Shades of green…and how it’s always greener somewhere else

This time of year Costa Rica is incredibly green. But right now, the grass is greener somewhere else…on the other side of the fence. The fence I speak of is the fence that separates me from the United States…or more specifically, my home state of Colorado, where right about now a retirement party for my father is winding down in my backyard. I can just imagine it…the sun is setting, the tables of gourmet, homemade food are emptying, the trash cans are full, and the last of the party stragglers are laughing boisterously after a few too many drinks. For this reason, this post is dedicated to my father, and his forty-some years of hard work in the field of Educational Administration. Wow, if only I could be that diligent and stay longer than two years in one job… ☺

Anyway, this is a chronicle of my day…in photos, in honor of my father, who was my original teacher of photography, and Master of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’. (Blogger has done something horrible with the saturation...please excuse the lack of brilliant color).

First, after an early-morning hike up the mountain, I got dressed up (in Peace Corps terms) in honor of dad’s special day, while listening to some of his favorite music (Willie Nelson)…


Then I called home to attempt to get in on some of the pre-party fun. After my mother passed me around to everyone else (because she was too busy to talk), my sister (with uncompleted tasks still at hand), snuck on Skype to chat with me.


Then dad, still in his work clothes, joined in for a bit.


On my walk home from the Internet (i.e., my neighbors), I stopped to notice the post-rain beauty and took these photos.




Upon arrival at home, my host dad was just sitting down to his afternoon cafecito, and I, to my lunch, a soup with vegetables and what else, but rice and beans, and homemade tortillas.


After lunch, I went into my bedroom to unwind. In the very same window that I wrote about in the last post where the Buddhist prayer flags hang, so do sit seven small plastic animals with interchangeable heads. As I looked out the rain-covered glass, I took all the heads of these previously normal animals and switched them all around. I thought their new state was photo worthy. And I couldn’t help but think I was feeling a bit like these strange, mismatched, frozen figures, all courageously poised on my sill.

After, I decided to head out and explore our property with camera in hand. But first I took this photo of my host dad and my 18-year-old host sister, Raquel.


Here’s a few photos I took from our property behind the house.

Peeeeaches (with my house in the background)!


Avocados!!!!

My house is the one on the right:


This is looking out from the hill behind our house:


Upon getting back to my house with muddy feet, I noticed how much I love my new rug. And how I partially wished that bicycle could cycle me all the way home…thousands of miles, in time to make it for the retirement party.


Buuuuutttt, since it couldn’t, I decided to walk less than one mile into town with my host sister and meet her friend to sit on a park bench and talk. It rained (surprise, surprise), so I took these photos, most of them from the under hang of a small super market of my site.

Costa Rican footwear...of high schoolers:




Downtown at my site:


And finally, the church with the fog settling in over the mountains:


After more rain, we made it home just by dark (unfortunately this time of year it’s about 6 pm), ate dinner, thought about my family in Colorado (some more), and got into my bed, all bundled up.

So my day has come to an end. And I survived it…even though I didn’t think I would this morning, so green with envy for that greener grass on the other side of the fence. And by now, dark has fallen upon that greener grass in Colorado. Father is probably fast asleep in his bed, exhausted from a night of celebration, ready to greet this next stage of his life with eagerness and desire tomorrow. Even though I couldn’t physically be there to celebrate, I spent a day in your honor…being rather than doing and just noticing the simple things. Throughout, I sent blessings your way for your new life of retirement! Congratulations, and go pick yourself out that new puppy now.

Move over Picasso!

These drawings, gifted to me by various children, speak for themselves. Okay, almost...the last two are my town that I live in.

On people and places

My bedroom window is six pieces of glass, each separated by a medium-colored wood. The mini Buddhist prayer flags fall smack in the middle of all of them, their colors illuminated by the light.

But what lies beyond is most important. Every day when I get up, I get to look out at the down-sloped apple orchard of my family’s yard that rolls down the dirt road, eventually leading into town, and meeting mountains and steep rolling hills in the distance. It’s green, it’s lush, it’s temperate, and it’s not the Costa Rica I had imagined. In fact, I imagined palm trees, flat jungle-like terrain, never-ending sun, and unbearable heat. But I’ve got quite the opposite and I couldn’t be happier. This is the Zona de Los Santos.

If you open the back door of my bedroom, you look steeply up the mountain at more apple trees, avocado trees, peach trees, a few citrus trees, and one elusive, pure white horse that roams among them munching on the tropical flora. The climate here is the most desirable in all of Costa Rica, I believe; cool mornings, cool afternoons, cool evenings. I find myself wearing long pants, long-ish sleeves, my many scarves, and an occasional sweater or hat. I eat breakfast every day on the front porch looking out toward town at the mountains as the sun rises over the hills. Usually, you can find crates and crates of apples or peaches or zucchini on the ground ripening in the sun in the front yard.

That brings me to the family that has adopted me for the next 6 months to two years. Who are these wonderful Costa Ricans that have so generously opened their home and their hearts to me (and bought me a brand new porcelain white sink to install in my bedroom, which is in fact a bit more like a mini apartment)?

Here’s who they are (pictures to come soon):

Miguel, my host father: a happy, happy man, curious about American culture; sits at the dinner table repeating random words in English like fork, spoon, sugar, carrots; works hard picking fruit on the land and in nearby communities to sell to vendors who attend farmer’s markets.

Carmen, my host mother: a warm gentle woman with long sable-colored hair with streaks of gray always in a pony tail who makes homemade tortillas every morning; owns the local pulperia (a mini-all-purpose store) so, nearly everybody in town knows her.

Annabelle, my 24-year-old host sister: a smart, well-educated, easy-going young woman who teaches math at a high-school in a nearby town; loves politics and is rooting for the first woman president in Costa Rica in the upcoming elections next February.

Rosybelle, my 22-year-old host sister: doesn’t live here but visits on the weekends; a more-traditional Costa Rican young woman who loves high heels; studying human resources at university and working in another province of Costa Rica.

Raquel, my 18-year-old host sister: a funky, typical high-schooler who loves her friends; is curious about American culture; is studying tourism; heading to college next year, and moved out of her bedroom into a spare one for me to use indefinitely.

And I can’t go on without mentioning my neighbors. They are the owners of El Toucanet Lodge (www.eltoucanet.com), so that means for all you friends and family looking to visit, I could not recommend a more beautiful, relaxing place to stay with a peaceful, romantic ambience. Edna is a warm, spiritual, lovely Costa Rican and her husband Gary is a laid-back American from LA who has barely been back to the States twice in nearly 20 years. Together they run a great business (with excellent food) and have brought a lot of good things to this community through the lodge. They also let me use their wi-fi and come over for the occasional dinner. How lucky I am.

So that’s my life as of late, and the people in it. It feels nice to be done with training and to be finally getting to the point of why I came here. Right now, it’s gray out and pouring down rain on the tin roof above me, it’s this way nearly every afternoon until November. I left my cobalt blue rain boots at home, so I am looking forward to buying a pair of tall black rubber rain boots here. Shortly, I’m walking up the road to the Lodge to dine with a couple from Chicago (music professors) staying at the lodge. They so generously offered for me to join them this evening, and I eagerly obliged. Today is my ninth day at my site; it humbles and excites me to think about all the experiences yet to be had.

Street life in a nearby community (mine is not so hustling and bustling):

Time - noun, the indefinite continued progress of existence

I have arrived at my site, and my two years as a Peace Corps volunteer have officially begun. And here, I am discovering, I lead a very simple, spontaneous life. I usually wake up bright and early with the Costa Rican sun, or with the typical Costa Rican sounds that permeate my thin wooden walls in my mountain community that is supposedly so quiet Lonely Planet says you can hear the coffee drying. These typical sounds include cows, roosters, washing machines, people speaking Spanish in the road, birds, dogs barking, and the list goes on. Though it may sound like I am living in a hustling and bustling metropolitan tropical locale, it is quite the opposite. I usually head out for a walk to enjoy the fresh mountain air and the rolling emerald mountains blanketed with coffee plantations and apple orchards. Upon return, breakfast usually consists of some type of fruit – pineapple, mango, papaya, banana – and pan casero (the typical bread), or if I’m lucky, cereal or oatmeal (I can no longer do rice and beans three times a day).

Then I usually stroll into town (by strolling I mean walking down a beautiful dirt road lined on both sides with bright green pastures and streams), sometimes with an agenda for a meeting or two, but most times I usually just take what comes my way. For example, I had plans the other morning to head to the school to help paint a mural. On the way into town, I ran into Don Lorenzo, a warm, elderly gentleman who sells apples from a fruit stand in front of his house. His greeting welcomed me to stop and talk. I introduced myself to the man standing at his fruit stand, Rodolfo. Turns out Rodolfo is just the person I needed to meet. Not only is he Don Lorenzo’s son, but he also makes furniture in a shop in his house (could be a potential skill to learn in the next two years), and lucky for me, is the President of the Junta de Educacion, or the Board of Education at the school, just the person I need to talk to to make connections. After spending a good portion of time talking about projects in my community, I forgot what I was doing and where I was going. Once I realized it, I continued into town towards school and began to help with the mural. Later that morning a woman on the bus asked if I was the Peace Corps volunteer in town and asked if I needed a place to live, and that it would make her very happy if I came and lived with her.,.this is after the school director called two families telling them I needed a place to live (which I didn’t). When the lunch hour rolls around, nearly all shuts down. People retreat to their houses and the sound of forks clinking against plates can be heard from the open doors when one walks down the road between 11:45 and 1. For lunch, I never know where I am going to be, and I never turn down the offer to dine with someone new. Lunch always consists of rice and beans, and usually some type of salad or picadillo, tortillas and freshly made fruit juice. Friday for example, after lunch I returned to the school to sit in on the theater class practicing for a play that will show in July. I laughed internally to myself as I found myself practicing play lines with 5th grade peaches and apples in the school play. While at the school that very same day, Arturo, a man I had met earlier in the week came by to see if I would help him learn to design brochures for his mountain cabanas that he owns for a tourism fair. Also that same day, the son of a woman I met who runs a used clothing store dropped by to bring me a newspaper I was looking to read. When 5 o’clock rolled around, and it was dumping down rain, and I was found sans umbrella for my 20 minute walk home, I passed time just sitting at the school waiting for the rain to stop. It never did, but the preschool teacher lent me her umbrella for a not-so wet walk home. That night, Friday, I found myself banging on phone books with my 5-year-old neighbor for nearly an hour, making rhythms and repeating them back to each other. I’m usually in bed under my bug net by 8:30 or 9 with a good book, my computer, or a cup of tea. Again, the next day is all repeats, with a few variations. Simplicity.

During these first three months as a PCV, we have to just take life as it comes. We have no agenda, no one to report to, no 9-5 job, simply the goal of getting to know our community, getting to know the people, the projects, the desires, the hopes, and their history. For these first three months we are simply students, with the task to write a 30 page in-depth diagnostic report about our community, about their strengths, weaknesses, projects, goals, failures, problems, etc. This will in turn lead up to create sustainable projects that are wanted and needed by the community. Right now two years seems like a long time. But the concept of time in the Peace Corps is so different than the time I knew in the states. And I’m not talking about the fact that it’s 9:16 at night and I can hardly keep my eyes open. I’m talking more about the fact that time is warped here. The minutes go by slow, the hours-less slow, the days-fast, and the months-they hardly exist. And if I have something to look forward to, nothing exists in the meantime. Tomorrow is Saturday, I have a whole week ahead of me, and in fact I still have almost two years ahead of me, but I know that Saturday will happen, and I will know many new faces tomorrow, but after Saturday, my family comes to visit in January. That will be here before I can even blink. Back in the states, January would seems like an eternity away, a summer away, and a semester worth of school away. But here, January is just around the corner. Time is so indefinite, so transforming, so existing, and progressive, and here I am just so wrapped up in it...existing. It’s not even ten, and I am already nearly asleep. Farewell, until next time…when I explain my lovely host family that I am living with for the first six months. Think apple orchard, avocado trees, peach trees, and one surreal white horse that roams among them.