University of National Champions

Whether one is in Chapel Hill or one is in Costa Rica, A TARHEEL IS ALWAYS A TARHEEL! #1. So I made my family and other friends watch the game with me via internet streaming! While my brother liked to cheer for "GREEN" just be annoying, I had a great time screaming at the computer for the "celestes!" And now everyone knows that Carolina del Norte is the best basketball team en toda la nacion. 

And my family was great and I told them we had to build a fire to jump over it afterwards, so this is the only time I have condoned TRASH BURNING. Go Tarheels! 

It's no Franklin Street, but hey! I'm spreading the Tarheel love all the way down here in Costa Rica! I can't wait to show them the Franklin Street videos. 

Dancing Baby

I know that I write a lot about my nephew Axel. And I know that everyone thinks their baby is the greatest. But seriously, I hope my baby is like this baby because this baby is HILARIOUS.

Hiking Volcanoe Poas

So my friend Moriah says to me, "Do you want to go on a caminata with me and some other girls?" A Caminata is like what we would consider one of those "Walk for the Cure" type walks. Moriah told me that it was only 12 km and it would be a fun easy walk and we would all have a great time walking. I had walked the Romeria which was a 20km walk to a beautiful Catholic Cathedral, so I joyfully agreed to go!

I and four other Peace Corps Volunteers traveled to Moriah's sight and we happily ate fried chicken and joked around on Saturday night. We awoke early on Sunday morning ready for a fun a walk!

As we arrived at the sign-in we noticed that most of these Costa Ricans looked pretty serious about this walk. Costa Ricans in athletic gear is REALLY uncommon, but these people looked pretty seasoned. We began to ask around and comes to find out that these were SERIOUS Costa Rican athletes. Some of them do "Caminatas" EVERY WEEK-END and a fair number were doing this caminata to train for HIKING Chirripo the highest mountain in COSTA RICA!

We knew we were in for a rough walk when we were asking when is the first rest stop and they answered "in about an hour!" WHAT?!?!?!? Even the easy part was pretty steep and we were sweating and tired. We got to the first rest stop and they told us something like one and a half hours more to the half way point.... WHAT?!?!?!?!?

We eventually entered the mountain and were hiking up a less than marked trail and there came a point when I just had to convince myself to think "Step. Step. Step. Step." It was ridiculous. The only thing that made it a little bit better is that EVERYONE thought it was hard. Even those in-shape Costa Ricans who knew what they were signed up for were taking it pretty slow with many breaks.

There are NO pictures of the HARD parts because at those parts, we didn't have enough energy to THINK about taking pictures!

There came a point when the muscles in your legs that apparently help you take upwards steps hurt with every step, but there wasn't must we could do, but keep walking. We were in the mountains...there was no way out, but up. At one point, one of our friends started crying. We all wondered why we thought this would be a good idea. And I'm not sure any of us thought it was worth it.

One Costa Rican woman kept telling me, "But look! Isn't it beautiful?" I was pretty honest. I told her "It's not THAT beautiful."

Finally, when we thought we were dead, we came to what was called the REPENTANCE HILL. At this point, it literally got so steep that it was like walking up a never ending staircase....for 3 kms. WHAT THE HECK. Seriously, we thought it would never end and we were all in a lot of pain. At this point, we also realized, that this hike was WAY LONGER than 12 km, it was definitly closer to 15-16kms!!

Finally, we reached this grassy area and there was a Red Cross Worker chilling out. We asked how much longer REPENTANCE HILL was and he told us there was still an hour left. And we were like, there is NO WAY I am going to walk another hour up this hill. SO...HE GAVE US AN AMBULANCE RIDE. Hahahahaha. Funny thing is that he was lying to us and he literally drove us around the corner. But whatever. We got to ride in an ambulance and it was just the pick-me-up we all needed.

It became a running joke, that although this was NOT fun and we were miserable, ATLEAST we got a FREE t-shirt! Hahahahahah....

Becuase, even though we had finally reached the road, there was still like 4 kms left. And we thought we would NEVER EVER EVER EVER get there. But we did. And then we laid down in the grass. And didn't walk again ever. Hahahahahaha.

Word to the wise: Don't hike volcanoes.

International Friends

Being in the Peace Corps is hard work. So sometimes, we have to take vacation...and that's what I did! One of my favorite "freshmen" who is now out in the work world took off a week of "real work" to come to sunny Costa Rica! Obviously, we headed to the beach.

Emily Bucci got off the plane (she hates planes!) a little outside San Jose, Costa Rica and after a little soft serve ice cream from the airport Subway, we got straight on a Costa Rican bus and headed for San Jose Center!

Then we walked to the Nicoya Bus Station in the part of Costa Rica called the Coca-Cola, which is a kind of dangerous part of the city (Luckily, Emily didn't know that until later.) It was here that Emily had her first enconter with Costa Rican bus station bathrooms...and we'll just leave it at that.

We got to our first hotel in Nicoya with no problems, we slept soundly and woke up early (but not too early if you know me!) to head to PLAYA SAMARA! Playa Samara happens to be one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica and we went there. Using my trusty Lonely Planet Guidebook, we sat on the beach and began to call hotels to see if there were any vacancies. Unfortuneatly, everything was full! We thought we were going to have to sleep on the beach...just kidding. :) After a short walk around we found a place that fufilled most of our requirements: comfortable beds, air-conditioning, close to the beach, and hot water. :)

However, after we got settled there and went to explore the beach, we found a MUCH better hotel RIGHT on the beach with ALL of our requirements PLUS cable tv, PLUS it was actually ON the beach and a little farther from the center of Samara so a little more tranquilo. We headed there the next night.

We spent our days catching up (there's a lot to catch up on when you haven't seen someone for a year!), tanning, swimming, reading, laying in the hammocks and every night we checked out the night life. It was definitly my MOST relaxing vacation since coming to Costa Rica and I obviously did NOT want to leave the beach when the time came!

But thanks to Emily Bucci's plane tickets, we eventually had to leave. We spent one night in San Jose. We had to walk through the center of San Jose with Emily's rolling suitcase (which she loved! sorry emily!), but then she really did love the cute hotel. We freshened up and Emily was a great friend and humored my vacation self-interest because I REALLY wanted to go to the movies! So we went and she even saw a movie twice because I REALLY wanted to see it! And then we ate a far too expensive authentic Costa Rican restaurant!

The next morning we ate McDonald's pancakes (because nothing else was opened, but we didn't mind becase I never eat McDonald's EVER and Emily loves McDonald's pancakes even if she is Costa Rica!) and we toured San Jose center. Emily was a great tourist and bought a few Costa Rican souvenirs.

Finally...we had to head to the airport, but it was my most relaxing vacation EVER just what I needed. When Peace Corps gets hard, go to the beach!

Recycling Collection Center

One of my big projects was to build a Recycling Collection Center at the school. They already had a recycling project going on, but they had no where to store the material until it could be collected. But now they do....

We are collecting paper, plastic, aluminum and cardboard. We do not collect glass because that is dangerous for the school and the majority of glass bottles are returned to the stores anyways.

Now that we have it built and organized it, we have to make sure that the school can handle it on it's own. The school was thinking I was going to be in charge of it...HA! We had to organize the kids, the janitors, the guards, and the teachers to all work together in keeping the Recycling Center organized and running well.

The community is suppose to bring their recycling to the center on Thursdays! We had a community meeting to inform everyone about the Recycling Center, but as is normal, very few people attended the meeting. For that reason, we plan to have the High School Students complete their required Service Hours for Graduation doing a Recycling Compaign.

Here are pictures of getting the recycling center ready, painting the recycling bins and having the comunity meeting!

Swim Camp

I hardly leave my site and when I do, I usually have a great reason...

One of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers had a swim camp and being the amazing swimmer that I am..I went to help. It was so much fun to help another volunteer and for once not be in charge or organizing, facilitating, leading. motivating, etc. It was great just to HELP out.

Aerobics

So one of our Peace Corps Goals is HEALTHY LIVING and that consists in being all athletic, which is not exactly my strength, but I have always loved Aerobics. Aerobics is MUCH more like dancing than like being athletic and so I have always had amazing Aerobics DVDs . I obviously brought them to Costa Rica for RAINY season when its too wet to go for walks and play outside. Then my oldest sister started doing Aerobics DVDs with me to joke around. Then we had a fabulous idea to start Aerobics classes! Now we have women from all over the community to go to aerobics classes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and it's been going strong for about six months now!

Good-bye Chicas Poderosas. Hello Guias y Scouts.

I have completed my working with the girls club mainly because I want to make it MORE sustainable. The girls LOVE it so much, but without a dedicated Costa Rican who can commit time to them every week, it will not continue without a Peace Corps Volunteer.

So…instead I have dedicated my time to working with the closest Boy & Girl Scout Troop to our community! We are going to prepare leaders in our community to receive the Boy & Girl Scout Leadership training so that Costa Ricans can lead their own community kids & adolescents in a VERY sustainable Boys & Girls Club.

I won’t lie to you. I never did Girl Scouts and I always thought it was dorky. BUT, seeing it in Costa Rica, I love and admire it! It teaches the kids SO much responsibility, self-discipline, community service, and provides them with learning opportunities not otherwise available. They have a chance to work for rewards, learn team work and structure (every meeting has some of the same rituals), and they will also be lead by adults who can serve as role models.
So I have given up on my girls club of Chicas Poderosas to promote and encourage Boy & Girl Scouts of Caribe. If you have connections with Boy Scouts of Girl Scouts in the U.S. and have any suggestions or would like to support us any way…let me know!

English Class

I have a group of 20 students who have now completed 4 levels of English with me! When the complete this final level, they will receive a diploma from one of the top English Teaching Institutes in Costa Rica! They are capable of basic English and what I really wish is that I could bring them to the United States so they could really practice.

We started the course for 4 hours once a week, but have recently changed to about 2.5 hours twice a week which has helped considerably. I have no teaching background and learned so much from teaching them! I almost feel sorry for them because my teaching strategies have all been hit or miss. I’ve learned that they have to play lots of competitive games of they get bored. I’ve learned that I have to give them graded quizzes every class period so they will study each week. I’ve learned that they have to turn in the homework to be graded or they will NOT do it. I’ve learned that we have to dedicate one entire class to ONLY SPEAKING for them to really be able to practice well.

I have seen so much improvement in their reading, writing and speaking skills and I am super proud of them all. Here are some pictures of the class:

To Explain My Work

I finally thought about how I have done a really bad job about describing my work on my blog. I thought for a long while about why I did such a bad job of recording my work successes on my blog. Here’s what I came up with…

The process of having a project idea, project planning, finding resources and then completing the project (only to see that the work is REALLY just beginning), MIGHT be the MOST frustrating thing in the world. After thinking about and working on a project for so long: 1.The last thing I want to do is then WRITE about it and 2. It is so much a part of me that I forget it should be news to some people.

I want to take one minute to describe some of the steps to completing a Peace Corps Project. They sound simple enough, but to a type A, do it now, instant gratification North American, the experience can be trying.

Steps to Painting Recycling Bins:
1. Wait for 40 minutes on the bus into town.
2. Twenty minute bus ride to town.
3. Walk to first paint shop.
4. Wait in paint store a good 20 minutes to be helped.
5. Figure out appropriate paint for recycling bins.
6. Price paint.
7. Realize that the specific paint needed is ridiculously expensive.
8. Walk to second paint shop.
9. Wait in second paint store for a good 20 minutes to be helped.
10. Realize paint is just as expensive there.
11. Decide paint cannot be afforded and must be donated.
12. Wait for bus.
13. 20 minute bus ride home.
14. Write donation letter Spanish.
15. Have Spanish donation letter proof read (by native Spanish speaker).
16. Wait for bus.
17. Twenty minute bus ride to town.
18. Enter internet café.
19. Print letter.
20. Leave internet café.
21. Enter copy center.
22. Make copies.
23. Wait for bus.
24. Twenty minute bus ride home.
25. Hunt down President of the PTA to sign donation letter.
26. Spend time socializing with President of PTA before can ask for signature.
27. Receive signature.
28. Wait for bus.
29. Twenty minute bus ride to town.
30. Go to first paint store.
31. Wait an hour more or less to be attended by the person in charge of donations.
32. Explain project. Turn in letter. Told to come back in a week for the answer.
33. Go to second paint store.
34. Repeat steps 31 &32.
35. Wait a week.

You get the idea that it has taken me two weeks to do something that with the correct resources in the US could take three phone calls (or at least not so much bus riding). While the process in the US of pricing, donation letters and waiting on an answer might be the same, it would be significantly easier with a car, a telephone, a computer, a printer, and a copy machine...

Keep in mind also that this is one VERY small and comparably EASY step to the whole project that probably took three and half weeks to complete. And it held up all the other steps to the project.

Furthermore while this step was long and just annoying, at least no one was FIGHTING against me in this step. In some of the other steps, the people of the same school do their best (unintentionally) to make the project more difficult. For example, in a school of 400 students there is ONE printer (bought and owned by the school), but only the director has access to it. With good reason he takes good care of the printer and not just anyone can use it; however, when I needed to print the 60 color labels for the recycling bins I had to wait until HE was available to oversee the printing. Could I have gone to an internet cafe? Yes, and I could have also paid $12 out of my own pocket for the printing! (That's like half my peace corps salary!) So instead, I was at the mercy and the schedule of the school director who (honestly) has more important and urgent things to do than oversee the printing of recycling lables.


I know its my job, but even the simplest parts of projects require a lot more waiting and time than I am use to. And finally, when the project is "complete," really, its just begun. The recycling center is built and had its grand opening! The school is using it and the community knows about it. However, the project is nowhere near being finished because now we have to teach the 5,000 inhabitants of this community how to use it! So begins PHASE 2: Education and Promotion of the Recycling Collection Center.

As soon as one step to the long process is completed, another step is revealed – usually bigger and more complicated than the previous step. For those reasons and more, I never write about my work, starting right now, I'm gonna give it a shot!

Lauren Quartz DiBianca

As I previously mentioned, my best friend came to Costa Rica in January! We had a great time traveling around and vacationing with my siblings, BUT even more exciting for me was the time she got to spend with me in my site! She had the opportunity to share in my “normal” life and experience a piece of Costa Rican sweetness.

My family LOVED Lauren and she loved them. And I obviously absolutely loved having Lauren see my site, meet my family and friends, and learn about all that I love so dearly!! Also, spending time with her here helped me see my site through the eyes of a North American again. Little pieces of life that Americans assume to be true about typical life sometimes just don´t fit here. It was almost scary how Costa Rican customs are so normal to me and American customs feel strange and out of place. I was thankful for a chance to compare Costa Rican typical with North American typical personified in me versus my best friend.

For example, Lauren always walked WAY too fast. Hahahaha. My brother and I took her to visit our friend Davis one day and as we were walking to his house, my brother and I felt like we were running. Finally, I asked “Why are we walking so fast?” Obviously Lauren responded, “This is how I always walk.” When I think back to when I first arrived in Costa Rica, I remember thinking “Why do these people always dawdle?” Americans walk with a purpose. We always have somewhere to be and something to do! Costa Ricans…..just walk. They enjoy the walk knowing that the destination will always be there, whether they arrive sooner or later. And if the destination is not there… well, that doesn´t really bother them either.

Also, Lauren was never hungry when we were hungry! Costa Ricans eat HUGE lunches and about two hours later drink coffee with a pastry. Like a solider Lauren ate the greasy, fatty, meaty foods and she even drank coffee with us two hours later! But I can just see her face now, when my whole family was like “Sorry, we have to leave the beach because our bodies are CRAVING coffee and we cannot live one minute longer without COFFEE!” And she was thinking “But we just ate the biggest lunch EVER!” Hahahahaha. I remember thinking the SAME thing, but now my body craves coffee too! Instinctively, I know when its coffee time. And trust me, you don’t want to deprive a Costa Rican (or Kim) of their coffee.

Finally, Lauren was far too responsible! She was always very interested in what we were going to do and when we were going to do it. Like a responsible person, Lauren mentally and unconsciously plans her time and her day. I know. I do it too. But I use to do it more. For this very reason, many Peace Corps Volunteers have a very hard adjustment. I can plan my day all I want to, but if the bus doesn´t come... I can say that I am going to research at the internet for an hour, print my work, and turn it in, but when the electricity goes out, the internet doesn´t work, the printer is out of ink, and the offices are close....What can you do? Costa Ricans have even less control over their lives than North Americans do. If all those things go wrong in the U.S. what do we do? WE FIX IT NOW. If all those things go wrong in Costa Rica, what can you do? Nothing. You can wait. Until the road gets fixed, the bridge gets rebuilt, the bus is repaired, the electricity comes back on, etc. How do Costa Ricans respond? They stay chill. They are not going to plan things because inevitably it will not work how they plan it, and the chiller they stay, the easier everything seems to fall into place.

It´s hard to explain Costa Rican culture in a blog. All I know is that in 21 months, I have mysteriously become a part of it.

Costa Rican Summer Vacation (plus one hot american tourists!)

So the typical time to travel in Costa Rica – summertime – is JANUARY. It seems so backwards to us, but my siblings were just itching to get to the beach! Unfortunately we are all WAY to poor to actually go to the beach…$20 for a hotel, $20 (or more) a day on food…NO WAY! So we went camping!

Maybe you remember my last Costa Rican camping trip, but Costa Ricans camp in style. We are talking mattresses and stoves here. Yes, we slept in tents, but each tent also had mattresses inside…no sleeping on the cold hard ground here. And as for food – we COOKED every meal on our very own gas stove which we took with us!

We had a great time! First we swung by the airport to pick up this hot american tourist named Lauren DiBianca! From there, we headed northwest to Playa Hermosa in Guanacaste – which was way too crowded.

So we packed up and went to Playa Juanquinikil which just happened to be a biological reserve. There were no buildings in sight, but there were tons of animals, white sand beaches, and starry nights!

From there, we headed Volcán Miravalles where we saw the bubbling mud lagoons – which we then proceeded to bathe in! Oh yeh, and after that we took advantage of the natural hot springs to wash off which also included a WATER SLIDE!

It was definitly a vacation to remember!