Being Home

I've been home for 11 days so far and let me just say, it's been great. Last week I made it up to Avon and was able to see and lot of great friends (not all sadly). Here are some things I've noticed about being home:

1. Hot showers are really nice, but they become really normal really fast.
2. I never noticed it before, but almost all of the houses in my neighborhood have really nice yards and flowers, I just never noticed this before.
3. Americans have a ton of stuff. I was on Craig's list the other day looking at the free section and was amazed at all the stuff on there. We just have soooo much stuff available that we have to give it away!
4. We eat a LOT of meat here, it's crazy.
5. I miss Deivin and Tigre a lot.
6. I'm sad to leave, but really happy to get back and finish out my service. I have some great projects and great people to work with so my attitude is, let's get to it and finish strong.

That was just a quick recap. Life it good and it's great to see lot's of great friends and hangout a ton with my family. Nephews are great!

Guias y Scouts Update

As many of you know I have been working for a very long time (almost a year) to form a Guias y Scouts group in my town. Guias y Scouts is the Costa Rican version of the boys and Girl scouts. I did not know this until I started, but the boys and girl scouts were actually started by a man named Biden Powell in England. He was a general in the English military and he started a boy scout group using some of his military background for the structure of the group. Shortly after he started the boy scouts his wife started a group for girls and that is where the girl scouts began. The program spread internationally and is now in 160 countries. Guias y Scouts has a different format from what you may remember, but it has the same foundation. Due to fewer resources in Costa Rica we have both boys and girls together and within one troop there maybe up to 4 different sub groups to help with organization as well as open it up to more kids. So, to get on to my group...

We will be having our official swearing in ceremony on August 29!!!! On this day the regional director of Guias y Scouts will come to La Palma and we will take our official oath and they will give us our leader/board of directors patch. I can't tell you how excited I am to wear my Guias y Scouts uniform and stand with my group as we are presented to the community. It will be a great day. The same day we will have activities for kids and we will begin signing kids up. I can't wait to see how it all goes and I know that we are going to have far more kids interested than we have leaders for, but, it will all even out after a while. I can't say enough about my board of directors group as well as my group of leaders. Over the past almost year I have really gotten to know them and am excited to see how they work together as a group (especially once I get out of the way). As a volunteer I'm always thinking and worrying about sustainability and with Guias y Scouts I feel confident that this will stick. So that's Guias y Scouts for now. As soon as I have pics from the swearing in I'll post them. At the moment my host mom is making me the uniform pants and one of the leaders is picking me up a shirt, I'll just need to sew on my patches! Who knew I'd be so excited about a uniform...

Spay and Neuter your pets clinic #1

Okay, I wanted to take some time to talk about a new project that I recently undertook and the results. On June 9th we held our first clinica de castraciones de los animales in La Palma. I got the idea from my friend and neighbor Alba. Alba asked me what I was going to do about my kitten Tigre since she's female and I told her that I would have to take her to Jimenez to have her spayed and she then asked why not have the vet come here and then she could have her 3 dogs neutered. I had never thought of it before and I told Alba that I thought it was a good idea and that I would think about it. That night I started to think about all of the street dogs that I have gotten so used to seeing, they are battered and skinny and everywhere, but I've just gotten so used to seeing them that what once made me angry now doesn't even register on the radar. The next morning I started making some phone calls to the CR equivalent of the ASPCA and asked if they could come and do a castration clinic in La Palma but since we are just sooooooo far away it ended up being way more expensive to have them come down than it would be to work with the local vet. So, I decided to head to Jimenez and see the vet there. We set a date for the clinic. I was in charge of organizing the event; advertising, making appointments, setting up the location, etc. The price of a castration is 8,500 colons, that's about $17 plus the cost of medications which depends on the weight of your animal. You may be thinking, wow, that's cheap! But to a Costa Rican living off of just $200 a month, it's a huge cost. Most people in my community use all of their money just to live each month, they don't have an extra 8,500 colons to throw towards a dog or cat. This worried me. Even if the vet came to La Palma and it was easier for the people to bring their animals to him, most still wouldn't be able to afford it. So, I started to have a hope of finding a donor, yet I did nothing to find one, but I started to hope that I could possible find one. I started to ask around town "If it were only 2,000 colons, would you castrate your animal?" and everyone I asked said YES! So, I went one day to the Danta Lodge where Deivin works and they are nice enough to let me us the internet and talked to a retired professor who lives there about the clinic. He thought it was a wonderful idea and wished me luck and said if there was anything he could do he would help. Not a week later I get a call from Deivin at work saying that a guest at the lodge wanted to talk to me on the phone. I said okay and I talked on the phone with Judy and we made a date for me to meet up with her at the lodge later that day. After a 20 min bike ride I arrived and we talked about the clinic and I told her that I was going to try and find a donor to supplement the cost for the people, I never thought in a million years that Judy would offer to be a donor for the first clinic right there on the spot. I was blown away, I never expected that and it was such an encouragement. So, the very first clinic was ready to go, all I had to do was find the people which was not at all difficult. It turns out that most people wanted to spay or neuter their pets, it was just financially out of their reach and also it was so far and difficult to get their that the location was almost impossible for most people to reach. Now, people had a chance. So I went around and told a bunch of people and had them make appointments and waited for the day of the clinic the whole time afraid that nobody was going to show up. On the actual day of the event people showed up with their pets, lots of people and lots of pet. From 8:00am to 7:30pm the vet and his volunteer assistant worked to spay/neuter 20 animals and were able to save the life of a dog that had been attacked by a wild animal that day and had some serious wounds to his face, neck and arm. By the end of the day it was becoming obvious that we were not going to be able to attend all of the animals that had show up so I took the names and phone numbers of the owners of 8 dogs and told them that we would have another in a couple of weeks and would call and give them appointments. All and all the day was a huge hit. Now when I'm out and about in La Palma everyone is always asking me when is the next clinic, they want to castrate their pet. The vet was blown away by the response as well, he was so happy with the results that we are planning to do one clinic per month in either La Palma or some of the other surrounding communities that are also in need. Thanks so much to Judy for making it all happen and I think we are on our way to a change. More info to come on the other spay and neuter clinic as well as Guias y Scouts.

I have a lot of updating to do.....

To start with, there have been no blogs for the past month or so because my computer broke. In the past I would type out my blogs at home and then when I got to internet I would just cut and past the blog and continue on. So, that's why there were no blogs. I kind of suspect Tigre as a culprit in the computer breaking, but I have no proof and she's just such a little sweetheart so I'm not pursuing that line of thinking... Also, I mean, the computer was rusting in places and it was around 5 years old and had been trucked all over Costa Rica in my backpack for the past 16 months so it's not like it's time wasn't up anyway.

I'm currently in the United States and loving life!!!! I arrived yesterday at noon. My parents picked me up at the airport and we went straight to Red Robin for a really tasty hamburger (I love the USA). I then got to take an nap while watching Days of Our Lives and then went to see my brother, sister in law and my two adorable nephews. It was such a great day!

Okay, I have huge updates work wise, but I really want to sit down and type it out and ad pics and such so I'm going to save that for tomorrow. Just know that the spay and neuter you pet clinics have been hugely successful and I'm really very excited about it! I'll write more tomorrow.

Project updates....

Well, the spay and neuter your pet clinic has yet to happen, but it's already been super successful. I have 17 animals signed up with appointments and room for up to 8 walk in's. I'm really excited to see how it all works out. Already there are more people signed up than I thought we would see. Thanks to the donor I think there is the potential for another clinic, I just need another donor... Anyway, if I can somehow find support the idea will be to have the clinics every 2 or 3 months to catch all the new puppies and kittens that were too young this time and to make it possible for all those that there was no room for this time. It has potential.

Guias y Scouts are coming along really well. We had our final training for the board of directors last week and now we are preparing for our final training for the leaders. I'm hoping that within the next 2 months we'll be ready for some kids. I was thinking of trying to find a grant to pay for all of the uniforms for both the kids and adults. Each uniform is about 4,000 colones, which is around 8 dollars, that may sound like very little to you, but the reality is that here at the end of the month most families have 0 left over. It's a pay check to pay check life for most so throwing 8 dollars which here is more like 30 is a pretty big burden. I'm hoping to make is possible for all of the kids to have the uniform (they can join with or without it).

Computers....I'm not hopeful.

English classes are going really well. Last night we listened and translated a song (which is always a hit). They loved it and hopefully they learned some new vocab. My students are lots of fun and though we don't always stick to the book, they are learning a lot. The hard part is getting them to talk. I honestly don't know how to teach that. I learned how to speak Spanish in Spain because I had to. I lived with a family and if I wanted something, anything, I had to speak Spanish. They all want to learn how to speak, but it's hard because I learned, but only by living in a Spanish speaking country. I think it is possible, just really difficult. Hopefully we get there.

Quick updates:

The giant spider that I thought was a tarantula and saw a few months ago, do you remember that? Well, he's been spotted again only this time he's way bigger! The body of the spider was about the size of a silver dollar and the legs made it huge! I went to open my back door in the morning and down drops the spider. I quickly yelled for my host dad, mom, Oscar, who ever to come and kill it. All three came to see what the Gringa was yelling about and said, oh, that's no tarantula that's a pico caballo (a horse bite spider) then Oscar says, no, it's not a pica caballo, it's a pica gringa. Haha. Sadly we did not kill it, it is still behind my sink but my host dad did spray a bunch of poison so hopefully it will die. I'm not a fan of this squatter. My rabbit has yet to be lost or killed, this is really saying something because everyone else that I know who got a rabbit around the same time as me has lost it or it has died. Currently I'm out sourcing my rabbit care to a neighbor who had 2 and one died so he asked if I could loan him mine so his wouldn't be so lonely. Sadly, his one remaining rabbit has been lost, but I haven't gone back for Cadburry just yet, he's got a good thing going over there but I'm guessing the neighbor is going to get sick of rabbit sitting soon. I'm impressed with the rabbit, I just let him run free almost all day and there are dogs everywhere, maybe it's because he's so big... Arroz con conejo anyone? Tigre is doing well, she's starting to settle down a little which is good because she's been super hyper. I guess this is more of an animal world update.

Faces and Places # 5 - Meet Tigre!!!!

This is Tirgre my new little kitty. I have a really cute video of her playing in a box and will post is next time I have the cable to my camera so I can transfer it. Tigre was brought to me by my host nephew who found her in the street. Apparently she had been dumped there since she was a female (nobody wants kittens and nobody spays their animals). So, he brought her to me and I couldn't resist her, she's just too cute and she was soooooo young. She was taken away from her mother much too early. Anyway, I've had her now for a month or so and she has become a really great cat. When I walk through the gate towards my house she runs to meet me and now she follows me everywhere I go around the house and yard. I'm planning on taking her with me when I leave so don't worry and also, she has an appointment to be spayed in June when she will be old enough. Which, brings me to my next and newest project, I'm currently organizing a spay and neuter your pets project for La Palma. There is a vet in Jimenez who is willing to come to La Palma for the day, sadly, it's pretty expensive to spay or neuter your pet here. I was really lucky last week to come across a donor and we are going to be able to have the clinic at a very low cost. I've been telling everyone I meet in my community that it will only cost 2.000 colones (4 dollars) per animal and everyone gets excited and asks to be signed up. Depending on how the clinic goes, I'm hoping to be able to hold a clinic every 2 or 3 months so that the puppies and kittens that are too young right now can be taken care of before they become pregnant. Hopefully this will help to reduce our street dog population and the lower the number of kittens thrown away. Depending on how the clinic, you should consider being a donor for the next (hint, hint), I'll keep you all posted.