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!