Close of Service Ceremony

This past week I was in San Jose for the close of service conference for my Peace Corps Costa Rica Tico 19 group. We started out as a group of 52 on March 10th 2009 and we are now a group of 47. We lost 2 volunteers in training to medical separations and over the past almost 2 years we lost another 3 also to medical separations. We were a special group in that we didn't have one single ET (early termination) an ET is when someone decides for personal reasons that they just don't want to continue. Usually in each group there is at least one if not several, but Tico 19 was a really cohesive group and we managed to not have a single one! They hold the conference at this time in our service to give us 3 months to tie up all of our loose ends, do the tons of necessary paperwork to leave and also to take care of all of the medical and dental visits that we need to be able to leave. During the conference we talked a lot about what we accomplished in our time here and reflect on our impact as a whole group. It was a great time and it's the last time that all of Tico 19 will be together. After the conference I'm feeling really reflective so I thought I'd write a little re-cap of some of the major events of my service...

PST (per-service training) was a great time. I had a great group in Acosta and we had so much fun together. I spent more time in the beginning at Mick and his host families house than my own. We had a lot of fun cafecitos as a group at Mick's house after class and were a group that never had any drama, just a lot of fun. Then we headed to our new communities and I could not have been further away from Mick, Brianna and Chase (my Acosta mates).

Next, I had not been in site for 4 days when the shingles struck and struck hard. It was a challenge getting to the hospital and admitting that for the first time in my life, I was sick, really sick. When I actually made it to the hospital I was convinced that I was going to lose my eye and possibly die. I had never stayed in a hospital before and had never had and IV before let alone two going at once, but I knew that I was in really good hands and felt very comforted by my doctors at the Clinica Biblica hospital. After leaving the hospital I went back to Acosta to start the recovery process. After a few weeks I headed back to La Palma to finish out recovering for the next 6 months. In this period I was really unhappy with pretty much everything, but I decided to stick it out until December when I would have a 3 week trip home to decide if I was going to stick it out or give up. I had some small projects going and was just in the basic finding people stage for the Guias y Scouts and had my English classes, but I was not very capable of anything during this time.

At Christmas 2009 seven months into my service and ten months in Costa Rica I headed to Colorado to re-group. It was the best thing that I could have done. I remembered what it was like to be me again and had the best time with my family and friends getting to meet for the first time my 2 week old nephew and see Mandy who was in town from Alaska. I had a few R-ball sessions with Jess and Mandy, went skiing with my family and in general had the best time ever. I'm talking a lot about this because this was a major turning point for me in my PC service. I needed this time to remember who I was and to get back to being me.

When I got back to La Palma my life changed again the same day that I arrived. I got in on the 8:00pm bus and my host family was there waiting for me and it felt so good to be back! They informed me that night that I was going to go to the dance at the beach with them and since I was feeling so good I said okay and we left maybe 30 min. after I got there. It was there that Deivin and I would start what would turn out to be a great love. I had no idea when he asked me dance that night that he would be the first and only love in my life. We danced and talked that night and began to date from then on. Also at this time, all of my projects started to turn around. Guias y Scouts started to really move along, my English class became a whole lot more enjoyable for me, I started to work a little with the development association and would soon find Tigre my cat which would lead me to probably my most successful project, the castration clinics. Once I had clinics going and the scouts were moving along and I had the flow of my English classes, life got a lot easier.

By the mid point of my service things had begun to work out and I had been wondering what was going to happen with Deivin. I knew from that start that I wanted to be with him, but he said that he didn't ever want to leave Costa Rica, that he had a good job, his family and that he never had wanted to leave. I respected this because I too felt that way about the United States, but by this time we knew that we wanted to be together and we knew that there would be more opportunity in the US. After a lot of thinking and as time passed he said that he would be able to go to the states and so we began to plan and think very seriously about the future and if we wanted to really make it happen by getting married. My projects were all going well and I was pretty busy with clinics, Scouts, English and the occasional side project of working with a group of women and teaching people how to make wrapper purses.

As time passed I worked on strengthening the scouts (and still continue to work on that), I've had many castration clinics including one 3 day clinic with vets, dentists and doctors and I still have my English classes. Deivin and I are waiting on word about the visa and hope to have it ready by the end of July. I'll be staying 2 extra months which I'm calling my victory laps to help build a playground in the little town of Guadalupe and hopefully wait out the visa.

It's been a long crazy ride, but it's been a really good one. I've gone through so much and changed a lot, but all for the best. If we never go through hard times, we never learn just how strong we are and who we are in the face of adversity. I never thought I would come to CR and leave with a Tico fiancee, I never thought I'd almost go blind from shingles. Life is one crazy ride and if you let God take you where you need to go, it's not all roses, but there always seems to be a great reward in the end.