Corcovado

Life is rolling along at this point. I have had a ton of fellow Peace Corps volunteers come through my site in the past weeks on their way to Corcovado National park which I myself had the pleasure to hike last Tuesday with Deivin and 3 of my Peace Corps friends. We saw all 4 types of monkeys (3 at the same time), a sloth, a tapir which is a really crazy looking animal, wild hogs, mountain chickens and a weird type of wild turkey, frogs, snakes, and lots and lots of birds. It was a really hard hike but very worth it. We hiked 8 hours through the rain forest (which is hot, but there is no direct sun so not too hot) to arrive at the Sirena ranger station and then we stayed there for 2 nights and headed out. It was a great jump start to getting myself motivated to get back into shape and it was a great adventure.

My next project is just for me and it's getting back into shape! I have a wedding dress to shop for when I get home and I want to be ready.

In February and March we held clinics and in February fixed 13 animals and in March 14. We are going to hold Aprils clinic in Jimenez.

We are still waiting to hear on the visa, hopefully soon...

I'll try to post more.

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.

Planning the Scouts Camping Trip

Next weekend we will be taking the Guias y Scouts older kids on their first ever camping trip and we are all super excited. I think it's really important that we get going on the camping and get the kids a little more familiar with what the Scouts do. At this point we tell them things like they need to have a flag for each troop and each troop needs to have their own call, but I think it really is one of those things that you have to see first. Needless to say the kids are a little lost, so, hopefully camping with a more experienced group will help them to find their way. Also, we want them to start feeling like a team, a family and there is no better thing than a sleep over for that. I'm hoping lots of kids can make it. We were originally going to make it up to Los Patos the national park entrance, but had to change at the last minuet to the beach (not a shabby change). We'll still go up towards the park with just our kids, but it works out easier this way with the other group. This and filling my application for an extension of service and getting organized on the new playground for Guadalupe have kept me pretty busy.

On a personal note, Deivin and I celebrated our one year anniversary on the 25th, but he had to work all day and had his computer class until 9:00pm so there was not much of a big celebration, just a nice dinner at home and some ice cream sundaes. Next year we'll have to plan something a little bigger, but for now, ice cream and dinner were just fine. We haven't really heard anything on the visa for a while which is fine. We won't hear anything for a while assuming everything is going well, no news is good news for a while anyway.

I have a request from a while ago to write about Mandy and Danny's trip. We did so much that I'm going post a different blog. It feels like so much happened that it's hard to capture it all, I'll post that soon and highlight some of our best adventures...

Also, you will notice that my English is horrible now. My brain is working mostly in Spanish these days so while I'm writing in English sometimes I'm using Spanish grammar. I'm sure it will go back to normal when I get back to the States... Anyone wishing to learn another language and have some fun adventures, consider the Peace Corps, you can't help but learn the language and there is no escaping lots and lots of adventure.

Update on me

Laura Update...

Many people know that over Christmas I got engaged to my boyfriend Deivin. Here's the low down on the day...

After spending Christmas eve day in Guadalupe with Mandy, Danny and Deivin and his family we made our way back to La Palma. It was late (8:00pm) and Mandy and Danny were done for the day. I knew that Deivin really wanted to do our gift exchange at the beach. I've been trying to get him to go to the beach at night with me for months, so I was up for it. The moon was almost full so there was lots of light and it was a beautiful night. So, we jumped on our bikes and headed to the beach, to the place were we had our very first date. It was so perfect, the moon was huge over the gulf, he lit a candle and there was no one anywhere. So, I gave him his present, a pair of shoes. He liked it, but I had a feeling that his present for me was going to be waaaay better. So, he hands me a little handmade wooden box. When I opened it up there was my engagement ring and he asked me to marry him. It was a beautiful night with a perfect ending. We stayed there for a while and then we rode back to La Palma. We have been working on the fiancee visa for a while now and just this week I got word that it was being processes and had been moved from one facility to another. Originally we had hoped to leave at the end of May for the U.S. But due to some unforeseen complications we have changed that plan for the end of July. What are two more months anyway? I'm working to extend my Peace Corps service for those 2 months. While doing the clinics this past week I got some new ideas for projects that will need funding and you can only get funding if you have a certain amount of time left. With the added two months it should be enough. I want to see if we can get a playground for the school in Guadalupe. At the moment they only have 8 car tires that are half buried. Not cool. I'm hoping to get a playground and maybe even a basketball hoop. They already have a flat slab of concrete in the school yard, why no get a hoop and some basketballs and the kids can shoot hoops...

That's it for me. Deivin and I are happy and excited to see what the future brings.

Adopt a Family with Guias y Scouts

This is a post from 12-20-2010, I'm a little behind...

Shortly after the teleton success the leaders of the scouts group decided that they wanted to participate in the Scout Navedeno, which is basically adopt a family. Anna one of the newest leaders (dirigentes) was yet again the driving force. I think I'm so wrapped up in all of the other organizing stuff that I just don't have it to be thinking of extra things to do. Anna was very insistent that we do it and I said sure, I'd participate and do whatever, but they had to tell me what to do, I did not want to be the lead. Which, I'm happy to say Anna did a great job. I'm beginning to see her as a real leader and someone with a lot of confidence, something that wasn't there before. So, we all said that we would buy a gift and go around to the stores in town to see what they would donate.

Real quick let me tell you about the family. They are a family of 5 kids and a dad. The mom left them a few years ago so it's 4 girls and 1 boy and the dad. The dad has only one functioning hand. The other is kind of there, kind of not, but it doesn't really work. The boy Simone is 9 years old, but cannot talk or walk and has really serious needs. He will never be able to be left alone. He can walk a little, but as we saw, he has no balance and if someone is not there and paying attention, he could seriously hurt himself. There is a 16, 13, 12 and 7 year old girl. They are all just so tiny, but you can tell that their dad had done a really good job of taking care of them because they were all very clean and were wearing cloths that didn't have holes in them. The house that this family lives in is falling apart. The dad was careful to tell us not to lean on the one wall they had inside the house because it was about to fall apart. Their kitchen floor is made of dirt, but it got wet and is now fairly muddy. The dad can't work because he cannot leave the little boy for very long, he does work on occasion, but it's not steady. When we arrived and explained that we were there to bring gifts and things for the house the dad saw the food and said “may God pay you for this, please, go into the kitchen, you'll see that there is no food in there”. So this takes me back to the end of the first paragraph. We had gone to the supermarkets and asked shoppers if they would be willing to donate any food, soap, toilet paper, etc to this family and it was incredible! Two separate people donated $40 dollars worth of food! There was something like 5 big bags of rice, a bunch of beans, oil, sugar, coffee, everything. We had people donate sanitary pad for the older girls, lots of nice smelling soap, people donated body sprays (everyone here wears perfume of some sort), it was just amazing to see how much people were willing to give! The kids, the dad, everyone was excited. We had cloths for everyone, toys for the younger kids, a pair of shoes for the dad. They all loved their gifts, but soon the interest turned to the food and they all wanted to see what food they were going to be eating that night.

Even with all the food that we brought and the cloths and the toys, it just wasn't enough, it's just not. We found out that they don't have enough money to pay the registration fees for the two girls in high school, they missed the first dead line because they just don't have the money. Thankfully, at that moment one of the dirigentes present took their names and said that the next day she would pay for both girls. It's something like $12 for both, but they just don't have that. I saw their bedrooms and for 5 people there were only 3 twin size beds. These beds didn't have sheets. We plan to get them sheets! I have seen people in the US that are poor by US standards, but this is different. This is a whole different level. As a scouts group we plan to continue helping this family with their needs, uniforms for all of the kids for school, continue to buy them soap, food, sheets, etc. Once you see how bad it is and how unfair it is, you have to try to do something.

Someone actually said to us “Gracias a Dios que hay los Scouts en la palma” or “Thank God that there are Scouts in La Palma”. I'm just happy that there is a way for those who want to help other to do it. If you are thinking about giving, helping, something this holiday season, do it. People aren't poor because they are lazy, sometimes life throws you something like a very handicapped son and there is nothing you can do but love and take care of him the best that you can.

Here is are some things that happened to me today that I thought were really funny:

Okay, so it was cloudy and cool today so I decided to go for a walk to the beach at 8:00am. I leave my house and haven't taken 3 steps when I hear someone yelling my name. I looked and found the person near the back of my house. He's a neighbor and I know him so it's no problem. So, I ask him whats going on and he and this other guy are chasing this rooster around and they want me to help them because the rooster is on my side of the fence. I hate the chickens. They make this weird moaning sounds all of the time and they're creepy. So I find the rooster and start to chase it and notice too late that it has a rope on its foot and I only needed to step on the rope, but, it had gone to the other side of the fence.

Once I got back from my run I was in my house doing some cleaning and stepped outside for a sec and see my other neighbor running around looking really happy. He sees me and yells “Laura, we're making a ping pong table!” he was sooooooo happy. I was took, I would love to play some ping pong. So, we I yelled something like “awesome, I can't wait”!

Today is a good day!

P.S. This happened on Friday. I told Deivin about the rooster chasing and he said this "Laura, you don't have to do everything that Pena (my neighbor) says, you don't have to chase the rooster". It totally made me crack up! Love it.

The Teleton 2010

This past week Costa Rica held it's annual teleton which is a nation wide fundraiser for the children's hospital. The hospital treats the kids of Costa Rica who have suffered serious burns, who have serious diseases that would normally cost a parent millions of dollars to treat over the course of a lifetime. The kids are given all that they need through the hospital, oxygen, wheel chairs, medicine, everything. So, each year people all over CR tune in and watch the teleton and donate money. Each year the Guias y Scouts of Costa Rica hit the streets with big tin cans to raise money for the cause. I had the great pleasure this year of being able to participate in the even with my Guias y Scouts in La Palma and this will go down as one of my greatest Peace Corps moments.

When I was given 12 big cans with slots in the top and told by Ruth the area director that we needed to fill them up I was not really sure how. We put them out in the different businesses so that people could donate, but they were really empty when Anna one of the other leaders and also my host sister in law went to check on them. So, on Wednesday; Anna, Gregory, Sary and I started hitting the streets Thursday and Friday and then organized Saturday as our big day when we would go to the town center and stop cars and have the kids bang drums and blow whistles and ask for money for the teleton. It was awesome! The kids were really excited and you could see that they were really taking ownership of it. They became somewhat possessive over their "alcancia" or can and would compare with each other "mine's heavier, look Laura, mine is the heaviest". There was even a girl who was helping her grandma cook for a church activity who asked if she could come with us to raise money. By the end of the day she had joined the scouts and was really excited to have been able to raise money for the kids. So, after working all day on Saturday we opened up our cans to count and we were all really excited to be able to report that we had raised 308,000 Colones! That's like $600 which is a lot for a little town. When I reported what we had raised to Ruth the area director she was really happy and told me that there were groups that had been formed for years that didn't raise that much. I was so proud of my kids at that moment.

So, after all was counted and reported we went home to watch the rest of the teleton. Group after group was going up and showing a giant check of what they had raised and they were doing testimonials from kids who had benefited from the teleton in the past (these were seriously heart wrenching stories). I started to get a little worried that I had missed the Scouts presenting what they had raised because it was getting so late. When they presented the Scouts they brought up the head guy from San Jose and like 6 kids to present the check for all of the Scouts all over Costa Rica and the amount was 125,000,000! After they revealed the amount Anna yelled to me through our shard wall "Laura, did you hear! We did it! This is great!", I yelled back “ I know, this is so cool”. It was such a great moment to know that I was able to be apart of something really great. The next day people were telling me how good they felt about having helped and I even had a neighbor stop by and ask if they could donate more!

Here are some things I learned: People who have less almost always give more. Those cruising around in their nice cars wouldn't even stop sometimes while those on bikes with no breaks and a wooden seat would stop to give. It feels good to give, to know that you were involved in something that helped those who need it most. Get involved! Help others to help others.