Playa, Beach, Playa, Beach

SAMARA BEACH!!!!

I decided to crank out at least one more journal entry before I embark on my journey back to the US. First really cool thing that happened is I went to the beach for Holy week. Holy week along with Christmas and New Years is when all the national tourism happens aka all the Costa Ricans head for the beach. That being the case I went with the family that I am currently staying with and had a blast. The greatest thing was that it was just really chill and nobody really cared to do anything. For four days all we did was sleep eat go in the ocean and repeat. I was really amazed because we could have gone horseback riding or rented inter tubes or a kayak but nobody did. The most we did was bring a soccer ball and play soccer when the tide was out. Really beautiful beach and we were a big group of about 15ppl so there was always plenty to talk about and do. The one thing that unfortunately will stick out in my mind the most will be the ride back to San Ramón. When we went to the beach it was only a three hour drive, however on the way back it took 7 hours. Everyone knew that coming back would be a lot of traffic and for that reason we came back a day early on Saturday but it didn’t matter as it was bumper to bumper traffic for a good 50 miles. I knew the roads in Costa Rica were bad, but I was once again amazed by how a country as advanced as it is neglects its highways so much. We were traveling on the main highway in Costa Rica and there are parts where the center line isn’t even marked and the majority of the road is only two lanes.

Other than that my time is winding up down here but I am a little concerned I am losing my mind. The town San Ramón is so laid back that I am usually in bed by 10pm and I am starting to take a lot of naps during the day on the weekends. I am really concerned I am turning into a grandpa. I have a friend who readily admits to being a grandma because she would sleep 15hrs a day if she could and would be fine by it. It is really starting to scare me though. The other night I went to bed and forgot to take my contacts out. I had never done that in my life before and it was the strangest thing. I think I might need to get out just to save my sanity. A running joke I have with the family I am with is that I am a big strong North American and never get sick and I don’t need anyone to look after me. Naturally though the Costa Ricans are always telling me to wear a jacket when I go out and are always offering to give me pills or take me to the hospital even when I have a little cough and I always tell them no, that they are crazy and that I am not sick and that these things always happen to me (asthma, allergies etc.). Well now they have been bugging me so much that subconsciously I think that I believe them.

Now sometimes if I have a little headache I will think about it more and because I start to believe that I am getting sick, the headache will get worse when before I could just forget about because nobody was telling me that I was sick. I don’t know I am probably just going crazy but I am at a weird point in my non-US life. Like for instance I got really sick the other day when travelling in another part of the country and I couldn’t pin point the reason for why I got sick until I realized that I hadn’t eaten rice and beans that day. I am sure that is had nothing to do with why I got sick but it just makes sense to me. Now I make sure to eat rice and beans each day and when I do start to feel a little sick with a headache I will make sure and eat rice and beans and I will feel better. I think I honestly have just a mental obsession and that I just believe that it will keep me from getting sick and that alone will trigger the hormones to cure me.

I am typing all of this half jokingly but the more I think about it I will probably need some psychiatric treatment at some point in my life if these weird things keep happening to me. Like when I forgot to take my contacts out, I hadn’t been drinking or doing anything out of the ordinary so I have no logical explanation for what happened other than I am losing my mind. Even the grandmas here are even saner than I am.

The family that I stay with goes and visits the dad’s mom every weekend and is probably the coolest grandma I never had. What basically makes her the coolest grandma is that she takes shots of liquor 3-4 times a day and when I come over sometimes she invites me to do a shot with her or she’ll offer me some drink she made with alcohol. And she is 84 years old! It is really funny because the family I live with doesn’t drink at all. They have half a bottle of baileys that has probably been in their fridge for three years and still have not finished it. Only the daughter drinks and she might drink one beer at a bar and that would be it. The last time I went to Panamá where the liquor is a lot cheaper, I brought back the grandma a bottle of rum and she had the bottle finished in like a week. Nice of her though to save the last shot of rum from the bottle. Really cool old lady though, she lives all alone so she sits all day and drinks and watches soap operas and is content as all can be. I hope someday my life will be that simple. Her kids chip in and buy her a ton of food each month and she cooks so whenever people come visit her they can not leave until they are stuffed. Every time I go there I have to eat a meal and if I don’t she’ll get upset. The food is really good though I am just glad I don’t live with her because I would probably be about fifty pounds heavier.

(Photo: Coolest Grandma and grandaughter)

I am really a sucker though for grandmas, the family’s other grandma I bought a box of cookies for her birthday. I really wanted to bring her a hamburger or pizza because that is what she really likes but is not supposed to have because of a medical condition but still sneaks that food into her diet when nobody is watching. Not just the grandmas I get along with but also my aunts (or the sisters of the mother of the family who I am staying with). There are four of them and they are all a little off their rockers but in a good way so it is always a good time conversing with them. When we went to the beach three of them went and you could totally tell they were sisters in the jokes that they made and just the way they got along. A lot of them are pretty strict with their kids and raise them a certain way always the straight and narrow and the kids never revolt or challenge their ideas so I am usually the one who will speak up for them and defend and at least put up a fight for them. I never win but at least I generate some conversation and a lot of times I feel I make a point but they never agree with me. There is one aunt who has a son who wants internet at the house but the mother says no because she does not want him to get on chats and make internet girlfriends and waste away his life online. She says nothing online will ever replace handholding or talking to the person face to face. I however argue though that he is really interested in a computer career and the internet is a resource he could use to learn about jobs and learn more about the computer in general. I also argue that someday there will be a program where you can stick your hand through the screen and touch the other person on the other side. She thinks I am crazy but I least try to get a little charge out of her even though it is probably better to keep the internet out of house until the kids are at least 18. I saw what the internet did to my house when it arrived and I see what it is doing to the kids who are getting it at their homes now in Costa Rica and they are obsessed with just like I was when I first got it. Anyways I get along so well with the Aunts that one of them invited me to go to her six year old daughter’s birthday party this weekend. She is having it at Brincolandia (Jumping Land) which I think is like a kid’s playground where you climb all around tubes and have a ball pit. I think in the US it is called jumping jacks or discovery zone. I don’t know they told me to wear socks, I can’t wait.

Housing Project, excursions, final plans...

Dear friends and family,
A lot has been going on in Costa Rica, so much that I have pretty much left my blog to die. However I am pledging to do a really in depth update as this may be the last post I make while in Costa Rica as my return to the US is scheduled for May 7th (I think).

My work with Habitat has been going well, we have now completed four (new home owners to the right!!) of the seven houses that we are scheduled to build in San Ramón. Needless to say we have had to deal with a fair amount of problems related to the houses. The project we are doing right now of seven houses is a second phase to complement a first phase of seventeen houses. Right now we are doing a lot of warranty repair work on the first phase and we have had to deal with recurring problems. Probably the biggest problem that we have had with the homes has been water leaks. A lot of the sinks are not strong enough to hold back the water pressure and leak even when shut off all the way. To fix this problem we could have specified stronger sinks but we didn’t know just how strong the water pressure was in this area. It is really pressurized though. We had international volunteers helping us and they bought us garden hoses and the water pressure was so strong that we would kink the hose and it would burst somewhere along the line due to the pressure. Another problem we have been having is that the ground is so hard that the water from the septic tanks doesn’t filter out well enough through the drain fields. It has gotten so bad that now we are routing out all of the water used for laundry out into the city drainage, which is not good at all. Supposedly it is illegal, but everyone does it, they just wait till after the final inspection and then re route the drainage on there own. Not very happy with doing that but all we can do now is learn from it. They should study the soil better next time and make drainage fields that can adequately handle the grey water.

There has been a fair amount of drama associated with this project as far as what the people thought they were going to get versus what they actually got in the end. Biggest difference so far has been that we changed constructors from the first phase to the second phase and the new constructor we have is a lot better than the first one. He is slower and has a smaller crew, but he does a lot better paying attention to details and really takes time to get to know the families that he is building for and the volunteers that come to help him. A lot of the families in the first phase have commented to me that they would have waited longer for their house if they could have had this second constructor build it. He is a lot better with the details and he even throws in little extras for the families, such as painting the interior walls, which was not included in the families estimate. Another big drama with some of the families has been that they thought they were going to get a retaining wall in the back of their lots because there is a steep grade and they worry about landslides in the rainy season. Basically what happened was someone “said” they were going to get a retaining wall, but nobody knows or remembers who that person was because it was not included in any of the families’ estimates. It is kind of turning into a big deal, but Habitat is doing a good job of handling the situation. Our Project Engineer has been really good about explaining to the families that they do not need a retaining wall and that it was never part of the estimate etc etc. I am really astonished at the patience he has had with some of the families because I have seen him explain sometimes up to thirty minutes as to why the wall is not needed.

I think culturally the people here are just so used to seeing certain things that they just assume they will get it. The retaining wall has been one thing that they just won’t put to rest for one reason or another. The septic tanks have also been an issue because the first phase families got a prefabricated septic tank while the second phase families got a masonry block tank. No matter how many times we explain that the prefabricated tank is designed to work just as well as the mason block tank, the families still always bring it up because I think culturally they have always seen tanks with masonry blocks and don’t trust prefabricated at all. It is kind of frustrating for me because Habitat took steps to prevent misunderstandings like this from happening. They had a meeting with all of the families before the project started explaining what the houses were all going to look like and everyone was able to ask questions beforehand. Besides these little hiccups things have gone real well and it has been really enjoyable for me to get to know the families. The best day for me so far was the day I was able to go tell one of the families that there house was complete and they could begin moving into it.

I am really disappointed that my time (aka money) is running out because I am really involved in this project now. Habitat let go one of the employees in our San Ramón office so I have had to get a lot more involved with getting construction permits and getting the proper documentation prepared and signed to give to the bank so we can get the housing voucher money for the families. It has been fun learning how to do all of this because it is just me and one other gal from the office and she was working in a different department and had no idea what to do either, so we are both learning on the fly. So far it has gone really well, we both work well together and even though we might not know what were doing, we haven’t screwed up too bad yet, at least that we are aware of. It is interesting because a lot of stuff with Habitat just revolves around people following procedures in getting paperwork together. The funny thing is you would think they would have a guide because stuff is pretty standard but they don’t. Everyone has their own guide, except it is in their head and they never take the time to write it out. It is easy for them to keep track of stuff, but impossible to teach somebody new all the procedures. I have been keeping track of the procedures that I have been doing and I hope to leave something in writing to help the next person that has to learn it.

Outside of work I have been staying pretty busy too. I had to do my last tourist leave in February and I took advantage by going to Panama when they had their carnaval. Carnaval is like Mardi Gras, except people take their kids to these things, and they are rowdier than the New Orleans parties. Imagine just a huge street party except it is 95 degrees out and they bring in big tanker trucks and hook up fire hoses to hose down all the people that are in the street drinking and dancing. They also had concerts in the street. I was really excited because I was able to see a fairly popular reggaeton artist Macano. He has few tracks that they play pretty regularly on the radio in Central America and I had no idea he was going to be there so I was pretty surprised when I was able to see him. Another thing that also went well for me on this trip to Panama was that I was lucky enough to be able to play an instrument in a Salsa orchestra. The family that I stay with when I go to Panama had a neighbor that was having a birthday party and he decided to get a Salsa orchestra to play at his party. Well I was there and towards the end there wasn’t a lot of people so they were letting people play the instruments so I asked if I could play the bell. It was really fun because from my dance classes I remember them teaching me to listen for the bell to be able to keep my place in dancing, so I already had an idea of how I was supposed to play it. Overall pretty good time in Panama but I probably have had enough carnaval for awhile. Fun to see once, but not as enjoyable as one would think because once a lot of ppl get drunk, it is bound to get a little dangerous, not that it did but after a certain point you worry a little more about yourself amongst the other drunks. One thing that didn’t sit well with me was that one of the sponsors of the carnaval was for stomach aches and they were giving out free samples of their stuff, which conveniently came in plastic bottles. So at the end one of two things were happening with the bottles: either they were dumping the syrup on themselves to cool off, or they were throwing the bottles at people.

After I went to carnaval in Panama my sister and her friend came to visit me for ten days which was really fun. We went and toured around meeting all my friends and family in Costa Rica and I introduced her to all of my guy friends with the hopes that she would once again fall in love with Costa Rica. I don’t know if I succeeded but I at least hope I got her mind thinking more about a future in Costa Rica ;) A couple things I noticed with them is that they had trouble getting used to the slower pace and that they weren’t getting any sun at all in Minnesota. When I got them at the airport they looked like ghosts. Good thing I got them to the beach for a few days because they really needed it.

My last excursion will be going to the beach for Easter. I am looking forward to it because I am going with all Costa Ricans so ill get accustomed to their beach going styles. I am glad that I am going to be at the beach though because last time I was in Costa Rica for Easter I was in the country and all day Thursday and Friday all they show on tv are 4hr long bible movies. Everything in the whole country pretty much shuts down from Thursday till Sunday. Needless to say the country is still pretty Catholic. Last Sunday I participated in my first Palm Sunday Procession. They had a Jesus ride a donkey from one church in town to the other to reinact how he came into town and everyone had palms for him.

After that I will only have like three weeks left before I go home and it is all going to fly by. Last week at work we had a going away party for the other long term volunteer who is going back to Arizona. She got here in July at the same time I did so we have been like our own local support team when we need someone to talk to who understands our culture. It is starting to hit me now though that my time is running out and I will have to start planning all my going away parties because once again I don’t know when I will be coming back. I do know however that I will come back…