July 8th, 2015

"The first three months are always the hardest" said every CED volunteer I have talked to

Only two more tough months hopefully.  One month officially down!!!!

Happy Birthday America!  Back in site after another long weekend out of site but likely the last one until we all have In Service Training in late August.  Had another great weekend of catching up with friends, talking with older volunteers and getting to see another beautiful beach.  I had a kid from the colegio actually seek me out for help with the spelling bee, two older gentlemen talk to me for over an hour each about Peace Corps my position in the community but for the most part just been absolutely bored out of my mind...welcome to CED Peace Corps.

There has yet to be a single CED volunteer that has not said they had to wait months in order to accomplish anything CED related and almost every Tico 29 CED volunteer I have spoke to is in the exact same boat as me; English classes and some computer classes.  The hardest part is not comparing where I am with some of the others.  While most of CED has yet to really accomplish much of anything, some have sites and communities that were prepared to received a CED volunteer and they were actually able to hit the ground running and accomplished at least something.  But my class schedule for my English classes and computer classes has been finalized and as soon as school starts up again (not for another 10 long, boring days) I will be busy with 5 English classes and potentially 6 computer classes.

The biggest story from the past weekend was probably the rain.  Because of the rain, I was actually stranded in Guapiles (the biggest city near my site) for a day and a half.  Normally coming from San Jose, we travel along route 32 through the mountains and a 2 hour drive to Guapiles.  However, route 32 was closed meaning the only way to Guapiles on Monday was through the south and a nearly 6 hour bus ride.  It was awful.  I missed the only bus to my site as I had no idea I had to plan for a 6 hour trip and since there are no buses Tuesday, I was originally going to take another bus and hike into my town.  However, that had to be scraped because the rain had taken out a bridge from that side of town and it was inaccessible.  So after staying with another volunteer Monday and part of Tuesday, a Peace Corps SUV was sent to drive me along the absolutely destroyed roads into my inundated community.  My house had water all over the kitchen, the backyard had the River Jimenez running through it, dogs, chickens, pigs were everywhere...it was a disaster.

This next week and the following week are still school vacations which means nothing to do...funnn.  However, the student that went to the national spelling bee last year (yes from my town of 400 people) is coming over everyday for an hour or two of practice.  The rest of the day is spent with the host family, taking walks or creating lessons for the English and computer classes.  

At least I have something to look forward to in 10 days and I am extremely excited to finally begin actually working.  Regardless of how little work I have been able to complete so far, I feel more and more at home everyday and everyday a new person says hi to me or waves etc. 

Oh and the worst news: the mosquitoes have made their appearance and its bad!