Monday, August 24, 2009

Laura 1 – Ants 1

I tried the boric Acid (I had written carbonic acid, but it's boric) and the ants ate it right up. I mixed the boric acid powder with sugar and the ants were all over it, hopefully now they will all die, otherwise I just gave them some desert. In other bug updates, when I first arrived here the mosquitos, zancudos and pretty much everything else were driving me crazy, I was always covered in bites and itching all the time. I'm not sure what happened, maybe it's because of the food I've been eating, but the bugs are leaving me alone now. It's crazy, it's like they had their fill. I'm really happy about this, I thought I was going to go crazy with so much itching.

As far as projects go, the emu project is coming to a close, the business plan is pretty much done and now it's time for the guy to decide if he wants to do it or not. I'm still working with the vivero but I think we are some months away from any sort of progress in the marketing field. My two english classes will have their first test with me on Tuesday so hopefully they do well. I spoke with someone yesterday about getting some ladies together for and exercise group, hopefully we can get that going when I get back from training which is the first week of September.

I can't believe that it's already in service training time. I've been in Costa Rica for 3 months and now my site for 3 months. This has been a weird 6 months.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Ants 1 - Laura 0

The ants took one look at my poison on the wall and walked around it. They walked up to it, smelled it and thought, wow, better walk around that and did. Not cool, I'm going to try my dad's suggestion of carbonic acid mixed with peanut butter or honey. I'll keep you updated.

I'm currently up in Escazu with some of my Peace Corps friends and it has been great. We rented a house (and it's a really really nice house) and have been cooking American food and watching tv in English and having wifi! I love it. I've missed my friends and I think to maintain sanity we are going to need to do throughout our time in CR.

English classes are going in one case really well and in the other it's improving. I'm starting to really enjoy the classes, which is good.

Soccer is going great. The girls are really fun and seem to really appreciate having a female coach. I've been working with them on really basic skills and some really really basic drills. It's been really fun and I'm really happy to be there.

The Emu project has been going great. We have made some progress with the business plan and through this project I have met a lot of new people and seen some new areas on the peninsula.

Life is good, my health has improved 100% since the start of August, I can't tell you how good it feels to feel normal again. 2 months of sickness are enough for me. Hopefully I've satisfied my quota for my Peace Corps service.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The War has begun

That's right, I'm at war. I'm so over the ants that love to live in my room. When I first arrived in CR I would look at the little streams of little ants running all over the wall and think, oh, how cute. When they pass another ant they always stop and greet each other, it's kind of cool. I thought that until I moved into my current room and the little jerks are EVERYWHERE! I hate them. Okay, so I could handle them on all of my things, then they crossed the line and have moved into my bed. It's not enough that my bed has termites, the little jerk ants have to crawl on it too and bite me! So, it's war. I won't stop until I have killed them all (at least the ones in my room). I'll keep you updated on the killing spree. So far I have knocked them back, but they are still going, I'm going to look for better poison in San Jose this weekend.

Friday, August 7, 2009

God is pretty awesome!

Things in La Plama are really picking up. In the past 2 weeks God has really been to blessing me and helping me out of my funk. I think I wrote about a guy that stopped by the house who wanted some help with writing a business plan for and emu farm. Well, last weekend I went to his farm for lunch and to see the emus and his farm and it is beautiful! But, as it turns out the guy and his family just love the Lord and we ended up talking about how great God is for the entire day, we hardly had 20 min to talk about the business plan and I was there for probably 6 hours. It was such a blessing for me, I've just been so sick for so long that I was really feeling discouraged and beginning to think that it was going to be a really long 2 years, but since that time things have really turned around for me. We all prayed together that day and since then, great things have been happening and I have been meeting really great people who love God! God is good, even when we have to go through really hard times, God is good!

Here are my current projects:

Tue/Thur nights I have 2 English classes
Mon/Wed/Fri nights I'm helping out with the high school girls soccer team
I'm still working with the vivero ladies, though we need to come up with a better schedule for working together
The emu farm business plan
The micro finance group
*and possibly I might start working with another guy on some Christian tourism projects. I'm excited to explore the possibilities of this. The idea would be that people could come down as a church group or group of friends, hike the park, explore the south a bit and have a speaker, do some work to help out the local churches, etc. Let's see where it goes.

Life is good!
Laura