Who can say...

With another year almost passed, I find myself looking forward instead of backwards. 2013 is going to be another year begun (and hopefully ended) in Costa Rica, and it holds more possibility than I can imagine.

But for reflections sake, I wil admit that I struggled this year with feelings of uselessness, lack of purpose and incapability. But I am done with that now. My naivety is long gone, but I have a newfound sense of being able to conquer the world, if I just put my mind to it. When I graduated from high school my Mom made me a very special quilt, and she stitched jokes, poems and beautiful messages throughout the seams. She wrote "you are a mountain mover." At the time, it made me tear up, but it seemed logical enough. (I know how that sounds, but hang in there with me) Up to that point in my life, all of the challenges I had encountered were conquerable. I may have come a little short of the desired outcome a few times, but I had never felt useless. I had never thrown my hands in the air and completely given up.

I can admit that Gallo Pinto made me give up on more than one occasion. I threw my hands up, and planted my ass securely in my hammock. I stopped having high expectations, I stopped feeling capable and I confronted persistent failure. Although I never gave up for more than a day at a time, I will admit that my previous site was the first challenge in my life, that wasn't conquerable. And even after leaving, and moving to a completely new environment, it was difficult to kick that gnawing sense of incapability.

I don't know exactly when, why or how - but its gone. I'm a mountain mover again and it feels good.

Day 1 (take 2)

Today I begin a whole new chapter of my Peace Corps Service. Yesterday I loaded my (not nearly as meager as expected) belongings into the back of my boss's car and unloaded them in what (in the coming weeks) will become my new home. After just over a year in my original site I am transferring to a new site. Big change huh? Although I will always reflect positively on my time in Gallo Pinto, about a month ago I came to the (difficult, but necessary) realization that my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer had come to an end in the community. Gallo Pinto is a community with a long list of development needs. Unfortunately my work in the community was limited by the small unmotivated population and the minimal transportation resources. Reflecting back I do know that I made an impact in the organization of the local groups and the youth in the community. I leave the community a few friends richer, and with quite a bit more knowledge about the workings of rural Costa Rica.

My new town is a hop skip and a jump from where I was. I will be living with a family again (for the first few months) and I get to start from square one- getting to know the local groups, the friendly faces and in what I will be working. I am pleased with what I know so far about my new community. The town is a little bit larger than Gallo Pinto, although it is still rural. The town is more spread out, although it has a great center. My new family consists of a Host Mother, Host Father, a teenager sister in high school and a 22 year old sister who attends a University in a larger nearby city. The house sits beautifully next to a river and the family has been extremely welcoming.

Hopefully with this fresh start I will update my blog a little more regularly. Sending love and blessings back home

Chels

Such is life...Asi es la vida

The longer that I live my Peace Corps life the longer that it feels less like "my Peace Corps experience" and feels more like my life (without quotation marks). I often hear volunteers say, "I want to go home." We don't always say it in the throws of an emotional breakdown. Sometimes, its just another sweaty day without water when we wish we could wear fall fashions and see the leaves changing color. In these past few months I have heard my fellow volunteers recite this familiar cadence, but it has left me feeling confused. Because the desire to "go home" (for me at least) has always been about escaping the tough stuff. "Going home" becomes a fantastical NeverNeverLand. But the more that my life in Costa Rica takes root, the more I am left wondering, what would it mean to actually "go home."

"Home isn't a place anymore, its about the people." "Its people that make the places important." These are quotes from friends here and at home. They speak to something that I have known for longer than I have been able to verbalize the words or even identify with them. Home is the connection I feel sharing stories with my parents, or sitting down to a cup of coffee with a close friend. That feeling of connection, understanding and acceptance, that is what home is for me. So what does it mean to go home? Is home holding on to the love that you have in your life or acknowledging that wherever you go in the world you will find love? Where do I go now, to find my home?

And I'm not just looking for a sense of home, I am seeking adventure. Which only serves to complicate what was not a simple problem to begin with. I could fill my life with people that I love and care about, but what if  my personal fulfillment comes from leaving the places where people love me?

So there you have it, the ramblings of a slightly discontent, but still committed and entirely uncertain Peace Corps Volunteer. Enough about the future, lets catch up on the present. I am still working in my community, although work is painstakingly slow and frustratingly uphill. I still live in the same home, my fishbowl on school grounds. I still fill my weekends playing with the soccer team and the nearest bus stop is still an hour walk away. I still eat rice and beans daily, and the water still goes out at least once a week. I still wash my laundry by hand and share my home with unwanted pests (not pets) of all shapes and sizes. I still attend daily meetings and combat machismo and apathy. But there has been a new development, for a while now I have been dating a man from a nearby town. And even though so many things remain unchanged, having such a good friend and support system in town has given a 'rosy tint' to all of the tough stuff.

Well friends, family and the Internet, that's all of my personal thoughts and meanderings for now. Sending loves and blessings :-)

hardening of the heart

I just looked at my last blog post. May 30th. That means it has been almost two months since my last update. I apologize, although honestly, it is because things have become pretty mundane. I wake up in the morning, coffee, hammock and reading time. Yoga, breakfast, email, housework and then see where the day takes me. Meetings starting around cafecito time, and then its time to head home, make dinner and do the dishes. Watch a movie or chat with someone from home and then its time to tuck myself into bed. Another day gone by.

The title of the blog post, and probably one of the most eventful happenings of the past month, was the death of Piper my 4th Costa Rican pet. I don't know if I have told this story before, but either way I am going to retell it, because it is uniquely applicable to the situation. During training back in April 2011 a group of 6 trainees and myself spent a week in another volunteer's site. We stayed with host families and followed her around for a week learning about her work. One night we were all sitting on the floor in her house and as her cat was suckling on her dog, she told of the stories of her pets in Costa Rica. I don't remember the specifics, but it was horrific, the quantity and the ways in which they had all died. What I remember (distinctly) is that we laughed. It was uncomfortable laughter, I guess we felt like there was no other way to respond. It was such awful luck. It was just too horrific to take seriously. And here I am, just over a year later. Sugar was stolen, Cricket was eaten by a dog, Gidget was poisoned and Piper got distemper and I had to put her down.

Piper had been walking strange for a few weeks and I spoken with more people and vets then I can count about how to help her. In the end, she couldn't stand up, and although she continued eating, she just laid on the floor, limbs splayed in all directions bobbing her head to eat her food and sleeping in her own excrement. Because she couldn't walk, and the bus stop is an hour away, I had someone in town kill her. They were kind enough to dig her grave and end her life. I sat in my room, on my bed, with my knees tucked into my chest, my hands over my ears and I cried.

I have more offers now than I know what to do with for more pets, but at least for today, my heart feels just a little bit too hard.

And such are the days...

Its hard to culminate weeks or a month into a singular blog post. The days seem to pass by now without even giving me a chance to X them off on my calendar. Shockingly, when I looked up from my desk this morning, it was May 30th, which means June is literally days away. Everyone says the second year just flies by.

I should probably include that things have been particularly slow in my site the past few months, and I was getting pretty frustrated. After consulting with my boss, I realized I had two options. Stick it out or change sites. I held a big community meeting to express my concern to community members and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of support I received. I am hopeful that the support will be long-lasting, but regardless, it helped me realize how important the relationships are that I have built this past year, and well, at the end of the day, I didn't join the Peace Corps to build buildings, I have always been more focused on making a more personal impact through building relationships.

Then I attended my Mid-Service Training with all of the other volunteers in my training class (Tico 22). We spent 4 days at the same camp-style location where we spent out first nights in this country. It was (surprisingly) the perfect venue, and allowed all of the volunteers a chance to catch up, goof around, and spend the time we needed together. I thought I would leave feeling refreshed, as I usually do after a stint in the city (and a hot shower), but I left feeling motivated. Which is exactly what I needed.

Training was followed by a completely unplanned (we were planning on going, we just didn't actually plan the things that need to be planned) trip to the beach. A beach where the water is turquoise, the sand is made of crushed seashells and when it downpours in the middle of the day, the tourists leave and you get the entire beach to yourself! We found a bus direct from San Jose to the beach, and then a place to crash for 8 bucks a night. I couldn't have planned anything more perfect.

Then another minor toe surgery, a day spent at a Costa Rican immigration office and I was on my way back to site. The corn stalk that is growing outside my back door (from what I can only assume was a popcorn kernal that fell to the floor that I then kicked outside) is now as tall as I am. I have decided that this is my favorite kind of gardening, the accidental kind. Piper is getting bigger, and has an anger problem. She does not like little boys, and when I say that she doesn't like them, I mean that she thinks that they were sent to this Earth so that she can bite them. She has yet to actually bite one, but darn, she has gotten too close for my comfort. The Ticos brush it off, but I have kept her diligently tied up since I got back and I am trying my best to break her of this awful habit/intention/desire? The rainy season has begun once again, which doesn't mean its any less hot (I know, right, what an injustice), but it downpours every afternoon, which makes leaving the house risky, because it means I could end up walking home in the sticky stucky mud, with lightning (which the Ticos tell me kills people ALL THE TIME) and the kind of downpour that hurts your skin it pelts you so hard. I still enjoy the rain, but I don't like wearing boots when I leave the house in 100 degree midday heat, and with these silly stitches I can walk barefoot. Oh Peace Corps problems.

This past weekend there was a Bingo and a Feria organized by the Church. It was a great time (you know you have been in the Peace Corps when...). I won half a prize at the Bingo, (inside joke: its like catching half a fish) as I was playing someone else's card. She had too many and couldn't manage them all, so she let me fill one up. My half a prize is a cute little Tupperware container. I played for a small (small, small, small) part of the soccer game on Sunday, and spent the rest of the day comfortably socializing. I know, you can go back and read that again if you didn't believe it the first time.

Then yesterday I spent the entire day at a neighbors house, they let me make lunch, the birthday cake for the birthday celebration, help with making dinner, and then around 8pm I fell asleep in a corner. Yea, it's pretty embarrassing to say now, but at the time, snuggling up with the refrigerator seemed like the best idea in the world! The moral of the story is that I have finally found a family with which I feel as comfortable as I did my host family during training. I have quite a few families that invite me to eat with them, or come visit me, but something about yesterday was different. I was comfortable to joke around, and be silly and to...sleep in the corner.

For now, that's all I got. Time to pull the yoga mat out and enjoy the rain on the tin roof. Thanks for reading and as always, sending loves,

Chels

Its all in the moments...

Sitting in my hammock, drinking my morning coffee and reading. Its recess at the school and a little boy walks into my living room, looks at me with really sad puppy dog eyes and says he feels sick. We sit on my porch and I give him a hug.

Riding home from a soccer game where I scored the winning goal (my first) with my girls soccer team screaming out chants and cheers. Going to the store the next day to have three people recount my goal to people who were not at the soccer game.

Finally finding a family that has an oven and making chocolate chip cookies. Pulling them out of the oven in the middle of the day heat and realizing that cookies warm from the oven will always make me smile.

Washing my house with two neighbors, and laughing so hard my stomach hurt after I got shocked from the electric socket we had just sprayed down with the hose. And then waking up to a clean house the next day, with no shit sand.

Starting each day with Piper, who makes it hard to hate the mornings as she pushes her wet nose against my mosquito net and nuzzles my cheek. And then proceeds to jump up and down, up and down, when I finally concede and get out of bed.

Watching a full moon rise over the plaza behind my house, knowing I have never seen a moon so beautiful and bright.

Receiving free food from my neighbors, from eggs, to fruits, to chicken legs, to empanadas. It was true in college and it is true in the Peace Corps, free food just tastes better.

Walking home after a long day, with the sun setting over the hill, a long stretch of empty mud road, fields as far as the eye can see, a silence filled to the brim with animal noise, and a serenity that the city will never know.

Are you mad or sad?

This is the first question that my neighbor asked me after I told him that my house had been broken into (for the fourth time). And for those of you who know me, you can probably guess, that I was mad. Infuriated, more like it. I got back to my house on Saturday night, after having spent the day planning soccer in another town. We left town around noon, and arrived back at 10pmish. I had a particularly wonderful day, because the town where we played happens to be the site of another volunteer, who had 2 other volunteers visiting her for her town's annual Fiestas. I got to spend the afternoon with the 3 of them- and we all went to the rodeo together that night. It was incredibly comfortable to have some cultural companions to pass the day with, and on the ride home I was content. Not just happy, but the kind of settled, luminous feeling that I can only describe with the assistance of my hands. When I walked into my house, I almost immediately noticed a hole in the screen by the back door. After that it was like one of those puzzles in the newspaper, where two drawings 'appear' to be exactly the same,  but there are really 10 differences and you have to find them. Except in real life, with each difference that I found I got madder and madder. Someone had gone threw my jewelry, emptied my coin jar, and so on and so forth. I went from hiding spot to hiding spot, checking on my valuables. Speakers, still there. Computer, still there. Ipod, camera, still there. Wallet, much emptier than before. Bummer.

So the only thing that was stolen was money, and not even all of it. But the sizable majority for sure. Frustrating. Violating. I hate knowing that people are in my house when I am not.Going through my things. It is so disrespectful.

So I have since spoken with a few community members, fixed a few holes, and expressed my sentiments. There is a general consensus on who is stealing from me, after all, in a town of 50 people, there is not much that goes by unnoticed. The man who is highly suspect, is in his mid-40's, he doesn't work, he lives with his sister and her family, and he is generally known as 'not being all there.' He has a history of stealing small things from houses (including people he is related to) in order to buy cigarettes and presents for his mother. I also believe that he is convincing a kid to do the actual breaking in, because he is too large to fit through the hole that was open. There is a 6th grade boy who was caught breaking into the town store a while back, and he is also highly suspect. He comes from the poorest immigrant family in town.  They live in a house with no water or electricity. He is extremely intelligent and his smart ass ways rival my own. I also think that my dog would have made a huge racket if someone tried to break into my house. But since I live on school grounds, she is used to seeing the kids running around the house during the day, and I don't think that she would bark if a kid was around the house.

I remember before I joined PC, I sat down to have coffee with an RPCV and chat about her experience in Zimbabwe. It was exciting listening to her stories (I know now that its easy to fantasize/romanticize lives we are not living). I remember asking her all kinds of questions about safety, and she shared that her house had been broken into once or twice. The way she talked about it surprised me. She seemed so disconnected from 'having her things stolen.' It was more a story integration and respect. I didn't really understand what she was talking about. I get it now. Its not what was stolen, its about so much more.