Two Weeks in Colorado

We have now been in Colorado for 2 weeks and you can't imagine how busy we have been! Tigre the cat is now feeling really good and comfortable in the house and we are working on the outside. I think she prefers the indoors.

Deivin had been doing some gardening and is currently working on the wedding gifts that we will give out to our guests at the wedding.

I don't know if I already said this or not, but planning a wedding is really hard! There is no end to all of the little details. I'm working on checking things off the to do wedding list which turns out to be a full time job. Once I get caught up though I'm sure it will slow down.

Home Sweet Home

Whew! I've been home for a little over a week and it has been so nice to be here! I have been and continue to be super busy with wedding, immigration and general settling in stuff, but I think that being busy is a good thing. Deivin is doing great! He has already totally redone my parents front yard, fixed a door that has been broken for 20 years and is currently teaching my dad how to use a machete. Deivin is keeping very busy with projects and bettering his english. We are no where near bored!

I had no idea that planning a wedding would be a full time job! There should be people that you can hire to do it... It will all come together I'm sure, thankfully I don't have a job yet so I can devote lots of time to it.

And let the Bitter Sweet Goodbye Begin

I'm now in my final days as a Peace Corps volunteer. For the longest time I have dreamed of getting home and how great it will be and how I just can't wait to get there, but now that it's really close I'm finding that I'm actually really sad. I'm still excited and I can't wait to see my family and friends, but I'm really going to miss people here. Also, leaving Deivin's family and my host family are going to be really hard. I see the sadness in Deivin's mom and it breaks my heart. I know that she wants the best for her son and for him to be happy, but he's the first of her babies to leave her and I can tell that it will be a hard adjustment for her.

I'm finally done with all of my projects! Yesterday we had a beach clean up and hung up and moved around a bunch of signs that were all over the places to make things just a little more organized. Deivin made some new signs also that should help the Blue Flag group to get more stars in the coming year. La Palma and Guadalupe hosted the VIDA volunteers again! This is a group that organizes medical, dental and vet clinics that serve people in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. They bring students from the respective fields and they get hands on experience working with people and helping them to get free medical attention. They way it works is they have the students break up into small groups and for example the medical students work with a doctor and they do the interview with the patient, learn to take blood pressure, ask the right questions and they even learn to give shots though they only practice on each other. It's a really great program and the students really get a lot out of it.

Now Deivin and I have moved on from work to the various lunches, dinners, coffee times, etc that people are inviting us to. This part is always so stressful for me.

One Month to GO!!!!

I officially have less than a month left before I'll be home!!!! I can't wait. On July 29th, at this time in one month I'll be in Colorado with dry skin!

I'll give you guys a quick work update, I'm actually really, really, really busy right now! It's good because it's making the time go super fast, but man, I have a lot to do.

We got our funding for the playground in Guadalupe and I went to San Jose with my community partner (Deivin too since we were already going up for the embassy interview) and we signed our contract and they gave us the money! Yay! So, this week I've been meeting with people in Guadalupe to organize with the parents of kids in the school who is going to cook the meals and who is going to donate what food for the workers (the contract is that we provide a place for them to stay and 3 meals a day). That was actually really easy. One of the teachers at the school helped out by taking the list of who was going to bring what and it was cool to see everyone shouting out a bunch of different things that they wanted to donate. Now, the workers will be here on Tuesday and in 2-3 days we should have our playground all ready to go! Pictures to come.

In June we had another spay and neuter your pets clinic and as always, it went great. Ricardo and I have now in La Palma fixed some 144 animals. We have another clinic on July 13th and it's a little sad. I'm going to miss my work with animals.

The group VIDA they are volunteers that do medical and vet clinics for free are coming July 19, 20, 21 and I'm organizing that. Yikes! We are going to hold 2 days in Guadalupe and one day in La Palma.

I have been trying to get everything ready with Peace Corps to close out my service and trying to figure out what to do about Tigre. We have reservations for her to travel with me inside the airplane, but I feel so bad that my poor baby is going to have to be cooped up for 8 hours+ 2 days in a row. For a while I was thinking of flying to San Jose from Jimenez, but it's just so expensive. I've been taking Tigre on walks to get her used to the cage and next Monday will take her to my English class so that she can brush up on her English a bit and be in the cage for a couple of hours at a time. Hopefully it works.

Deivin is almost done with work and is really excited to see Colorado and the US. We are planning to head to Montana for out honeymoon and then in early October do a Grand Canyon hike with my dad. Should be a fun couple of months. I just need to somehow manage to find a job at some point... I'm sure it will happen for me.

Update

I have a lot to update! Que dicha – Finally! So, the biggest news of all is that we were approved for the visa!!!!! Now all we have left to do is go back and pick up Deivin's passport with the visa in it. Awesome! There were a few moments during our appointment at the embassy where I was pretty nervous because of my lack of income as a Peace Corps volunteer, but the interviewer just asked me what I was planning to do for work when I got back, I told him probably HR and he was happy with that. Mostly the interviewer wanted to know about my Peace Corps projects. So that's done! Thank God!

As far as projects go: We got our funding for the playground in Guadalupe and should be starting/finishing that in a couple of weeks. I'll have pictures coming when we begin construction.

Tigre still thinks that her cat box is a bed and now she is bringing the birds that she hunts outside to the box to play with them. A total failure to communicate. Hopefully she'll get it soon!

Life is good, God is good!

Cat Box Training and Visa Interviews

5-24-2011

This update is mostly about Tigre the cat. So, Tigre is pretty much my bff here is Costa Rica, she's really the best cat ever. Since she was a baby, Tigre has known that she goes outside to use the bathroom. She's like a dog but better because I have a hole in the screen of one of my windows and just comes and goes when she wants too. Also, when I leave for trips to San Jose, I never have to worry about her starving to death because she is an exceptional hunter and catches birds, lizards and rats all the time. She's pretty much the coolest.

Now the time is approaching that we will go to the USA. Yes, Tigre the cat is also going to the states with me, but, I was lazy about training her with the cat box when she was a kitten because I just didn't want to have to clean it and now, what a problem. When we get to the states, she's going to have to be kept inside for at least 2 weeks so that she learns where her home is, otherwise she could get lost. In these 2 weeks, Tigre really needs to hit the target ie, the cat box. So, this last time that I was in San Jose I bought her a cat box and filled it with sand from where she usually goes outside. She's not sure what to make of this box with sand in it that is now in our house. Yesterday, I put her in there and she laid down like it was a new bed for her... At least today she has started to play around with the dirt. Training a dog is so not like training a cat. Hopefully over the next two months she will figure it out...

Update on visa stuff:

Last week Deivin and I were in San Jose running all over the place to take care of all the paperwork and stuff that he needs when we go the embassy for our interview. He had to have chest x-rays, blood test, vaccines and a visit to a doctor to make sure he is healthy. Each vaccine was $20! I could not believe it! So expensive. But, luckily they gave him a chicken pox vaccine so should my shingles come back one day, he won't catch a really bad case of chicken pox. Now we are all set for the interview that will be the 14th of June in San Jose. We should have the visa in hand a few days after that. Exciting!

2 more months to go!

For the past couple of months there have been no real changes made to any of my projects. I took the scouts on an outing to Jimenez to participate in the international day of the forest and they had lots of fun. I'm still meeting with my english class and am currently planning yet another clinic. I'm still waiting on the money to build the playground so hopefully that will happen soon. No big changes.

I do have big changes that happened with the Visa! Deivin and I were approved from the USCIS a few weeks ago and we were then quickly approved by the State Department (it's where they do a background check on me) and the papers were forwarded to the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica where I was able to pick them up last week while I was in San Jose for Peace Corps stuff. It's all really come together. Now all we need to do it take care of the medical visits, blood test, x-rays for Deivin, call the embassy and schedule an interview. We are just a few weeks away from having the actual visa in hand! Super exciting! We are heading to San Jose tomorrow and after that it usually takes about a week to get an interview and then usually it's the next day that you get the visa. It's all really worked out perfectly! Now we have plenty of time to prepare to leave while we have the visa. We will be able to buy airline tickets, Deivin and give notice to his work. It's all worked out so much better than I could have hoped for. Thank God for that!

I'm pretty much in a holding pattern for the next 2 months. I'm sooooooo extremely ready to get back to the states and see my family and friends and find a job and all that good stuff. I have the next 2 months to enjoy my friends and family here and to say goodbye. It will be hard, but I can't wait to see what's next, marry Deivin and start our life together! Life is good!