CUBA

Wow, can you believe it? Thirteen days until I am home! Time flies thats for sure!

Here my plan for the next 13 days.

Tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. I am meeting the rest of my group to go to CUBA!

Yes, I am going to CUBA. I am really excited and I have no idea what to expect. I don't really know much on what we are doing. However, I do know that I will be learning a TON of information. I also know that we get to go to the beach for a couple of days. How great is that?

Here is a schedule so that you are aware of what country I am in and when!

April 18-April 27: CUBA

April 27 night: spend night in Costa Rica at a hotel

April 28: fly back to the U.S. (Miami)

April 29: debriefing time with the entire group in Miami

April 30: HOME TO 21093!

I will see you in 13 days!

Life in Esquipulas

Hi everyone! It has been awhile since I have written! I am doing very well. I have been in my new house for over two weeks and I have less than a week! Wow, time sure flies. Three weeks and I am home!
Well, my new house is located just about an hour away from San Jose in a place called Esquipulas, Palmares. Palmares is a small city with grocery stores, a market, and a nice park with a beautiful Catholic Church. I live in Esquipulas which is a small town surrounding Palmares. There are small stores all around but for the most part Esquipulas is quieter than Palmares and MUCH quieter than San Jose but it isn’t rural either!
ANYWAY, my house is located right across the street from where I work. I work everyday in a primary school called, Escuela Julia Fernandez Rodriguez. There are lots of kids from kindergarten to sixth grade. There are a group of thirty-some teachers and I work with three of them. Mainly, I work with three women, Julia, Cindy, and Andrea. My day normally starts out with Julia at 8:30. She works with first through third graders. I am with her for three or four lessons. I don’t really do as much with the younger kids because they don’t know as much English so our communication is very limited. Then, everyday from 10:00-11:00, I am with Andrea in the kindergarten classrooms. There are two classes: one class is a delight the other is horrible. Andrea and I both leave there shaking our heads because the kids are wild! We sing fun songs together and the kids are so cute! Funny story: One day we were learning the words, “boys” and “girls” and one little boy said he knew the word girl from the song, “I’m a Barbie Girl” and he started singing it. Don’t ask me how a little boy who speaks hardly any English knows that song! It was hilarious! Anyway, from 11:00-12:25, I have a lunch break. I come back to the house and eat lunch and relax. I go back to school to work with Cindy for the afternoon, usually at about 12:25. She teaches fourth through sixth graders. These classes are more fun because I can actually participate. There are some interesting students but overall, the students are eager to learn and are excited that I am there. Although lots of students don’t understand why I don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes if I am from the United States? It’s really funny!
At night, I don’t really do much. I normally am here with my family just relaxing. I live with three women. I basically have two “moms”. Elisa is technically my host mom. She is super quiet but, really nice. Betty is her sister. She is really nice and although she is still quiet, she talks a little bit more! Magally is Betty’s daughter and she is 22. She takes me out and I have met some of her friends!

Life here is really chill. This whole week, I was off of school because it is Semana Santa, or Holy Week. The majority of the people in Costa Rica are Catholic so this week is really important. There are celebrations everyday. My family is Catholic and I even went to mass last Sunday. I was pretty lost but it was still cool to see a different way to worship God. I have also gone to “prayers” with my family which are AWESOME. Last Saturday night, I went to one with Magally just for young people and I understood the majority of it.

Four Cool Things I have gotten to do:
1) Two weekends ago, I went to a volcano! Volcan Arenal! It was beautiful and everyone said that I was so lucky because I got to actually see the volcano because usually it is really cloudy around it. I have so many beautiful pictures of it! While I was there, I got to swim in a hot spring! It is so weird that the water was warm and in some parts hot! I felt like I was taking a bath.
2) Last Sunday, I went with some family to Naranjo, a neighboring city/town. It was completely overwhelming with lots of family members but, we got to do something really cool! We went for a “hike” basically up this mountain to a tomato farm. We picked tomatoes and I was basically covered in dirt from head to toe! It felt great to do some exercise and it was fun to climb a mountain only to find lots of tomatoes at the top! I told my family all about how we have places like this only for apples. They thought that was really cool!
3) One night last week, I went to Cindy’s (the teacher who I work with) house In San Ramon. She lives with her husband, Gustavo in this brand new house! It is beautiful. Cindy took me to Puntarenas, which is a beach with some of her teacher friends. This beach was a little bit different than the beach I went to with my friends for Spring Break. It was more developed and definitely not as pretty. We were only there for a short time and we didn’t sit on the beach BUT, we got to see the soccer team of Puntarenas (I think) work out on the beach. They are basically like a professional soccer team and it was really cool. It was super hot too; I don’t know how they were surviving!
4) I have gotten to cook a lot too! My host “moms” are very good cooks and they make empanadas and tamales to sell to people. Making each of them is an all day process that I have loved learning about. Don’t worry I have lots of pictures!

Hasta Luego!

Hi everyone! I can't believe how fast time is flying. I am leaving tomorrow morning for my concentration for 24 days! Like I explained before, I will be teaching English and living with another family. I will more than likely not be able to use the internet so I will not be updating for awhile. However, I will leave you with a few pictures of me and my host family here in San Jose. We took a lot of pictures today! Tonight I cooked dinner for my family: Millie's chicken and mashed potatoes! For dessert, a vanilla cake with chocolate icing and caramel ice cream! They seemed to really enjoy it. I did too because it was a little taste of HOME.

I hope you all are doing well. Thanks to those who are reading my blog. It really means a lot that you would take time out of your busy day to read about me.

I'll miss you, Mom, Dad, and Beau!

Talk to you in 24 days :)

The Next Step!

Today we had our orientation about the next step in our program. This step is called our concentrations. My concentration is called Latin American Studies Concentration and there are about twenty of us who are all spread out over Costa Rica doing some kind of work in a community and living with a different family. I leave on Monday, March 23 and I return to San Jose on Wednesday, April 15!

I will be living in a small town called Esquipulas which is about an hour bus ride from San Jose. I am living with a 53 year-old woman and her 43 year-old sister. My “mom” is apparently a very quiet woman who is really nice but hardly talks at all. My teachers told me that this is going to be an additional challenge in my trip. I will also be working at a school called, Escuela Julia Fernandez Rodriguez. At this school, I will work as an assistant to the English Professors. The children I will work with will be between ages 6 and 12. Apparently, the two teachers that I work with are wonderful women and will actually let me help (which is great I won’t just have to sit there for three weeks!). My house is right across the street from the school which works out great-no commute!

I am a little nervous as this part of the trip comes closer because I will most likely have no contact with any people from my group or my family at home! But, I also think that I am ready for a challenge such as this. I feel comfortable enough in my Spanish that I can navigate a new place. I also feel comfortable living with a new family, especially because I will be living with two women who I can’t wait to get to know!

I will update before I leave but please keep my entire group in your prayers as we all venture out into the unknown for 24 days!

A Much-Needed Rest: Spring Break!

After Nicaragua, we were given a short four day spring break: a time of relaxation and rest! For my spring break I decided to go to the beach with my friends.

I went with four other girls to a beach called Jaco. Everything worked out so well with the bus and our hostel. The bus ride was about two hours and after a little bit of wandering we found our hotel, Centro Vacacional Bancosta Playa Jaco. It was made up of little cabins with three pools! The best part was it was RIGHT on the beach. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday morning we went for walks on the beach, swam in the ocean and the pool, explored the town, and ate at some cool restaurants. The beach was absolutely beautiful. It is cool being at the beach and seeing the mountains at the same time. On Monday night, we found a huge log and sat on it and watched the sunset. It was beautiful!

The town itself was very touristy and it was weird to hear so much English. Almost all of the workers knew English but we were very proud of the Spanish we could speak so we wanted to speak in Spanish. Since the area was so full of tourists, we did a lot of shopping and I got some cool souvenirs for my family back in the U.S.

This trip was great and exactly what I needed before I begin the next part of the trip! However, it was weird for me to get back into what seemed like the American culture so fast after leaving Nicaragua. I spent the week in Nicaragua learning about a different way of life and I so easily go back into the culture that I feel most comfortable in. I hope and pray that I will be able take what I have learned and make actual changes in my life!

My Family in Nicaragua

Here is a video with my family members from Nicaragua! Sorry if you can't understand it but basically they are just explaining their names and how old they are!

Nicaragua

From March 2nd to March 13, I was in the beautiful country of Nicaragua. My trip was broken up into three parts so that is how I will explain it! So many things happened that I am having difficulty summarizing everything. Feel free to ask me questions for more information!

Managua:
On Monday March 2, 2009, I woke up at 4:45 am and made my way to the bus station. Our whole group took a tour bus, TransNica, together. We spent the entire day on the bus and we arrived 10 hours later around 5:00 p.m. in Managua, Nicaragua. Managua is the nation’s capital. The whole feel of Nicaragua is different than Costa Rica. Life seems more easy going and not as busy. The people are friendly and have a different accent (which was hard to understand at times). We spent Tuesday and Wednesday as what I call academic tourists. We heard from many speakers (three who went to Messiah, which was pretty cool!). We visited many of the important locations in Managua. Since I wrote my paper about the Revolution in Nicaragua, it was especially cool to see the places in real life! Overall, I really enjoyed Managua!

Home Stay:
Thursday morning marked my first day of the home stay. Most of the group traveled to communities way out in the country of Nicaragua, but I chose to go to a small town, called Masaya, with 7 others from my group. We had about a 45 minute bus ride to Masaya. We all met at a place called Alternativa, which is a micro-credit loan place that assists people in starting their own business because work is so incredibly hard to find in Nicaragua.
We met our families and off we went! My family was rather large, with a Dad (Flavio) and a Mom (Jacqueline). I had three brothers, Flavio (13), Marvin (10), and Henry (8) and a little sister, Jacqueline (3). What a crew! They were so great and I especially fell in love with Jacqueline. We must have colored every page of her coloring books together. She kept forgetting my name and so she would called me Gringa!
Anyway, my family owns their own shoe business. They hand make shoes for women and children. They make flats and high heels that are absolutely beautiful! There are about seven employees, all male! I worked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, in the workshop. I did lots of different small jobs but mostly I used a lot of glue! It was really interesting and really difficult to work with someone in another language but it was especially difficult to work with all men. In Central America, the woman is sometimes looked down upon and only her physical characteristics are noticed. This was an interesting thing to look at and experience. I am not going to lie, I felt uncomfortable a lot of the time, but I think that I definitely learned a lot!
On Sunday, we went to this beautiful lookout point, called Catarina, where I saw a volcano and one of the lakes in Masaya. On Monday, we went and saw the other lake and the other volcano. Definitely breathtaking. I also learned how to cook los rosqillas, which are little tortilla type things. I rolled the dough and everything. I also got to go to preschool with Jacqueline. Wow, it was nuts! Twenty some three-year-olds with one teacher.
This experience was the most difficult yet most rewarding weeks of my life. I was out of my comfort zone the majority of the time but I learned so much about Nicaragua, the people and culture and even myself. I still have a lot of thoughts going on in my head and I am not quite sure what to do with all of this. I was really blessed with a fun family who loved to talk and ask me questions about life in the United States.

Granada:
On Wednesday morning, we said goodbye to our families and took a bus to Granada. I absolutely LOVED this city. It was really old with beautiful buildings and nice people. We stayed in a super nice hostel with a pool! We basically had two free days to do whatever we wanted. I explored the city and went shopping and ate at some cool restaurants. On Friday, we were on the bus to go back to Costa Rica by 7:00 a.m. and I arrived back at my Costa Rican house around 6:30 p.m! It was a long day and I was definitely really excited to see my Tican family!

Overall, this trip was wonderful. I learned so much that my mind is exhausted. I wish I was able to put into writing everything that happened but that is definitely impossible. It was weird being out of contact for almost two weeks so I am looking forward to getting back in touch!
I have Saturday to Tuesday as my Spring Break. I am planning on going to the beach with my friends on Sunday and I will return on Tuesday! Talk to you then!