New Year, Same Juxtaposted Life

A new year is upon us. 2010.

This year, this March, more specifically, I will complete one year in country. It’s hard to believe. Time has passed quicker than the blink of the eye, and has passed slower than molasses. Oftentimes I feel like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, lost in a life that is routine, predictable, planned, and protected. It’s a time warp here, and it’s a bubble, just like Jim Carrey’s. I wonder if this is every Peace Corps Volunteer’s experience. Aside from the occasional glance at the New York Times online when I can get to functional Internet, I have no idea what is going on outside my bubble. I barely heard about the earthquakes in Haiti, I have no idea what Obama is up to these days, nor did I know about the State of the Union until the day before. I feel so ignorant about world news. Instead, I hear when the soccer field opens for the season, I learn my neighbor has a fig tree in her yard, I discover a new fruit, I hear of Raquel getting into college, I learn the first day of school was changed to a week later, I learn Rocio and Mario got new chickens.

Life here is both funny and serious, peculiar yet ordinary, stress-free yet demanding, uncomplicated yet complex, ambiguous yet incredibly clear, spontaneous yet remarkably calculated. It’s a juxtaposed world of duplets I live in.

And the month of January began in very similar fashion, back and forth between my comfortable North American style life and my adopted other, temporary life.

I rang in the New Year on the Pacific coast, asleep in my hotel, The Pelican. I was there for a wedding of the Peace Corps assistant country director, chock full of out-of-town guests thrilled to attend a destination wedding in Costa Rica. Following that I returned back to my site to “work” for a week. Side note: my town is somewhat of a ghost town -a sleepy mountain town, the Yin of the Yin and Yang, and during summer vacation, even more so ghostly. So by “work” I mean stroll to the local corner store, talk with the people, teach an English class, garden, sleep a sufficient 8 hours a night, and spend a lot of alone time.

Then a week later arrived the Yang to my Yin – my parents, and two weeks of traveling and showing them Costa Rica – in luxury, might I add, something I do not know of this country. The trip was without parallel. How do I sum up two weeks of occurrences, comings and goings, escapades, and mishaps in one blog post? Sure, I could regale you with tales of how we almost got a piece of luggage stolen right off the car seat with us in the car, or how freezing cold wind and rain in a funky mountain town of Costa Rica forced us to sleep in our coats and hats, or how we walked hundreds of feet high in the jungle tree tops on hanging bridges, or swam with schools of fish in the mighty Pacific, or how we ate fresh seafood nearly every day, or how we witnessed herds of both White-Faced Capuchin monkeys and Howler monkeys on the prowl for food as wallflowers from our eye-level, villa balcony, or how we traveled over 900 miles on pot-hole covered roads only to find that Toad Hall (“it was written in Lonely Planet”) was permanently closed, or how we learned on our Costa Rican coffee tour that your $4 latte at Starbucks is worth every penny of it, or how we sometimes felt like we were in Germany due to the plethora for German-owned places, or how we got lost almost every day oftentimes finding ourselves in slums or seemingly unsafe areas with our fancy rental car, or how we turned the wrong way down one way roads a time or two, or how I made my parents help teach my English class, or how my parents learned the Pura Vida lifestyle of the Costa Ricans, or how we ate fresh tropical fruit every morning, or how my parents were both simply shocked and humbled by this tiny little country. But then I thought, ‘Naaaaah, that wouldn’t be so interesting for you.’ So instead, I just decided to post some pictures.

Arenal and the hanging bridges:

My front yard in Copey:

Coffee tour in my site!

Breakfast all the time:

Drove so many miles, only to find out it was permanently closed:

Relaxing over the Pacific:

Getting ready to relax in the Pacific:


And so now my parents are back safely in their North American home, and I’m back to my juxtaposed life, back in my bubble, waiting for something interesting to happen. Perhaps the corner food store will put everything on half price tomorrow, or Carlos Andrés will buy a new bicycle. But until that does, I’m just living my simple, humble life, grateful for a new year….waiting, thinking, being.

A Disease Under the Tree This Year

PREFACE:

Dear beloved blog readers,

I imagine for the past two months you have been up at night musing on possible reasons as to why I have not written since October 21st. Perhaps you came up with such outlandish stories as I was kidnapped by a herd of wild Costa Rican monkeys and taken deep into the rain forest, escaped into Panama to became a drug mule to Columbia, decided to quit Peace Corps to pick coffee day and night, or became a surf bum and had away with technology. Well, the truth is, no such shenanigans have occurred.

So I have no excuse.

Here it is: I was walking down my road one day in my site to go make Christmas cards with a group of youth. When I arrived, I reached in my bag to pull out my computer to fill the air with musical festivities. Much to my surprise and dismay, along with it came a steady stream of water dripping off from the corner. My careless actions were the result of this - haplessly putting my water bottle in my backpack with my computer, cap not fully tightened.

There it is. I have been without a computer since November, which in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer is almost like living without air. But thankfully, I survived, and I hope you did too, and you are reading this now, graciously rejoicing for a new blog post.

Or so I can only hope. ;)

Anyway, now begins the actual post.
______________________________________

I write this from the comforts of my parents' living room. The Christmas music is blaring from the stereo, the lights illuminate the tree, the house is warm, snow is falling softly outside, comfortable carpet engulfs my bare feet, the shower has the capability to rain hot, hot water, and the fridge is stocked with varieties of diverse foods. Basically, I feel like I am in heaven.

But then things took a turn for the worse. This year Santa brought me something I didn't want....he brought me Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. Yes, that's right, Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, not to be confused with Hoof and Mouth disease which is found in farm animals (hold the jokes, Jonathan). I spent part of Christmas day in the ER, and am still recovering. It's a bummer I have to spend my vacation laid up in bed, listless, and zapped of all energy, but it's also a blessing I'm not alone in Costa Rica battling some mysterious illness. Thanks Santa.

Perhaps when I have more energy, I'll post more, including photos........from a new computeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! Really, thanks Santa!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat!

I thought the United States was bad....Christmas stuff has already hit the stores full-force here!

Autumnal Whisperings

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. - John Muir

Today I went for a short hike at dusk. I cannot even begin to describe the beauty Copey holds at this time of night. But I will try.

First, imagine a quaint little town tucked in a tiny, tiny valley high in the Costa Rican mountains surrounded on all sides by various shapes and sizes of lush, emerald hills. Now imagine being able to walk up any of those roads/trails to see what's tucked around/in/between/beyond and below them. Now, imagine dusk - that warm golden glow of the sun casting it's light and long shadows upon which it falls. The big dome above still half blue from the day with small, puffy clouds turning mixed hues of pink and orange, and the other half to the west - a flat, white gray where the fog takes shape. It's that very fog that begins to gently cascade lower and lower amongst the hills and into the valley as the sun sets deeper far beyond them, only casting remaining slivers of brilliance here and there. It hangs just below the mountain tops, leaving a vast opening behind the tops themselves, creating a magical illusion of floating peaks. That's why they call this mystical place a cloud forest- where billowy clouds marry the lush, succulent flora. Looking down, the dirt is wet, the rocks in the road are smooth and glassy yet jagged, puddles of water left over from the afternoon's rains look like chocolate milk, and leaves are scattered about...those oversized, polished leaves that evolve with the seasons into new shades of pigment.

On the way back down, as the light dwindled, I stopped to notice these leaves. Something was strange. One, there were leaves on the ground in the first place. Two, these leaves weren't green. They had turned to a golden shade of autumn with black spots, as if just past their prime. And three, Fall doesn't happen in Costa Rica! I took a deep breath, a cool breath of the fresh air and re-evaluted. Where was I? This surely felt like Fall as my scarf engulfed me and my thin jacket didn't stop the chills from occurring. Surely, this did not feel like Costa Rica, as in Costa Rica only two season exist - rainy and dry (also known as humid and hot). As autumn being my favorite season, I didn't care where I was, it just felt amazing to feel the world ripe with autumn, if only for one short walk.

Like the leaves and trees and winds of autumn, I too, experience change during this time of year....even where autumn doesn't exist. Things are a-changin'. How so, you may ask. Well, mostly work-wise, life-wise, all around just -wise. I'm getting into the groove of things. I'm learning that this really is pura vida, as they say, and no one is really too concerned about things. It's okay that meetings go four hours and nothing gets accomplished; it's okay that when it rains no one leaves their houses, its okay that everything closes for lunch, it's okay that it takes 5 months to paint a world map on a wall, it's O. K. Everything here is OKAY. PURA VIDA.

This land of pura vida is becoming not so foreign like it once was. Things are becoming commonplace: I'm no longer annoyed at how much rice and beans everyone eats. I'm no longer bothered that no one here has carpet in their houses. I'm no longer frustrated that I spend half the days doing very little. I'm no longer sickened that I have to share my room with probably 20 different species of spiders. I'm no longer frustrated by my spanish ability. I'm no longer bothered that every bakery in the country has the exact same thing (okay, that's a lie, I'm a baked good snob). I'm no longer wishing I was somewhere else a lot of the time (just some times, but hey, the grass is always greener...). I'm no longer bothered by the fact that bugs like me, and they will eat my legs to pieces. I'm no longer angry that I have to sleep on pieces of foam and wooden slats. I have just learned to deal. Call it cultural adjustment. Call it complacency. Call it what you may. But ch-ch-ch-changes are occurring, and I couldn't be happier with that fact.

I realize I haven't talked much about work. Well, to be honest, that's because there hasn't been a ton. As stated above, things take TIME to get accomplished here. If it isn't the rain, it's another thing. And trust is important - trusting to do work with a white person who just moves into your community for two years. Today, though however, marked day one of my girls empowerment group, Chicas Podersosas. Out of 12 girls, I was very pleased that 9 showed up to the first meeting. I fear that when I listed the themes for the three-month program on a permission slip to the parents including one as "sexuality and dating," I scared off a number of extremely Catholic mothers trying to protect their innocent 5th and 6th grade daughters from the "sexually-liberal" American who is probably going to shove condoms in their daughters' faces and tell them to go have sex. Well, not the case, and I assured the mothers who expressed concern over this topic that I would do none of the sorts. Anyway, day one went well, and things are moving along. Slowly but surely. Now I just have to figure out how to teach a group of sixth graders about the concept of 'ecological footprint'...in spanish on Friday. All sorts of other mini-projects are up my sleeve and currently in the works too. More on those in the future...

So, as I head to bed tonight, I am tucked under two blankets and my down sleeping bag, as I am every night. Every night here in my bedroom, my little cave tucked aside from my host-family's house, it feels like Fall. And today, out in the world, felt exceptionally like Fall. I don't know if it was the dusk, the cool, crisp feeling in the air, the feeling of normalcy being in this culture or the feeling that I am actually being needed here now, but I do know every year when this time rolls around, I too, become rich like the colors of the leaves.

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." ~George Eliot

Who knew?!

Did you know that line-drying two loads of laundry in the sun per week saves as much energy as it takes to run your fridge for four months?  I didn't either.  So now every time I get out of the shower and have to use that crunchy bath towel and then put on that overly stiff, stretched-out pair of jeans, I will try and remember how I am saving lots and lots and lots of energy (so people with dryers can use it).  :)

Today, and its story

Today I painted, danced, laughed and listened. That's the short story.

The long story went like this: I woke up in my own bed, freshly returned from my first In-Service Peace Corps Training (3 months into service), unsure of what to do with my day, after re-grounding with other volunteers and discussing our experiences. Feeling a little bit overwhelmed from all the ideas I accumulated at training, frustrated that not much has been done at my site thus far, defeated by adversities of international development work, and just completely unsure of where to start all over again, I went for a hike to clear my head. The early morning air was fresh, slightly warm, and rich with untainted mountainous fragrances. The Costa Rican fauna (the area I live in is well-known for bird-watching) was strongly resonant high above me in the trees. And my body and soul were happy - happy to be moving, alive, and right where I was, despite my feeling of lack of purpose.

Shortly upon arriving at home, the unmentionable happened - a youth from my town texted me (yes, I have a cell phone) asking if today she could help paint a world map mural we are working on at the school. Sounds so simple, but I was overcome with excitement and humbled that someone wanted to help me and sought me out to ask. Peace Corps work is difficult for this very reason...oftentimes I feel I am begging people to help me in projects, or having a hard time motivating them to realize their own projects. Apathy is plentiful in these parts. But I was so touched that this one youth cared enough to offer her help on a project that has been on hold for awhile because I was away at training. So it was, I had a purpose for the day (in Peace Corps doing one productive thing per day is considered successful). I would meet her (and her younger sister) at the school and we would begin painting the background ocean color for our 4x8 meter map. Taking up most of the afternoon, the painting led right into my dance lesson. Yes, that's right, I'm in dance. Okay, let's not say I'm in dance - more accurate is that I am learning a traditional Costa Rican dance to perform at my site's Independence Day festivity September 14th (the actual day is the 15th, but festivities begin the night before). I'm prepared for the whole town to silently chuckle at the gringa dancing baile típico donned in full traditional Costa Rican garb. But I can't help chuckle myself! Well, when in Rome....

Then later, I realized something important...though I felt like I had no purpose today whatsoever, as I found myself sitting in the salon comunal (community center) with a woman with nothing around us but the two chairs beneath our bodies, I realized I did have a purpose - I was there to listen. This woman sought me out to ask me a question. She began telling her story of her son who has lived in New Jersey illegally for the past fourteen years. He recently discovered a cancerous tumor on his leg, and has had a hard time receiving sufficient medical treatment...specialist treatment, more accurately. The woman broke out in tears as she retold the fresh news of her son to me. Due to his specific situation, receiving chemotherapy was proving very difficult, and cutting out the tumor would mean cutting the tendons that enwrap it, thus making his lower leg immobile. The tears continued to fall. At this point, I had no idea what this woman was going to ask me...money to visit?...help finding better medical treatment as an illegal immigrant? I had absolutely no idea. But then she said, "My question for you is this: I just want to know if the medical treatment in the United States is advanced?" That was it...a simple request for a little reassurance from someone who knows where her son is living. This land of the United States is so completely foreign to this woman, she has no understanding of most things there...all she simply wanted was to feel a connection to her son through me, and be confident in and comforted by his important journey he is about to embark on...as an illegal immigrant in a foreign land. She asked if I knew the the specific hospital her son was at, and questioned its ability. I assured her that New Jersey and New York yield many very specialized, skilled doctors and that her son would be fine with the medical system there. Though I can't be sure this is the case, I said so because I am confident that our medical system will realize and recognize the importance of every human being, illegal or not, and their right to have adequate health care, ability to pay or not. It was a bittersweet interaction - I felt extremely powerful, yet completely powerless at the same time. I wanted to tell her that I really had no knowledge whatsoever of the medical system in New Jersey, and that getting treatment as an illegal would prove difficult, but I held back. I have learned that hope is what gets me through my days here, and so I continued to exude that same aura in that moment towards that woman. I can only hope it worked.

So you have it...very simple things happened today after waking up purposeless - a text message, laughter, a desire for a lending ear. But then I realized that this is why I am here. I need to give up this strong desire to move mountains. Idealism is important, but too much can lead to frustration. It's in the simple day-to-day things that really make the difference. I am here to listen, to help, to collaborate, to laugh with the people, to dance, to paint, to give advice, to see, to learn, and ultimately, this is what will move mountains.

28 overstuffed envelopes and the passage of time

Exactly one year ago today, I turned 27. And I can remember that day so clearly. I had spent the day with my lovely roommate Erica playing around in the Blackfoot River near Missoula, Montana, getting lunch and just relaxing. But I also remember receiving something in my mailbox that day. After arriving home from the river, I walked across Pattee Canyon Road to our row of mailboxes. There I saw a huge envelope forcefully stuffed inside. I was giddy with excitement, as I knew just what it was - it was my long anticipated invitation to the Peace Corps, and that day I found out what country I would live in for the next two years. I sat in my backyard by my garden and stream, grasping the overstuffed envelope, barely holding back from carelessly ripping it open like a child and her gifts on Christmas morning. I remember telling myself to be mindful and remember that feeling....that feeling of complete uncertainty, delight, mystery, excitement (what a wonderful birthday present). When I opened the letter and saw the words "Congratulations," and one line below it, "Rica," I instantly knew I was headed to Costa Rica, but I had no idea what was in store for me. So here I am, celebrating one year later in Costa Rica...but this time 28 years.

My day is nearly over and my first birthday in Costa Rica was simple yet lovely. It began at the school where I taught the pre-kinder class to the play the childhood game red-light/green-light. They sang a long rendition of happy birthday to me, and then ten pre-kinder kids swarmed me at once to hug me.....a big group hug. I had a relaxing afternoon at home, and just before dinner went on a run in damp, foggy, mysterious weather. It all ended with the most deeeeeeelicious dinner (yet) of vegetable lasagna, red wine, salad with homegrown yellow, green and orange cherry tomatoes (a welcomed relief from rice and beans) with a wonderful couple in their home (and two more happy birthday songs). This may have marked the latest night out yet (since being in my site)....11 pm......whooew, this Peace Corps life is crazy.

Another year has come to a close. I look ahead (as I did this same time last year) and once again, it is filled with uncertainty, delight, mystery, and excitement...another overstuffed envelope waiting to be opened and unveiled through the passage of time. And so, mindfully I go, into my 28th year.

Thank you all for the wonderful birthday wishes!!!

(pictures to come soon).