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!