Road Trips and Relaxation

Last week was “Semana Santa” aka the Holy week of Easter. This is an incredibly important week in Costa Rica as CR is a Catholic country. This meant two important things for me personally: 1. Almost everything is closed and 2. No classes Thursday and Friday! Woohoo- the first real “break” in PC training. So what can one do when everything is closed (with patchy/no bus service) and you don’t have a car, cell phone, and arguably any money??

Take walks, for starters. But once you’ve covered your (small) town and all the connecting neighborhoods and it’s still only 8:00a.m., what next? You could buy a newspaper from the stand across town, attempt to do the crossword puzzle (turns out it’s even harder in Spanish, Mom…who knew?), drink a pot of coffee, eat breakfast, and then check the time again. Now it’s 10:30a.m. Time to hitch a ride with your host Mom’s friends to their finca (farm) and bring a picnic lunch! It’s amazing how quickly 4 hours go by with good food, Spanish music, and a beautiful view of the mountains surrounding San Jose.

Ok, so community tours, cultural experiences, and Spanish movies aside- I still had 2 days left of the glorious Semana Santa weekend. What better way to pass the time than to embrace my American-ness and hop on the tourist train? Or, in this case, tourist bus. Saturday morning me and a couple of friends hopped on a bus to see the Irazu Volcano. It was beautiful, un-crowded, and fortunately for us, dormant. It was a really different experience to be in Costa Rica as a tourist- if even for only a day.

Sunday morning I went to church with my host mom, her daughter, and her friend. While it was nice to take part in the festivities of the weekend, a song book or projected lyrics would have helped during the first straight hour of songs. Likewise, I would have appreciated a translator (or a head’s up) that the Pastor was going to preach for the 2nd FULL hour. In case you didn’t know, Jesu Cristo se resusito!

But, like all good things Semana Santa came to an end and it was back to the grind bright and early Monday morning. After Spanish class, my training group and I met with a local church group to start our “Service Learning Project,” more specifically to draw a Community Map of San Antonio. Once again, it was another valuable practice session with the language barrier and cultural differences of CR. But, the map has been drawn and everyone left (alive) and smiling. Side note: drawing the map wasn’t the actual project, just the beginning of a series of required tasks by the PC.

Tuesday morning I went to the local school to interview the Director and observe a 6th grade Social Studies class. Students in 1st-6th grade attend school for half a day, wear adorable white and navy uniforms, and flirt and poke each other just like the awkward 6th graders in the U.S. In addition to the inner-workings of Costa Rican schools, their physical structure, funding, and enrollment, I also learned a tidbit about the Conquistadors who “discovered” CR. I felt right at home with the language level of my fellow 12 year old classmates, although I somehow resisted the urge to raise my hand and join the q & a session about the cartoon the teacher passed out. Not surprisingly, they were less enthusiastic about the exercise.

This weekend we have a “Project Fair” to learn about all the projects the current volunteers are working on. Following this, there is a country-wide volunteer dinner where we say “adios” to the Tico 16 group and “hola y bienvenidos” to Tico 19 (my group). Should be interesting to see if, in fact, all the women have doubled their weight and all the men have lost all of their muscle mass like they say happens by the end of one’s service… If nothing else, it’s a night out in San Jose with some good food and good company.

I hope you had a relaxing safe holiday weekend!

April 2009