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!