Barbacoas Church in our community center

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

“I can see clearly now the rain is gone......."







When we wrote our last entry we could say that we were in a less than happy state. We are fortunate enough to say as Sam Cook’s song plays out, “there is that rainbow we’ve been praying for”. First of all, we are traveling to our new site this Friday, the 24th. But that isn’t the call for the entire rainbow. As I said before we are here to go wherever the Peace Corps deems necessary. With that said the last few weeks have been pretty stressful with not knowing exactly where we are going, starting anew and most of the stress has to do with breaking the news to a community that we are leaving and still live here for 3+ weeks. We thought we would leave here on a bad note because we are leaving to a new community, but the last few days here have been quite the opposite. Like with any tight knit large family the integration of an outsider is quite a process, and when you do finally begin to integrate as that outsider you are super happy :) This how we feel today, super happy. Literally so happy we skipped home. Let me be clear we have no complaints whatsoever about the treatment we received from our host family; they have been friendly, helpful and good to us. But we always felt, well on the outside of things. Like I mentioned above totally natural during integration process. So in lieu of our recent announcement of our departure we have been invited to a birthday party for our host mom, lunch and breakfast at host moms and breakfast at our host sisters. Yay!!! We feel that we have taken one very important step in the right direction .And feeling this new sense of comfort with them brings much joy to our heart, especially since we did not want to leave the island on bad or uncomfortable terms with our family or want them to think the move had anything to do with them. Being away from home makes us realize how much we really are family people; we love to hang out with our family and talk for endless hours, go to movies with them and basically are with them any chance we get. So it comes as no surprise that when we came here we just wanted that, but we forgot that this is a process. And now that we have taken one step closer towards this we feel super happy. We now have a new set of friends in Costa Rica, and this rocks! We are glad to end our time here in Tortuguero having accomplished one very important job task befriending host country nationals. We are excited for the move and have been informed by Peace Corps we will be going to Barbacoas de Santiago de Puriscal. Before physically leaving Tortuguero I wanted to share some funny anecdotes with you all that happened to Tony and I here in Tortuguero, I believe that laughter and happiness have super healing powers and can think of no better way to end this chapter in our life.

*While we were living in the cabinas host nephew Little J would come to our room in the morning and at our closed curtain window would say:
Little J: “Cuerpo de Paz, despiertense. Cuerpo de Paz yo los puedo ver”
Translation
Little J: “Peace Corps wake up, Peace Corps I can see you”

* While we were showing our wedding pictures to our host nephew he said
Little J: “ Y porque no me invitaron a mi? Yo hubiera ido y les hubiera regalado el regalo mas grande”
Patty: “Es que no lo conocíamos todavía”
Little J: “Pero yo soy su amigo Cuerpo de Paz porque no me invitaron?”
Translation
Little J: “Why didn’t you invite me to the wedding? I would have gone and given you the biggest present”
Patty: “We hadn’t met you yet.”
Little J: “But I am your friend Peace Corps why didn’t you invite me”

*During Patty’s visit to the CEN (village daycare) our host nephew Joshua who attends the daycare center runs up to Patty as she arrives and calls out to the other children:
Little J: “Acérquense guilas!! Que llegó el Cuerpo de Paz y se las voy a presentar”
Translation
Little J: “Come here little kids!!! The Peace Corps is here and I am going to introduce her to you.”

*At the village elementary school Patty played an alliteration game with the 3rd graders. The students had to say their name and say a word that started with the letter of their name. Patty went first to do an example for the children and she said
Patty: “Patty Pinguina”
Translation
Patty: “Patty Penguin”
From that day on when Patty sees any of those children around town they yell:
“Patty Pinguina!!!” and to identify themselves say “Soy yo Elizabeth Elefante!”
Translation
“Patty Penguin!!” and to identify themselves say “It’s me Elizabeth Elephant!”

The pictures we included this time are of baby sea turtles!!! Yes we were very fortunate to see them and it was an experience we will never forget!! They are amazing!!! Enjoy!!!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Patty & Tony Updates!!!







Missing in action, we have been! 3 full months at our site now! 6 months in country!
• My project manager has done his site visit here in Tortuguero
• Patty’s project manager has done her site visit here in Tortuguero
• Patty’s 30th birthday has come and gone, although she was a little sad about reaching 30, she looks just as great as the day I met her
• We spent 3 full months in Tortuguero, only leaving 3 times to get groceries and access a bank.
• After 3 months of stressful adventures we went back to our training communities and felt the love immediately with our training host families. It was a special time being able to spend a few days with them. God bless them for treating us like family.
• We then had In Service Training (IST) at a wonderful hotel in which we were treated really well in San Jose. It was a week long training event in which we received further tools to take back to our communities.
• We live in one of God’s most beautiful wonders of the world. We have so many different habitats surrounding us. I went out for an early morning walk (5:00 a.m.) and there is a beautiful, peaceful, Green Sea Turtle laying her eggs and slowly, but surely making her way back into the vast, dark blue ocean. There I was at the high school with my service learning group in the open air mess hall that’s right next to the jungle and 6 spider monkeys swing on by. A mother and her young on her back hung around (no pun intended) long enough for me to get a great shot of them with my camera. Patty and I were sitting in the privacy of our own kitchen when I poisonous terciopelos snake tried to make its way in. We have the beautiful Morpho Butterfly and so many different types of birds always flying around. When we are simply leaving or getting to the ¾ island we run into caimans. The life that inhabits this paradise is beyond amazing.

• During IST we found out that we are being moved to a different community here in Costa Rica. After both of our project managers did their visits to Tortuguero it was decided that a new site would be developed for us. I believe we are at least the 5th couple to be placed in Tortuguero (not every couple having a full two years). There just simply wasn’t enough interest from the community leaders. There are towns out there that have not had the chance at even one volunteer and could really use the help. We are here to go wherever the Peace Corps needs us for two years. So now we must go where there is a greater need for us as volunteers.
o Enough of the Politically correct version. We are fluent Spanish speakers. We might not know a lot of the Costa Rican or Nicaraguan terminology but we can get along in a conversation. This did not help us one bit when it came to integration. If you want my sincere opinion, I believe it hindered us. I felt discriminated against for not being your stereotypical American (tall, white, blue eyed, blond hair). I lost entirely way too much weight during these previous 3 months and if you’ve seen me, I don’t have extra weight to lose. We started thinking that it was our fault. “What did we do to them, what are we not doing”? We would ask each other. For 3 months we racked our brains, blaming ourselves. At one point we started questioning our reason to be in the Peace Corps. It looked a lot more enticing to be back home with friends and family. We started thinking of ways that we could go home. But we are not people to do something like that, we made a commitment and we plan to stick to our 2 years of service. I hear that volunteers in the past had a great time here, I’m happy it worked out for them, but we haven’t even scratched the surface of integration with this community. After having the experience of 4 previous volunteer couples, should it really be this difficult for the 5th couple. Sustainability is a word thrown around a lot when it comes to Peace Corps volunteers. After 2, 3 or even 4 couples here, the community still waits for the next round of volunteers. In my opinion there comes a time when a volunteer could actually hurt the community because of dependency issues. The place is beyond amazing; our house is less than 50 yards from the beach, instead of traffic we hear birds, howler monkeys and the ocean waves crashing against the earth’s surface. I wish that was all our work entailed, but we didn’t sign up for a 2 year vacation on the beach, we are here to collaborate and build relationships with host country nationals. Although the site change comes after 3 months of being in this community and will put us back at square 1 with the new community, we are thankful for 2 things; 1. That the Peace Corps and our program managers were able to assess the situation and do what was deemed necessary. 2. This has been a learning experience that we will forever remember and although it was difficult for us, we leave the community grateful for the experiences we had here.

So 3 announcements before we sign off:
1. Please do not send anything to us until further notice. Since we will be moving our address will be changing. If you have already sent something do not worry it will get forwarded to us.
2. Thank you to everyone who has sent us goodies!!! We appreciate the packages greatly!!
3. The pics we included this time are of the beautiful but deadly snake that visited our home, spider monkey with baby during Tony’s class at the High School and a pic of Tony and me in Empalme standing in front of a beautiful valley!! Enjoy!!