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!!