Back in site after two days in San Jose eating Cosi, hamburgers, drinking craft beer and everything else we wanted (mainly really good cheese).  Admittedly, it was pretty tough to leave all that behind and especially hard to leave all the English, the stories and the conversations behind.  Most of all, the hardest part is knowing I have to leave site again in under a week.  However, the coolest news on coming back to site is that apparently a couple people in the community had asked my host mom when I was returning.

Seeing as there has only been about 2 weeks since the last update and everything here moves really slowly, there is not a whole lot more to update but the biggest news of the past two weeks is that I am officially a Costa Rican resident which should mean that I can get a phone plan but according to a couple other volunteers, because we only have a restricted residency, some service providers do not offer plans for us, I guess we'll see soon.

So the past two days, Wednesday and Thursday were spent in San Jose with 8 other Tico 29 volunteers, some CED and some TEFL.  Four of the other CED volunteers were also in my training community so we were all pretty close so it was great to catch up with them.  Both days were spent catching up, talking about our communities, our challenges and any projects we are working on.  As it turns out, I am not the only one not doing anything really CED related.  In fact, the majority of us are having a very hard time getting projects off the ground and once we do, we have a hard time getting people to show up.  Obviously, while we all have our unique problems, we all seemingly have very similar problems just with different people and I think that's just due to the clash of cultures.  While we are all here with the dream of changing the world (or even the life of at least one person), we are new to a community, culture and way of life that is more or less content with where they are.  That's not to say that no one in our communities are unmotivated but rather that it may take more attention and persistence to get people involved.  And the hardest part for us I think is when people come across as motivated, asking when the next English class is but then never show up.  It gets our hopes up, gets us to look forward to having a larger class but then have only 2 people come.  

Some of us are dealing with weight issues; some losing 25 pounds of muscle, others gaining 25 pounds of fat.  Both extremes are hard to deal with and for those dealing with it, it has become a source of friction with their host family.

Another issue some of us are facing is sexual harassment in the community.  At this point, its fairly isolated to the women in the group but it has strained relationships, caused some to change project partners and even one to ask for a potential site change.  And while its something I haven't experienced, the machismo culture of Latin America and especially rural parts, the machismo culture is one that really does allow men to say and act as they wish.  For years, the crude (in our point of view) things that men say to women was taken as a compliment and as such, while things have changed in recent years, many men still feel free to say what they like and expect women to take it as a compliment.

And the last but most popular issue we are facing is communication.  Whether it is face to face in Spanish, trying to get our thoughts into a coherent sentence or just trying to communicate that there are English classes for all the community, we consistently run into obstacles which made the trip to San Jose that much better.  Suddenly we were able to say exactly what was on our mind rather than tweak it because we don't have the vocabulary in Spanish and just being able to talk about the challenges to someone who understands it from our point of view was pretty liberating too.  Its one thing to talk to a friend back home or complain to our parents but to hear from other volunteer that they are dealing with the same issue and how they have gone about dealing with said situation was incredibly helpful (honestly, it was almost like a therapy session.)

But other than the San Jose trip, I only had 6 classes this week (3 of which no one showed up to) but on the bright side, had 16 students in my advanced computer class and all showed some decent motivation not only in the class but the final presentation they have to complete.  This week I only have 4 days in site, a regional meeting on Friday in Siquires and then off to San Jose again from the 22nd until the 31st for In Service Training (IST).  All the classes this week are a review so I am hoping that I can keep most of the kids encouraged to continue, most importantely the colegio kids in the advanced computer class and the wednesday English class that usually has about 15-20 students.  

Last note, I created an attendance tracking spreadsheet to track who shows up to each class every week because I was feeling kind of down about how many classes had 0 people show up.  And while I had plenty with no one, I had enough with 10-25 people where I actually had 160 students in the first two weeks of classes so about an average of 80 students a week.   Not too bad!!!

Hopefully more around the end of the month!  Thanks for reading!

-Conor