Hola, querida gente! (Hello, dear people!)

First things first: I’m feeling a lot better! Muchas gracias to everyone who has been sending me emails and chats and love and thoughts. The meds seem to be doing their job and bit by bit I’ve had more energy and voice. I can’t wait to be able to sing normally again!

I’ve been in Costa Rica for almost two weeks now. It’s amazing how quickly a new day-to-day schedule becomes a routine—it’s normal for me now to wake up before 5, to eat beans and rice for breakfast and lunch and dinner, to walk to school on an unpaved road lined with palm trees, to look up and see towering mountains covered with coffee plants, to speak in Spanish to my family, and to have no cell phone and only have internet for an hour or so a day. My skin is darker, my brain is fuller (hi Matt :) ), my spirit feels free—it’s easier somehow to focus on the day-to-day when you are plunged into a world so intensely different and at the core similar to the one you’re familiar with.

My brain can’t help but automatically compare and contrast this experience with my times in Germany and Austria. Costa Rica really reminds me of Austria, actually, with all the mountains and greenery. It’s just that where Austria had evergreens, snow, and large, multi-family houses, Costa Rica has palms, sunshine, and tin-roofed single-family homes. The air has a similar clean taste to it, the clouds roll in over the hills, and the people go to market each day just like in Austria. There are a lot of parallels that I can see, and I draw comfort from them.

That said, I’m also reveling in how incredibly different Costa Rica is from anywhere else I have ever been in my life. I feel like I’ve jumped into a page from The Jungle Book sometimes when I see the orange and cassis trees full of fresh fruit and the palms with their leaves bigger than my body, when I turn the corner to find animals running around the roads and hear tropical birds singing in the trees, and when I see the Turrialba volcano spewing ash on the horizon:



This is a developing country, which means that by any standard I am rich, not just in money and technology but also in resources, connections, education, and potential for upward economic mobility. The average annual income of a person in Costa Rica is around $6,000. The diet consists mainly of starches, and it’s a struggle to get all the nutrients I need. The houses are small (tiny by DC standards) and often in disrepair (my 9’x7’ bedroom, with its fantastic mauve-colored walls, has holes in the ceiling and a door that won’t shut properly). Every house has a metal gate and fences wrapped around it to thwart the abundance of crimes of opportunity that exist in this country. Dishes are hand-washed, laundry is hung outside to dry, and many homes do not have hot water—mine does, but only in a small heater attached to the shower head that turns the shower-water from cold to lukewarm if you learn how to use it right (which I am still in the process of doing.) My host father does not know how to read, and my host mother spends her days cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, and watching TV.

I can’t imagine what it is like for my host family to have me come in from the outside, a 24-year-old gringa, multilingual and university educated and with my own computer and camera and Kindle… but it’s fun and important that I try to put myself in their shoes and understand what their world is like. We have innate, human similarities that make living together a pleasure, and at the same time we also come from such distinct cultural backgrounds that sometimes we just sit together in the kitchen and laugh. They laugh at me because I like to be barefoot in the house. They laugh at me because I like raw vegetables so much. They laugh at me because I eat so much, and because I go running. (Why in the world would you get up early, put on shoes, and go running—just running—all over town? Americans are crazy!) … but I think my favorite moments so far in Costa Rica have been those where I am just sitting in this tiny house with Ligia, Mila, Walter, Yesalyn, Yesi, Brittany, Antony, and Jose, talking in Spanish about life and our days, playing with baby Lara, listening to music, and eating together.

...like this:

:) :) :)

It’s also been incredible to bond with the other volunteers form Worldteach and to attend our charlas (seminars on teaching) every day. I feel more and more excited about why we are all here, more and more committed to the program and teaching, and also a tad more nervous because with each passing day as the start of the school year draws nearer. … this has already been an adventure and will only continue in that way, and I feel blessed and thankful to have this opportunity not just to experience but also to give back.

…. Yeah, moral of the story, I’m a really, really lucky girl. And a big part of that has been the support of everyone who is reading this—you are with me! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for supporting me.

ANYway… it’s time for me to go to Spanish class, now.

Adios! Hasta la proxima! Besos y abrazos,
Raquel