La Florita

Working 7:30-5 in an office all week while in Costa Rica just wasn't sounding ideal...I love the cause and I do feel like I'm helping (and putting my Photoshop and Dreamweaver skills to use!), but of course I always need to push the limits. I felt a little cut off from everything that makes this university so alive with activity all the time, so I decided to see if I could get involved with some of the projects going on in the communities around EARTH. There is an actual class called Community Work that students take part in, so I started going with groups of students on Wednesdays to surrounding small towns where they help farmers with field work/how to improve their crops, assist organizations with meetings and gathering for a purpose, and help teach the principles of EARTH in elementary schools.

I wasn't sure where I could put myself to use, since I'm not exactly a pro in using a machete or planting much of anything, but it turns out that both adults and children in a community named La Florita, about 20 minutes from EARTH, were interested in learning English...which I happen to be a pro at haha. Callie, an exchange student from Michigan State, and I spent two days just walking the dusty roads of the community, house to house, and asking families in our bumbling Spanish if they were interested in English classes and what time would work best for them. The houses are very modest-I would call some of them structures more than houses. I have yet to see a door, everything is open air with maybe a curtain covering it. Each family would invite us in, insist that we sit, maybe feed us some fresh pineapple. The people are amazing.

We were a little worried, sitting there at 9am on a rough wooden bench in the structure used for meetings, that no one would show for our first class. But five students ended up trickling in! After we realized that we are on tico time and people would be coming whenever they wanted, we had a great first class just teaching the alphabet, numbers, colors and a few useful agriculture terms. It's so hard teaching from the beginning! Because it's just not how we think. We taught another class in the afternoon, this time with about 12 adults lining the bench and a couple kids as well. The best part is when they correct our Spanish as we are correcting their English! haha.

We are in the community from about 6:30am to 4pm, so this past Wednesday, one of our adult students who everyone calls Macho invited us back to his house for lunch. He's a big guy with curly blondish hair and just tramps around in his big rubber boots while we try to keep up with him on the uneven roads haha. His wife made patacones, which are like fried sliced plantains. so good!! And his four young daughters are so adorable-the biggest eyes! Then we walked around his property just picking fresh fruit-left with some oranges and a grapefruit!! I can't imagine just being able to go in the backyard and find myself a grapefruit in the morning.

I took pictures this past week of our class, but don't have a computer to put them on...I'll figure something out. Until then, these are a couple Callie took on our first day walking to all the houses.


We would just walk along for a couple hours and stop at each house for a chat. At first, a 4th year student named Sandro came with us, but then he left us to fend for ourselves with our Spanish haha.

Finished for the day and talking with the professor in charge of the project, Julieta.

New Friend

I told you I'm getting used to the spiders here...

RIP MacBookPro

I know I know I'm ridiculously behind on writing! My current lack of a computer is a good excuse though right?! It had been giving me trouble for a little while..but then I came back from the beach two weekends ago and it wouldn't even turn on. I guess it was pretty old in Apple years!
Obviously a lot has taken place since the last time I wrote...so I'll just try to cover the good stuff.
Sam and I, along with a student from Guatemala named Everardo, went a couple weekends ago to Puerto Viejo (ab 2 hours from here on the Caribbean coast) to help the Iguana Verde Foundation. They had been having trouble with local boys coming and trying to steal eggs or just kill the iguanas for sport, so we patrolled the iguana compounds/beach area for 2 days. The foundation is located on a beautiful strip of beach and we got to see so many iguanas! (Now I know that the one I see in my backyard here is an older male since he is an orangish color). Also saw my first sloth! We watched him just slowlyyyy reachhhh for the next branch of a tree. They have the funniest little faces and theyre cuter than I thought!
It was also a good weekend because Everardo didn't speak English, so Sam and I had no choice but to speak Spanish the entire time!

Male iguana at the foundation.

Takin a break

We didnt get to enjoy the actual town of Puerto Viejo since we were on the outskirts at the foundation, but it has the feel of the rasta Caribbean culture, with tiny restaurants facing the beach, live music and backpackers everywhere.
So Sam, Kaia and I, along with three 3rd year guys, Javier, Favio and Luis, decided to go for a weekend and just hang out on the beach. We stayed on Friday night at probably the best hostel I've ever been to. It wins mostly just because it was right on the beach, but it also had two levels- the ground level was just a ton of hammocks for rent, and the top level was rows and rows of tents. Kaia and I ended up staying in a little tent, but if we go back I think I've gotta try sleeping in a hammock for the night! We went out that night to a big party on the beach, danced with some rastas haha...then went to an after party with some people we had met from Sweden until around 3am. That's around the time I realized that I can't stay up late anymore! I'm so used to going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 6am here.

We had big plans to just lay on the beach all of Saturday, but it raineddddd. All day! Sunday we walked through the muddy trails of the rainforest to a beautiful part of Manzanillo beach that we had all to ourselves. Definitely worth it. And I saw monkeys! They were pretty far away, but I saw two of them swinging around up in the trees. I just realized that it's monkeys I usually hear on my way home from dinner at night...

Alright there's much more, but that's all for now

looking out after our walk through the rainforest

We saw this guy crossing the street on our way back into town!!

What I´ve Learned so Far...

1. You can´t fight the bugs. You´ll lose.
2. But cockroaches must die.
3. Make a truce with the spiders in your closet...they live as long as their webs aren't touching clothes.
4. Rice and beans. If you don´t like rice and beans, you need to start liking rice and beans.
5. When you think something is crawling on you at night... there is, in fact, something crawling on you.
6. Guys love to dance! And they´re good. Let them lead and you won't do half bad.
7. The rainy days are a small price to pay for the rest of the unbelievably gorgeous ones.
8. Speak Spanish, no matter how much you stumble. Your effort makes people want to understand.
9. Your bike is your trusty new friend.
10. Always be aware of where you are and why. Then take a deep breath and take on the next challenge.

I went to San Jose this past weekend with Kaia, Thea, Rosemary and Samantha, who are studying here for the semester from Norway, the US and Canada. I hadn't really seen anything of the city yet, just the drive out of it from the airport, so I'm glad I got the chance to go. We had a great time! We stayed with Rodrigo, an EARTH student who has a house there, and then went out on Saturday night. Felt like home-just going out and having some drinks with friends :)

EARTH is like its own little community. For those of you LOST fans, I seriously feel like I work for the Dharma Initiative. A community in the middleofnowherejungle, all kinds of research going on...minus all the evil. A lot of the staff and professors live on campus and its easy to forget that there is a whole other world out there! I was starting to feel a little isolated, which they warned me about in my interview, but I don't know if I totally grasped the warning. It's nice to know that a lot of the students feel the same way and we can get away now and then on the weekends. Next order of business...heading to the beach!!

11. Tackle your fear of speaking on the phone in Spanish!
Just had a successful phone call in Spanish with Julieta, who is in charge of my community work! woo! (For some reason I have the hardest time with it..something I've been working on)