Birthdays!

We recently had two parties for both my host parents, so here are some pictures!

Here's a picture from Sandra's birthday that I just love!





And here are two of my Tico cousins awaiting cake.

Thanksgiving cont.

On Sunday, Melana and I (both still fighting colds, mind you) prepared for a thanksgiving meal with the rest of the PCT community. There had been a similar gathering in my community on Friday, but I had missed It due to the fact that I was still running a fever. Fortunately, two of my friends were kind enough to walk over a plate of food that I could enjoy while busying myself with fighting a virus. Thanks Roxanna and Audrey!

Pictures of Melana's event below!





The turkey wasn't quite done so we wound up microwaving it to make sure no one got food poisoning (take note peace corps!)


With everyone waiting for food it was up to Melana to teach the boys how to carve a bird.


As the event waned to a close, dancing commenced...


With Megan still washing dishes.




Later on... Limbo!

This mission, should you choose to accept it...

Well, it’s official. Melana and I finally have our site assignment. On Wednesday, Melana and I received our very Mission Impossible style folders containing the details of our assignments. Though I am disallowed from disclosing the exact location of the site (clearly if I told you, I’d have to kill you), I can say that it is fairly close to the town of San Rafael de Guatuso in the northern province of Alajuela. I will be working with a women’s cooperative of cocoa growers and with high school and middle school students, though I won’t know more details until I actually get to to site and assess the community. Melana will be working with a local high school acting as an English teacher. As far as more details about her assignment, we’ll find out more on Tuesday. Due to some clerical error, Melana’s folder was a little.. erm... blank.

The site is about as far as you can get from the beach, but the good news is that that’s only about 3 hours in Costa Rica. Melana and I will be living on a farm amidst cocoa and pineapple fields. More details will come later, as I get them. Next week, Melana and I will be traveling out to meed our new family and to survey our site. Below you’ll see a picture of one of the locations that is supposably near our town. I’m psyched!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

The Peace Corps Trainees and Staff celebrated with a Thanksgiving lunch yesterday. There were mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing and even pumpkin pie. Unfortunately, there was also some very bacteria filled juice of some sort and today, everyone has food poisoning - and I mean everyone. I'm writing this between trips to the bathroom and everyone got out of class early today.

Melana really commented best on this when she said, "you know... of all the opportunities to get sick from the water and food of Costa Rica, who would have thought the Peace Corps would be the ones to wind up poisoning us."

Happy Thanksgiving!

CED Training

It has occured to me that, with all the things that I write on here, there is not that much information on what we're doing on a day to day basis. So, today I wanted to fill you in on what I've been up to for the past couple of weeks. Normally, I have Spanish class in my community with two other trainees three times a week. On Tues. and Thurs., however, we hike to the neighboring town of Tarbaca (there's a bus, but where's the fun in that?) To study business and economic development stuff specific to Costa Rica along with safety, security and medical procedures generic to Peace Corps. With the flooding and landslides throughout the country, though, things have NOT been normal.

Usually, at this point in training, the trainees would be sent to another volunteer's community to study the technical aspects of their projects. It is normally an intensive and challenging week that incorporates business theory with Spanish and cultural immersion. Sadly, the normal tech training that we normally had planned was canceled and replaced with a condensed week of business theory.

For this past week, our CED group was in Tarbaca for the whole week. During this time we conducted a market survey and started

a mock company. For most of the week we went over the technical specifics of a business plan. That means, roughly 6 hours of marketing followed by 6 hours of accounting and so on... We basically covered what a normal JA program would cover in 18 weeks. What's JA you ask? Well...

This is actually a great place to plug the JA program. The Junior Achievement program is a program designed to educate young people about the world of business and entrepreneurship. If you want to learn more specifics, you can check it out at www.JA.org.

We also recently had another birthday, and this time - thanks to the internet, the entire Diaz family was in attendance.

A Special Welcome

I would like to extend a special welcome to the students of Sea Girt School who are now following my blog! Please feel free to leave comments!

Here's a view out the window of the internet cafe I'm at!

Nicaraguan Border Dispute

Read all about the latest in international disputes. This one has been ramping up recently and is a very hot topic among Ticos at the moment. You can read about it here.