So I got inspired after my post today to go out on my run but take my camera so I could show pictures of how lucky I am every day on my run :)

The little chicks we're going to eat in a couple months

Fishing for our lunch in our backyard :)

Celebrating Independence Day :)

Picking Mamones with my sister

Milking another one :)

The start to my everyday run

Just one of the beautiful views I see every day running

A type of flower I like at my house :)

First Month at Site

So much for updating my blog often...turns out I'm not a very good blogger! I will try to give an overview on my past month without rambling on for too long, it's been pretty crazy!

Swearing in was on August 24 at the US Ambassador's house in San Jose, it was broadcasted live from the US Embassy's website so anyone watching could see us being sworn in and we all got to give a shout out and say something to the camera to our families watching at home. This is very neat, in theory, but not so neat when you are one of the three people who get completely cut out so the families at home miss what you say. Yes, that was me. Fortunately my dressed up self made it on camera until the Ambassador handed me my certificate but my shout out got cut out...sad news. However, I was told the camera man like me so I was shown a lot throughout the ceremony, better than nothing right?! Anyways, if you are at all curious what a Peace Corps swearing in ceremony is like, it is forever in the archives of the Costa Rican/US Embassy website. Following swearing in, most of us went to a hostel in San Jose to celebrate with many other Costa Rica volunteers, it was a fun night!

Saturday was a busy day of packing and me trying to fight off my two week long sickness. This didn't work well, I left early Sunday morning (about 5 am from my house) and started my 10 hour long trip to my site. The altitude was a horror for me because it turns out I had a very bad sinus infection and had a killing headache/toothache/earache/cough/couldn't taste until Tuesday when I finally went to the doctor in San Vito and got loaded up with medicine. Fun way to start out my service! ;)

Since then, I've been busy, not busy, stressed out, happy, sad, bored, excited...pretty much every emotion you could think of. Since arriving, I have seen 2 poisonous snake (don't worry...my host dad didn't hesitate killing them with his machete), milked FOUR cows, eaten fresh honey/raw sugar cane/cow heart/freshly made cheese/endless rice and beans/arroz con leche/miel de ayote (look it up)/freshly killed chicken/tilapia from my family's pond/and much more, all of which were delicious. I'm very lucky to have a host mom who is also an amazing cook. I have been to a bee farm, picked mamones (a delicious fruit), celebrated Costa Rica's independence day, been tormented by ants, and started english classes. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things too. It has been a crazy and great month and I am nervous/very excited to see all that is coming up.

Talking about ants, they are going to be what drives me insane. They love to show up in my computer, bed, desk, food, floor, walls...EVERYWHERE. They are so small but somehow one of the most obnoxious things I have ever had to deal with. I guess that's what I'll have to deal with living in a tropical country!

Between all of the craziness, I have been able to relax and even get back into working out. Even though I am high up in the mountains, I found a road to the next town over that is somewhat flat, so I run there almost every day, definitely a great stress reliever.

I started english classes this week, I am teaching them to the whole elementary school (about 87 students), Kindergarten through 6th grade, every monday three classes a day and Wednesday I have my kindergarten class. It is crazy and I'm not so sure about this teaching thing, but the kids are great and so excited to learn english, which all helps out a lot! My counterpart and I are also in the process of finding out ways to find funding to concrete the roads here. Hopefully that will work out soon! Everything is a lot of work but I'm eager to help out with it all and hopefully have success.

I feel like my community has accepted me pretty fast for being a gringa, I get many hugs and kisses (on the cheek) every Sunday at church and when I see community members on my walks around town. Everyone here is great, including my host family, who works so hard to make sure I feel like I'm at home.

I have gotten very lucky and even though I miss everyone from home so so much, I think I have the next best thing with my community. It is still as beautiful as ever and I can't wait to start having family and of course a certain boy come to visit. My community is excited as well :)

I will do my best to keep up with my posts, I hope everything at home is great!!!! Love you all!

 Right outside the school

 This is only about 1/4 of the road from my house to the school...

My first cow milking experience :)

La playa, tech week, and site assignment!

Hola! I have really been slacking on my post writing, sorry about that! It is mostly because we have been very busy the past couple of weeks, going to the beach (rough life huh?!), visiting a volunteer, and preparing ourselves for finding out our sites this coming Friday.

Our exciting past couple of weeks started out at the beach on a Saturday with 20 of us. Our bus left San Jose bright and early at 7am (which meant we had to leave our houses around 5 am) to go to Playa Hermosa where stayed at a great hostel called Brisa del Mar. The hostel is run by two guys and one girl from North Carolina, they are just as cool as you would expect US surfers hiding out in Costa Rica for three years, very cool. It is a surfing beach so we got to watch endless surfing, which was amazing! The waves were huge and the beach was black sand (on the Pacific side). We had beautiful weather so I was very glad we got there around 11 am to hang out at the beach all day, swim, go out to eat for dinner, and visit a local bar. We were all pretty exhausted the next day, but that didn’t stop us from getting up early and going to the beach until we had to leave to catch our bus at noon! We got back to our houses, packed for the coming week, went to bed, and caught the bus on Monday morning in San Jose at 7 am once again to start tech week.

For tech week, we were split up into four groups, with each group of 10 visiting a different volunteer in Guanacaste (the HOTTEST part we could go to). The volunteer I visited lives in a small town about 5 ½ hours from San Jose right in the mountains. Her town has 350 people and we all stayed in 10 different houses with a host family, we are really learning how to be as adaptable as possible with different families! The volunteer scheduled the entire week for us so we did not have a dull moment. A common saying here is “si Dios quiere”, which translated means “if God wants”. They use this here for everything, for example…”are you going to my English class tomorrow” and they say “si Dios quiere”. So our volunteer was constantly calling people we had meetings with to make sure “God still wanted them to go”, it is a very good thing to know for my future site! So…the week actually happened as she planned! We taught English class (speaking only in English to students who know only the basics…very hard), made jewelry with the local women’s group, taught a computer class about PowerPoint, went on a 6 hour hike, interviewed micro-entrepreneurs, chatted with the local Empresa de Credito (they give small loans to the stakeholders in the community), and celebrated the week because it was the anniversary of the annexation of Guanacaste. Anyways, that week was fun and got us very excited to find out our sites!

After tech week we were all exhausted and had a nice relaxing Sunday before starting classes again on Monday. We had a normal week until Thursday; we got it off for one of Costa Rica’s most important holiday. It is the day they celebrate the Virgin Mary, it is celebrated all over the country but it is amazing because the big festival and mass is in Cartago, the old capital of the country. People walk from all over Costa Rica to Cartago to celebrate this holiday, some walking for a month or more! A couple people in my group walked 35 miles to get there, and they said it was just torture, but a good experience. I, on the other hand, decided to not walk and hung out with some friends grilling out and watching the Olympics all day (my host family didn’t walk so I figure it gave me the right to skip out), also, I can’t go out of our communities without a host family member, so its okay ;). Even though I didn’t walk 35 miles, it was a long day and we had to get up bright and early on Friday to…find out our future sites!!!

We met Peace Corps at 7:30 in San Isidro and they had two busses to take us all to this very nice country club that had tennis courts, pools, a hot tub, soccer field, basketball courts, and probably more. Peace Corps likes to keep us hanging, so when we got there they had a map of Costa Rica and had us all stand in a big circle, we played a game where you were given an animal and you had to close your eyes, make the animal noise, and find the other people who were the same animal as you. I was a monkey, so after some searching I found three other friends who were monkeys too! It turns out, these were the volunteers we are going to be in the same area as! I was very happy because my best friend here and I are very close to each other J also, we are by three other great volunteers from our group. However, the game wasn’t over after this. We had to send up one person from each group and they blindfolded each individually and put their site on the map with a post it sticker and we had to yell and help them point to their site, then they could look. It was very nerve racking but in the end was very fun! I am going to be in Fila Tigre, Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It is in the super south zone, very very close to Panama. My town only has about 400 people, but I hear it is very beautiful! I could write a lot more about what I learned but I think I will just have to write more later when I actually go!

After all of the excitement we got to swim, eat from an awesome fruit bar, and later have a great lunch, there was chicken, steak, sausage, fried plantains, black beans, salad, potatoes, and iced tea, it was perfect. We were then taken to a hostel in San Jose where a ton of Peace Corps Costa Rica volunteers were for the night. We all hung out, got to know each other, danced, and had a great time. I also got to meet three volunteers who are very close to us in the “super sur” (super south).

As you can see, it has been a VERY exhausting few weeks, so much excitement, nervousness, and being very busy can really take a toll on you! Which is showing now because I am lacking a voice. I think it was worth the sacrifice ;) I am hoping to update this more like before so I can tell better stories! I forget things quick when there are other things constantly happening J. OH! And I of course have new food to post!! I will try to post again soon, next Thursday we are going back to the place we had orientation week to meet the person from our sites who requested to have a volunteer and then Saturday they are taking us to see our future sites and meet everyone in the town, we will all be at our sites for a week. Okay, I need to stop typing and actually post this J I hope everyone is still doing great! Like always, if you have any questions or just want to chat, let me know!

FOOD!

-       Arroz con leche (milk with rice…very good dessert)

-       Pizza bread (I know we probably have this but it is especially good here)

-       Fried yucca

-       I HAVE THE RECIPE FOR AVENA! (The drink with oatmeal I talked about in one of my posts…here it is!

o   Boiled water, powder milk to taste (more powder will make it creamier), dulce liquido de tapa (I think kind of like sugar water but sweeter, use as much as you want for how sweet you want it), and of course, oatmeal.

-       Tamal duro (like a tamale, it is a special kind from Guanacaste that is harder than regular tamales and has black bean spread and hard boiled egg inside…it is very good).

-       Corn pancake kind of thing from Guanacaste

-       I will try to write these down throughout the next week so I can remember everything…I’m pretty sure I’m missing some!

Wow I wrote a lot…sorry for any typos, I didn’t really proof read this one! J The pics above are at Playa Hermosa, a long hike we went on, and me and my friend pointing to our sites on the Costa Rica map :) Hope to talk to you all soon!

My 6th Week!

Me with Claire's new puppy, thought you could use a picture of a cute dog :) How cute is she?! Her name is Lunita (little moon in Spanish)

 This is my great little town that I live in :)

Hello again! I hope everyone’s weeks were great…mine was nice and busy. It was our last week with our current Spanish teachers so my Spanish class of five made our teacher a couple cards (decked out with Spongebob…she is the biggest fan in the world, and no she is not 10. She is 25.). She loved the cards and was sad to go, but Monday we start another new adventure with a new teacher! I hear she gives a lot more homework…so I will be in my room even more…my host family already thinks that homework rules my life, which is probably true, PC is not shy about giving homework ;).

This week we had class on Saturday from 8-3 in San Jose, so that meant another 5:45 morning to get there in time! But it was actually very fun, I think I mentioned last week that we were going to have a project fair, so that is what was going on yesterday. I learned so much about volunteer’s projects and got to talk to a lot of cool people. It is amazing how much some volunteers have already done! From bio digesters to starting recycling centers to coaching businesses, the things we can do are endless! We also got to talk to the volunteers in small groups and ask them about their projects, their service, and anything else we were wondering. It was super helpful, because I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’m pretty sure we could ask questions all day…there are so many unknown things coming our way!

After the project fair, me and about 8 other people, RAN to a bus station across San Jose to buy our bus tickets for…wait for it…THE BEACH! We get to go this coming Saturday and I can’t wait! We are going to Playa Hermosa with 22 of us; it should be a great time. So we were running across San Jose during our hour lunch break and barely made it back in time by one…and we were really running. It was probably the hottest many of us have been here. I’m sure my face was just beat red for all of the committee fair. So that leads me to the next part of the day, the committee fair. This was where volunteers who are in certain committees just talked about what they do to see if we wanted to join anything. Some of the committees were the VAC Committee, the diversity committee, resource committee, eco committee, and many more. Me and some friends joined the resource committee…and I’m not sure all that it entails but it should be a good way to get to travel to San Jose every few months, meet new volunteers, and hang out at the Peace Corps office helping out. I am also interested in the VAC Committee (one person represents every region in Costa Rica, they are elected, and this committee plans lots of the fun events) and I also think the eco committee would be great. I have too much I want to do!

So after our long day, we went with a lot of current volunteers to a restaurant in San Jose and hung out for a while just talking more about their service and getting to know everyone. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get to know more volunteers, they are all so impressive!

Today will be interesting; it is the birthday party of the nephew of my family here who turned 3 this past week. He is very cute, but I hear about 60 people got invited to our house, which is not exactly big enough for 60. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun and craziness with a lot of little kids! However, the house smells amazing because of the food my host mom is making, so I am very excited for that (I will have to do my weekly food list after the party so I can add some new things on there from today!).

This coming week is a pretty normal one, with the exception of the beach on Saturday, so hopefully I’ll have some good stories for next week! I am sorry for those of you who want to Skype! With my slow Internet, it is hard to fit it in sometimes, since I have to go to San Isidro to Skype. Tyson, my mom, dad, and Dana have been very patient with taking my ‘word’ for being able to Skype…it doesn’t always work out like I’d hope and they are all very understanding, I’m so lucky J. I’m really hoping that after swearing in (in almost a month!!!!!!) that I will be able to buy better Internet (because I’ll be a resident of Costa Rica, with a id card and everything! J). Once again, I’m missing everyone from home all the time and I would love to hear how everything is going! I have been gone almost two months…how crazy is that?! I hope everyone’s weeks go great! Love you all!

Birthday Week

This last week was busy with projects, Spanish classes, continuous training that is probably going to be the end of me, and perhaps most exciting, my birthday! Not only was it my birthday but my friend Stephen has the same birthday and another friend’s birthday was the week before. I haven’t talked about my new friends yet, but they are awesome. Not only are they fun, but they are some of the most thoughtful people I have ever met. I am very lucky to be training with these people; they are also all very impressive; they have all done amazing things in regards to traveling, volunteering, work, and school. We represent almost half of the states in the US, from the east coast to the west, we have people from all areas.

For our birthdays, our friends decided to throw us a joint surprise birthday party, and it was amazing. They somehow kept it a secret, at least from me, and surprised us with almost our whole group being there, great food, homemade cake (thanks to Haley and Eric), and music. It was a very fun time and after the party we went to a local dance for the 106^th anniversary of San Isidro (a training community we’re in). As I mentioned in the last post, we do try our very best to dance like Ticos, some succeed and some (me) don’t. However, I have to say, I think I am improving a little bit, maybe it’s just in my head and I’m just getting more confident, either way works for me. The dance was very fun and the night went by very quickly, I have to admit, it was a great Costa Rican birthday and I am very lucky to have such great friends. I did miss being home on the lake though, and my dad and Dana rubbed it in a little when they called from the middle of Gull Lake, but I’m glad they got to enjoy it for me. As jealous as I was, I’m glad it was nice out so they could have fun, summer in Brainerd really is great. Tyson also rubbed in his July 7^th breakfast he WOULD have made for me (juevos rancheros) if I were home, but instead I got a picture, and it looked amazing, it was torture. Tyson, you’re going to have a lot of cooking to make up for when I visit/when I come home ;).

This next week is our 6^th week here! I cannot believe it has already been that long; the time has flown by so far. In just 6 more weeks I will be traveling to my future home for the next two years. We find out our future sites on August 3, so I am getting very excited for that! This week isn’t too exciting; we have A LOT of projects due on Tuesday so it will be nice to get those out of the way. Saturday we have a project fair, where current volunteers come to San Jose and show off what they are doing to give us ideas of what we might want to do in our communities. I am excited to see all of the different projects, because even though my project is CED, I will be able to do secondary projects not related to business. Some secondary projects that CED volunteers do are teaching English classes, starting a Tilapia pond for local families, starting yoga/Pilates/workout classes for the community, having a women’s group, starting soccer teams, and much more. The possibilities really are endless and I am so excited to see what kinds of projects I will have. If anyone has a good idea, I’m open to hear them, I want to do as much as possible! I am also very excited to show those of you who are going to be visiting me, what I am doing. Be prepared to work with me at least a day or two J.

Well, I think that’s all for now, I will of course add some new foods I’m loving at the end because that is, of course, the most important part. I miss you all! Remember, I’m open to calls and visits at any time J (okay, maybe no visits yeeettt).

-       Tres Leches Cake

-       Lentil Soup my host mom makes

-       Horneadas con Dulce de Leche (okay…anything with dulce de leche really)

-       Vegetables (I am really…really savoring when I get a good veggie, since we do not have many here. Don’t take that easily accessible healthy goodness for granted!)

Oh! Also, my host sister is a great boost to my drawing confidence that probably shouldn’t be encouraged. I’m not sure if you know, but I am not very artistic, and Angelica and I were drawing today and she said I am a great artist. I drew a very nice car driving on a road in the mountains, with a house in front and two stick people standing by a rabbit looking dog. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I have to say that was at least as good of work as a 5^th grader ;). She needs to not compliment my drawing skills, because the world can only take so many of my stick people.

Love you all!

Me and some of my friends who came to the surprise party :)

Finally my first post! It has been a crazy first month with bad Internet, too much homework, and too much good new food to eat with new friends! Food does seem to be the center of the culture in Costa Rica and Ticos (Costa Ricans) are not afraid of their carbs. Most of you probably know that I love food, so I have been trying anything and everything here, don’t doubt that there will be a list of great foods at the end of this post. As much as I love my carbs, a plate full of white rice and spaghetti is pushing it just a little. This is the norm in my house here, but I have learned that in fact I do not have to eat the pound of each they give me, it is acceptable to say I am full, thankfully. However, between all of that, there are some amazing things I have had here and I am no stranger to all of the empanadas available, that’s for sure. I would also like to add that while writing this, I am eating my favorite ice cream of all time, it’s called Trits and is heaven. It is a sugar cookie/graham cracker type cookie on the bottom with soft ice cream and a little fudge in the middle with another cookie on top…please just try to tell me that doesn’t sound like complete happiness.

So it turns out, there is more than food to talk about in this post. We started out our Peace Corps adventure in Washington DC for our staging event where we all had a great last meal, visited the white house, and got about 1 ½ hours of sleep before we had to leave the hotel at 2:30 am to take off for the airport. The flight went well and before we knew it, we were in Tres Rios, Costa Rica for orientation week. We were at an old monastery, which was actually very beautiful. We were eased in to Costa Rica by sharing rooms, having semi-warm showers, and great meals. The week was busy and fun, they really did cram in all of the training they could in regards to safety, security, Spanish testing, and much much more. The week went by quickly and before we knew it was Friday and we were saying goodbye (until Monday) to our new friends to meet and start living with our host families.

My host family in Santa Cecelia is very young, my host mom Guinnina is only 30, her husband Edward is 31 and they have a 9-year-old daughter name Angelica. It was very overwhelming being thrown into this brand new environment, and still is, but I like to think I’m improving with my Spanish being here because my host family speaks…fast, to say the least. So the training was started…the next few weeks were full of Spanish classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Community Economic Development (CED) training Tuesdays in San Isidro, and Tech training in San Jose on Thursdays. This is our regular schedule, which is exhausting, but it’s nice to be able to see friends everyday and start learning about things we could be doing for the next two years! One of those things is working with Junior Achievement teaching a 5^th grade class with one other girl. We have 6 classes with them teaching about the organization of businesses, marketing, advertising, and more. It is fun, but definitely challenging to get 5^th graders interested.

Side note…I did get a cell phone, so if anyone would like my number, just ask! (Or else ask any of my family members).

Another other fun thing we did was going to a town baile (town dance…in Costa Rica…where they start dancing when they are babies), it was very fun and we are very American, but we try to dance like them as much as we can! Today we are all just getting back from visiting a volunteer at their site, I got to visit my Peace Corps mentor in Pacayitas, it is about a three hour bus ride from San Jose, in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, and absolutely beautiful. The only way there is on a dirt road winding its way through the mountains until you reach this little town. There is not much there, a couple Quesaras (where they make cheese), two small supermarkets, and some Fincas (farms), but it was a lot of fun. Friday night Audrey (my mentor) took me to a party/bbq at her neighbors where a world teach volunteer lives and we hung out with a couple peace corps volunteers and some locals while we ate fresh Chicharrones. They had just killed the pig, so they were about as fresh as ever! The next day we went to the pool, which overlooked all of the mountains and was beautiful, and we rode horses through the mountains. Sunday, we rode with Audrey’s host dad, brother, and friends, to a river where we swam and relaxed and later hiked up a different river to a waterfall. That night we had fresh Tilapia and too many good desserts that the host mom made us.

It has been quite an adventure already! I am exhausted all of the time and always have endless homework and things I want to do, but it is all worth it. It’s hard to believe I’m actually living in Costa Rica; I am very lucky! I miss my family, friends, and of course Tyson a ton, but I can’t wait for the visits to start! I would like to throw in that two of my best friends also got engaged this last week…so congrats to Nicole and Vinnie!!! I will try to update this more so the next one doesn’t take up your whole week. I hope everyone is doing great and I hope to talk soon! J

Alexa’s favorite Costa Rican foods so far:

-       Fried plantains

-       Endless avocado

-       Empanadas

-       Picadillo de platano

-       Avena (look it up…so good!)

-       Fresh Tilapia

-       Trits (of course)

-       Homemade tortillas
-       All of the crazy different kinds of fruit

My favorite ice cream :) Takes too long to upload photos so I thought I'd add the most important ;) i'll add more later!