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!

Here is a rant:

To give some background to this rant... Last week was holy week here in Costa Rica and everyone heads to the beach to be with family and it's a MAJOR holiday here. During this time all the people and things that make my house incredibly loud were visiting their family or they didn't have to get up in the morning and go to work or whatever the reason you can not imagine how peaceful it was last week. Which brings us to today. What a horrible nights sleep that was topped off with a ridiculous symphony of noise starting at 5:30am and ended with me giving up on sleeping at 6:15am. First, one of the dogs here Canela was poisoned 2 days ago. It was really sad, I came across here and we were able to give her some milk and sugar (I was told that was the cure) and she lived! We thought all was good and she was fine yesterday, but all night, I'm saying allllllllll night she was coughing really loud and dry heaving right outside my window. Then, at about 5:30am Oscar the taxi driver is out and messing around with his truck and the alarm on the truck which he manages to turn on and off a bunch of times. Thanks. Then comes Janet and Jose, they live in the cabinas that are connected to my house. Last night they got back from their holy week adventures and brought their little girl with them who for some reason unknown to me was really pissed off this morning and crying a lot. Then comes the final blow, Jose goes out to warm up their car to take Janet to work and leaves it running blaring ranchero music for no one in particular. Not cool or needed and as I write this very blog, it is still not 7:00am, my host dad has deemed it necessary to burn leaves outside of my window. Awesome. I live in a house that has a bunch on windows with no glass, just screen and bars, also, my roof is not fully connected to the walls so pretty much whatever is going on outside is also going on inside. Also, the wall that I share with my neighbors is not exactly sound proof, if they turn on their light it ligths up my room too. Not sound proof at all. Well, that's my rant. It's usually not so bad and I think I just got used to a week of quite and will need to get back to blocking out the noise. I have 3 more months in Costa Rica and then I will back to the peace of my parents house. I can't believe how well I slept when I went home for my visits, it is just so quite and in the winter when there is snow and of the windows are closed, you can't hear anything. Well, I think I can handle just 3 more months of noise, tonight I'll be using some earplugs.

My plan for today is a beach clean up at 9:00am with the banera azul committee and english classes in the evening. Should be a good day.

nada especial

Last week ended up being a really busy week with Guias y Scouts meetings, and environmental group meeting and my english classes. At this point I really only have about 3-4 students, but let me just say, I love it! We all know each other so well now and they can speak so well that when we have class it's like friends sitting down to chat. I still teach a little from the book, but I really try and focus on them talking as much as possible and the fact that there are only 3 of them most of the time (sometimes 2) means they get a lot of that. I can't believe how much they know. I think the Matt/Laura combo really worked (he was the volunteer there before me). They had 2 years with Matt and now 2 years with me and I can really see a difference.

For the scouts we are taking them to Jimenez on April 30th to participate in the Day of the Forest celebration. Today they are making a work of art (a painting) in which each scout will paint something that makes them think of the forest and then they will take it to Jimenez and present it. Hopefully it goes well.

Currently I'm in San Jose just finishing up with the last left overs of shingles stuff and tomorrow will be attending AVC, all volunteer conference. It's pretty much a party for volunteers to get together and hang out. Should be fun and it's always a nice break to have some cable tv and a hot shower. Soon enough my regular life will be filled with both of those things! Weird to think that soon enough I'll have comfortable couches and chairs to sit on and mirrors and good lighting and a big comfortable bed and hot water all the time and a tv that works and most importantly, an oven! I really can't wait to have and oven and a grill, it will be great. I know little tigre is really going to miss hunting all of the lizards that are everywhere and the frogs, but she'll still have birds and rats to eat so hopefully the little dear won't be too sad when we get to Colorado.

On the visa front, one of my peace corps friends just got his visa approved! He was about a month ahead of me so hopefully we will move just as fast as he did. There is just no real way to know.

P.S.

Today was the most productive day I've had in the past 2 years. I was all over town and got tons of stuff done all in time to watch Days Of Our Lives by 11:00am. Not bad!

Rain, Rain, you can STAY!!!!

My parents just came for a visit for the past 2 weeks and we had a really good trip. For the first time I headed over to Drake Bay and it was beautiful. What a cool place! We arrived from La Palma in bus which only took about an hour and a half super easy and direct. Our first day we took a tour out to the caño island where we snorkeled along the way. Super cool. It's actually the second time I've done the tour, but the first time for my parents. We saw tons and tons of cool fish. The next day we went hiking along the beach for most of the day and got caught in the total down pour on the way back. I knew it was a risk when I saw how late we were hiking out and knowing how long it would take us to get back, but what's going to the rainforest without any rain? This was not my first hiking/walking experience in really hard rain, but it was for my parents. It's warm rain so basically you're just totally soaked but not cold. I don't think my mom was such a fan of that part of the hike... I'm happy to report though that none of us were burned by acid rain and we are all still in perfect health (ticos try to get rained on as little as possible saying that it will make you sick or that it could have acid in it). We made our way our of Drake via boat to Sierpe and then in taxi to Palmar where I got a bus going South and my parents headed up North to San Jose where they flew out today early in the morning. All and all a really good trip and they got to spend some more time with Deivin so that they will all know each other well before we temporarily move in with them! Yay living with your parents in the basement ;).

I just have to say that I'm soooo happy the rainy season is back! I love the rain here and it is just so much cooler and I can go running at 10am or workout in my house and it's not an oven. It's my favorite season by far, the dry season is waaaay overrated.

Time is going by quickly and at the same time really slow. We are still waiting on the visa and will be for a lot longer. All in it's time...

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.