Birthday in the bus, more rain, holiday plans, '09 planes

So I lived to tell about my birthday. Barely. Overall one the most boring birthdays ever, spent on a bus watching dubbed Hollywood Chihuahua or whatever they call it in English. Only exciting part was when we brushed up against a mini-van and had to sit for 2hrs for the police and insurance ppl to show up and take pics and document the damage. Was more annoying than anything because then we had to rush just to get into Panamá before the border closed.

Panamá was about just as much underwater as Sarapiquí was (where I was the previous week). Not to hurt the tourism industry but nov-dec travel in Central America can be pretty hit and miss and would be better off avoided. I met a friend in Panamá who had been there the previous month and it rained the whole time he was there. I guess the rain was kind of out of control their too because they had a bunch of mudslides and even the best road in the country had two lanes wash away down the mountain. Basically there are two ways to enter Panamá and both are by bridge. One bridge was closed because of the rain and the other one we had to sit in traffic for 90min to get around the washed out portion of the road. Overall a big clusterf*ck if you ask me trying to get around all the detours that had about half the signage that a typical US detour would have.

So I made it to the city and got stuck shopping for a day with some of my aunt’s family while waiting for my bus to leave at 11pm that night. Here is the most messed up part about Panamá: they celebrate mother’s day 16 days before Christmas. So imagine the malls. I was there on the Sunday before Mothers day when they had Monday off to recognize their independence from Spain. So the mall was a zoo. I’d never seen that many ppl in my life in a mall. Apparently the crisis hasn’t hit Panamá yet.

Since Panamá life has been pretty normal however tomorrow I start my end of year vacation. Habitat has an employee outing tomorrow where we are going to hot springs in la Fortuna by Volcano Arenal. Then this weekend I have a wedding to attend and then after that I will be eating tamales pretty much everyday up until Christmas because it is the cultural custom here to make them. The big idea though is to get the whole family together to help make them and chat at the same time. I have between 10-15 families from which to make tamales with so I’ll be pretty busy. I come back to work on Jan. 4th. Might be a little awkward not being at home for the holidays but I’m looking forward to being able to spend them with my more or less adopted families. Ppl always ask if I get homesick and the truth is I really don’t that often. I only get homesick a little for holidays and birthdays. Missing the leaves change colors and fall also bugs me too. It’s not like I get lonely here though because I have everyone I met when I came to Costa Rica two years ago to visit when I get lonely or bored.

Things will get exciting then in January because we are starting a 4 house project in San Ramon and I’ll be involved a lot in that. We actually have an office in San Ramon so I’m going to relocate there and will be able to work in the office and on site. This will be really interesting because I’ll be able to help Habitat manage the construction and we will be able to track our costs better by having someone on site. Also we have two volunteer brigades coming in January so I will be there helping them get situated with the construction.

Don’t know when my next chance will be to write on this so to all my loyal readers: Happy holidays and Happy New Year ’09.

My week in Sarapiqui

Last week I was with a brigade in Sarapiqui in Northeast Costa Rica to work on 4 houses that were in various stages of completion. This group has donated a lot of money to Habitat so they requested to have four houses to work on in different stages so they could see all the activities involved in the construction. I don’t typically work with brigades but I was invited to help out the coordinator in everything construction related and to help with translating. It was pretty fun but at the same time challenging.

To start out with it rained the whole week. We didn’t see the sun at all. The region is typically a hot and humid jungle climate, but not this week. Just in order to walk around on the site we had to put down gravel and rock because it was very muddy. I had a schedule all worked for dry conditions which basically became useless due to the weather. The brigade ended up being 22ppl from Oregon plus we had between 10-15 local family members helping us work each day plus 10-15 Costa Ricans that Habitat had invited from the Central Valley. So each day we had between 40-50ppl working on site who needed jobs. Due to the weather we were limited to what we could do and spent a lot of time filling drainage ditches for septic tanks and shoveling mud. That kept about half of the ppl busy and the other half would come to me in English and Spanish asking what they could do to help. At times it was pretty chaotic but in the end we managed. The brigade had some really good workers and the contractor was really good with them. He helped me out by recognizing that some of the brigade members were capable of doing things that typical volunteers wouldn’t do and that really helped. We had some ppl that were cutting ceiling trim with a table saw and others who were up on the roof helping install the roof sheeting. Despite all the work we got done the week wouldn’t have been complete without some drama.

The first day of construction one of the brigade members had gotten something in their eye and by night it had gotten really red and painful and we had to take her to the hospital. I was freaking out. At first it was thought that she may have something very severe and if we didn’t get her to a major hospital in San José she might lose her vision. So needless to say I thought we were on our way to San José, 2hrs away, pitch dark, not having eaten dinner, wearing athletic shorts, sandals and a t-shirt, and having no money on me at all. Why was I involved? Translate. The brigade coordinator stayed at the hotel with the brigade and our regional coordinator who didn’t speak English drove while I went along to translate. I took a medical Spanish class in college but that was two years ago and we were talking about technical eye stuff. Yikes.

We decided that first we would stop at the regional hospital in Puerto Viejo that was on our way to San José first to see if we could treat it there. Puerto Viejo is not that big of a town and I had been there before and by chance we had to stop by the hospital for something. Well it being dark and ppl stressing in the back seat the last thing I wanted to be doing was asking people on the street where the hospital was. Luckily my memory served me right and we got there on the first try. I remember helping them get checked with the other Habitat employee I was with and I was showing him how my hand wouldn’t stop shaking from the nerves. After that though everything began to calm down little by little. Turns out whatever she had gotten in her eye was gone and it was just inflammation from having rubbed it so much. So the doctor gave her a patch and a prescription for generic eye drops. After all was said and done I was really impressed with the public health system. In the guide books they always say go to a private clinic, but for what we needed this worked out swell. We didn’t have to wait long to see the doctor, she understood a lot of English so it made my job easier and the whole time we were there they never asked us to pay anything or to see any insurance papers!

Only other iffy part of the week was trying to leave Sarapiqui and get back to Alajuela. Since it had been raining the whole week there was a lot of flooding and mudslides going on so we decided to wait it out an extra day and try to come back on Sunday. We really didn’t have too much of a problem, except we crossed a road that had about a foot of water running over it. Maybe not the best idea looking back on it but it was set up so we just followed a line of cars that were crossing all at the same time which was good because the water was dirty enough that at times you couldn’t see where you were on the road. They had ambulances and transit police there too keeping an eye on it all. We lucked out leaving when we did as the water was still rising and I think they closed it shortly after we crossed it. Kind of funny though shortly after we crossed it we had to pull over to let a bicycle race pass us and they were headed right for the flooded part of the road. Only in Costa Rica. The other really cool part about the week was how active the local families were.

The leaders of this brigade had previously donated to help construct a housing community located really close to where we were building and the beneficiary families of that first build really did all they could to show their appreciation. They organized throughout the week to provide us with snacks and serve us lunch at the construction site. One afternoon they organized a tortilla cooking lesson and then we taught them how to make hamburgers. They are all really great with me. They had been asking me about hamburgers for about a month so it was great to watch them savor the long awaited burger as they can’t afford that kind of food. Really cool though how motivated the working poor can be. They already have a plan in place to develop the community, they have put in a proposal for funds to improve the roads in their community and have dreams of building a mini mall in the area that faces the main road. Having visited a few times before and then spending the week with the brigade I feel like a part of their community.

I have a running joke with the other volunteer who lives in her own community up in the mountains. She teaches English and works on other community development projects so basically the whole town knows her by name. I always kid her that I am super jealous of her popularity and wish I had my own town. Living in the city you just don’t build that kind of small town atmosphere. Well I think I found my neighborhood in Sarapiqui. The little kids there saw me and literally latched on to me and wouldn’t let me go. They would call me “Juice” or “Toasty” for Dustin or Dusty. I dn they have trouble with the D in my name and Toasty is a brand name for chips so it is easier for them to remember. Really cool neighborhood though I have to add it now to my list of places to visit every time I come to Costa Rica.

Tomorrow is my birthday, for which I’ll be going to Panamá to celebrate. Yesterday I invited the Alajuela office over to my house for lunch and cake. Pretty low key, I’m not overly excited about 23. Honestly the only good thing that I can think of is that 23 was Michael Jordan’s number. Tomorrow is also Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t exist here, just like Halloween.

quick

This next week could be my make or break week in Costa Rica. I've been invited to work with a brigade from the US who are going to be participating in a housing project all next week in Sarapiquí, a country area in Northeast Costa Rica. I'll be helping in translations and organizing all the construction activities with the constructor and the brigade. It should be pretty interesting/challenging. Interesting that the brigade of 23ppl are all at least 60 years old and retired, and challenging in trying to keep them healthy as a lot of the activities involve a shovel and dirt and /or concrete. They are all big donors so there are going to be a lot of special activities throughout the week that are going to involve the families who are going to receive the houses. I went yesterday to visit some of the families and it will be great to see how much their situation is going to improve once they move to their new homes which should hopefully be in time for Christmas.

It is hard to explain in a blog but this is really what Habitat is about. Providing families with a means to secure dignified housing. My co-workers do so much for these families in getting them enrolled in the government housing voucher program and are very passionate in this aspect of their job. Yesterday we went and told the families that they had been selected to receive these houses and my co-workers were so emotionally involved that there were tears in their eyes as we read them the letter of acceptance. That is the kind of job I want, where the only time I cry is for joyous situations.

Anyways I look forward to working with this brigade because it takes a certain type of person to gear up for a week of hard labor when the majority of everyone else their age in Costa Rica would be at the beach or bird watching. And I'm getting a free t-shirt too!

In other news I'll be spending my birthday (thanksgiving) on a bus for 12hrs on my way to Panamá for the mandatory tourist exit every 90 days. Next time I live more than 6 months abroad I'm getting a work permit because these trips are getting a little burdensome. At least this time there will be a lot of birthday parties where I'm going and the next time will be for my very first carnaval in February. After that time will really start to fly.

October: in a nutshell, más o menos

Wow it’s been the three busiest weeks in Costa Rica. Not really overly burdensome busy, but enough that it has kept me from writing. With that being said I’m going to summarize about a million things that have been going on down here:

Buenos Aires pt. 1
-My travels within Costa Rica recently led me to the southern part of the country to visit the small town of Buenos Aires. Part of Habitat’s requisites for families is to attend a financial workshop where they teach the families how to manage a budget and what are investments and what are expenses and that your house is an investment. This is a really important step because some orgs will give houses to poor families and the families will trash the house because they don’t know how to live in a house. They will take materials out of the house and sell them, or sell the house and move back to where they lived before. The workshop went well, however we invited 40 families and only five showed up. Not so good.

Buenos Aires pt. 2
-This trip for me was to see what could have been. Originally I was going to be assigned to work in this town with the Habitat affiliate office. This however never happened because another gal from the area transferred from the National Office in San José to be closer to her family. Because of that I got bumped to Alajuela, which on the whole was probably a better deal. The town was pretty tranquil and I really liked its set up. Things weren’t all scrunched together like in Alajuela. It reminded me a lot of the towns that I visit in Panamá. Only bitter taste left in my mouth was that they were having their town carnival with Ferris wheels, bumper cars and the infamous Kamikaze. Since it was a 5hr drive from Alajuela we came a day early and were able to go to the carnival at night. I allowed myself to get talked in to going on this ride which the best way to describe it would be like a pendulum and you swing back and forth until eventually you end up spinning around like a windmill. We went once and that was fine, however they wouldn’t let us get off the ride because there were two pendulums and we had to stay on to balance the weight of the other pendulum. There weren’t a lot of people so they decided to give us a two for one. Worst idea ever. The second round was about twice as long as the first and I was going to puke the second I got off the ride. I never did though thanks to a timely drink of water. Call it the revenge of Buenos Aires, but let’s just say I won’t forget about this town any time soon.

Rain Week (aka my first Temporal)
-Do you know what it is like for it to rain for five days in a row without stopping? I thought it would be fun to experience but turns out to be very depressing. It started on a Sunday; I was in la Fortuna supposedly hoping to see a horse parade which ended up not happening. So I decided to make use of my time and look for places where I could open a Latin dance studio. Well about 230 it starts to rain, and then downpour. I had my umbrella which didn’t help really at all and by the time I made it on the bus at 315 my shoes hasta my knees were pretty well soaked. The bus ride wasn’t any more comforting because the windshield wipers didn’t work, but that didn’t slow the driver down.

Getting off the bus I had a 15min walk ahead of me to get to the house. I got off the bus and waited a good hour at the stop for the rain to stop but it never did. It poured the whole time. Finally I was able to grab a ride with another guy in the back of a delivery truck and made it to the house. To top it off though the whole town had lost power and it was getting dark and it was close to dinner but nobody could cook cause of the power outage.

So that was fun but getting back to Alajuela on Monday and having it rain every single moment of every day got on my nerves. I had to go back to San Carlos the next weekend for a first communion but I didn’t have any clothes because they had not been able to dry the whole week. We were ironing clothes so they would dry and hanging stuff behind the fridge just so I had clothes to wear each day. Supuestamente the hurricane by Puerto Rico and a tropical depression in Honduras totally messed us up. It was pretty miserable though. My host family didn’t send their daughter to school for three days that week because of the rain. I know that sounds weak but the roads are bad here, the drivers are crazy, the cars are in bad shape and there was A LOT of rain. So put two and two together and you get the point. Moving on…

First First Communion
-Turns out Costa Rica first communions are pretty similar to the US’s. Only difference is they overcrowd churches when its 80 degrees out and there is no a/c, and they have a ridiculous amount of photographers to the point where the priest scolds them for half the mass for being rude in taking pictures. After the grueling mass we went to the family’s farm where they had a big area set up to serve food and hang out. I went the day before and helped them set up basically putting up two tents setting up tables and chairs. I’ve known this family for almost three years so I knew a lot of the people that came to the party and it was the first time I had really talked with some of their kids.

One of the kids had a pet snake with him that he brought to church with him which was totally ok with his parents. I also received an inordinate amount of requests for how do you say x swear word in English. I like to help them out a little bit on the pronunciation just so if they are going to cuss they’ll at least sound good doing it ;) My other gringa friend here is an English teacher and is very strict when a student uses an English cuss word in her class. I figure they know the word is bad so they won’t use it around other North Americans, but at the same time they won’t say it in their daily language because they have a lot more swear words to choose from. I see myself as the cool uncle with the younger generation of my generation. I’m kind of a tweener in being barely young enough to be a son, but am old enough to be the young cool uncle type. Like the uncle that shows up at family events and all the kids beat him up or throw water balloons at him… And then he gets married and gets lame (you know who you are). Well maybe not that cool but I’m getting there.

21st century in the country
-A part of me died inside when I found out my friends in the country now have cable tv and internet. It’s great for them because now they’ll be connected but now I have to go further to get away from it all. Its cool I can go there and watch NFL on the weekend but I miss how it used to be. Being able to leave my email for a few days and having no way of accessing it is always refreshing. I remember how sweet it was when I first got internet and I’m already telling the parents to set limits on how much computer time they allow. The one weekend I visited, comp usage was up easily 1,000%. Now that it is there, it only serves to taunt me. Same with tv, gone are the days with 4 channels and having to watch soap operas at 8pm.
My family in Alajuela also recently upgraded to cable too. We used to have a basic cable package which was perfect. All the local channels plus cnn, espn, animal planet, discovery, fox sports and some other good ones. Now we have like 90 channels, some that are English with no subtitles. I can now watch Lou Dobbs and the Late Show, and I’m not too happy about it. Good for my family that they can be connected but I could care less, I want to be disconnected (except 12-6 on Sundays, 7-10 on Mondays and eventually Thursdays but that’s it, seriously).

FALL
-The one season I hate to miss: Fall. Why? I don’t know I used to hate it because it meant winter was next but missing it this year is really messing with me. I missed it once before living in Miami and it is so awkward celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving in the tropics. Like why am I wearing shorts awkward? The leaves changing colors and falling, the freshness of the air, pumpkins, bonfires and the asthma/allergy attacks are all stuff I've come to miss. I never really cared for too much until I missed it that one year. Now it might be my favorite season as it is unique to the Midwest as apparently you can pick pumpkins in Arizona? Isn’t it all desert? Well I was recently informed by a Tucsonan that I had been mistakenly grouping AZ into the non-fall category. Fine, they can have their pumpkins but their leaves don’t change colors and the sun is way too high in the sky for it to be fall and it is way to hot and dry for it to be called fall. I’m even more for fall now after having to defend it against a wanna-be. (Disclaimer: I’m only attacking specifically the Tucson AZ area for trying to fit in with fall. If there are parts of AZ where the leaves change colors and fall, please don’t tell me about it. I like living in my bubble of ignorance in thinking that AZ is the boiling pot of the US ;)

Burnt in Fall
- Oct. 27 I managed to sun burn myself. Just my face and forearms but still impressive. Anyways the reason I got burned is because we were starting our 17 house housing project in San Ramón and ran into some problems that kept us out in the sun for three hours. Most notable problem being that someone had built their house about 5ft into one of our lots. An issue in Costa Rica is that drawings hardly ever reflect what the lots actually look like. So that lot is pretty much dead until we figure out what to do about it so were down to 16. Another issue we have is that they put an access road in where there used to be two lots for homes. That doesn’t affect us so much as those lots aren’t part of this build, but they didn’t cut the street in evenly and so one of the lots that was going to have more street frontage now has less, while one that was supposed to have less now has more. It’s not like we can just ask the families to change lots or accept less/more space as they have housing vouchers and loans that were calculated based on their specific lot. So to change things around would involve a lot of messing around and who knows if the bank would allow that. Good news is we have started construction on a project that has been so up and down. According to the plan we should have 17(well probably 16) houses by the New Year.

Llegada en Grúa
- Most exciting and scary thing that has probably ever happened to me in Costa Rica: getting stranded in the middle of a mountain with a broken down truck, in a torrential downpour, getting dark out and not having cell service. It probably should have been a lot scarier but we were on a major highway and luckily a tow truck happened to pass by and towed us back to the office in San José. I was with another gal and we were coming back from organizing stuff for a volunteer group Sarapiquí about two hours away from the office when the clutch on the truck went out as we were crossing the mountainous part of the journey. Like I said we should have been freaking out a little more but it was surprising to see how Helen, the Costa Rican I was with handled the situation. She never seemed to be worried and just did a semi-nervous laugh the whole time we were in the situation. The gringo in me should have been screaming but it was calmed by how calm Helen was. By the time I got home I didn’t even think too much about the whole ordeal until my host parents reassured me that I could have potentially been in a very risky situation. It turned out to be quite the experience though riding in the truck as it was getting towed. They took us about an hour and a half and only charged us $90 which is a steal even in Costa Rica. Next day at work though I had to tell everyone about it, which earned me the black cat label as it was the second time I’ve gotten into trouble with the truck.

Pretty exciting way to finish out my first four months with Habitat. Overall really liking the job and I see areas where I can make a difference and make things better for them in the long run. This weekend I’m going to another financial workshop in Puntarenas, right by the beach, super hot, should be interesting. Oh and Halloween… I plan on remembering it this year.

LIGA LIGA, Bad country concert, Project-icos, Who turned out the lights?

LIGA LIGA! If you go to any soccer game in Alajuela you’re going to hear this chant. Liga (league, or rubber band) is the local team in Alajuela and I went and watched one of their games last weekend. It was my first time going to a professional soccer game in another country and there were some notable differences. First off the stadiums don’t compare. The stadium they had was pretty tiny, tiny enough that the gopher football team could probably achieve a sell out if it played there. Also the field is poorly maintained. It was natural grass but since it was the rainy season there were lots of muddy spots and in certain areas really affected the play. Supposedly Costa Rica needs to put synthetic grass in all their stadiums soon or else FIFA is going to kick them out of whatever program they are in with them now. Right now only one stadium in Costa Rica has synthetic grass.

Despite the field conditions La Liga won 2-1, beating the top team in the division. One thing about the fan base is they get ticked off a lot more easily I think, especially with the referees. Pretty much every non-call for the Liga or call against the Liga created an uproar of curse words from the crowd. After the ref’s they would taunt the other team and then even their own players if they made a bad pass or messed up. However when they did well they were very enthusiastic.
I went to the game with my host sister and one of her cousins who I finally met after living next door to him for three months.

I don’t know what took so long for me to meet him as he is about my age and I think we are going to get along fine. He goes to play soccer once a week and he told me he would take me along the next time he goes. I still haven’t met my host dad’s son who is about my age and lives in San José. He only visits once a month on the weekends and I am usually gone so I have yet to meet him too. There is also an older sister who I have not met yet, but that is because she is a school teacher in Los Angeles, California. Supposedly she is going to come for Christmas so I might by then have met all the family. Usually it is the other way around where there are so many siblings its hard to get around to meeting all of them, this time it is more of a distance/laziness factor.

I don’t know if I have mentioned the childcare center project yet but it is a little thing now that I really hope to achieve while I’m here. The other long term volunteer that is working with Habitat is stationed in a village helping with community development projects and one project is to build a childcare center. Well I went up there recently and took pictures of the site and sketched up a site plan to send to interested architects who were looking to help us out with the design of the center. This has been my favorite project so far because I am managing it and acting between the clients (Habitat community) and the professionals (architects). Just recently I sent out a request for design drawings and once we get those, we can do a take off and find out how much this is going to cost. Once we know that then we can apply for grants and solicit people like you for donations ;) Were scheduled to start construction next April so I’m hoping to make that a reality, I’ll keep you posted.

The other housing project that I have been working on has stumbled a bit. I talked to our engineer the other day and he said the bids we got last Friday did not look very good aka really expensive. We’ll see where this goes but the delays are starting to mount up for this project so thankfully I’m still here for awhile and should be able to see the groundbreaking ceremony at least. I imagine the next stumbling block will be the trickle down effects from the US financial crisis with either prices going up or interest rates going up making families unable to pay their mortgage. We’ll see, something is bound to happen. Apart from those two projects we are looking at properties to purchase to start other projects so there is a fair amount of stuff going on, all in different stages so I’ll be able to see a lot.

Last weekend I was able to participate in a fundraiser for Habitat. They had a concert in San José to raise funds and invited the group Malpaís to play. They were pretty well known and had around 250 fans show up. It was cool as I was able to get my first Habitat t-shirt and Habitat wrist band. Also I met my volunteer coordinator from the international office.

I didn’t think I had one because once I got here nobody from the US or the International office had been checking in on me or anything. Supposedly I was supposed to sign a contract and do all this other stuff, but the volunteer coordinator left just as I got here so I had no one in contact with me outside of Costa Rica Habitat. That was fine though because Habitat Costa Rica took care of me no problem with my housing and job and everything. So I was kind of caught off guard when a random gal introduced herself to me at the concert. Before they had volunteers being the volunteer coordinator but now have decided to have a staff person do it as the volunteers change pretty often. She’s pretty cool and I was also able to meet the other International office long term volunteers, which there were about four of them. So that’s cool, I have some more gringo friends to hang out with now.

To put it in perspective, the Habitat Costa Rica main office is a house where about ten ppl work. The International office which does all the Caribbean and Latin American countries is a few blocks away in an office building which they take up about three floors. I haven’t been there yet but I hope to go soon to tour it and see what it is like, especially now that I know some people who work there.

One other funny story to finish off this post: yesterday the electric company cut our power because we forgot to pay our bill. They just showed up at about 9am and shut us down without even saying anything to us. We finally got it sorted out and paid but they didn’t come back to turn it on till 3pm. Biggest waste of a day because we couldn’t do anything besides sit around and tell jokes. Luckily our new boss is pretty chistoso (joker). I’m apparently bad luck because I had brought my lunch that day because I thought I was going to be in San José. Normally I go home for lunch because I live so close. So this was my first time having lunch at the office and they cut the lights! What was even more random is the power company shut off the electricity at my host parents house even though they had paid their bill on time. I was going to go there because I couldn’t microwave my lunch at the office but they didn’t have power either. Later my host parents told me they got all upset with the electric company, which I wish I would have been there to see because I can’t imagine them getting upset because they are so pura vida. It worked for them though because they got power back at 1pm while we waited till 3.

Three day weekend this weekend because Monday is a holiday for a cultural day that happens on Sunday. Gotta love it!

Beach time, Panamá, lot of fiesta, project valle escondido

If you had a house on the beach, wouldn’t you maintain it? Even if it was your mother’s house and she passed away and left the house for you and your 4 other siblings? Even if you couldn’t stand your siblings wouldn’t you at least maintain the house in your mother’s memory?
So my family took me to the beach the other weekend. I had no idea about where the beach was and supposedly there was a house and all we had to do was bring sheets. I think we ended up at an upper class Costa Rican private beach community. Upper class in the sense that all the homes were mostly vacation homes and they had security guards patrolling the community all day long, however not so much in regards to the bumpy gravel road and how run down some of the beach houses had become. For instance the house we stayed at might fall down in a few years. Long story short, sibling rivalries and stubbornness are causing the house to be neglected and it shows. At least there weren’t bed bugs. Anyways besides a semi-rundown house the beach was a nice getaway. I spent most of the weekend sleeping on a hammock and trying not to burn myself. I got pretty bit up at night and the black sand literally made me feel like my feet were going to catch on fire in the sun but other than that things went well. Crazy though how much the ocean can change day to day. I went in the water the first day and it was kind of dirty, I didn’t think much of it because the black sand would make it look like that. However our last day something changed and the water was a lot clearer and there wasn’t as much sand in it.

We came back from the beach on September 15th, Costa Rica’s Independence Day. They don’t shoot fireworks off but rather have a bunch of parades and torch relays. I didn’t get to see much of the parades as I was at the beach but my other volunteer friend told me she had someone run a torch through her town on a relay to somewhere. She lives in Cartago though, the original capitol city of Costa Rica so they crazy over there. They have a religious holiday where people walk from as far as Nicaragua to the cathedral in Cartago to worship the Virgin of Los Angeles.

Shortly after I returned from the beach I had to turn around and head to Panama for 5 days. I wasn’t due to leave the country but another volunteer had to and she didn’t want to go along so I told her I would go with her if we could go to Panama. She agreed but said we had to go see the canal. I’d seen it before but this time we went to an actual tourist area which had a visitor center and museum. Different kind of tourism for me though as there were more Latin American tourists than North American/European tourists. It is off season for tourism though so that could be why. I also was able to hear a lot of funny Spanish accents that I hadn’t heard before. I guess I’m sheltered with only hearing Costa Rica and Panama Spanish. I wasn’t too thrilled about staying in Panama City but in the end it turned out alright because I actually had to navigate the city on my own. The first time I came to Panama City I was able to meet up with cousins of my aunt (language note: I naturally wrote that in passive when it should be active, my Spanish is messing with my English!) and they took me all around so I didn’t have to navigate anything. This time however they were all busy with work so I had to do it all alone. I’m learning Panama backwards from Costa Rica. When I first got to Costa Rica I had to everything on my own cause I didn’t know anyone, now when I come I don’t have to stay in hotels anymore because I have so many other connections.

Well after touring the city we went to the country to stay with my aunt’s family for a few days. My friend Mikey totally stole the show though which I’m glad she did. Granted the guy cousins all wanted to flirt with her but even the girl cousins, aunts and grandmas all had a good time getting to know her. It was nice too that she spoke Spanish so I didn’t have to translate at all. Staying there for 2 days was probably the highlight for me. The town had a club so we went there both nights and got free drinks till 11. No crazy stories resulted from that but it did help me keep my streak alive of consecutive weeks going out and dancing. Our bus back to Costa Rica picked us up at 1am so we had to leave the club early the second night and ended up missing a wet t-shirt contest. Oh well couldn’t have been as crazy as Hawaiian tropic models wrestling in pool full of chocolate…

I have to say town festivals are getting pretty out there these days. In my original host town, a tiny little place out in the country, they decided for their town festival they would get models to wrestle in a pool of chocolate. It didn’t last long though because people started pushing to see and they broke the barrier so the dj called it off. Little ‘ol La Lucha not quite ready for the big time yet mud wrestling events I guess…

I know it sounds like all I have been doing the last few weeks is sun tanning, travelling and going to exotic clubs/parties but that’s really how its been… not really but seriously I went to probably the best surprise birthday party ever the other night. My boss at my office in Alaujela is dating an engineer from the main office in San José except it is super down low because of the whole no dating people you work with policy. I don’t know if it is policy here but they just prefer to keep it on the down low. They do so well that I almost forgot they were “dating”. Well that was until my boss decided to plan a surprise birthday party for him and we spent the better part of a day working on stuff for the party. This however was more than just hide everybody in a room and yell surprise, we were on a mission. Not only was there cake and food, but we also had music, karaoke and a piñata. Well it didn’t stop there as we bought fake eggs and filled them with candy and then when Carlos (the b-day boy) was blindfolded for the piñata we just let him have it, the whole time him thinking the eggs were real. The best surprise of the night though was when we gave him a fake gift. We had a big box wrapped up with a bow and everything and one of Carlos’s friends dressed up as a woman and hid in the box. I’ll have to try and get a picture of his face when he opened the box because it was hysterical. Having a grown man jump out of a box, wearing a wig and makeup, dressed like a stripper… just can’t be described in words.

That concludes this edition of my Costa Rica Party tour but leads me to my next point as Carlos and I now work together on housing projects and we are pretty good resources for each other. I tell him how construction projects go in the US and he tells me how they do them here. In Costa Rica my degree Construction Management doesn’t exist, so everybody becomes engineers and they are dam proud of it. They answer the phone saying their name as engineer so-and-so. They’ll say their title but they won’t say who they work for as if being an engineer carries more weight than any company name.

Right now were in the bidding stage of a housing project of 17 houses that we are doing in San Ramon and are big struggle is finding a decent contractor. We’ve already had two site visits because only one contractor showed up for the first one and had to push our bid date back two weeks because of that. We are hoping that we get 3-4 good bids for this project. Our concern is that most of these contractors have very little experience doing this type of housing and won’t be set up for this kind of work, causing the bids to be high because they won’t be as efficient. We have one project going right now where the contractor has pretty much given up on finishing it anytime soon as he sends maybe 3 ppl to the site each day. They are already way late and there are penalty clauses in the contract but apparently the laws are too weak to enforce them in court. So here is my open call for bidders, bids are due next Friday, send them to San José. We have one really good contractor that does what he says so we use him on individual projects and little side jobs and repairs that we need done. We just need like 2 or 3 more of him for these bigger projects. Maybe that’s my calling…

Sucesos:

-I think dancing is a way better way to meet people than smoking. In college ppl would say they smoke because you’ll meet other ppl that stand around outside when it’s ten below and you can be there so they don’t feel completely insane. I have this cultural suspicion that everyone here either knows how to dance or are very open to learning how to and it is a great way to break the ice. For instance I was out with my friend and his girlfriend and my friend didn’t dance and the girl was like “yeah I dance a little” when I asked her to dance with me. She was pretty shy so I hadn’t talked to her much before but I had to at least ask her to dance. So we go dance and I spin her around enough that she gains confidence in me and then the music changed and I asked her if she wanted to keep dancing and she was like hell yeah (well the Spanish equivalent more or less of hell yeah). Turns out she danced a lot more than she said she did. Later when I was saying good bye to everyone she tells me that I’m an excellent dancer and I need to come back and teach her to dance sometime. Doesn’t always go like that but I’ve gotten to know a fair amount of people from dancing.

-I almost got stranded for the first time in Costa Rica coming back to the office with another employee when our truck’s electrical system went crazy. It literally shut the truck down and we had to disconnect the battery in order to start the car and get it back to the office. Weirdest thing ever though, like it all of a sudden became possessed, or blew a fuse.

-My host mom makes incredible pizza.

-I (still) hate the Cowboys. I still remember when we finally crushed them the season after the super bowl. I was watching the game with some cousins and we were dominating when Sharper returned an interception for a td. It was glorious but all I remember are my cousins getting upset because they would have won a bunch of money had the score remained as it was. Have to savor those moments now because it looks like were back to the early 90’s again. At least the Vikings still suck.

Nuevo Pueblo, family visit, habitat cambios, sucesos

So I’m actually not all alone down here come to find out. Well actually I knew pretty much the whole time that I wasn’t alone, it was just that I thought my compañera (friend from work) lived relatively on almost the other side of the world. Well I thought that until I went to visit her town this past weekend.

Habitat has kind of like an adopted community where they built a bunch of houses and are now trying to develop the community and they have a volunteer to help them. She is teaching English classes, helping with a folk dance team, starting a recycling program and helping with many other projects like a community child care center. It is probably the most ambitious project, but they already have land donated for it and I’m working on getting them an architect to do some drawings for them. After that it will be a matter of fundraising $10-$15 grand to build and operate the center. Anyone want to chip in? Needless to say she is the most popular gringa (person from the US) living in a Costa Rican community that I have seen, and I’m a little jealous of her because of that ;) Anyways my beach plans for the weekend got cancelled so I gave her a call and she bailed me out by inviting me to her town because they were having festivals that weekend.

It’s maybe three hours traveling to get to her town from my town but it could be another country. For one, the landscape is not at all like the jungle-scape (see pics) that most people think of Costa Rica as. The best comparison I can make is maybe to that of N. Ireland. We are up way high in the mountains above the clouds, it rains a lot, is very cloudy, green and extremely cold. And by cold I mean that people have wood stoves that they cook with but also use to warm the house. Now for my North American readers I must add that I am really over-exaggerating the cold. The coldest it got was maybe mid 50’s at night, but I’m used to mid 80’s and humid so this was a big change. It felt like camping in October. I got to wear my sweat pants and hooded sweatshirt for once and I slept with legit blankets. Not just the landscape was different but the people too talked differently, had their own phrases and were more pasty white because it is cloudy 90 percent of the time.

I lucked out as the town was having a festival so they had carnival games, dances and a bunch of good food cooked up. No tacos, but the churros and tamales were pretty good. Saturday night we went to a small house party and everyone was chill and we were watching the Costa Rican equivalent of Dancing with the Stars. Well that ended and then they got out their sound system and started playing salsa music, something I’ve never heard at a house party. We danced a little and later they switched to club music and brought out a broom stick to dance with (or to be a stripper pole). It was getting close to my turn to dance with the broomstick when I made probably my best cultural save ever. Not being a big pole dancer I somehow turned it into a limbo competition. Everyone loved it and totally got into it. The game ended when we started trying to jump over the stick and it broke. (I wonder how they are going to explain that to their parents.) Mikey (la compañera) and I just kept chuckling to ourselves as we had never been part of such a lively limbo competition.

Sunday was pretty laid back however they were supposedly having a parade, which never arrived but they had a dance which was ok. It was ok mostly because Central American dj’s never shut up. They can’t let music play more than a minute without cutting in and interrupting or advertising stuff. It wasn’t even good commentary, mostly “Who wants free beer?” or “Raise your hand if you like girls.” So annoying, ay por el amor de Dios cállese y deje que la música se oiga (For the love of God shut up and let us hear the music). Anyways I now have another place in Costa Rica that they told me I can visit whenever I want.

Last Friday was a very interesting day as I went with three other Habitat employees to visit a very poor family in Northeast Costa Rica. The journey itself was pretty cool as we had to go over mountains and we passed some waterfalls and got some pictures. For me it was just fun to hang out with co-workers and be the only foreigner. It is funny though as everyone knows a little bit of English and some more than others but there are English words that are pretty much part of Costa Rica, or at least Habitat Spanish. For instance when we would pass by a waterfall or something cool everyone would say “Take a picture”. What, sorry and next are also other words that have gained acceptance in the Costa Rica language. Anyways the family we visited was the poorest family that I have seen in Costa Rica. We were way off the beaten path to even get to their wooden house. We went paved road to stone road to dirt road and then had to walk 100 meters (300ft-ish) to the house. The family had six kids the mother had cancer and the two youngest twins were noticeably malnourished. We brought them a whole bunch of clothes, and food and got them started in the process for getting their own home. There is a big donor group coming in December to help build and pay for this families house as there is no way they could afford their own home. There isn’t a lot of work and it is sporadic so as a family they might only make $6 a week. What is even sadder is that the work they do get I think is cutting down trees for lumber companies. Luckily this family had city friends that had been helping them get by month to month by bringing them food and supplies. Hopefully this story has a good ending 6 months from now as one of the older boys really wants to continue studying so hopefully he can get the help he’ll need. The walk from their current home to school is 3hrs so there really isn’t much chance that any of the kids will have a very high education level and will end up repeating the cycle of living in extreme poverty for generations to come. I’m confident Habitat will be able to help them out though.
In other Habitat news my jefa (boss) accepted a new job with the International Habitat office in San José and will be leaving us for good in November. They are going to pay her literally double what she is making now so I can’t blame her. Since I’ve started here about three ppl have left for other jobs and it has been because they’ll be earning double what they make at Habitat. So it goes in the life of non-profit orgs. My job is shifting a little bit also. With her departure I’m going to be focused on developing processes for Habitat construction projects. It’s hard to explain but we have to submit estimates to the banks that give us the housing vouchers and they want to make sure the money is being spent as efficiently as possible. So I’ll probably be buried in more estimates but I’ll also be working out of the San José office more often and there will be other day trips to go on. I currently work in the Alajuela office which is tiny-er so it will be nice to get out more often and head to the big house.
That’s all for now, is summer really over?

News and notes (updates):

-I’m pretty sure Obama will dominate, or Costa Rica is extremely liberal. The Republican convention didn’t get hardly any tube time in my casa (house). I even told them it was going to be in my old college town, but tropical storms take precedence.

-Speaking of tropical storms we are all messed up because of the indirect effects of the storms. We have big time flooding going along the pacific coast, so much that my beach plans have once again been cancelled. I don’t get it, the Caribbean coast isn’t getting any rain and they are closer to the storms.

-Alajuela’s soccer team La Liga, my favorite team here played such a bad game last night it made me upset. They almost give me Costa Rica National Selection team jitters but they played so bad I might disown them. They didn’t complete more than two consecutive passes the entire second half. I’m half glad they lost because they didn’t deserve to win. It’s not hard to pass the ball back and forth more than twice. It’s like a handoff in football, not that hard or risky. Speaking of football Americano…

-Is it Sunday yet? My football fever is in full force this week. I tried to avoid it up until now but I honestly can’t wait for the season to start. I think I’ll learn my lesson being out of the country during football season. I think ESPN deportes will be my savior though as I was able to watch last night’s game from my house, so I’m optimistic.

Abanico, Día gringo, la disco/la vida, gerencia

Puras Vidas para todos (pure lives for everyone). I have more news on the Abanico “housing crisis” that I described in my last post. Abanico is the name of the town where 60ish houses are being built for people with few resources aka poor. The problem is that 40 houses are already complete but sit empty and everyone wants to know why. Well here are some reasons why:

-The gov. does not want anyone to move in until all the houses are complete so they can build a sense of community.
-The families will need the housing voucher to be able to buy the house, which the gov. has suspended for the time being.
-Of the original 130 families that applied for the houses, only 5 families qualified.
-The gov. has a gynormous amount of requisites the families must comply with before they can purchase and move into the home.
-There is a big pile of sand and stone blocking the entrance of vehicles into the housing project.

The list goes on but basically the story goes that Habitat got a big loan from a somewhere in Europe to build these houses. They decided to build all 60 at once to utilize cost savings from ordering in bulk. That makes sense and all but then you should beef up your construction resources. I was there the other day and they had maybe five ppl working. Knowing that you can’t move ppl in until you are complete should put some pressure on the construction schedule. However everything seems pretty pura vida as of right now. I think the bigger issue is not having all the families lined up. We were going to interview in August families who wanted to move to the project but I’m guessing it is hard to find families that qualify due to the recent economic crisis, with costs going up and wages staying the same or lowering due to the devaluation of the colon. It was brought up why the project couldn’t be done in say 3 phases of 20 houses each? Build 20, move 20 families in, then start the second phase etc. That would get you around the government road block at least. The downside there is you lose the economy from ordering in bulk, prices could go higher, and who knows they may only have a certain amount of time to use the loan or they will lose it. There are a lot of things that I would do different, but who knows what kind of other restraints are put on a project like this to cause it to go like it is. There are a lot of things that haven’t been well thought out, like where are these ppl going to work, how are they going to get transportation etc. The site was selected because the land was cheap, however it means driving down a bumpy stone road for 2-3miles to arrive at a small town with a school, church and convenience store. What is going to happen to when 200+ ppl move in at once?

Anyways let’s back up a little bit. In my last post I mentioned I would be spending a day with donors from the US on a day trip that happened last Friday. As usual you never find out exactly what is going on until you get there the day of. What was going on last week in San José was a big Latin America Habitat conference, where fundraising personnel from different US affiliates were invited to participate. I didn’t know this but US Habitat affiliates are required to donate a percentage of their earnings to International Habitat offices. The people that came to this conference represented different regions of the US and also were the ones that solicit the big bucks from the major donors. So this conference lasted the whole week with Friday being the day trip excursion for the group. I got invited as the group wanted to meet the long term volunteers.

We went to a souvenir shop, visited a Habitat house and then we went to a swanky hotel/spa resort for lunch with a view of a volcano Arenal. I thought we were going to stop at some smaller Costa Rica typical food restaurant but we passed through the resort town and headed for the volcano where the higher end tourist destinations were, me all along looking out the window at all of these places that I never thought I would see from the inside until we pulled into Montaña del Fuego. There we ate a pretty decent lunch and then went to Abanico to plant trees and see the project. We had thirty ppl and thirty trees so everyone would get to plant one, however the group became very tired and so only about half of the trees were planted and we left the rest for the construction workers to plant. The group got so tired that they passed on dinner to return to the hotel. I don’t know how they got so tired but it was funny to see the look of disbelief on the faces of the Costa Rica Habitat ppl. They couldn’t believe they weren’t going to go and eat dinner, even though it had been already paid for.

I felt pretty spoiled the whole day and felt a little out of my comfort zone. Travelling with US people, on a tourist bus with air conditioning, and eating at a palace all made me feel a little out of place. It was ok though, it is nice to have that break from the norm. I found out about the tropical storm in Florida and caught up on some college football news. I also got to chat with the National Director for Habitat in Costa Rica and met some other people from the national office that I hadn’t met before. One guy in particular found out from the National Director that I spoke pretty good Spanish so he wanted to test me to make sure I was for real. Well I passed his test no problem but I’m always hesitant to jump into a conversation after someone says yeah talk to this guy his Spanish is excellent. We spent most of the time talking about places in the US because he lived there for 9 years and had travelled all over the place mostly by train.

After we finished in Abanico the bus went back to San José but I stayed behind because some friends of mine invited me to go out to the disco with them. This disco had a huge first floor for dancing and a second floor mezzanine with a bar. There weren’t a whole lot of people so everything was on the mezzanine. One thing to note about the disco in Costa Rica is that they play all types of club, reggaeton, reggae, techno, and pop but also mix in salsa and meringue and sometimes cumbia. They play each genre for maybe 20min and then switch to the next genre. Well I went about 30-40min without stopping because they played salsa and meringue back-to-back. And Latin dancing is not like club music where you can dance at your own pace, with this you have to keep the beat and lead your partner well. Somehow I survived (till 4am) as the ticas (Costa Rican women) that I danced with never got tired. I have to say Latin dancing has become probably the most enjoyable thing that I do on a weekly basis. I finally found the right class that matches my abilities, so I’m excited to see how good I’ll be in December. Another thing that I enjoy immensely in Costa Rica is how laid back things are.

Every day I’m able to wake up at my own pace and get to work, a leisurely 2-3min walk from my house. Everyone gets in around 8am and the first thing we do is eat a light breakfast, usually bread and butter with coffee and chat about whatever till almost 9am. From there we do work till about 12pm and then we have lunch until 1pm. During that hour we close the door and lock it and we don’t take phone calls or nothing. Then from 1-330 or 4pm we work and then have another 15-30min coffee break with crackers and then we close up at 5pm. Pretty awesome if you ask me, I used to feel bad if I took lunch longer than 30min, where here 3 breaks a day seem mandatory. Granted not everyday is like this but it happens pretty frequently as a cultural norm.

Life should get a little interesting the next few weeks as we are going to start managing the construction of some model homes. I’m working right now getting the budgets and schedules and spreadsheets together to track the progress of the construction. A lot of outsiders I find have a hard time understanding what exactly construction managers do. A lot of people here think that I’m out working on the houses each day. When I tell them I don’t do that then they think I am the engineer or architect. It actually involves quite a bit of things that put together requires someone to manage them. There is the schedule, the budget, the scope of work and customer satisfaction that all must be managed by someone. They are the ones who get all the glory and take all the heat based on the success of the project.

Other notes this week:

-Is it just me or does it seem like Obama is going to take this thing in a landslide? I think he would win Costa Rica in a landslide if it were part of the US. My family is glued to CNN this week because of the Democratic Convention. We’ll see how the Republican Convention goes.

-Apparently US Open tennis takes priority over preseason Monday Night Football in Costa Rica. That better not happen during the regular season.

-Travelling last weekend I was able to avoid the rain for two straight days. I don’t know if I was just in the right place at the right time or the storms/hurricanes in the Caribbean are messing up our rainy season.

-I’m totally hooked on the national Costa Rica soccer team. They had a World Cup qualifying game against El Salvador which they won 1-0 but I couldn’t sit still most of the game. It must be a hang over from when I watched them play in the World Cup of 2006 but sometimes they give me the jitters just like the Packers.

-My host mom makes incredible hamburgers.

When in Rome, La Rumba, matrimony, housing crisis/process...

When living in a foreign country I always prefer to do things just like the locals. I always take public buses; I speak as much Spanish as possible and almost always do things on my own. A lot of people here when they find out I’m from the US will ask me who I came with, thinking that I’m with a tourist group or some big group from the US. I’m always confused by that question because it never crosses my mind as a question that might come up. In the US when you meet a foreign exchange student, they are usually there by themselves, not with a big tourist group. I guess though when your country is known for tourism, ppl think to ask that question more often. I’d compare this question to the “where do you work/study” question of the US. Usually it is the 2nd or 3rd question asked when getting to know someone in the US as our jobs are a bigger part of our lives. That being said I made a major break through the other week when one of my friends from my salsa class told me that he thought that I was Costa Rican. I was pretty impressed with myself as I had talked to him before and asked him about where he worked and such. Usually I’m a dead give away even before I speak, usually due to the t-shirts that I wear advertising some fundraiser that happened three years ago. The only other time I had made a semi-breakthrough was when I was leaving Costa Rica for the first time and I got to the airport and a taxi driver asked me if I wanted a taxi and I told him I needed a plane, to which he replied asking if I was going to Spain.

In my quest to blend in I requested to live with a host family while doing my volunteer work. It has been pretty nice, they take good care of me. Making sure to serve me three meals a day, wash my sheets and clothes each week, and occasionally we’ll go out and do something like visit a volcano. Within my house though it is definitively very macho. Macho, as in machismo or male dominated I guess. It’s not always very noticeable but the women culturally have the responsibility of anything that relates to the daily operation of the house. It’s not like their enslaved by their spouses but it’s more little things that don’t always make sense to me. For example; we always eat dinner and then the dogs are fed by my host mother. Sometimes we finish eating and me and my host dad we’ll be watching tv in the room adjacent to the kitchen while my host mom is upstairs studying (she never graduated high school and is now going back to finish). Anyways the dogs start whining for food and all my host dad will do is announce to the upstairs that “Laura, the dogs are hungry.” Eventually she will come down and feed them but why couldn’t he just feed them? What’s funny is that they think nothing of it as it is part of their culture, while I’m sitting there about to get up and feed them myself. That is just a typical example of the machismo here. I have to say though my host dad has assumed all responsibility for sweeping and mopping the floor, which he does 3-4 times a day. Yeah, they also find it weird that we (college aged kids) can go weeks without vacuuming or cleaning bathrooms, when they do it almost every day. I should point out though that both my host parents work at home, the dad painting and finishing the construction of the house while the mother bakes bread to sell at the bakery and does the domestic goddess thing.

Last Thursday I went on my first Latin dance outing in Costa Rica. Since Mother’s day was last Friday, there was a big dance at La Rumba, a big dance hall/bar-restaurant in a pretty nice part of Alajuela. As big as the dance floor was though, it filled up quickly to the point where there was no room. That is what I hate most about going out and dancing. There never is enough room to display your full repertoire of combinations without hitting anyone. It is even more nerve-racking for the guy as it is his responsibility to protect his partner from getting stepped on. One cool/funny part of the evening was when they invited a Mexican Mariachi band to the stage. The cool part was they were really good and had a saxophonist who played one note for about 5min without stopping. The funny part was the whole dance floor cleared out for them. Nobody danced while they played. I don’t know if it was more as a sign of respect or that no one knew how to dance to Mariachi. I think it was more of the latter; ticos don’t dance to Mariachi but rather sing karaoke to it.

That was fun, was out till 1:30am but thankfully I was in Costa Rica and everybody gets the day off for Mother’s Day so I didn’t have to worry about getting up and going to work the next day. With the extended weekend I decided to hang around in Alajuela as one of my co-workers was getting married that weekend. I’d never been to a foreign wedding and even though it was catholic it still varied from a little from US weddings. I only went to the mass as they were having a small party later for family members. What I liked most about the wedding was that it was a lot simpler. I don’t know if that was because of custom or lack of money but it worked for me. There wasn’t 4-5 bridesmaids and groomsmen all dressed to match and those who came to the wedding were dressed more laid back than what I was used to. The mass went pretty well with only two awkward moments, one being when the bride was supposed to say I do, but forgot that she was supposed to say it then, so there was a hold your breath moment. Also at the end of mass it just kind of abruptly ended. They didn’t even have an exit song. The mass just ended and they started taking pictures. Kind of awkward for me but not so much for them I guess. Two emotions that I always experience when I’m at weddings; one is I start to imagine how my wedding is going to be, how I’ll have to get married twice, once in the US and once in my bride’s country…, and how big/small my parties are going to be etc. After that emotion passes though the next feeling I have is one of total immaturity where I sit there and almost laugh to myself as I watch the bride and groom promise to be together forever. I mean that is a long time. How nervous they seem to me, it’s like there getting their ball and chain fitted instead of the wedding ring. Usually right then I realize that I’m definitively not ready to get married anytime soon.

From the work standpoint things have kind of stalled as of late. Habitat in Costa Rica works as the bridge between the government agencies and the people that apply for gov. housing. You wouldn’t believe the number of tramites (steps) that one has to go through to build a house. They have job positions down here called tramitadoras, which basically is someone who runs around and does all the paperwork and permitting because it is a chore. Things have slown down as of late because the gov org that gives out the housing vouchers has suspended this activity as they are revising their budgets to determine how much money they don’t have I would assume. With construction costs doubling in the last year and the colon (Costa Rica’s currency) getting weaker has caused the vouchers to be issued for more money than in the past and now there is less money to go around. So for the moment we haven’t started construction on any new houses in the past two weeks. Today I heard on the news that 43 thousand people live in slums in Costa Rica and that the President promised to construct homes for at least 20 thousand living in slums, but he hasn’t done anything yet since he was elected 2 years ago. So business should be booming, right?

Yesterday I went and visited a project of 60 houses (see photo). We got there and they had about 40 completed, 5-10 half way done and the rest had yet to be constructed. What I don’t understand is some of these houses have been completed for months but nobody has moved into them yet. We were supposed to go and interview ppl for the houses this month but I doubt that is happening anytime soon. I don’t understand why families who live in substandard housing must remain like that, even though there are decent homes available that sit vacant. They say they have to take out a loan and do all the paper work and a lot of ppl don’t qualify and blah blah blah. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing a big chunk of the story but it kind of boggles my mind. Tomorrow I am going back to the project with a bunch of major/potential donors from the US and other countries to plant some trees at the project site so I’m sure more of the story will come to life. I mean, we’ve even started projects without permits before (ok we did it once, and that was because we had a huge US group coming and didn’t have any other sites available to send them to) so I don’t know why these houses remain empty. Maybe we need another kick in the behind from the US?

P.S. I haven’t officially given up on my US citizenship; it just makes more sense to refer to the US as the US when I’m not in the country. However, I think I’m completing already 8 weeks in Costa Rica this week. I lost track about 6 weeks ago but thankfully my host family is good at remembering for me ;)

Getting out of dodge, lenguaje, environmetal stress and fun facts...

-So are you ever coming back to La Lucha?
-No.

La Lucha. It was my home for six months, quiet and peaceful. A small farming community amongst the tropical forests and volcanic region of northern Costa Rica. The families are big, the children go to school and later join the farm, never straying far from home. Well that was 2 years ago and now things have changed.

Recently one of my old host brothers got a job working at a hot spring in the la Fortuna tourist zone about an hour away from La Lucha. Between work and English class four nights a week he barely has time to study, let alone sleep. I was lucky enough to catch him on his day off this last weekend in La Lucha. Despite how busy he is, he says he loves it. His job is easier than the farm, he gets paid better, and receives benefits such as health insurance and a free buffet when he is working. With his English classes he is hoping to move up in the tourism industry, eventually into hotel reception work. I can’t tell you how happy his mother is for him. Most mothers in La Lucha would rather their kid’s stay close and safe, however Magdalena (my old host mother) is part of a different breed.

Despite having seven kids and living on a farm her whole life she has been out and about selling pots and pans for Kitchen Fair and is on the Costa Rican board for boy/girl scouts. She wasn’t always like this and because of that her older children have stayed on with the farm and manage to get by with the basics, but it is never easy. Her younger children she has encouraged to get off the farm and go to higher education so they can get better jobs and live a better life, and little by little things are starting to change.

Come to find out that also one of my neighbors in La Lucha has also left to work in a beauty salon in la Fortuna. I used to bug her all the time because she didn’t finish high school and just hung out at the house all the time saying that she wanted out and couldn’t stand the boredom anymore of the town. Now she tells me little by little she is moving up to the bigger cities and hopes one day to make it to the US. She also has a younger sister who still has a year left in high school and I ask her what she is going to do and she says she is definitively getting out of La Lucha. It is exciting for me to see ppl doing what they have always talked about doing. It will be interesting to see where people are in a few years time. Now that they are in La Fortuna it´s “hey you got to come up this weekend and we’ll go dancing at the club.”

Another town I have spent a lot of time in has been a town called Santa Clara. I imagine it was similar to La Lucha about 10-15 years ago. This town is located closer the capitol city of our region and it has more going on as far as schools and retail and restaurant business’. There the jobs are better. A small percentage farm but a lot of ppl have city jobs. With the better income they are able to invest in different things, such as Costa Rican folk dancing. A group of thirty students and parents are currently participating in a folk dancing convention in Peru this week. They are very dedicated though as they told me their plane ticket was $1,000 and some families sent more than one person. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have paid that much for the plane ticket and they were taking out loans to cover the trip costs. They have to perform like six dances, each with different outfits too. To digress I was visiting the other weekend and one of the families was selling tacos to raise money for the Peru trip. I have to tell you the tacos here are nothing like taco bell or even what we typically make tacos with. Imagine putting ketchup and mayo on your taco… and loving it. Their style is pretty basic but they wrap the meat in a taco shell and then deep fry it to seal the meat entirely in the taco shell. Then they put lettuce and ketchup and mayo on it and you eat it and it is good. I can’t even describe it; I’ll take a picture of one sometime. Random trivia fact: tacos are also what the call soccer cleats.

Going along with the language trivia I find myself advancing to the next level of dominating a language. When you first start speaking a new language you think of what you want to say in your first language and then translate it and then say it in the new language. That works well until you actually begin to think in your second language, which I don’t think happens until you have lived abroad and have used it extensively. I have a handle on the language where I have no problem thinking in that language no matter where I am. The next level of dominance though is speaking without even thinking. In the past few weeks I have found myself doing this and it has been a little weird for me. Weird as in I can’t control it. Sometimes the words leave my mouth so fast I don’t even know if I’ve said everything correctly. Spanish being my second language I’m a stickler in making sure I say everything in the right tense and address the right group of people. I always listen to others speak and I catch a lot of their mistakes, however they are so fluent that people don’t realize they have mis-spoken. The best English example I can think of are the good ‘ol Wisconsinites who sometimes say yeah I seen it, when really they should say saw.

And now for my environment editorial: Last Friday I hitched a ride to La Lucha with a friend of mine Don Jaime, who is a vet/doctor and started Proyecto Asis animal rescue center in hopes of teaching ppl to live in harmony with nature and not to destroy it. He definitively cares for animals as the center has well over 100 animals either in recuperation or living there. Well we were about 15mins from Asis when in the middle of the road was a litter of 4 kittens that couldn’t have been more than a month old. Of course he stops the car and I know for sure that we are going to pick these kittens up and take them with us. There was another guy with us and he thought we were crazy but after knowing Don Jaime long enough I was not surprised at this. However when we got to Asis he proceeded to tranquilize them and then put them in a bag full of carbon monoxide, effectively putting them to sleep. Now this I didn’t see coming. The response I got was that these kittens had no mother, nobody wanted them, and if they kept them at Asis they would hunt other animals and screw up the natural habitats of the other animals. He made it clear that he didn’t want to put them to sleep, but it was the only good option as he said they weren’t going to live a very good life. Truthfully, I know he’s right.

I see a lot of stuff here that I don’t agree with. A lot of families have small little chirping birds called perrícos (mini-parrots) that they keep in a cage and clip their wings. I don’t believe these animals are meant to be domesticated. They justify it by letting them out of their cages and letting them walk around the house, however to me it just doesn’t seem right. Cats and dogs are ok, caged parrots not so much. That is just an example of a bigger cultural problem that Don Jaime and Proyecto Asis are trying to change by educating on how to live in harmony with the environment. I was visiting a farm with one of my Costa Rican friends and there were leaf cutter ants carrying leaves across the trail and she decides to put a stick in the middle of their path to block them. I just kind of looked at her in amazement like a what are you doing kind of look and I really got no response. And to think her dad used to work in a national park! Anyways I’ll get off my soapbox now knowing that it is tough to change a culture that has become accustomed to having their way with nature. I’ll put the links up to web sites if you want to know more about the mission of Proyecto Asis.


I’ll sign off with some interesting things that may or may not interest you:

-If you are a mother this is your week to be in Costa Rica. Mother's Day is this Friday and we have the day off from work because of it. Gotta love it. ¡Te amo mamá!

-It has rained everyday in Alajuela except for two days I think since I have been here. It always rains in the afternoon or evening, except for one day last week it rained from 4am-9am.

-They now sell digital cameras that have a smile mode. If you don’t smile it won’t take the picture. My boss got this camera from her dad as a birthday gift and it’s for real. I wonder how much money it was to add that feature.

-I was able to watch the Packer game last night as we get MNF on our espn station down here. I forced my family to watch the whole second half while I tried to explain the whole Brett Favre saga. They really could have cared less. They were more intrigued by the stadium and the cheeseheads.

-My host family is an Olympic fan. They were all up at 6am last Friday to watch the opening ceremony and now all we watch are the Olympics.

-I planted a tree two years ago on one of my family’s farms and I just went and saw it and it is already bigger that I am. They say it is going to really grow a lot the next five years.

-People down here say I look like Micheal Schoffield from Prison Break. I kind of do though when I shave my head; all I’m missing are the tattoos. It goes without saying that the ticas love it ;)

Panama and tico words

Hello everyone, it has become apparent to me that i'm not very good at blogging. I've been reading other ppls blogs recently and have realized that mine are really lame compared to theirs. I used to be a lot better as far as sharing feelings and emotions instead of just play by play at what i've been doing. I think part of the reason is that Costa Rica is not a new place for me, I've been here many times so I'm used to a lot of cultural norms that might suprise other people. For one, everyone is probably wondering why the blog is called Pura vida or Tuanis.

Pura Vida or Tuanis really means the same thing down here. Pura vida means literally pure life but people use it to describe anything pleasant. Like how are you: Pura Vida. How do you feel: Pura Vida. How was the food: Pura Vida etc. Tuanis is like the slang word for Pura Vida. I would always be asked, "Pura Vida or Tuanis?" and it didn't matter what the response was. Maybe there is more meaning to it but this is how I have come to learn it. They are two words that you really can't translate and can only learn to use after hearing the locals speak it enough.

The reason behind my web address being ticodustin is that tico means Costa Rican. It is their local touch that they will add on to any word, such as momentico instead of momento. There is a lot of variation on the language and I've been learning my fair share of pachuco (street talk). It is almost like learning a new language within a language. They have their own dictionary just related to Costa Rican words. I've been getting accustomed to this dialect so it was interesting for me to travel to Panama this last week.

First off, it was 12hrs one way on the bus, which sounds painful but the bus was nice and had a/c, bathroom and movies and was about half full so it was good for sleeping. I was looking forward to going there to see my aunt and uncle and cousins who were there visiting family on my aunt's side. Also I liked how you can speak a lot more informal in Panama than in Costa Rica which is all very formal, but can be harder to figure out at times just who you are talking about. Language people you know what I'm talking about. Also Panama has just as much slang as Costa Rica except I know none of it which makes it hard to keep up with the locals sometimes. I couldn't call them Maes (buddy) or tell them i had filo (hunger) and wanted to hamar (eat). After being in Costa Rica for a month I realized how little Spanish I could speak outside of Costa Rica. It really wasn't that bad, I just wish sometimes the slang could be a little more universal.

As far as Panama though, I had an excellent time. The landscape where I was was one of rolling hills, tall enough to climb, but not mountainous. We climbed one that was pretty steep, but from the top you look around and see a bunch of other hills all kind of lined up and scattered about the landscape. Very pretty. I also got a sneak peak of carnaval- the huge 4 day party that happens every year right before ash wednesday. The town Santiago, was about an hrs drive from where we were and we got there at about 6pm and the party had already been going for 8hrs and wouldnt stop until 5am. The easiest way for me to explain carnaval is to think of a small town and their main street... and then think of a huge football tailgating party in the street. And it is big, taking up the whole street with music blaring out of the back of vans on each side of the street with the dj screaming something every 30sec. Everybody comes out with their coolers (or cardboard box if you're like us and couldn't find ours and didn't want to pay $80 for one at the grocery store, talk about price gouging...) and they pick a spot in the street and just start drinking and keep going until who knows when. I kept thinking the kids at the U of Minnesota would love this because we never want to stop tailgating and go watch the game and the police always come around and kick us out whereas the tailgate party here is the main event. It was pretty fun overall but I don't know how they do it for 4 days in a row.

The next few days were pretty mellow before I headed back to Costa Rica, we visited with more extended family and enjoyed the cerveza (beer). I still can't get over how a can of beer is only 50 cents, where it is at least a dollar in Costa Rica. Maybe that is how they go for 4 days in a row. I'll have to start training for February soon...

esta semana...

If you look close enough you will actually see a lake that appears to be smoking. A few weekends ago I went to Volcan Poas. This picture is looking down inside the volcano at the crater. It was a mystic view as we were in the clouds and every so often they would clear to catch a quick glimpse of the crater. I had never seen water that was such an aqua color. Also all the rocks in the crater were of astounding colors too. The picture does not really explain it. I would compare it to seeing the Grand Canyon from above. All you see is canyon and it doesn't seem real. It felt like the view was being projected as everything seemed so flat as your mind couldn't figure the depth.

Apart from my tourist excursion I've resumed salsa dancing two times a week and am looking at possibly volunteering at a recycling center in Alajuela. The dancing is an incredibly good deal at $17-month and I'm getting an education with salsa, meringue, swing, bolero, cumbia.
The recycling center is something new that just started. It is pretty similar to the US however it is very under funded. The biggest problem is that they have to educate people on the importance of recycling. The people are already accustomed to being wasteful and won't change unless they see the benefit. The other issue they have is that they have two centers that they want ppl to take their recyclables to. Without a collection service it is going to be really hard to get ppl to deliver their recyclables. My city has trash collection three times a week so I think ppl will just put everything out at once. Supposedly San Jose has a recycling service and a large waste collection but they only go out once every two months. By then ppl have already gotten rid of their big trash down by the river. Refrigerators, cars, TVs, etc. Everything goes and it is pretty bad considering how the country is known for its beauty. I was talking with someone at work and the one thing she said she liked about the US is that we were strict about keeping the environment clean.

Other than that things have been pretty indifferent the last few weeks. Work has been steady, I am working to help habitat take more of a construction management role in their construction projects. Right now they are the owner and the architect does the drawings and estimates, while habitat contracts with the constructor. In the future habitat wants to take control of the estimate and the procurement of materials and hire out the labor force. Also habitat is going to experiment with 6-8 different house designs that they hope to make standard so they can take control of the drawing process too.

I'm off to Panama to visit friends/family the next couple days, should have more stories to tell come next week...

tuanis

hey everybody!
it has taken a bit getting settled in down here but i am going to dedicate myself more regularly to the blog. i´m still working on getting internet at work and we are close so i should be able to stop using the internet cafe pretty soon.
Anyways i´ve been in Costa Rica now over two weeks and working with Habitat for Humanity. My job is pretty interesting. with my construction background i´ve been placed in a office that deals with the construction of new houses. it is pretty interesting. the houses are nothing special. they range between 42meters squared and 51 meters squared. i haven´t done the conversion to feet yet. They used to be built all with masonry block but now they are going with mostly prefabricated walls and columns. They are doing this mostly because it goes up an lot faster than with brick and is cheaper.

i´ve been visiting a lot of sites lately as there have been international volunteer groups (brigades) that have been helping in the construction. they get all the fun jobs like digging the septic tank and all the holes for the columns, which there are 30 on each house and are about 2.5ft deep each hole. the prefabicated walls are mostly pieces about five feet by 2.5ft and they are positioned between two columns and then sections are stacked one on top of the other to make the wall. the columns are keyed so the panels fit snug and each panel is keyed so they lock together with one another when stacked. the walls are only 2-3in thick.
Pretty simple in all. Biggest difference i have noted is the lack on insulation and no strip footing. Obviously you value engineer some things out so you can build the house for $6,000.

Aside from work, i feel even more at home in Costa Rica than I ever have before. Living in the city has been kind of a change. We have lukewarm shower water and some cable channels and I don´t get rice and beans every meal. I was expecting less but i guess this will do ;) My host father is an artist and does a lot of neat paintings. he is working on illustrations for a book written about the costa rican civil war. they just finished building their new house and it is pretty nice. small and concrete but sufficient. The lot they were on used to be one big lot but they wanted to tear the house down and build two houses. One for my host dad and one for his mother. it was quite an ordeal i guess to get the lot split as the city didn´t want them to do it unless my host dad built both of the houses. i guess the gov was real leary on giving loans to senior citizens and didnt want to give a big loan to my host father to build both houses. Habitat for humanity ended up helping my family out as the bank was not going to loan them the money to build both houses. Long story short we just have to finish up the kitchen and do some painting and the house will be complete.

well that is just a tiny bit on what has been going on down here. next time i write i´ll get more into just how habitat works. they actually do a lot more than what i thought they did.

tuanis,

Introduction

Welcome everyone to my blog! Whether you are a friend, family member, teacher, former coworker or just randomly stumbled across this blog I hope it is enjoyable for all.

So what is the story here you are probably thinking? What am I doing that is blog-able? Well the short and sweet version is that I am going to Costa Rica to do work as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity for about ten months. Great, right? Well there is more to how I arrived at this spot.

When I arrive in Costa Rica on June 29th it will be the fourth time I have gone to the country in the past two and a half years. It all started by chance in my sophmore year of college when I wanted to study abroad, but wasn't looking forward to the costs or the classes so I decided to go the volunteer route and learn a foreign language by being totally immersed in a culture. I had heard good things about Costa Rica and decided to volunteer there for six months working in a wild animal rescue center and a women's recycling association.

At the end of my volunteer term I knew that there was no way I could write this off as a once in a lifetime experience and just move on with my life. Living with less and being happy is tough to acheive in the United States as you are measured by how much "stuff" you have. What is a grocery store that doesn't have at least 50 different kinds of cereal? I didn't even see cereal in Costa Rica. Microwaves, dryers, cable, hdtv, computers, internet, hot shower, dvd... forget it. I was deprived of all of this at my host families house but it didn't bother me one bit. Watching endless hours of tv was replaced by casual conversations on the front porch. By the end of my term I had a second family, about seven mothers keeping the girls off me (ok that's not completely true... the part about me having seven mothers ;) ), and an endless amount of friends. Experiencing that and then coming back to the U.S. can make you sick to your stomach. Things are great here because we have all this stuff to entertain us and make things happen faster. The trade off we must endure though is working longer and having all these distractions that take away from justs shooting the breeze with friends and family.

I wanted out the day I got back, however I still had two years of school left to complete. To hold me over I made a visit in the summer and through my volunteer work at the University YMCA I was able to lead a trip to Costa Rica last January for two weeks. My long term plan was to graduate and then apply for the Peace Corps and get out for 2+ years. I was moving really well in that direction until I failed my medical exam because my asthma condition prevented me from being able to serve anywhere with them. I was dissapointed initially but I think it was for the better as I ended up falling into my volunteer job with Habitat for Humanity International. They have long term volunteer positions overseas and one happened to open up in Costa Rica in the same area where I had volunteered two years ago. This time the medical form was about a page and all they required was that I bought travel insurance.

So here I am, a 2008 Construction Management graduate from the University of Minnesota leaving to do a volunteer job in Costa Rica. I know for a fact that not many people with my degree do volunteer jobs as there first job out of school. Many classmates I talk with can't get over the fact that what they make in a day, is what I'll receive in a month ($200 stipend). It goes a little further in Costa Rica, but on a larger scale it might cover my monthly loan payment. It doesn't matter to me though. Thanks to great internships with Ryan Companies and Flatiron and being very frugal I was able to save up enough money to support myself for ten months. Besides, I have my whole life to make money and the people I am going to be helping wouldn't know what to do with $200. So why should I?

At my commencement ceremony I was invited by my college to speak as the student speaker. It was a great honor for me and I really tried to put some sensibility on the building industry as "I just couldn't justify building shopping malls and office buildings when there are people on this planet that can't even meet their basic needs." At this point I may not be using my degree to make money but I'm using it to make the world a better place.

At this point my excitement is only building (literally) to go down there and get started. I plan to use this blog to provide insight on working non-profit construction in a developing country as one of my long term goals is to have my own non-profit organization in a foreign country. I also hope this blog will encourage others to get out and volunteer/work outside the U.S. as it is one of those things that you have to do to really "get it". A good place to start would be with Habitat as they are all over the world, and if you came to Costa Rica I might just end up being your tour guide ;)

Ok that's just about enough history to bring everyone up to date. That's what I'll be blogging about the next ten months or so, so check back often as this blog is going to grow.

Pura Vida,