this knife but it cracks me up. Its just 2 pieces of scrap metal welded together and sharpened on one side.
Jessica and her gradma, also Alejandro and Carmen´s mom. I feel like everyone I know is in some way is related.
Taking a drink of water out of something.

Deep in thought.

Me being given a Full Nelson.

Hola

2008-12-08T15:31:00.003-06:00

Hey everyone. I know it has been a while since I’ve written anything. Its not because there is nothing interesting going on, it’s just that things that once seemed noteworthy or exciting are now just part of my everyday life and I don’t even think to write them down. Even though I definitely don’t have a very busy life, I am rarely bored and lacking constructive/fulfilling activity. The truth is some of the most beautiful and gratifying experience can’t really be explained in writing and I just appreciate them in my own quiet little way.

Anyway, the last month has been beautiful, meteorologically speaking. The temperature has been in the high 70s, low 80s with sun and a light breeze most days. At night it gets cold enough to wear a sweatshirt…definitely ideal sleeping weather. It only rains once in a while, but usually very heavily and without warning. Of course it always seems to be when I’m out walking around with no protection and have to resort to hiding under a mango or avocado tree. I guess during the next 4-5 months the temperature is going to gradually get hotter and dryer to the point where it’s uncomfortable. I can already see that I’ll have to invest in a fan for my bedroom.

On another topic, my host sister got married two weeks ago. It was a big catholic wedding in the main church in Nicoya with family and friends from all over the country. She arrived 2 hours late, I guess because the hairdresser messed up her hair and they had to redo it or something. Meanwhile we all sat around awkwardly in the church wondering what was going on. After the church service there was a big party in my town’s community center. There were way too many people who I didn’t know and the music was way too loud so I went home early and went to bed.

Two Fridays ago I went on a little spelunking adventure with my friend Andres. We went to Barra Honda Nation Park, which is about an hour west of Nicoya, where the Tempisque River meets the Golf of Nicoya. We got a tour guide who took us on a 2km hike up this mountain to the entrance of one of the park’s seven caves. We climbed down a 60 foot ladder to the first room and then down another 12 footer to the second room. There were all kinds of cool stalactites, stalagmites and crystal rock formation and everything was so beautiful and natural. The pictures don’t really do it justice. I guess the other caves are bigger and really dangerous, and you can only go in them with a special license or something. Luckily the place isn’t very well known and hasn’t been ruined yet by tourism.

It is still coffee picking season and the harvest is in full force. The bean pickers get paid about $2 a bucket and if they work really hard they can fill 8-10 buckets a day. This is really good money and the main source of income for a lot of the farm laborers. During other months they get paid about $6 a day to do “machete work” or pick corn or black beans which is barely enough to get by and feed a family (if your not an alcoholic). Since people make good money right before Christmas and New Years, and the weather is perfect, there are usually all kinds of parties and community events. I guess the festive mood usually lasts into February. December and January are supposedly the best months of the year, at least in Guanacaste anyway so at least I have that to look forward to.

Umm...what else.....oh yeah, I have gone to 3 different birthday parties in the last month. They usually involve lunch with cake and the men playing guitar and singing for 4 hours strait. Other than that I cant really think of anything else to write about. Enjoy the pictures and keep an eye out for more coming soon.

Heath

pics

2008-12-08T14:42:00.007-06:00

Visit from Home

2008-11-13T21:00:00.008-06:00

Volcanic Hotsprings. One of Mom's highlights.

About to go Zip-Lining

Jim about to fly 50 miles an hour down a half mile steel cable 600 meters above the rainforest.

Can you see my mom in this picture??

Mom with a few wines in her :-)

Having a great day four-wheeling on the beach.

Hanging with the locals.

An after lunch walk on the beach.

Beautiful view from our room.

Pizotes.

Our rent-a-car.

All volunteer conference.

Breakfast

What we called home for 4 days.

Can you see the little girl hiding in the coffee?

Me with an ax.

Coffee beans ready to pick.

2008-10-27T11:22:00.002-06:00

I forgot to post the monkey. There are families of monkeys that roam around my town. They are pretty cool to stop and watch.

In the higher parts of my town there are actually a lot of pine trees. Then you go down a few hundred yards there are a lot more banana trees and more tropical plants.

Some more pictures.

2008-10-27T10:29:00.005-06:00

Another view from my town. These pictures look a lot more spectacular in person.
This is the road out of my town. The only thing that separates my bus from a deadly drop is a foot-high pile of dirt.

Hanging out in front of the store. Its corn season.

Dinner! It´s kinds funny, people here are afraid of toads. They think that they bite or something and find them to be particulary grotesque animals. When i showed this picture to some friends here they started gaging and almost threw up.

This is how you cook food here. Burning little pieces of firewook under big metal pans on top of clay or concrete things.

Martín and Alejandro pretending like they understand what I am trying to teach them.

Alejandro practicing the colors.

"This lunch is brought to you by the color yellow"

A couple of my best friends. My phone and dictionary.

Walking home from English class in the rain.

My 18 year old host sister Mylene and here 24 year old fiancè Dennis. She is 4 months pregnent.

My 12 year old host sister, Lilibeth. I think I forgot to post a picture of here before.

Me at a birthday party. The guy behind me is wearing a t-shirt that says "Grandpa Rocks" (he is not a grandpa) There is this large woman in my town who likes to wear a shirt that says "naughty girls need lovin`too" I don´t know where they find them.

A pretty cool bird that was was right next to my house.

That´s it for now. In a week a bunch of us are meeting up in San Jose to watch the election. The following 3 days we have an All Volunteer Conference where we will be camping in the mountains, the day after the conference my mom and Jim get here and the vacation begins!

Keep posted for more.

2008-10-13T15:27:00.000-06:00

Hola amigos y amigas. Some of you have told me you would like to see more on my blog. I will do my best to post more, more often. Here is a long one for you. You might want to read it in several sittings so you don’t get too bored….seriously.

Well what’s new? Lets see…I went on a field trip with the 7th and 12th graders of my high school the other week to El Rincón de la Vieja. It’s a volcanic mountain range located about an hour north of the city of Liberia, and a little over 3 hours from my town. It was pretty cool, there were all kinds of geysers and hot springs. The water was boiling and way to hot to touch. There was even a really big waterfall we could get right up close too. The animals weren’t afraid of us and the trees we like none I have seen so far.

We basically just walked around the hiking trails for a few hours, had some lunch on the picnic tables, and headed back home. It was kinda like a Thatcher Park type of thing. We stopped at the mall in Liberia for a half hour. It was pretty exciting for some of the kids from my town who don’t get out much. The whole ride home I sat between two 7th grade boys who found it necessary to teach me every bad word and vulgar phrase they could think of at the time.

I am getting into the habit, when the weather seems nice, of going on long walks in different directions away from my town to get new views and figure out what’s on the other side of the mountains. I have found out (as I already knew from my map) that to the north there are more mountain, and the city of Santa Cruz, to the east is the city of Nicoya, el Rio Tempisque and the Golf of Nicoya, to the south are more mountains until Playa Samara and to the west, once you get over this one mountain you can see pretty much up and down the entire coastline of the northwestern side of the Nicoya Peninsula.

Last time I went for a walk I was trying to find a town called Vista al Mar (View of the Sea) but I ended up talking a wrong turn (or not taking the right turn I think might be more appropriate) and just kept walking further and further into the middle of nowhere. Then out of nowhere it started raining unnecessarily hard. I put on my rain jacked but within half an hour I was soaked through anyway, my cell phone included. After about 5 hours of walking (which included an hour walking down a dead end road and then an hour backtracking) I came upon an abandoned house. There I decided to strip down and ring out my clothes, dump the water out of my Gortex and supposedly waterproof boots and sit and waited for the rain to stop.

After an hour or so of awkwardly standing around cold and naked the rain started to slow down a little. I thought it a good time to put on my damp, cold clothes and start the three hour trek back to my town. After about an hour a car came by (the only car I had seen all day) and the driver was nice enough to stop and offer me a ride, which of course I accepted. He was a surveyor working somewhere out there in the middle of nowhere and on his way back to Santa Cruz, which meant he had to pas right through my town. Qué suerte verdad? Next time I’ll bring my umbrella. I’m looking forward to summer (the winter in the US) because it almost never rain. I notice I fell a little more depressed on the rainy days and happier on the sunny day, which I think is completely normal. Starting the middle of November we should have nothing but sunny days for a few months.

I have received the books for my community English and have had 3 official classes so far with 20 students, mas or menos depend on the weather. They have gone surprising well and I enjoy teaching more than I thought I would. I think mainly because it is my time to be the language expert and their time to struggle and sound silly (99 percent of the time it is the other way around). The Peace Corps ran out of the teacher’s edition of the book that has the lesson plans and activities so I have to make them all up on my own. It’s kinda hard to keep a three-hour class exciting and interactive but I’m doing my best.
I have already bought the books and started the class and people keep coming up to me asking to join. I have to tell them no and they are not very happy. Its their own fault though. I had the class advertised for 2 weeks and they had plenty of time to let me know. Oh well, maybe I will start another class in a few months if there are enough new people.

My program director came to visit my town and talk with my community counterpart a few days ago. It went pretty well, my counterpart (Carlos, the ADI president) made me sound like a much better volunteer than I think I am. I rode with my program director to my friend Matt’s town where he met with his counterpart. After he left I went to Matt’s English class, then we watched the finale of Latin-American Idol (like American idol but in Latin America) with his host family. It was really exciting because there were only two participants left, one girl from Panama and the other from COSTA RICA, Maria Jose. After a very suspenseful show the Panamanian ended up getting the most votes (all done through text message of course) and went home in victory. It was a shocking defeat and very sad night for the Republic of Costa Rica.

The reason I spent the night in Matt’s town was because we were both going to a regional volunteer conference about 4 hours northeast of where we live. So the next day we got up early, missed the bus to Santa Cruz and got a ride in the back of an old Land Cruiser. We fought each other in Age of Empires in an internet Café for a few hours and the got the bus to Liberia. We ate lunch at Burger King then got the bus to Bagaces. Then we got a Taxi to this cool hot springs and cabins type place called Thermo Mania. (what a name) we met up with about 8 or so other volunteers from the are, discussed some peace corps stuff and had a fun night in the hot springs. I left Bagaces on the 8am (too early) bus and eventually got back to my town at 2:30 or so. That was 2 days ago. Yesterday I had a good English class but there was a lot of rain and only about 12 out of 20 showed up.

Oh by the way, I got a new camera since my old one decided to stop working (thanks mom!), so expect some new pictures soon.

As always, thanks for reading.

Warning: There is no overwhelming need to read any further unless, of course, you are extremely bored and interested in staying that way for 10 more minutes, or if for some reason you have a peculiar interest in reading a poorly written and uninteresting analysis of my physical state, or if you are my mother or grandmother, in which case such interest would be normal and whom I know will probably read it anyway.

Sometimes I get bored and start writing and this is the kind of stuff that comes out:
Even though I am eating considerably healthy and getting plenty natural exercise and sleep (9-10 hours a night) I can’t help but feel that my body is in a constant state of degeneration. For example, I can walk around mountain roads for hours without getting tired but this morning I just tried doing pushups for the first time in many months and the results were disastrous.
I remember intense pushup competitions with my buddies years ago when I could easily pump out 60-70 with pride. Even when I wasn’t in the best of shape I could do at least 40 or so. How many can I do now? Well, I got to fifteen and I had to stop because it felt like my chest was going to rip apart! Unbelievable right!? Well its true. And of course this change can be discerned both visually and tactilely in my muscle tone. What were once rock-hard muscles I now find somewhat softer, and might dare even to say, with noticeable sagginess.
“What is the cause of this?” one my ask themselves. Well I will tell you. The problem is twofold. First off, the exercise I’m getting is almost purely cardio, and completely lower body. Therefore the overdeveloped tissue of my upper body is naturally reducing in denseness and size due to its newfound vestigiality (my computer tells me that “vestigiality” isn’t a real word but I will use it anyway because I don’t believe it, and because its supposed definition makes complete sense in this situation). Also, my diet consists largely of rice, beans, eggs, chicken (sometimes) and the occasional corn or flower tortilla. Although this is obviously healthy, natural food the protein level is drastically lower than what my body has been accustomed to for years. This diminished protein intake necessitates a supplemental source i.e. the unused and therefore unnecessary tissue of my overdeveloped upper body.
I’m not exactly sure how much weight I have lost, the last time I had a medical check in San José (5 months ago I think) I weighed 163lbs. I know I weighed about 185 when I graduated from college and at one point during my senior year I was pushing 200 with a full stomach. This is all with below 10% body fat of course. I currently have a 30 inch waist, making my old 32 inch pants pretty loose and requiring the constant use of a belt for reasons of practicality rather than mere fashion. I also find that the tightest holes on my belts don’t seem to be as tight as I would like them to be.
Even though this is all quite disturbing, mainly due to the amount of hard work and money I had invested into my physique over the last 5 years, I guess it should be expected.
The fact is that although I haven’t touched a weight in seven and a half months there are plenty of other ways to accomplish anaerobic exercise. My town is not suffering from a lack of tree branches that could be used for doing pull-ups nor is there a lack of 1x2 meter open places that could be used as pushup sites. Of course, I am also a certified personal trainer (though I think my certification runs out soon) and therefore am familiar with a plethora of strength training techniques which do not require the use of a gym, so I am certainly capable of implementing some sort of creative exercise program. So why have I let myself go? Well I have thought about this and I guess the truth is that I just don’t really care right now, I’m in the Peace Corps for goodness sake! Right?
Or does the fact that I’m writing this show that I obviously do care? I haven’t quite figured it out yet.
I’m sure much of what I am saying has been embellished do to the existence of an innocent, self-discerning paranoia that undoubtedly has been generated as a result of me having too much free time to think about such foolish things. I know that none of this is very interesting to anybody other than myself so if you are still reading this I apologize, you should have headed the warning. I am well aware that it is the goal of most good writers to provoke a certain amount of stimulation to the readers five senses, mainly visual, to relocate them to another place and experience. But who said I was a good writer? The fact is I’m just trying to get some stuff out of my head and down on paper(or cyberspace) for mental health reason.
Anyways, I guess I’ve decided that I should try to start some kind of regular exercise program, even if just pushups, pull-ups and sit-ups. It would also be nice to start jogging again and I world love to be able to go on long explorative bike rides like my fellow volunteers. The sad truth is the geography of my town is not very conducive to any form of exercise other than walking. The Peace Corps even issues volunteers mountain bikes for the duration of their service but I declined mine because I knew I would be pushing it more than riding it, and it would end up being more of a liability than an asset. It looks like my hiking boots and the mountainous terrain will continue to be my gym and at the same time will serve to satiate my explorative nature.

Also this blurb was an attempt to write something a little more linguistically rich than usual. If you found the result to be more annoying than enriching I’m sorry. I’m not really sure if I should be writing purely factual and informative pieces or more thoughtful and intuitive works. Maybe I should just post pictures and include nothing more than a short description of each one when necessary. Either way, as always thanks for taking the time to read this and keep checking for updates.

A lil´somethin

2008-10-03T15:58:00.000-06:00

As I sit at a little table in front of my friend Alonso’s house trying to explain to him the conjugations of the verb “to be” we decide to take a break from studying and enjoy the peaceful pacific sunset in the distance. The light blue sky radiating with every shade or orange, red and purple imaginable.

Alonso, who is in his early 20s and has never been very far from our little mountain town of 350 people explains to me that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life working in the fields with a machete making $6 a day like the rest of his friends. He tells me about the luxury hotels and resorts, and multimillion dollar homes he knows are located just out of sight on the other side of the mountains and how if he spoke English he could easily get a decent paying job anywhere along the coast. This, he believes, with bring him the more exiting and fulfilling life he is looking for.

The fact that he was never exposed to English in his rural elementary school and unable to attended high school due to family work obligations makes English learning a particularly daunting task. Never the less he is undeterred and probably one of the hardest working students in my community English class. I gladly take some time to work with him one-on-one to make sure he keeps up with the others.

We stare in silence when suddenly a flock of squawking chickens streak past. I look up to see Alonso’s mom in hot pursuit with a broom in here hand cursing something about hell and damnation at the animals which have invaded her door-less kitchen for the umpteenth time that evening. She nicely smiles at me, lights the lantern on our table and goes back to sweeping the dirt floor of their humble little house.

After finishing the generous dinner of rice, beans, eggs and homemade corn tortillas, I give Alonso a little extra homework and say my goodbyes to his parents and 5 brothers and sisters. Taking out my flashlight I turn to start the hour and a half walk back to my house when Alonso’s dad yells from the doorway, like always reminding me that I should buy a horse or mule, instead of always walking everywhere.

I chuckle and wave goodbye, inside knowing he makes a valid point. Since most of the roads (trails) are too steep, rutty, rocky and/or muddy for a bicycle, it makes complete since to invest in a horse. What is hard for them to understand is that in a lot of way I enjoy the long quiet walks, especially at night. Aside from passing no more than a handful of sleeping house and the occasional pasted-out drunk, it is just me and the stars, the cool breeze, the crickets, and the howler monkeys that make it their job to scares the crap out of me when I get too close to their trees. In a countryside as beautiful as this why hurry?

This is a fairly typical evening for me here in rural Costa Rica and the story of Alonso is similar to many others in my town. Although I was not sent here specifically to teach English, I do find that teaching takes up a surprising portion of my time. In a rural town located only about 12 miles from some of the country’s most popular beaches, in a country who’s economy depends largely on tourism revenue from North Americans and Europeans, the locals understand more than anyone the benefits of learning English. Though most people I meet here are happy with life the way it is, there is a surprising amount of people, mostly the youth, who have a strong urge to make a different life for themselves.

For me, as I knows many of my fellow PCV friends here will attest too, living for so long with a host family can make life a little more...lets say…“interesting.” For instance, I’m getting to the point now where I can tune out the roosters that start crowing furiously outside my bedroom window everyday at 4:00am but I still have to wake up at 6:00 with visions of buffalo soldiers dancing through my head because my host-brother finds it necessary to blast the same Bob Marley CD every morning while getting ready for school.

Also for some reason it still disturbed me a little when I’m sitting in my room reading just before dinner and watch through the window as my 12-year-old host sister runs out the backdoor and brutally kills an unsuspecting hen with whatever object happens to be laying around at the time. Then 20 minutes later there it is sitting on the table with the usual dish of rice and beans. Of course I have more gruesome accounts involving pigs and cows, not that I hesitate to eat any of them.

Due to the numerous tourists here it is fairly easy, especially in the more developed parts of the country, to be just another gringo (American) walking down the street. Most people are friendly and fairly patient with my stumbling Spanish, and some thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to practice their English. This is usually little more them the yelling out of random words or phrases as I walk by them on the street. I hear “hello my friend” call out from from random people all the time but if I stop and respond in English they are suddenly silent and embarrassed. A also remember one instance standing at a bus stop when a boy I had never seen before ran up, look me in the eye and said “thank you very much.” When I simply replied with a “you’re welcome” his face lit up and he ran away grinning, obviously content with his conversation skills.

I guess in some ways Costa Rica might be a little different from the traditional Peace Corps country. I have even heard it referred to by some as the “Posh Corps” due to the existing luxuries that are very rare in other Peace Corps location. I can agree when I think of a few of my fellow volunteers who I know live in homes with wireless internet and are a short bike ride form malls, Burger Kings and movie theater. Even the more “isolated” volunteers like myself don’t live much further than a couple hour bus ride from places with internet, restaurants and bars. Most of us here also have cell phones which also makes life that much easier. Considering the beauty and popularity of the country and the considerable luxury that many volunteers live in, one might be confused to learn that the dropout rate here is among the highest in the region. Although the reasons for this are debatable I think I have a pretty good idea. Keep posted for more.

Pura Vida

Heath

2008-09-30T12:30:00.003-06:00

Sorry I havn´t updated in a while. I will write something up soon.
Here are some pictures from a party at my house 3 weeks ago I woke up at 6:00am to my host dad and 2 friends killing and then butchering a half-grown cow outside my bedroom window. Then in the afternoon, into the evening, we all ate a lot of meet.

I started community Englishs classes a couple weeks ago. I have a class of 20 people are we are meetine every wednesday and sunday for 3 hours each day. The age range is 13-50 and the skill range is just as wide, which makes things a little complicated for me.

For everyone who called me or sent me a card for my birthday, Thank You so much! I really appreciate it. Very few people here knew it was my birthday.
Anyways, enjoy the pictures and I will try to post more soon.

All my host cousins

My host dad and his bad hand.

We moved the TV outside and sang karaoke and danced (well they did anyway).

My host brother on the right and a few of his friends/neighbors/cousins .

Quick update.

2008-08-29T10:43:00.005-06:00

I guess not that much has happened in the last month. I have been wandering around my town everyday meeting new people and finding different houses hidden in the woods. I got stung in the foot by a scorpion one night when I was sleeping. I went to San José with the other RCDers for a week of training in a nice hotel. We learned a lot of relevent information and had a lot of fun too. My host dad cut the inside of his hand where the fingers connect to the palm with a machete, severing the tendons connecting all but his pointer finger. He is in the hospital now in San José to see if they can reconnect them. I was there when it happened...it was pretty gross too say the least. I am going to have a meeting next week about starting english classes for the community. A lot of people say they want english clases but we will see how many are actually willing to walk through the rain and mud to sit in a classroom for 3 hours twice a week. I will keep you updated. Enjoy the pictures.
Pura Vida
Heath

2008-08-29T09:29:00.004-06:00

Right now there are bananas and plantains hanging all ove the place.

This is the center of my town were most of the infracture is. The houses are all over the surrounding mountains. You can see the soccer field, school, community center, health center and police station. The little store is at the bottom of the picture behind the trees. My house is way way to the left off the picture.

Pastor Martín (by the window) and Alanso (the guitar player) waiting for church to start.

Carlos and Eric praying about something.

Some of the highschool kids.

Alejandro showing me how to us the trapiche (sugar cane crusher) to get sugar cane juice...which they then boil and make molds of dulce (blocks of crude natural sugar) which they sell or use to make agua dulce "sweet water" a traditional drink sometimes used as a substitute for coffee or during holidays.

You dont wanna get your fingers stuck in there.

Pure sugarcane juice. They filled me up a big glass (with dirt, cane-fiber and who knows what else still in it) and made me drink it on the spot. It doesnt really taste as good as you would think.
They attach 2 oxen to the trapiche to turn it and crush the sugarcane.

Alejandro standing on a big pile crushed sugar cane.

There are definitely more people who get around on horse than car.

I like the way this picture came out. On a clear day you would be able to see the ocean from here. This is Carlos, my "counterpart" and president of the local development association. The same guy in the church picture.

The church in Nicoya built around 1600. This picture is during the festive when there was a concert going on to the right.

The the only boys in RCD Tico 18. Rob, Matt, and me.

Some nice Italian place we ate dinner before we went out.

A bunch of us went out with Sylvia (our old boss) in San José to say goodby. She left Peace Corps to go to grad school in Spain.

2008-07-26T10:07:00.000-06:00

I know it has been a long time since I last wrote, which means I have a lot to talk about. He it goes:

About 4 weeks ago we had an optional training event in San Jose, which I went to, about a program to teach micro-enterprise development in the high school. That night I went back to my training town, Jerico, with the other volunteers from there and spent the night in my old host-family’s house. It was quite nostalgic for us, remembering all the good//bad/awkward times we had there. The following day we all got a hotel in San Jose and had a party for Tico 15 who was closing service and leaving for the US the following week. I came back Sunday evening and since there are no busses to my town on Sunday I had to walk over 3.5 hours from the highway up the mountain roads (most of it in the dark and pouring rain) to get to my town.

The next 4 days I just hung out in my town and did my thing until Thursday when a bunch of us met up at Jaco Beach for a couple nights to celebrate the 4th of July. We rented a little cabina a block from the beach and had a really good time. It was quite the adventure finding my way to Jaco from my town. I had to take 4 different busses. The bus from my town had to be pulled up the mountain with a truck because it was too muddy to make it out on its own.

The following week a bunch of college students from the University of Costa Rica came to my town studying the area, which they believed to be a good place to start a rural tourism project. They stayed in the national park down in the valley and walked up every day for almost a week (a 3 hour walk up a steep mountain). They organized a town meeting in my community center and explained to the town some possible tourism projects that would be possible to implement. The people who came to the meeting thought it was a great idea and we have had two meetings since then and are in the process of forming a “junta de tourismo communal:” An organized tourism group to start researching projects and see what we have to do to put our ideas into action. I will give you more details later after we have our next meeting this weekend.

Now that I have been in my town for over two months I feel like I am getting to know a good amount of people and almost everyone knows/has seen me. People are starting to invite me to their house more and I have been making friends/acquaintances with the important people of the town. I have even had other families ask me to move in with them. I guess what I’m saying is that little by little I am starting to feel more comfortable here. I still have a long way to go with my Spanish and I still have my share of awkward moments buts it’s either getting better or I’m starting to get used to it.

I am still teaching English in the high school to 11th and 12th graders. We are supposed to have class every Monday and Wednesday in the afternoon for about an hour and a half. Monday and Wednesday are supposed to be the later days when there is class until 2:30-3:00ish and there is an open window of time for me to teach between 1:00 and 2:30. More often than I would like the teachers find an excuse to leave early and there is no afternoon classes. Sometimes it’s because there isn’t enough food to feed the kids lunch, sometimes its because it looks like its going to rain and the kids don’t want to walk home in the rain, and sometimes I show up and they are already gone.

I am definitely unimpressed with the rural education system here. The students spend more time in recess than in class, there is little discipline, and the teachers can come and go as they please, they rarely stay until 3:00 like they are supposed to. The school itself is basically a big open barn with 5 different classrooms set up in different corners. It is very loud and distracting and I can tell a lot of kids aren’t paying attention most of the time. Hopefully things will get better after we build the new high school with separate classrooms.

About a week and a half ago 12 American came to my town to build the aqueduct to bring water to the new high school, which we hope to start building in November. They were from a group called Leader Treks and most from a Christian camp in Wisconsin. It was all girls except for the leader. It was a lot of fun having them around for a while. They worked really hard and had really positive attitudes. Because of them I went to the church in my town for the first time, which was a pretty interesting experience. There was more singing and clapping than any church service I have ever been to. If we weren’t there, there would have only been 5 people at the service. In the afternoons they held activities for the youth of the community, which allowed me the chance to meet and/or become better acquainted with many kids from the area.

In the short time they we here the group became very popular with the youth of the town, especially the boys. Everyone was sad to see them leave and a lot of them were sad to go. We had a nice little going away party the night before and all the kids left the high school and elementary school the next day to go outside and officially say goodbye when the taxies came to pick them up.

The Friday of that week I went to Tamarindo Beach with a friend from my town. Luckily his aunt has a house about 15 minutes from the beach. We stopped there and met up with his two cousins and went to the beach “too look for the ladies in the string bikinis” as they kept saying. We hung out on the beach until the sunset, enjoyed the nightlife for a while and took a bus back to the house. We never did find any girls in string bikinis. When we all woke up the next morning they offered to let me ride one of their bulls before they went off to work in the fields. As tempting as it sounded at 5:30 am after a night at the beach, I had to respectfully decline their offer. After breakfast we were on the 6:30 bus back to Nicoya. On a side note, everyone gets up really early here. Usually between 5:00 and 5:30. One day I slept until 8:30 and my family thought I must have been sick or something.

There is a lot more that has happened that I haven’t mentioned but this is already getting too long so I will try to wrap it up.

I have been reading a lot of books here. In the last 2 months I have read:

-Into the Wild by John Krakaur
-Drop City by T.C. Boyle
-The Kite Runner by Khajed Hosseini
-The Life of Pie by ?
-Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
-Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
I am currently reading a The Haves and the Have-Nots, an anthology of short stories by various historic/famous authors analyzing economic distribution and the class system in America.

I am also slowly working my way through books in Spanish but I don’t find this as enjoyable. I am still lacking so much vocabulary that I have to use my dictionary way too much. I also don’t understand most idiomatic expressions usually I read a few page and have only a basic idea of what’s going on in the story.

Some historic information: 184 years ago today, July 25th, the independent state of Guanacaste decided to become part of the republic of Costa Rica, increasing the size of the country by almost 20 percent. Every year there are big parties and festivals throughout the province, especially in the three main cities: Liberia, Santa Cruz, and Nicoya. Nicoya, although being the smallest, is the most historic with a colonial church dating back to the early 1500’s.

Right now I am in an Internet café in Nicoya and the city has transformed itself into a big party. There are venders everywhere, all kinds of traditional food, cloths, art, parades, and music. There is a big stage set up for a concert later tonight, and mechanical rides in the central park. It kinda reminds me of the Altamont fair. I heard a rumor that the president of the country is coming either tonight or tomorrow night to give a little speech. I’m meeting up with a girl soon who lives here and she’s gonna show me around and stuff and I guess I’m going to hang out with her and her friends tonight. I have to make sure I get back to my town at a reasonable hour because I’m supposed to help the pastor of our church plant corn at 7:00am.

Anyway thanks for reading I and will try to keep this updated more frequently so I don’t have to write such long posts. Hope you enjoy the picture.

2008-07-26T08:54:00.008-06:00

My host brother in his favorite shirt.

The church

The bar

The church across from the bar.

This is the main crossroads in my town. I live down the road on the left, the national park is down the road to the right, and if you keep going strait you eventually get to the beach after passing through a few other small town. Behind me the road leads up to the school and soccerfield area.

I like to sit here and read

This is where we stayed in Jaco Beach

Sitting in front of my store where I always talk on the phone.

Coffee

Coffee beans
Hanging out with the local youth.

Saying goodby to the volunteers
All the kids came out of the school to say goodby

playing volleyball without a net.

The elementary school. This is where the volunteers slept.

Pretty sunset

Me working hard.

Tamarindo Beach

Mt friend Andres and his cousin.

Hanging out in church with the other gringos.

Building the aquaduct through the jungle

Sabrino. The toothless old drunk homeless guy from my town.

The store

The store again. It doesnt look very fun but I hang out here a lot because there is nothing else to do.

Jose Louise, the store owner giving the old guy a haircut with a knife.

Left: Police station. It is boarded up and there are no police in my town.

Right: Health clinic. The doctors come twice a month.

The bar. These are mostly the people from the university. We just got done playing soccer.

Scouting out the rout for the aquaduct.

laying some pipe

New Address

2008-07-24T10:36:00.002-06:00

Hey everyone, sorry I havn´t updated in a while, there has actually been a lot going on in my town and I have been suprisingly busy for the first time since I´ve been here. Everything is going great. I have a lot of pictures and a long update home in my computer but I wasn´t able to bring it with me today. I might be coming back tomorrow or monday so check back then.

I got a post office box in Nicoya so mail and packages should come a lot faster. The address is:

Heath Boomhower
Apartado Postal 79-5200
Nicoya, Costa Rica

Thanks everyone who has been sending me mail and packages. I really appreciate it.

Some more pictures

2008-07-01T10:19:00.006-06:00

This is what a lot of the houses in my town look like.

Refining my skills

Conchal Beach with my host family

We ate lunch (chinese food) under this really cool tree.

Some Pictures

2008-06-21T15:18:00.007-06:00

My community center/high school.

My host brother and sister.

My sister plucking my brother´s eyebrows.

Me scoring a gole!

My little pink house.

This is the view of my house from the soccer field with a lot of zoom

My house...in my opinion it is by far the nicest house in my town

I walked down this road for 2.5 hours and this is where I ended up. I think this is somewhere around Ostional Beach.

Another view from my town.

Me in front of the surf place. For those of you who were worried, you can tell Im not wasting away too bad.

A few of my neighbors. That´s our 2-room elementary school in the background.

Trying to surf at Samara Beach

Practicing in the little waves.

My soccer field with community center and school in the background. This part of my town is on the ridge of a high mountain. If you look to the left or the right there are really cool views of more mountains below.

I dont know what kind of tree this is but it scares me. These spikes are about an inch or 2 long.

My host cousin, Fabiola, with a baby chick.

This is what a cow pasture looks like here. There are no flat areas in my town unless it was made that way with a bulldozer.

A random road in my town.

These are what coffee plants look like.

Another road.

One Month in Site

2008-06-17T11:55:00.003-06:00

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.

2008-05-26T11:34:00.006-06:00

I found 2 old pics I should have posted :

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.

2008-05-05T15:51:00.002-06:00

Hola todos,

I’m sorry that I don’t have any pictures of my site…I forgot to bring my camera, but don’t worry I have two years to take pictures. My town (Esperanza) is up in the mountains of central Nicoya Peninsula and its very beautiful. It is super spread out over this little mountain range so I will have to do a lot of walking to get around town. The roads are way too steep and rocky for a bicycle so I will be getting plenty of exercise. My host family lives in a posh little pink house on the top of this little mountain with a beautiful view of the surrounding area. They told me on a really clear day you can see the ocean from my town….but that isn’t really saying much since there are mountains in the southern part of the country from which you can see both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. To get to the beach from my town you have to take a bus into the city of Nicoya and then another bus to the beach and it take about 2 – 2.5 hours depending on traffic, which I guess isn’t that bad. Overall my visit went really well and I met a lot of important people. I even got to play soccer for my town’s team. I will write about my town more when I have some pictures.

The other night we had an RCD house party and it was a blast, the freedom kind of made us feel like we were home again. Almost all of us where there.

I had my last language proficiency exam today and I did really well. I guess I easily made Intermediate Mid which is what is required before I can swear-in as a volunteer in 2 weeks. This weekend we are throwing a party for all the families that hosted us during training so that should be a lot of fun too. I would write more but I am in a rush to make the bus back home so I will try to update with more soon.

2008-04-24T09:27:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone! The last week has been pretty eventful. First of all, Friday was Site Assignment Day! We all got to go to this really nice resort with pools, a hot tub, good food and stuff for the whole day. After we got there in the morning we all found out where we were going to be living for the next 2 years and then put a little sticker with our name on this big map of Costa Rica, then we had the rest of the day to hang out. It was really interesting to see where everyone else is living too...all 53 of us are definitely spread out all over the country. I am going to be living in the province of Guanacaste on the Nicoya Peninsula, kind of between the city of Nicoya and the Pacific coast in a little town of about 350 people called La Esperanza Norte. It is about 7 hours by bus from San Jose and I guess in a pretty mountainous area. I have heard a little about the town from my program director and it sounds pretty nice but I will be able to tell you more after I actually go to visit this weekend.

I’m actually in an internet café in San Jose right now with a couple buddies waiting for the van to pick us up and bring us to that conference center in Cartago where we spent our first 5 days in Costa Rica. Today we are all going to meet up with a representative from our future site and tomorrow we are going to go with them to visit for 5 days. The man coming to meet me is the president of local development association and is probably someone I will be working a lot with in the future, so I’m looking to meeting him. I’m sure we will get to know each other well after the 7+ hour bus ride from Cartago. I’m also excited to meet my new host family and see what the people in my town are like.

In other news, Saturday night was Festival Imperial in Heredia with Incubus and Smashing Pumpkins. About 20 of us got a hotel in downtown San Jose and it turned out to be quite the interesting night in more ways than one. It wasn’t a bad time but I think it took too much out of us…physically, mentally, financially etc. and we had to spend the next day, in rough shape, planning our English class and Community Field Activity. Next time I will take a bus to the beach and relax instead.

Monday I taught English to a 2nd grad class in my town while being evaluated by the Peace Corps. We sang all kinds of songs and played games about body parts and I made a bingo game with weather and emotions. I was definitely well prepared and it went pretty smoothly. The first 5 minutes were pretty scary but after that it was fine and I actually had a lot of fun. The next day Sarah and I had to hold a little assembly in the school for the first, second, and third graders to educate them about Earth Day (since that day was Earth Day). We talked about what Earth Day was, protecting the environent, recycling, and litering (all in Spanish). Then we had them draw pictures of nature and the Earth to hang on the side of the school and after that we decorated old milk cartons to use as pencil holder. All the kids had a good time and it went better than I expected.

Well I guess thats it for now....I better get going. I´m sure I will have much more to talk about after I visit my site. Take care and thanks for reading.

- Heath

2008-04-17T12:15:00.004-06:00

Eating Guava on our way to the river to go swimming...(this is Dennis, a current volunteer who I went to visit for a few days)

Dennis´s little friend.

A rodeo in San Jorge...this is a professional group that travels around Central America.

Waiting for the rodeo to start...that´s me with my hand being raised.

This woman happens to be the best female cowgirl in all of Central America.

Cutting open some pipas...

Eating some kind of fruit I dont knw how to spell.

Some little parrots on my finger.

2008-04-15T15:47:00.005-06:00

Learning about piña. (pineapple)

The view from my town...
Our soccer field and basketball court...
Our school...

A big hollow tree we hiked to and climbed, you can kinda see people at the top...
Me

Looking up the inside of the tree...

Hiking back...

My bedroom during the site visit...

More hiking in the jungle...

13 out of the 18 Tico 18 RCDers

2008-04-11T22:30:00.003-06:00

Here are a few pice I have alot more and will try to post them soon....

Walking to one of the volunteer's sites...(this was the most urban site out of all the RCD volunteers in the country, as you can probably tell by the electrical wires running right through it).

Hanging out at the pizza place... that's San Jose in the background.

This is my community center where I have class almost every day...

Pineapples don't grow on trees...

Hey everyone, sorry I haven’t updated this in a while, the last couple weeks have been super busy with training and I’ve only had time to go to an internet café once for about 15 minutes. So much has happened that it would take too long for me to write about everything, but I will try to give you the gist of it.

The other week we broke up into groups of 9 and went to visit current volunteers working out in the country. We were gone for 5 days and visited 2 volunteers that live 5-7 hours from San Jose. One site was right next to a beautiful national park and the other was a huge pineapple farm close to a couple volcanoes. They were both really cool and it felt so refreshing to get out of the Central Valley and see other parts of the country. It was also great to be able to hang out with volunteers and see what their lives are really like. I stayed with 2 different families during the trip and it is so interesting to see how different people live and it was an all round great learning experience. I went on hikes in the jungle, went swimming/cliff jumping in 2 different rivers (unexplainably beautiful), met some really awesome people, spoke a lot of Spanish, walked a lot, learned everything about pineapples, played soccer for hours in the pouring rain, saw a sloth and a few tepiscuintles (I probably spelt that wrong but it’s this really weird rat/pig/dog looking thing that barks and people say they are delicious to eat). I went to a rodeo/carnival/dance, sang karaoke, and spent way too much time in buses. Overall it was a great experience.

We also had a “project fair” last week where nine current volunteers came to visit us and we were able to talk to all of them about what kind of work they are doing in their sites and get a lot of our questions answered. It definitely gave me a better idea of what to expect for the next two years.

This week I had to teach a second grade English class in the local elementary school. It went pretty well but it was definitely a little scarier than I expected. I have never been in front of a class of little kids before, let alone kids who cant speak English. This was only a practice class but in a couple weeks I have to teach again and this time be observed and evaluated by the Peace Corps. The 3 other trainees in my town and I also had to organize a town meeting to assess the strengths and needs of our community. It lasted for almost an hour and a half and went very smoothly (only because Jenny and Tes are amazingly good at Spanish). We have to plan a community activity next and we are thinking about going something about environmental education with the young people of our town since Earth Day in coming up soon and the littering problem here is definitely spawned by a lack of education on the issue.

We have dance classes every weekend in our community center so I have been going to them when I can. I get to dance with Ticas (Costa Rican girls) who have been dancing since they were old enough to stand, along with other Gringas (American girls) who are just as bad as me, so it’s a lot of fun. I am still a pretty bad dancer but I have definitely learned a lot. Dancing is an important social activity here and you pretty much have to learn if you want to fully integrate into the culture. Hopefully my dancing skills will improve along with my Spanish, and soccer skills and after 2 years I well be really good at all of them.
Speaking of Spanish, two weeks ago I had a proficiency test and scored Intermediate-low. I started at Beginner-mid so that means I am definitely getting better. Our last week of training we have one last test and need to score at least Intermediate-mid in order to swear in. I am definitely not worried about it at all. I have been learning so much the last few weeks and I still have 4 more weeks to go up only one little level. Intermediate-mid isn’t that good at all by the way, it just means you can have pretty basic conversations with people and are able to get you point across while understand most of what people are saying back to you. It is starting to get more difficult to write in English too. I am getting confused with sentence structure, spelling and grammar and a lot of English words don’t look the same as they used to, it really hard to explain but I think maybe it’s a good thing?

We all had to spend the other day shadowing someone of the opposite sex for at least 8 hours. I spent the whole day in the next town over hangout with my friend’s host mom who owns a Bazar (a small school/office supple store). It was a very interesting experience and actually went by much faster than I expected. She’s a really cool, intelligent woman and spoke slowly and clearly enough with me that I could actually get something out of our conversations. She is a retired school teacher who owns 2 stores in town and has like 3-4 kids and a bunch of grandkids.

We are currently past the halfway mark of our training period and next week we find out where we are going to be living for 2 years so we are all pretty excited/nervous about that. Even though we have been working super hard with training and everything most of us still make time to hang out and have fun. I have made some pretty close friends for the short time I’ve been here and we are definitely bad influences on each other, and are creating some very interesting and memorable experiences. Its kind of weird to think that in 5 weeks we might be living on the other side of the country and only see each other a few times a year.

I have always heard that the Peace Corps is an emotional roller coaster ride and I can see it’s definitely true even in the 6 weeks I have been here (it feels like so much longer by the way). Anyway, I think I have been riding pretty high most of the time with a few little drops here and there, for example a low point might have been when I had a dastrointestional viral infection and was violently sick for 5 days and still forced myself to make it to most training event and participate in everything. I definitely thought about how much more comfortable things would be if I were just lying in bed at home doing nothing. But then other times when I least expect it I look a something or think about my situation and am so glad I am here and honestly couldn’t think of anything else I would rather be doing or any other place in the world I would rather be. It’s kind of hard to explain but I know a lot of us fell the same way. And this is only training, everybody says things get so much crazier after you are in your site for a little while.

Tomorrow I get to leave by myself on a four-day trip to visit another volunteer. I guess I have to take a 6 hour bus ride then walk 7 kilometers to get to his town, so that should be quite the adventure. Since I have to take the 5am bus out of San Jose the Peace Corps is putting me up in a hotel for the night. I am actually stalying here with 4 other girls who have to leave early too so at least I'm not alone. Right now I'm sitting in the lobby of this nice little hotel and I have a big room to myself with a big bed and hot shower, this is definitely a good start to my little adventure. Its almost 11pm and I have to get up at 4am so i better get going. Thanks for reading, I will try to update next week.

Pura Vida,

Heath

2008-03-22T13:01:00.003-06:00

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.

2008-03-17T17:59:00.000-06:00

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

2008-03-10T17:12:00.005-06:00

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.

2008-03-01T19:39:00.003-06:00

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

I'm Here!

2008-02-28T12:20:00.003-06:00

We finally got here last night! The 2 days of staging in DC were pretty fun and very informative and the group of other volunteers is great. There are 54 of us and we are already becoming pretty close. Right now we are at a beautiful resort/conference center in the mountains of western Cartago (I think). Our days are extremely busy right now but we still have a little time to relax or go online. I will try to take some good pictures to post next time. Sunday we will each be dropped off at our own host families and we will start official training classes monday. Tomorrow night we get to go out to a town for dinner with a few other volunteers and only $4 each. That will definitely be a good learning experience b/c there will be nobody there holding our hands. By the way, out of the 54 volunteers, I definitely have among the worst spanish ability and it is making thing a little harder (and definitely more awkward). I am not too worried though b/c it seems like the training is going to be great and i know if i work hard i will pick up on it fast. Im sure sunday will be a little awkward meeting my host family for the first time. Hopefully they are VERY patient. Well its time for lunch so i have to go.

-Heath

Two More Days! Already Packed

2008-02-22T13:52:00.001-06:00

Here is everything I am Bringing:

I'm posting my packing list on here because it may give future volunteers some ideas on what to bring. I don’t know if I've brought too much/enough or how it's all going to work out, but it’s what I think is going to work the best for me at this point. It all weighs less than 60 lbs and there are only 2 bags (since the small backpack goes inside the duffel when I am not on a plane). To save space I've packed all my clothes in large Ziploc bags and squeezed the air out.

Bags:
EMS 5500ci Hiking Backpack
EMS Large Duffle Bag
Smaller North Face Backpack (carry on for electronics, fits inside duffle when traveling)

Clothes:
5 pants (1 pair are dress pants)
5 short (2 pair are running shorts and 1 is a bathing suit)
8 pair of underwear
8 pair of socks
6 t-shirts
5 button-up shirts (one is a long sleeve dress shirt)
3 polos
3 tank tops
1 tie
1 fleece pullover
1 raincoat
1 hat
2 belts

Shoes:
Gortex trail sneakers
Keen walking shoes
Crocs
black dress shoes
cheap sandals

Electronics:
Apple i-book and charger
Small travel computer speakers
Small book of CDs and DVDs
Camera
Rechargeable batteries and charger
4gig USB drive
i-pod shuffle

Miscellaneous:
Fleece Sleeping Bag
Fast-dry travel towel
Nalgene bottle
World Map
3 Hacky Sacks
Sunglasses
Headlamp
Pocketknife
2 Paperback Novels
Shortwave Radio
Scissors, tape, pens, pencils, markers and other office supplies
Couple coloring books, crayons, and other little nicknacks for kids.

Journal
Small bag of toiletries
2 Pairs of glasses
contacts and solution

One More Week!

2008-02-15T09:14:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to do a little test post to make sure I know how to use this site. I guess I will start my blog from the events of this week and try to update it every week (or whenever I can) until the close of my Peace Corps Service in May 2010. If you are reading this I assume you already know I'm leaving Monday Feb. 25th for "Staging" in DC and then the 27th for Training in Costa Rica to be a Rural Community Development Volunteer for the Peace Corps.

Well whats new this week..? I'm finally done working for the state, Woo Hoo! no more hour long commutes in the snow every morning! I visited my old stompingrounds of PSU to say goodby to everybody, then went to Old Gregs Place and drank Baileys from a shoe. My dad and I have been going to the gym the last few weeks...it feels good to workout again but also kinda wierd since I've lost over 20lbs of muscle...but whatever. Its pretty funny, still the same old faces there since high school. My mom and Jim are getting married tomorrow, so that should be fun...looks like the weather should be good. Oh yeah... when I came home on monday I had a new sister: a little Pomeranian puppy! I definitely didn't expect that but its really cute.
I have been reading a lot. I just started/am almost done with "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, it's a great book. I think we can all learn a lot from Chris McCandless, especially about taking initiative with our own lives and not losing the spirit of adventure. It kinda makes me want to hitchhike down to Costa Rica :)
I really want to go skiing at least one more time before I leave but I don't think its gonna happen...its probably for the best, I've made it through the winter so far, it wouldn't be good to break myself right before I leave. Well anywaw....I can't think of anything else to say ringht now so I will update next week before I leave.