Thats another month down and we have actually had some decent progress along the way, however, its only been small progress but it means I am that much closer to closing out some projects that have been underway almost since the time I arrived here.  The first major point of progress was with the basketball court; we painted the court, installed 2 of the 4 lights and purchased part of the fencing materials.  The second major success is that the recycling center FINALLY has water and we can get started with the next phase of the project.  The third and final point is that I have finally started talks with the women's group about starting their project and how best to continue with them.

Basketball Court

It took us a while but we finally got around to painting the court with the markings for both basketball and what is called "futbol sala" or "futbol cinco", kind of like indoor soccer which is typically played on a smaller  field with only five players to each side.  Because our court (23m x 13m) is a little smaller than an official sized court (28x15), we had to get a little creative with some of the basketball markings but it turned out really nicely.  Unfortunately, the community involvement was smaller than I had hoped and I had to do all the painting of the backboard but we got a couple people out to help paint the court.  Upkeep is already becoming a bit of an issue as the court gets dirty really fast and all the small pebbles lining the court are constantly all over the court itself.  Also, as I mentioned earlier, 2 weeks ago, the ADI wrote the agreement to purchase the fencing materials for the court and they arrived last week.  Because construction costs were higher than we originally hoped, we had to scrap one side of fencing but still have enough for one other side and will hopefully be installing that next week.

Last week the contractor, a different one this time, got to work welding the two lights that had been delivered this far.  I went up to help actually put this lights in and then mix the cement with him and then the next day we went and dug the trenches to install the electric cables for the lights.  As of now, we have two lights up and working and are just waiting the other two lights to be delivered to install them on top of the other poles we have already installed.

At this point all that is left is finishing installing the lights, installing the fencing (and organizing community labor..ughh) and trying to find a way to organize some sort of upkeep/cleaning for the court. 

Recycling Center

I am proud to finally report that we finally have a water source installed in the recycling center!!!  After I-don't-know-how-many-months of talking and planning around this, we finally ended up offering Jorge some money to get him to go and install the bicycle pump.  It worked really well for the first day and then broke down and stopped sucking water...naturally.  We think its a fairly easy fix because we can see where it is sucking in the air but it might require some more materials which for us here in Linea Vieja, means leaving to a city for a day and buying the materials there.  Also because the pump is worth so much here and wasn't too secure until we cemented it into place (again, we have to go out and bring a 100lb sack of cement in), we decided to take out the pump until we were ready to install it again.  The good news is (if there is any here), is that the design works, it just requires a little more tweaking.  Also, from my work with the recycling center, I was invited to an all expense paid 1 night, 2 day trip to Tortuguero with local SINAC and the municipality to make a presentation about my project to a group working there locally.  I know...for a group that hasn't had much success still, it might sound a little ridiculous that I was giving a presentation but SINAC and the local government really likes the fact that the group is made up of mainly youths and we are using a fairly "green" way of getting water to wash the materials.  We met the park administrator, went on a night walk along the beach to look for turtles (no luck), and got to climb a hiking trail not yet open to the public that opens up to an amazing overlook of the entire national park.  We also got to visit another local center where they are much further along in the process but stuck in the same situation as we are: transportation of the materials.  But the best of all, I had one-on-one time with SINAC reps and the local municipality rep in charge of recycling and trash collection.  I got to talk to him about our situation and how the muni can help and he gave me some ideas on how to best leverage the help from the muni.  Obviously, this won't be the quickest process but he gave me ideas on how to expedite it and what kind of details the municipality needs before offering services.  We also began planning another field trip to Tortuguero with our recycling committee to those same centers which will certainly provide some incentive to the youth involved and surely entice others to think about joining.

Women's Group

Still not a whole lot to report here because I just got word they are going to cancel today's meeting but at least we have begun talks again about designing a project.  They still seem fairly set on their cow project (each woman gets 1-2 cows and that's that), but I am trying to explain that if they want to grant, the project needs to be a little more extensive than that but the problem is we are running out of time to use the grants (only 5 months left until all my grants have to be closed) and this group seems to be a little divided among themselves.  I do really like the president but she also has a very strong personality that can push people away and she comes across a little individualistic.  I am very interested in seeing what can come of this because this particular group has been successful in other past projects but I just am unsure what I can do with this cow project.

Vacations

Besides the Tortuguero trip, this past month I made another trip to Puerto Viejo after our regional meeting in June and then went into San Jose this past weekend to renew my resident documentation and for the 4th of July celebration (which was held on the 3rd).  The 4th was a great celebration of free beers, free hot dogs and free....BAGELS!!!  We got there early this year because I offered to volunteer for an hour and got to stay a little later after the celebrations had officially ended.  I probably ate like 3 hot dogs and 4 bagels...it was incredible.  Obviously with all these vacations I haven't been in site a whole lot this past month but we have made some important progress and I am officially only 5 month from coming home for Christmas and only 11 months away from the end of my service.  So close, yet so far!

Thanks for reading as always!

-Conor