Feliz Mayo! :)

Alright, world, where did April go? How is it May already? How is it somehow possible that my parents will be here to visit me in TWO MONTHS? .... man oh man,this time is a-flyin' by. :)

I am............ in a really good place, right now. And this isn't a fluke, this isn't 'just because I'm in Costa Rica': it's the result of having spent the last month of my life working, working hard, every single day, at making Costa Rica into a place that I love.

You see, about a month ago I hit a bit of a slump. Ok, that's a lie: I was in fact slipping towards a pretty deep depression. This was partially because I hurt my back and couldn't go running for a while and partially because I really, truly was in dire need of a bit of a mental shift. I had a good bit of misery, tears, and negativity. I was scared because I was lonely, and I wasn't able to revel in myself, in the world, in others, in the Spanish language, in the joy of sharing and volunteering and learning in this awesome country. All of the positive feelings that I had been loving and living since getting here were being hidden by my general angst, and something needed to change.

So what did I do?

I made a list. That's right, I made a list-- a list of all of the things that I wanted to change about my life in Boruca, about the things I want to accomplish here, about the things I wanted to add into my Costa Rican life on a day-to-day basis. And then, after I made the list, after I'd checked it twice.... I put it into action.

Here are some of the things I've changed and implemented and done these past four weeks:

-I've made a better effort to live in Spanish:reading a novel in the language, speaking with more people here in Spanish, avoiding speaking in English whenever possible, listening to Spanish music
-I've gone out and gotten to know the community more: I now go over to my neighbors' house daily to chat, play with the baby, and listen to the grandmother tell tales (in Spanish, of course) of what life was like here when she was a child... I've met and talked to more and more parents of my students, met more people my age, and played cards and soccer and hide-and-seek with the locals.
-I've tried to make a mental shift more towards fitting in here instead of trying to 'be myself' here-- this means, for example, being mroe open to drinking coffee, trying to revel in the glory that is the cafecito (cafecito being when you go to someone's house, planned or unannounced, to sit around talking-- or not talking-- for an indefinite period of time, drinking tea or coffee, just being relaxed together instead of working)
-when my students say 'te quiero', I now say 'te quiero' right back. (te quiero is hard translate into English-- in English we just have 'I love you', but in Spanish there are several levels of it. 'te quiero' is more like'i hold you dear'/'you are awesome and important to me' as opposed to 'te amo', which is a distinctively romantic thing.)
-I MILKED A COW!

-I now hang out with my host family more. This means, in effect, that I now watch a lot more TV than I did before.. but at the end of the day, it means that I'm bonding a tad more with them... and hey, the TV also helps my Spanish.
-I now drink tea almost every day... tea has always been a big comfort for me, but it's expensive and difficultto make here because my family doesn't have a microwave or stove or water cooker, so I have to go next door to make it... but I've decided that it's worth the effort. An added benefit is that I've gotten to bond a bit more with Doña Paulina, the ancient old woman living next door whose microwave I use each day (she's actually my host grandmother.... and she's pretty awesome.)
-each week I take the bus into town and buy myself a big bag of fresh fruit so that I will have a piece to eat every day
-I began to teach my classes immersion style, which not only makes me feel like a better teacher but motivates me, motivates my students, and shows them how much they have learned (we make a game out of it every day, Teacher vs. Students, and keep track on the board, to see who can go a whole class without speaking Spanish.)
-I've returned to my old habit of making lists in my head of things that I am thankful for. I wake up in the morning, and I try to have my first thoughts be ones of peace. When I go to bed at night, I try to think about the good stuff about the day that has passed and about what I'm looking forward to in the upcoming days.

The effect of all of this has been overwhelming: my Spanish is better, my classes are better, my relationship with my family and community is better. I've made new friends, and I'm content in this tiny pueblo in the jungle. When I leave for the weekend, I'm excited to go-- and now, also, excited to return. In fact, when I was in San Jose this weekend, I mentioned to Alex (one of my Tico friends) something I wanted to do 'when I was home'-- and realized that, at some point in the past few weeks, I have naturally started thinking of Boruca as 'home'.. and it feels good.

Speaking of Alex: a couple of weeks ago, I got to accompany my him to a rural car race in Guanacaste that he was covering (he's a professional photographer here in Costa Rica.) It was SO beautiful that I'm actually giving some thought to living there for a while:

...anyway. This is getting long, so, I'll stop for now. Moral of all of this is that I'm doing alright. In fact, I'm doing great. Thank you to all of you for your patience with me, for your support, and for your thoughts and prayers :)

Besitos!
Raquelita

'...if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.' -Mother Teresa

I did not come to Costa Rica thinking that I knew how to teach. If anything, after three years as an assistant teacher, I came here knowing that I did not know how to teach— but also that I had a talent for winging things, learning fast and working under pressure. I knew that I thrived on challenge, could learn languages well and rapidly, and that I liked adventure.

It’s true that I had lived abroad before, for years at a time. I had had language immersion experiences before and had emerged from them with fluency and confidence, and I had been away from my family before for long stretches of time. I was confident that all of those things would help me during my time in Costa Rica, and as it turns out, I was right.
But it’s also true that I had never lived in a culture so vastly different from the one I was used to. I had never lived in a climate so vastly different from the one I was used to, and I had never worked a fulltime job before. I had never agreed to live as a boarder with complete strangers for a year, giving up my daily personal independence along the way.
And now, here I am in this 700 person pueblo in Costa Rica, listening to the rain pour down and digesting a bellyfull of yucca and mango. I’m here in Costa Rica, living this life that I have chosen, waking up before 6 AM each day and starting to teach at 7, eating three plates of rice and beans and taking cold showers and going for runs in the sweltering Tican sun on a dirt and rock path through a jungle full of palm trees and jicara, speaking Spanish to my family and colleagues and neighbors, planning and teaching lessons and writing and giving and grading exams for 150 students, and all the while trying to forge new relationships here while cultivating those I have in the other homes where I’ve lived and loved.

……..and I still haven’t been able to find the words to describe it.

The thing is that every single aspect of this experience has been a challenge. It’s tough. It’s a neverending riddle. It’s fantastic, and intense, and awful, and I have had days where I wake up with a smile on my face and joy in my heart and days where I wake up and just want to groan and where the last thing I want to do is eat gallo pinto and go face a hoard of 26 2nd-graders all screeching TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER!!!!.......... I have had moments of intense pain and loneliness, moments of overwhelming happiness, moments where I feel like an inept failure and moments of accomplishment and confirmation where all I can focus on is the sheer thankfulness in my heart for having had the amazing luck to land here, in this place, with these people, doing these things.

So, yeah.  It's tough.  It's amazing.  I feel lucky, I feel crazy, I feel lonely...so I guess the moral of the story is:

I’m here.
I’m alive.
I’m doing my best.

Thank you for caring. 

Love!
R

Saturday Morning in Costa Rica: An Essay

8:40 AM, Costa Rica. Rice and beans eaten, waterbottle filled: all systems go. I step out onto the dust and rock road at the center of Boruca, turn left, and start walking.

The first few meters are blissfully flat, a ten or fifteen second tease. Then the ascent begins. One foot after another, one meter after another, I climb. The sun burns bright overhead as I pass the shuttered police station, occupied only once a week, and then the pulperia on my left and the bus stop across from it, teeming with the relative life of four or five people standing, sitting, buying, and watching me, the gringa in orange sunglasses making her way up, up, up.

The road does not flatten out after the pulperia—it gets steeper. The incline is at least 30 degrees, an estimate which to my out-of-practice brain and aching calves seems pathetically conservative. A shout—HELLOOOOOO, TEACHER!— is answered automatically with my response of HELLOOOO into the cluster of tin-roofed houses to my right. And I keep climbing.

The already scorching pre-noon sun is blissfully off to the side in the sky, allowing for several of the trees towering over the road to cast arching shadows into my path. Several, but not many. Even now, at 8:50, the vast majority of what lies ahead is unprotected, uncovered, bleached by the power of the giant ball of energy pulsing above me, waiting for my Tevas to crunch in, crunch on, kicking ambitious pebbles loose to tumble back down to the center of the pueblo below.

I pass the last of the houses, then the blue-roof clinic, then the energy compound. The incline increases. I can feel the sweat starting to drip down my back and my arms, feel my pulse pounding in my fingers and the pads of my feet, hear the roar of blood in my ears. I think of the Hunger Games, think of Katniss Everdeen and how she lost the hearing in her left ear as she fought for her life. I am lucky to not live under the rule of tyrants. And I am lucky to hear. And I am lucky to be alive.

I keep climbing.

9 AM. The road curves again to the right and I stop to catch my breath, resting my hands on my thighs and leaning down as I gaze back over Boruca. I have been hiking on a steep incline for 20 minutes without respite and my shirt is damp with sweat. From this altitude the houses look like toys, the giant cross in front of the church a dainty white figurine against the rolling backdrop of the mountains stretching as far as my eyes can see. These mountains are majestic in their enormity, their endless peaks reminding me of stiffly beaten eggwhites atop a lemon-meringue pie. Dark green, leafy eggwhites. I find my brain again thinking of the Hunger Games and Katniss, again thinking of her struggle for food and the fantasies of meat and water that haunted her, then thinking about my own thirst and the water and cookies in my camera bag. I promise myself that once I reach the top of the mountain, I will take a break and refuel.

But I still have quite a way to go.

Up, Up, Up. I round a bend and come up short—this is the curve, this exact swath of dirt and rock, this exact precipice over a valley—this is exactly the place where, three weeks ago, the bus broke down and began to slide backwards, backwards down the incline, first in a straight line and then in a curve, the driver unable to control it and the wheels rolling further and further until—suddenly, blessedly, and diagonally across the road—the wheels had come to an abrupt stop on the edge of a steep drop. I remember the knuckles of my fingers grasping the seat in front of me, remember searching for a way out—windows too small, door closed— remember the shriek of nervous laughter that had escaped my lips as I wondered what would be the safest position to crash in, what I could grab that would give me the best chance of survival, and then it was over. Over, and then we were out on the side of the road, waiting for an hour in the shade of the bus for a pick-up truck to come and drive us up the mountain. Waiting, as men dug a path in the mountain around the bus so that a car or two could get by—waiting, waiting, in the dust and rocks. The same dust and rocks that now slip under my feet as I climb.

Up, up, up. It is now past 9, and I have yet to see a car, a motorcycle, or any other sort of vehicle. I pass a horse chewing its way through the high grass beside the road, contained not by a fence but by an overabundance of food. It whinnies what seems disapproval and continues to chew, chew, chew as I climb, climb, climb. The sun climbs, too, but I do not welcome its company.

I hurt. My legs hurt. My lungs hurt. My throat hurts. My lips are dry, my gaze does not want to focus as well as it did a half hour ago. My face and body are wearing a mask of sweat. There are three shadow-patches ahead on the final stretch of mountain, and I force myself to trudge up from one, to the next, to the next, waiting a few seconds in each and savoring the treat of an instant of shade. I think about each step, think about the distance I am putting between myself and where I have been, think about where I am going. I think about music, about the birds, about death, about the absence of humanity, and about nothing at all.

Have you ever noticed how some birds have a wingspan as large as a human? A huge shadow grazes over me as a vulture swoops down close over my head, and I think not only of its size but also of how, were I to collapse in the heat, the vultures would soon return, gleeful and wanting to pick my bones clean.

Up, up, up.

I can see it now. I can see the curve of the road that promises relief, shade, and a stretch of flat path before hills begin again—and I know that I will make it, can almost taste the sweet water in my thermos, can barely contain my relief as I round the bend and find a swirling, cool patch of air under a copse of trees where the wind seems to be caught in an angry loop, furiously swirling around my aching body.

Finally.

There are no benches here. There is no curb. There isn’t even a stump of a tree or a big rock that could serve as my chair, so I plop down unceremoniously on the road, sending up a small cloud of dust into the mountain air.

For a few seconds, this is my dream, this is my heaven. It takes no effort to block out the entire universe save for the rise and fall of my chest as I gulp air, the ecstasy of every exposed inch of skin as the wind—ohhh, the wonderful wind!—dances across it and lifts away the heat. I am purely, entirely happy, aware of my life and knowing my ignorance and full of love.

My fingers trace over the cool metal of my thermos and I crack it open,
sipping down life in short gulps. I break into my honeycrackers, chewing them slowly and letting the flavors sit on my tongue. My pulse and breathing slow and a rooster crows somewhere nearby and I imagine a camera, zoomed in on me, then slowly panning out, out, out, and I wonder how long it would take, how many seconds of film, how many hundreds of meters of dirt road, before that camera would arrive at the first houses, the first people, the first signs of civilization. Quite a few, I think.

9:20. I smile, stand back up, dust off the back of my shorts. I am almost there, now, I know—only a few small hills left to go—and I start walking again, this time quickly, pushed forward by the knowledge that I have almost accomplished what I set out to do.

I crest a hill and come upon the place where I once found a recently dead puppy in the road. I can still see its paws and empty eyes and sleek hair, and I want to cry, and I feel thankful, and I force myself onwards. It’s not far now. I come upon a few small houses-- a radio is blaring out—and first I think it is Pearl Jam, then I think it is Madonna, then I realize that it’s more like an awful cover of a Celine Dion song and I speed up even more. The music cuts a harsh wound into the stillness of the mountaintop.

To my left and right, valleys spill out around me, rolling hillside dotted with palms and fruit trees. Smoke rises from where a farmer is burning off the remains of last year’s crops and the air has a faint scent of barbeque.

The rumble of an engine far off announces that I finally have company on the road. From behind, a car struggles up, followed by billowing dust in the air. It pulls to a stop next to me and I get in with two strangers, two men, two Ticos, a thing I would never have dared to do in the States but that here is so commonplace.

Only one more hill, less than a minute in the backseat as palms flash by, and then I am stumbling back out into the sun, murmuring my thanks, and slamming the door a little too hard behind me without wanting to. The car pulls away and I am left on my own at a place I have only been once before.

I enter the store, walk up to the counter, and explain who I am and what I am doing here. The woman I speak with is small, round, and obliging, and at her direction, I enter the attached house through a small wooden door in the back.

I follow the short body of the boy who is my guide through the labyrinth of rooms and corners until he motions to the right and there it is—the room— and I can almost taste sweet success. I enter, I rummage, I unlock, I reach in, and AAAHHHHHHHHH. There it is. My fingers close over its reassuring weight as I pull it out, open it and inhale the enticing smell of pages and binding. After all that work, after all that sweat, after all that incline, I have it: The second book in the Hunger Games Trilogy.

It is 9:35 AM. I exit the store, wave my thanks, and start the hike back to Boruca.

For those of y'all not on Facebook...

A few of my status updates from the week, sharing stories from each day:

Monday: one of my shyest second graders brings me a freshly picked flower to every single class. .......... and I always manage to forget that he does this, so whenever he looks up at me with those HUGE eyes and says 'for you teacher?' and hands me the flower it just makes my heart want to explode :) :) :)

Tuesday: ok, guys, today i had an incredible moment in school that literally felt like it came right out of a family movie. there's a special-needs kid in one of my classes who is at a completely different level than his classmates, but because of the system here, he's in the normal class. I do the best I can to include him in whatever activities are possible, including the game of Jeapordy that the class was playing today to review for their upcoming exams. The score was really close and everyone was getting really into the game, and then it got to be this kid's turn. I think the whole class was holding its breath-- but not only did he answer, he answered PERFECTLY. The ENTIRE class erupted into cheers. I cheered and clapped. And he grinned a grin that filled up his whole face and quietly returned to his seat without saying a word.

Today: today's moment-of-the-day wasn't quite as picturesque as yesterday's, but it was still awesome. i was pounced upon-- literally-- right outside my classroom by more than a dozen 2nd graders who ALL WANTED TO HUG ME AT THE SAME TIME. Now, tell me, children, what happens when ONE adult is jumped on by THAT MANY LITTLE PEOPLE? Yeah. I went down. Actually, we ALL went down, and ended up in a huge pile on the floor, them still refUSING to let go (TE QUIERO TEACHER TE QUIERO TEACHER TE QUIERRROOOOOOOO) with other classes laughing at me from out of their windows. oh costa rica :P

ALSO, here is an adorable video of me and some of my students (just a warning-- though it will make you smile, it will also hurt your ears!)



Hope these made you smile!
Besos,
Raquel

Sibú át cá, dí át mán*.

(*God with me, none against me. in Brunka, the indigenous language spoken here in Boruca)

Alright. Time for an emotions check, guys.

Today, this week, this month, this entire year and EXPERIENCE so far has been full of Feelings, big-time Feelings from all across the board. And, at risk of sounding like an angsty middle schooler, I'm going to take a stab at chronicling some of what's been going through my head since arriving in the rich coast.

Let's start with today, for example.

Today, I have felt several odd sensations-- first and foremost, while talking with my awesome uncle Ryan on Skype this morning (three cheers for VoIP!), I had the distinct feeling of missing DC. Not just missing my friends and family-- that goes without saying-- but really, truly, intensely MISSING the oak trees and houses without gaps between walls and ceiling, the smells of vaccuumed carpets and asphalt and the cold and really, truly, just everything.

Now, for those of you who knows me well, you'll know that DC is not the place that I have ever imagined myself as living or being or wanting to stay. It's been a project of mine over the past few years to find the beauty in life in DC and see the positives whenever I am there, but I admit that it does not come naturally. More often than not, if I am in DC, I am actively planning how to leave DC. I'm more drawn to nature, to travel, to close proximity to forests and water and mountains and wide open spaces (cue Dixie Chicks.)

So... what happened to me? What brought about the change that's making me actively miss not only the people but also the place that I always struggled to love?

I think it's the fact that Costa Rica is so unlike anywhere I've ever lived before. All the other times I've been in other countries, they've been much more similar to DC, weather-wise, food-wise, and lifestyle-wise.... And on those levels, Costa Rica is nothing like DC. The weather is tropical; the food is starchy and deep-friend; and this is not a first-world country.

I love it here, I truly do. I love my job, I love my freedom, I love the simplicity, I love the language. I love the CHUBBY WUBBY BABIES :D--

(thanks to Sydney for the photo! PS, check out my tan... ;P)

...I just sometimes long for a sweater and a mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of oatmeal and some good old freezing rain on a Saturday afternoon. You know?

..... another odd sensation I've felt today is that of having Free Time. As I've mentioned before, my life so far in Boruca hasn't exactly been offering up the abundance of free time that I'd expected before finding out what site I had been placed at. Where many of my compatriots from the program who have significantly smaller schools have been talking about having tons of time, I've found the opposite to be the case-- with 150 kids and 8 classes, not to mention lesson planning, there's not much time left over for myself. I've budgeted in a daily 45 minutes for jogging and walking, but that's pretty much it.

HOWEVER! Happily, my experience thus far has taught me that planning ahead is SO worth it in the classroom. I'm by no means an expert, but I've found that planning in big chunks for at least a week at a time is WAY better than planning every day for the next days' lessons. What this boils down to is that after a marathon 3 hours in my classroom this afternoon (I know, I know, it's a Saturday) I not only have the room organized for Monday, I also have almost all my lesson plans done for the upcoming week.

Speaking of having my classroom organized, here's what it looks like now, thanks in large part to y'all AWESOME PEOPLE who have been sending me stuff from the States:

...I have already jogged today. I have showered twice. I have eaten yogurt. I have talked to family and friends. I have talked to my host family in Spanish. I have watched Interview With a Vampire. And now, it is almost 5 PM and I have absolutely NOTHING PRESSING that I need to do!

And that is a new sensation for me, here :) :) .... not that I'm complaining. I mean, there is stuff TO do, it's just not crucial that I do it right now, and I like that. Tranquila :)

...anyway. All of this leads me to something that I've been meaning to write about here for a while, but haven't yet written about for various insundry reasons.

That's the fact that this experience so far has been a very spiritual one for me. (Pause to shovel yogurt into my face; the evening bus struggles by the house on the road, sending up clouds of dust and dirt as it inches back up the mountain. The sound of the engine dies down... now there are just insects, birds, dogs, people talking from all over the neighborhood, a child screaming, a rooster crowing, puppies barking, and TVs babbling on and on...)

Spirituality is an interesting thing. A complicated, personal thing. One that I've thought about and thought about ever since I was aware of it inside of my own brain (not just from watching people go through motions and repeat things, but truly being aware of having my own opinions and beliefs.) I try to see my spirituality not as a journey with a start or a finish but rather as a state of awareness and thankfulness and openness, with my main goals being love, acceptance, and gratitude. For me, the Spirit is everything and everywhere, in me and the dirt under my feet and the rainbow overhead and the music that I hear and the anger I sometimes feel and the yogurt I eat and the puppy playing outside. I believe that everything and everyone is connected and that the more positive energy I can put out into this universe, the better it will become for everything in it.

I find myself praying a lot nowadays. I don't exactly know what 'a lot' means... it's not a number, just a growing thing that's been developing over the past few years of my life. The word 'prayer' is also an inconcrete thing, symbolizing any time that I consciously emit energy and emotion out into the world. Often, my prayers are simple waves of gratitude-- I look out over rolling hills, I see a beautiful sunset, I am helped by a kindly stranger, and I just think thank you.

(sunsets like this one, from two weeks ago.)

...Sometimes, the prayers are a pure wave of joy at how inCREDIBLE life is, how lucky I am. And sometimes, in more difficult moments, my prayers are a reassurance and a reminder that pain and joy are connected, that this is all part of life, and that I need to be thankful for every part of it, for the whole.

Something about being in Costa Rica brings out this side of me more than anywhere else I've ever lived on Earth. I think that part of it is because life here is very tranquila, very calm, very relaxed. I am not here to earn money or get rich or become famous; I am here as a volunteer, to help and teach; and as a human, to learn and love and experience and grow.

Whenever people asked me why I wanted to live in Austria, I always told them it was because when I looked out my window, I could see proof of God. But it's more than that-- it's also the reminder that while I am a tiny, tiny part of this huge system-- less permanent than a grain of sand-- I am still a part of it, and that makes me matter.

Life here in Costa Rica, similar to life in the Alps, also gives me that feeling... but it's about more than nature, here. It's also about actively working to make this world a better place, and being the kind of adult human being that I want to be. I have a choice about how I want to live, and I am making it every single day-- and if some people think I am crazy for doing that, so be it.

This is where, and who, I want to be.

Much love,
Raquelita

Wowza, dear readers, so much is happening here all the time that I never know when it is a ‘good’ time to write.

I've been in Costa Rica a little more than 2 months, which seems to be such a long time and also such a tiny instant in the greater scheme of things... I feel like I've done so much, on the one hand, and on the other hand like I've only barely just begun.

I think this would be a good time to mix it up and just jot down a few things that have happened recently.

First of all:
-I got to the bottom of the biggest waterfall here in Boruca yesterday! It’s an almost vertical climb, extremely nerve-wracking, but I went with a group and we all made it in one piece. Here’s evidence of our success:

-My computer died dramatically on Friday, but after a marathon two days of bussing back and forth between Boruca and Buenos Aires, I now have it back in decent health with Windows reinstalled.

-Classes are going well. Some American college students were in Boruca this past week and one of them, Emilie, helped me out at school. She was amazing and interested in asking the kids about their futures, so we ran with that instead of doing traditional lesson plans, and it went awesomely!

-That said, exams are coming up, and I’m a tad nervous. I know, as with everything here with my job, that one way or another I will muddle through it and figure out, but it is still nerve-wracking at times. There is just SO MUCH TO DO and it really does just keep hitting me over and over again...

-I get to go to a Costa Rican baby shower this afternoon! I’m pretty excited about it.

-I’m hiking or running most days, which has become a crucial part of maintaining both my physical and mental well-being. I need that time to myself, and I need to move my body. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a good alternative to the deep-fried, starch-based diet here. My stomach and my skin are still suffering from it, not to mention my mental health, a bit. But I’m working on it, and I know I’ll be ok.

-In a decidedly Edward Goreyian turn of events, someone stole the letter K from my classroom. Bewilderingly enough, everything else seemed to be in its right place—only the letter K was missing from the alphabet I have hung on the wall, and the word SMILE on the door had been rearranged into MELIS. When I returned the following day, the K had been returned.

Classroom ghosts? Who knows...

:)

And in more exciting news....

-TWO PACKAGES GOT THROUGH FROM THE STATES!!!! While it's still unfortunately true that several have been stopped at the border, two boxes of supplies did indeed reach me in Boruca, meaning that I have a few more books and some other awesome stuff. SO what this means for any of you such-minded folk is that it might not be such a futile endeavor to try and send me things. I can't guarantee I'll get it... but I can guarantee that I will appreciate the effort, and if I do get it it will have me dancing with joy!

ANYWAY, that's probably enough for today. I'll try to write again before too much time has passed.

...It just keeps hitting me again and again how much work there is here, how important it is to take this all seriously and yet also be tranquila, how much I miss people in the States and Germany and Austria but also how lucky I am to be here, how thankful I am, and how grateful I am.

Thank you to all of you. For reading this, for caring, for helping, for thinking anything supportive in my direction.

Besos!
Raquelita

Oh and PS: Here are two more pictures:

the first one is of me playing guitar in the houses of one of my students. That's Gary at my elbow... he's in... 2nd grade? or something like that.

the second picture was taken yesterday by Graceann. It's of me and Sara riding in the back of a pickup truck up the mountain after our bus broke down... I'm uploading mainly so you all can see the awesome miniature mask (what Boruca is famous for) that one of my students gifted me with this week. I'm wearing it around my neck and I love it!!

...alright, for real this time.
Besos y abrazos!
R

Pura Vida

Dearest, most fantastic and wonderful people reading my blog:

Hola y muchas gracias por leer! (hello and thank you so much for reading!) It has been a few weeks since my last post and there are a ton of things that I want to talk about, so many in fact that I’m not even sure where to start. So, I’ll just jump in…

First and foremost: PHOTOS! I have been taking tons and tons of them, and have started dividing them into the following albums (click on each word to view): people, food, landscapes, and teaching. It’s incredible what a wide array of flora and fauna is waiting for me right outside my window here in Costa Rica… every time I go for a walk or a hike I see new plants, animals, and insects that I had never seen before. I love being surrouded by views like this:

...or this (it's a view of Boruca from above!):

...or this (that's my house in the center of the picture!):

....so yeah, it’s pretty amazing. I highly recommend checking out my albums! (Note: I don't have any up-to-date pictures of my classroom yet, but I will post them soon. Keep checking back!)

Life here is…… in a word, full. Very alive. My brain is continuously busy, working on lesson plans, learning Spanish (and Brunka!), writing music, getting used to the culture here, missing life in America and Germany and Austria, and so many other things… whereas some of the other volunteers I’ve chatted with have commented on having tons of free time, I’ve been having the exact opposite situation. I have 149 students and 8 classes (because 1st and 4th grade were so big they had to be broken into two) meaning that my schedule looks like this:

Monday and Wednesday: 7-8:20 1st grade B 8:40-10 6th grade 10:20-11:30 4th grade B 11:30-12:00 LUNCH 12-1:20 2nd grade 1:40-3 3rd grade

Tuesday: 8:40-10:00 5th grade 10-12 LUNCH 12-1:20 4th grade A 1:40-3 2st grade A

Thursday: 10:10-11:30 5th grade 11:30-12 LUNCH 12-1:20 4th grade A 1:40-3 2st grade A

Friday: planning

…last week was my first full week of classes, and by the time I got to Friday, I crashed a little bit. I shut myself in my room and listened to music and vegged out and talked to friends all morning, just savoring NOT having to be in a classroom surrounded by TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER.

This is without a doubt the hardest job I have ever done. There is an incredible amount of effort that goes into teaching—not only the lesson planning and follow-through but also discipline and management, counseling and guidance of students, classroom decorating, faculty meetings, parent-teacher conferences (I’ve already had them—in Spanish!), and so many more things. Teaching is an all-encompassing undertaking and doing it well requires an incredible amount of dedication, especially when it involves elementary-aged children who are still in the process of learning to learn. To add to all of that, I’m teaching without many of the resources that are available in the US in a school full of teachers and students who do not speak my language (and I am still learning theirs), making for a strangely isolating and challenging experience.

BUT…. All of that said, this has also already been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. While it is true that I end some of my lessons feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, there are also lessons that end with me literally jumping up and down in my classroom from the sheer JOY of getting to watch these fascinating young humans in the process of learning, of not only getting to WATCH them but also to guide them and help them and inspire them and make them laugh. (Don’t worry, I usually shut my door before I start jumping up and down… I don’t think they’ve caught me yet!) I am keenly aware of the fact that everything I say to these children has the potential to impact not only a few seconds of their lives but also their long-term development (both intellectual and personal.) It’s an incredible responsibility and honor that I can’t help but think about each and every day that I am here in Costa Rica.

Some of the biggest challenges of my job so far are: lack of many resources, lack of books, bad chairs and desks—and not enough of them!, several ‘problem children’ with behavioural issues and learning disabilities who have been grouped in with all the other students, not understanding my fellow teachers and director and students sometimes when they talk to me in Spanish, very high workload

Some of the most rewarding aspects of my job so far are: the incredible energy of the children, their hugs and smiles and gifts and compliments, watching them learn, the support I feel from my coworkers, feeling my Spanish abilities grow, how empowering it feels to plan and put into action a successful lesson.

While the work is difficult and the sense of responsibility and obligation extremely intense, it’s at the same time liberating to realize that these children see me as an Adult. A Teacher. An Authority Figure. They do not see me as a nervous 24-year-old who isn’t fluent in their language who is far from home and her friends and family and lonely and worried and tired and floundering her way through everything—they see me as a faculty member at their school. When I tell them to line up, they line up. When I tell them to take out their notebooks, they take out their notebooks. When I dance around and act silly, they giggle with glee not just because I look funny but also because I am an Authority Figure who is breaking the normal, accepted bounds of the classroom. And that’s pretty cool :)

I bought a bookshelf for my classroom this week, which is a huge deal. It cost 90.000 colones (about 180 dollars) and I paid for it partially with donations from a lovely family from Idaho who visited the reservation a week or two ago. The bookshelf was handmade by a man from Rey Curre, the nearby town where my friend Sara teaches.

… so yeah, that’s a bit on the work front. On to:

Living with my host family! So, yeah, I’m living with a very well-to-do family here in Boruca. Well-to-do by Borucan standards means that they have computers and a car and can afford to eat things other than rice, beans, and eggs (which is literally what some of the other volunteers are eating day in and day out! One of the volunteers was telling me how she wanted to cry with joy when she was given a strawberry.) … I live in my own wing of the house that I share with Carlos, a math professor from the highschool. We share most of our meals in the giant green kitchen with Oscar, my host father (also a teacher at my school) before all leaving for work, which starts at 7 am.

The family has been welcoming enough, though not affectionate. It’s easy for me to see the silver lining of their reserve – I treasure my independence—but at the same time I miss having people around me who think I’m awesome. That’s one of the reasons I love to go visit my friend Sara in Rey Curre (where the festivals were a few weeks ago) – her mother adores me and hugs me and compliments me and it makes up for some of the distance I feel here in Boruca.

The Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Boruca, Kelly, is awesome. She and I have been hanging out a lot lately and we’ve helped each other with our classes (she teaches adults a few times a week.) She’s really tall, like me, so we joke a lot about that.

The food is good but generally bland. My host mother, Yaneth, only seasons things with oil and salt and occasionally a bit of garlic. I had to do a bit of soul-searching before going in to Buenos Aires and buying myself a shaker of black pepper… it seemed far too luxurious in a way and like I was snubbing my nose at the Costa Rican culture. But in the end I opted to get the pepper, simply because I missed having another flavor.

My typical breakfast is rice, beans, and a fried egg. A typical lunch is rice, beans, some other kind of starch (potatoes, yucca, or noodles), some kind of protein (eggs, chicken, some chunks of beef or pork cooked in salt and oil to gnawy toughness), and if I am extremely lucky, some kind of vegetable (onions, tomato, chayote.) A typical dinner is usually leftovers from lunch, sometimes with fried plantains added. Moral of the story: lots of rice, beans, starch, oil, salt, and not much else. Last weekend I bought some carrots, onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers in Buenos Aires just because I missed them so much…

Ticos love their coffee (they’re kinda like Europeans in that regard), but I don’t drink a lot of it. I pretty much only use it if I’ve had trouble sleeping or have a headache. I managed to get through several years of living in Austria without getting addicted to caffeine… so I’m optimistic about being able to manage the same feat here in Central America 

Because my schedule is so full on Mondays and Wednesdays, I’ve taken to getting up in the morning and making my own breakfast so as to get to school by 6:30. Normally when Yaneth cooks, breakfast is at 6:30, and I really value that half an hour of calm before the craziness of classes begins. Plus, when I cook for myself, I can throw in some of the vegetables I bought! It’s amazing what a TREAT it is to be given things here that I take for granted in the States. It I a huge, huge highlight of my life here to be fed vegetables. Being given more than one egg makes me feel like I’m living like a queen (because it is almost never an option). Yogurt, which I buy myself when I go in to Buenos Aires or occasionally at the pulperia (little shop) in Boruca, is a special special thing to be savored.

I actually had to take the afternoon off sick yesterday and go in to the clinic because my stomach was hurting so much... the doctor gave me a shot of anti-nausea meds, a bunch of pills, and told me to stop eating so many fried foods. HAH. That will be a challenge.... :)

Anyway, I think that this post has gotten long enough. Thank you so much for reading this. As always, I love love LOVE to get emails from all of you. Though I am very busy here, it’s also a pretty isolated life, so I love to hear news from the rest of the world!

I think about all of you a lot. It is good to not be alone in this.

Besos!
Raquelita