On pain and becoming an official Peace Corps volunteer

Friday we officially committed the next 24 months of our lives to Costa Rica...legally, I am bound to serve this country until May 29, 2011. This means training has ended and we are finally beginning what we have come here to do.....be Peace Corps Volunteers. Here’s some pictures from the big ceremony.

The ambassador and the Peace Corps Costa Rica Country Director:

Adrienne and Chase becoming official:

That´s me becoming official:

Okay, I´m official!

This is the group of Children, Youth and Families volunteers with program managers and spanish language facilitators:

So with that being said (and shown), today, Sunday, all of the new volunteers are going to their sites all scattered throughout the country. That is, everyone except me. Why? you ask. Well, the answer is in the two trips to the hospital, the two shots in the buttocks, the two xrays, the one abdominal sonogram, the five types of medicine, and the two blood tests I have had over the past week. Don’t be alarmed. It sounds worse than it is.

Earlier this week, I left our second to last Spanish class due to the beginnings of an illness: cramping and pain in the abdomen and pain in the lungs. Later that day it all worsened. By nightfall, it was unbearable, and instead of trying to force myself to sleep in loads of uncomfortable pain, I called the Peace Corps Medical Officer and told her I would be escorting myself to the ER in San Jose. Trying to explain the type of pain I was having in to the doctors at the hospital in Spanish must have been entertaining. I think it probably translated to something a little bit like this in English: My lungs hurt. I can’t breathe. There is pain in my abdomen. It feels [motion with hands a symbol that is supposed to mean tight]. I can’t breathe strongly. I cant be flat in my bed. Needless to say, they got the point and sent me to the ER for an xray. I thought my Spanish was pretty good until the point when the xray technician left the room for me to change for my xray. There I waited eagerly for him to return in my hot pink bra, anxious to know the source of my pain. He opened the door and quickly said "No, no, no, camisa SIN braseirre," meaning shirt no bra. I understood the opposite: bra no short. Ha, I’m sure he got a good laugh at that one…the gringo that came in and wanted to have an xray done topless.

Anyway, long story short, I was told I had an infection of the lining of my lungs…inflammation that caused those breathing pains, oftentimes known as pluerisy. Fast forward to Thursday, after being on three medicines and not getting better, I take myself back to the hospital. More tests, and pokes and prods later, I was told some ambiguous thing about my lungs and nerves and given two more medicines.

I made it to my swearing-in ceremony early the next morning eventhough I was in extreme pain as I took the official oath. So here I sit, in my training community, the last, the only Tico 19 former Peace Corps TRAINEE left. Though it’s loud and cars and motos buzz by and the rain pounds on the tin roof above me, it is so silent. All my training mates have scattered throughout this land, eager and ready to embark on this adventure we all came here to do. Soon, with a little more rest, TLC, and a few more days of these meds, I will be back on my feet, heading south to my new home as well, ready to insert myself into the little community of 400 in the mountains of Costa Rica.

Read below to see where you are going to come visit me.

Friday was site assignment day.

This means two things:

1) After much ambiguity during this whole Peace Corps process, and months of people asking where I am going and not being able to give them an answer, I finally know where I am going to be living. So here is your answer.

2) More importantly, this is the post where I get to brag about my site placement so I can entice some visitors my way!

Where to begin? Well, first, due to publicity of this blog, I am unable to post the specific name of my site for Peace Corps security reasons, so I posted a picture below showing you where I am going. However, don’t be discouraged. I will tell you plenty so that you will shut down this computer and be on the next plane to Costa Rica.

So, here´s where I am going:



Okay, okay, here´s more: On May 30th I will be packing up my life from the past three months and head south. For the next two years I am going to be living in the Los Santos region of Costa Rica about an hour and a half from the capital of San Jose. Now, for this I am grateful: close proximity to the capital, the beach and national parks (more on this later).


Here´s a picture from the Internet of the general region:



And here´s a picture of a church in one of the communities:

But that´s enough photos for now....since I didn´t take them, and I will be visiting in a week. So stay tuned for more.

First, the Los Santos region is mostly known for it’s coffee plantations (some of the best coffee in the world comes from this region) and stunning topography (very mountainous) and scenic beauty. When my program manager announced this site, he said it was a photographer’s playground, and before I knew it I was walking to the front of the room to add my name to the map of Costa Rica. I guess I will begin to explore landscape photography…

So, more specifically my site…I am located in the Los Santos National Forest Reserve at about 6,200 hundred feet elevation next to Tapanti National Park and not far from Chirripo National Park (the highest mountain in CR is located here, so for all you hikers out there…). Not only I am one of the coldest Peace Corps site, but I am also thrilled about the fact that I will get to wear all my scarves and fleeces and an occasional beanie at night. I was beginning to wonder how I was going to handle this heat for two years, now I don’t have to! Also for those who like birds and watching them, you can come spend time at my site looking for the elusive Quetzal, a rare bird that is prolific in this area. Also, this region is one of the best trout fishing regions in Costa Rica. Aside from coastal sport fishing, this is where people come inland to fish for trucha, or rainbow trout in the many clear mountain rivers. Rare to most other parts of Costa Rica, this region is also rich with apple trees, avocado trees, and peach trees. And I am only a couple hours from some great beaches and four hours from Panama if you like crossing borders. Not to mention there are several mountain lodges scattered throughout the valley, so there is no lack of places to stay. The Internet described my site as a once in a lifetime experience you will never forget…a dream town that you would think it never existed. But it does.

But folks, don’t get me wrong, I am in the Peace Corps, not the Posh Corps and they place us in these communities for a reason. So yes, it sounds wonderful, and I’m sure it is, but as with any place, it also has its problems. And this is where I hopefully come in.

But if mountains, forest reserves, national parks, birds, quality coffee, fishing, stunning topography, fresh fruit trees, beaches, cool weather in an incredibly hot country, and me, doesn’t entice you, I don’t know what does. My door is open!

Freckles and Del Monte Pineapples.

I’m not sure if it’s the food, the water, the sun, or the culture. But the other morning as I was diligently smearing my usual SPF 100 all over my face, I noticed, for the first time in my life, I have freckles. My nose is covered in a mask of spots and part of my cheeks as well. No matter how many times I got sun in the past, I never developed freckles as a result. But now I have. I just think it’s interesting. And there’s really no other point to the story than that.

Can you see my freckles? I´ve got ´em on my nose:

So now I will begin with my real blog post…

Living with host families can be awkward. And by awkward I also mean draining, uncomfortable, humorous, challenging, unfamiliar, confining, tricky, precarious, entertaining, wacky, and sometimes just downright ridiculous.

This past week, I spent time in the southern part of Costa Rica on a site visit visiting two different current volunteers. The purpose of the visit is to get us into the field to see the ins and outs of being an official Peace Corps Volunteer. During these visits, we stay with host families. So, I left behind the comforts of my own home and family near San Jose that I have been living with since March to go be a stranger in the house of two new families for a few days each.

The first site visit was a small indigenous community of about 700 people near the larger city of Buenos Aires. Here the roads were made of stones and dirt….rich, crimson-colored dirt that was contrasted with the lush rolling emerald Costa Rican countryside, the two complimentary colors unknowingly bringing out the beauty in the other. The houses were spread far apart, cars were few and far between, the soccer field was the town’s hang out, there was one small school, one high school, lots of roosters and chickens, and no grocery store. But since this is about host families, back to that…my host mother and father were a married couple 4 years younger than myself…23, married one year, and with a 4-month-old baby who didn’t cry once during the night of the three nights I was there. Their house was simple. Made of cement. The walls inside were more like partitions made of wooden planks. They didn’t reach the ceiling, but rather left space so that the tin roof that covered the entire structure could be seen throughout the whole house. Not to mention any noise could be heard throughout the whole house as well. My room had a mattress on the floor and an old wooden closet. It was simple, basic, and extremely different that where I live right now during training. The couple was young, seemingly educated, and more than willing to go out of their way to make me feel comfortable.

Mid week, we moved 30 minutes down the road to a neighborhood of Buenos Aires called Santa Cruz. Here you had many more than 700 inhabitants, more like 5,000-ish. Pineapple and sugar cane fields surrounded the city, and high numbers of people, including my host father, worked at Pindeco, the company that packs and ships Del Monte pineapples to the US. Because of this, every meal not only came with rice and beans, but also with pineapple. And if you didn’t get pineapple in slices, you got it in a juice form. And if you didn’t get rice (wait, that never happened)…correction, in addition to rice on the plate, you also got it in juice form mixed with the pineapple – fresco de piña con arroz, a delicious, refreshing drink. My host mother was a generous, older, caring woman of short stature with a hint of eccentricism. She willingly offered to wash my nearly completely dirty weeks’ worth of sweaty clothes. The awkward part came when she came to me after lunch two different times once day holding two of my shirts up to her commenting how much she liked them, asking me if I like them, and continuing to stand there with a questioning look on her face. Now, in a culture of indirectness this was to be interpreted as “won’t you please gift these shirts to me?” At the time, I knew what she wanted with this seemingly innocent compliment, so with my American ways, I played ignorant and just thanked her profusely for the compliment and for washing my clothes. Phew, crisis diverted (all in Spanish, not to forget). Well, not so fast. Later that week, one of those two shirts mysteriously disappeared from my clothes pile. Again, I played ignorant, of course to not accuse her of stealing my shirt, and simply asked if she had taken it to iron. When I did, she quickly said yes and grabbed the shirt from her bedroom and handed it back to me. Upon my departure, after 20 questions of how I liked living in her house, she gifted me a small trinket of Mary and Jesus on a wooden base…something that she obviously pulled off her shelf and handed to me with all its nicks and bangs and dust. She gave me well wishes for Mary and Jesus to protect me always and sent me on my way, not without her phone number and a promise from me to call her.

Here is a comparison of my two rooms during my site visit:

The point is, these two experiences couldn’t have been more interesting…and awkward. From the quieter young couple to the eccentric woman in her 50s, I have had a lot of awkward moments…just in the past week (too many to even retell). I can’t explain how good it felt to get ‘home’ to my training community and be back in the comforts of my own bed, my own family, my usual food, my room with walls that reach the ceiling, and the thought that things are starting to feel comfortable. But just when they are really starting to feel that way, we up and move to another host family. In just one week, I find out where I will be placed for the next two years. And in four weeks I will move yet again to go start over with that new host family in my new site.

When you think about it, it really is interesting how so many families let complete strangers (Peace Corps volunteers) into their house in countries all around the world. Inevitably, when two different cultures collide, there is bound to be some tiredness (always trying to speak Spanish); some uncomfortableness (indirect, culturally different questions); some humor (figuring out how to open a Costa Rican lock at 11 pm when all the people are already all in bed); some challenge (figuring out how to not eat the 4 pounds of rice they give you); some tricky situations (figuring out how to get your clothes back); some entertainment (the mountain of people in the house at all times); and sometimes things that are just downright ridiculous (all of it). But the biggest lesson I learned this week is to laugh and embrace this awkwardness, because with time, things will change. Besides, by the time I make it to my fifth host family at the end of this month, I should be an old pro.

A few pictures from the site visit.

Those fields are fields of Del Monte pineapple. If you´ve ever eaten one of those, chances are it came from here! Eat up:

Government housing in Costa Rica:

We did a group project of painting recycling bins and shared the importance of recycling:

This was my and my friend Josh´s group of girls whom we helped....they had the best bin by far:

Then we hiked to the top of a mountain and saw pineapple and sugar cane fields for miles:

And finally, did our fair share of goofing off:

The end.

Friday, I find out the fate of the next two years! Hope it´s somewhere good!

Two hydrogens and an oxygen that tried to be milk and coffee

Water. It’s a hot topic all around the world. And when you’re in the Peace Corps, even hotter. Since arriving in Costa Rica, I have only been drinking boiled water. They say the water here is safe, but every now and then there can be a bicho in it that could very easily make you sick. So for now, I continue to boil it, like they recommend. But that’s not the point of this story. The point is the following: I never know what’s going to come out of my faucet.

Last week, I woke up, bleary-eyed one morning and headed to my (private) bathroom still half-asleep to brush my teeth. I turned on the faucet and pouring out came what looked like muddy flood runoff or slightly watery coffee. Costa Rica being the land of coffee, the latter didn’t seem too impossible. It woke me up rather abruptly and I questioned my host family. They seemed to believe that this was a common yearly occurrence after Holy Week here…something having to do with cleaning out some sort of pipes or system (at least that’s what I understood in Spanish). So we just waited it out and drank the next run of clear water. Earlier this week, I went to wash my face in the bathroom, and this time milk came out. Okay, not milk literally, but the water was as white as milk pouring right out of the faucet like you could just hold a bowl full of granola below it and grab a spoon. Instead, I washed my face with it, and who knows if it made it cleaner or dirtier, but I wasn’t really hungry for granola. Finally, two nights ago, nothing came out of my faucet. Nothing. No water to be found…not even milky nor muddy. No one in my host family was sure why, and no one else (neighbors, etc) was experiencing this. We just waited it out (it lasted about a day or so), and though it didn’t last long, it seemed much longer. And finally finally, on the topic of ‘no water’, this morning, in the shower halfway through, my high pressure, rain-shower-like showerhead slowed to nearly a dribble and turned scalding hot. I quickly finished and proceeded on with my morning in my regular fashion.

After such incidents of surprise lately by what does (or doesn’t) come out of my faucet, I have really begun to appreciate water. Pure, clean, clear water…something we maybe take for granted in the US to always flow clear and potable with the turn of a knob. But since being here I have learned a lot about and appreciated water (I don’t even have it nearly as hard as my friends in the Peace Corps in other parts of the world). So, even though my water may have bichos in it, I can just boil them out; If it’s milky or muddy, I just have to be patient and wait till it runs clear again; If there is none, let’s hope I didn’t just go for a run or hope I have some boiled reserve in the fridge to drink. It’s that simple.

Soon, the water will be flowing plentiful, but this time from the sky.

And it won’t stop until November.

Sleep tight. Don´t let the bedbugs bite.

This week marks the midway point of training. This means three things - one: we still have six weeks to go (ugh); two: we’ve already completed six weeks (yay); and three: it’s about time my first big challenge comes up (more on that later).

The other day someone said something to me that really resonated with the state of things lately. They said that time in training (or Peace Corps in general) passes in the following manner – slow days, fast months. To me, that couldn’t be truer. Training is a period of intense learning whose days seem to drag by, yet it’s hard to believe I’ve been here over a month. During training, not only are we learning how to carry out international development work five days a week (sometimes six), but among that, we are learning how to design sustainable projects, how to do community analysis, how to speak like a true Tico, how to make authentic Costa Rican food, how to get around the country safely, how to culturally adjust, how to deal with unwanted attention, how to implement non-formal education techniques, how to gesture a’la Tico and all the meanwhile maintain a level of enthusiasm and professionalism while we feel our way around this murky pool with our eyes somewhat closed. Phew! And that only covers one-fourth of it. So, with that in mind, I’m happy we’re halfway there. In three weeks we find out our permanent site placement for the two years. I’m learning more and more each day what I want for my site, and hope that wherever it is, it will fit me well (and elicit more than a few visitors).

Until now, things have been going quite smoothly in training. That’s why I thought it’s about time my first big challenge comes up. Well, call it a challenge or not, it’s just one of those things that is added to the list of cultural adjustment difficulties; one of those things that just makes a hard day a little bit harder; one of those things that makes you want to go retreat to your own comfortable world of whatever bit of American culture you have with you – for me that is my music and my Yoga Journal and News Photographer magazines my mother sent from home.

So onto my situation…….for the past month or so my legs have been covered in bites…..an absurd amount of bites…more like it looked like I had chicken pox or some rare disease. At first I thought they were just mosquito bites, and then I realized that this was not possible considering I wear repellent almost daily and mosquitoes aren’t really that big of a problem right now. After my real mother and a couple friends here in the Peace Corps suggested this, I began to research the situation of bedbugs on the Internet. Turns out, I most likely have bedbugs. Though this is not 100% confirmed, my situation seemed all too similar to that of my research. So there you have it, problem solved. Weeeelllll, not really. Source of unknown bites solved. Situation? Not solved.

As one knows, getting rid of bedbugs is quite a process…..if you live in the States, that is. But if you live in Costa Rica and aren’t all that sure what bedbugs are, all you do is spray your mattress with Raid, put it out in the hot Costa Rican sun all day, continue to inhale fumes of Raid nightly, and hope for the best. Well, that’s what I was instructed to do. So that’s what I did. But until I was able to do that, I took certain precautionary measures to prevent any further bites. These measures, perhaps a bit extreme, gave me, if anything, peace of mind. They included the following:

1. Sneaking around my host family’s kitchen late at night looking for garbage bags to sleep on.
2. Lining my bed with the garbage bags.
3. Wearing socks and tucking my socks into my pants.
4. Wearing longs sleeves and a scarf (if I had mittens, I would have worn those too).
5. Sleeping with the light on (since bed bugs like dark and warmth).
6. Wearing an eye mask to block out the light.
7. Sleeping on top of the bed, on top of the garbage bags, sans covers.
8. Fan on full power (of course, to blow any bugs away).

See below for this ridiculousness:

I have slept two nights in my supposed bedbug-free bed. I have to believe that the power of positive thinking works, because I’m hoping that it can overpower that fact that Raid actually probably doesn’t kill bedbugs. Buuuuuuuut, we’ll see. I mean, what is Peace Corps without ants in my tea, and bugs in my bed. Right?

In other news, today I made cream cheese brownies, and got three packages from Mom. Now, that’s a good day in the Peace Corps.

Side note: I have been meaning to post this picture for awhile now. It´s my last live memory of my parents at the Denver International Airport. Thinking of you daily!

Not much to say....but some to show.

These first few pictures are from my family´s cabin in the mountains that we went to over Holy Week.....a time when pretty much the entire country shuts down.

This is their pool which I swam in every day:


We saw toucans, igunas and hunted for Tilapia......with a gun. Then we ate them for lunch (the tilapia, not the toucans nor iguanas):


This was lunch one day, and it was DEEEEELICIOUS:

Then, when we returned, I spent Easter with two fellow Peace Corps trainees. We went to the mountains and hiked to some waterfalls. It was steep and we were soaked in sweat by the time we arrived:

But, here we are!

That´s all I´ve got for now. I will share more....in words, again soon. My mind is overloaded right now after hitting the books again.

Farmer´s markets, serendipitous discoveries, and fish-egg-looking fruits

Todays post is dedicated to my lovely friend Mary Rizos, who I think about rather often. It is dedicated to her because she is also a photographer and is the queen of dyptychs (two photos paired together). I´ve created a few dyptychs in her honor of todays activities.

First, it began on a street corner waiting for our Language and Culture Facilitator to arrive to begin class:

Once she arrived, we had class in the kitchen of a fellow trainee´s host family. There we learned one of the most important lessons ever - how to cook arrecache, tortillas, and of course, something sweet, arroz con leche (rice pudding Costa Rican style), the best part? We got to enjoy it all, only an hour after eating lunch:

After class, my host father, who owns a fruteria, goes to the Ferria de Agricultor (farmer´s market) to buy all his produce for his tienda for the next morning. It was a lot like Missoula´s farmer´s market. And by a lot, I mean.........well, not very much, but some similar produce at least, and by some, I mean.......well, I can´t think of one thing actually:

Below, the picture on the left was at the market. The picture on the right is my host father in front of his produce shop (it was closed....we just dropped off the goods):

Oh, and I almost forgot.....the importance of the title of this blog. I´ve jotted down some moments over the past week of things I thought were interesting, difficult, culturally challenging, fun, exciting, random, etc. Here they are:

First, I really miss Peanut Butter (it´s few and far between here), so when I was in San Jose a couple weeks ago, I splurged on a six dollar jar of JIF. One night in my room I was craving a spoonful, but since I had nothing normal to dip in the peanut butter, I decided to try the Starburst I had left over from my time in the States. Much to my surprise, Strawberry Starburst and Peanut Butter became the most serendipitous discovery I have made in a long time. (Hint hint: we don´t have Starburst here, and now I´m all out. Wink wink).

Second, I laugh at myself when I have to try and explain something difficult in Spanish. Examples as of late are explaining the meaning of AC/DC´s song ´Overdose´ to my 30-something-year-old host brother, and also explaining the meaning of ´picky´in Spanish, as in ´I´m picky with my beers and I´m picky with my boys.´ Apparently, they have no such word.

Third, was a lovely, very Costa Rican moment. I was hanging out with my host father in our backyard, and he picks this ball-looking thing from a tree, pops open the top and hands it to me with a spoon. I look inside and it appears to be filled with slimy fish eggs, each one covered in a clear amniotic-type sac. I reluctantly put some on my spoon and place them inside my mouth. Surprisingly, this granadilla fruit has now become one of my favorite things to eat!

Finally, on the topic of food. I think of my friend Laura who is in the Peace Corps right now in Uganda......there she is eating potatoes and grasshoppers for dinner as there is often a food shortage in her town. Here, I think I eat every two hours. I am never hungry, always full, and always willing to try new foods. What a contrast. But on that note, I have also begun to eat bugs. Here, there are hormigas, or ants, everywhere. They infest foods, they are on my bedroom floor, they are on the kitchen counter, they are in my shower. They´re tiny, but they´re there. A few days ago, I realized I had been eating them in my cereal. When I poured the last bowl from the bag, I noticed what I thought were whole grains in my Komplete all along, actually turned out to be a bunch of little teeny tiny ants that I had been munching on every morning with my 2% milk. I promptly threw that bowl away. But today, when I noticed ants floating in my tea water, I chalked it all up to a cultural experience, and continued to sip my morning Earl Grey.