For the last three weeks I've been living in Pueblo Nuevo. It is very different from San Jose. It is much more quiet, everybody knows each other, very little internet access, and it is very rural. It was always really hot and humid. I stayed with another host family family: Liliana and Marcos and their daughters Yeimy (10 yrs) and Anyell (7 yrs). Marcos was one of the men who helped us at the cacao plant when my class visited a few weeks ago. Liliana is a stay-at-home mom and she also sells items from a catalogue.
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| Pueblo Nuevo, Costa Rica |
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| My house |
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| Liliana and I |
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| Anyell, Yeimy, and I |
Traveling to Pueblo Nuevo was a bit scary. I took a taxi from my house in San Jose to the bus station that takes people to the northeast area of Costa Rica. I asked someone where I could by my ticket and found where my bus would pick me up. That wasn't too much of a problem. I made sure with the bus driver once I got on that I was on the correct bus. After an hour ride, I got to another bus station in Guapiles. Luckily both of the bus stations I had to go to were clean and in good parts of town. I felt comfortable, but slightly nervous. At the second station I bought my next ticket and had to wait about an hour until my bus would arrive. Again, when I got on the bus I made sure it was the correct one and told the driver where I needed to get off (the bar in Pueblo Nuevo). To me, this wasn't a very descriptive location, so I felt very nervous, hoping I wouldn't miss my stop. At one point I asked the two women seated in front of me if they would let me know when it was my stop. They both got off before me, but they told me the bar was blue and it was only one or two stops after theirs. This was helpful and I'm glad I didn't wait to ask. Otherwise, who knows where I would have ended up. Being in Costa Rica (and being sent off by myself) has really taught me to be confident, ask for help, and do things I don't always like to do or wouldn't do if I was in the US. At home I can often get away with making educated guesses. In Costa Rica, I don't always understand the nuances of life and not asking for help and guessing is taking a much bigger risk than stumbling over my Spanish, but getting a better understanding of what to do/where to go/etc. When I got off the bus, I didn't see anybody. I waited a minute before I decided to call my new host mom and tell her I had arrived. Just before making the call, I recognized Marcos walking towards me with one of his daughters. At that moment, I felt a huge amount of relief. I was not lost. I was not alone. I felt like I was being saved.
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| Main Road in Pueblo Nuevo (my bus stop on the right) |
The rest of my time in Pueblo Nuevo was an eye-opening experience. I had to be confident with my Spanish. I had to meet lots of new people. I had to learn how to embrace cold showers and ants running everywhere. Living in Pueblo Nuevo was a totally new culture than living in San Jose. Like the first few weeks in San Jose, I had to learn a new daily routine, a new route to and from my house. During the rural stay was the first time I felt homesick. It was more homesick for San Jose than for Minnesota, but I felt it for both. I missed my new ACM friends and teachers. I missed my host family. I missed my real family. I missed the faster way of life because I often felt bored. Luckily, I used the cell phone I bought in San Jose and so I was able to text my friends and call my family in Minnesota for support. This was one of the hardest times of the trip, but it made me grow so much. It also made me realize how important my friends/family/teachers in San Jose had become to me.
My volunteer project in Pueblo Nuevo was to teach english to a group of women who make and sell chocolates for a living. Their company is called Amazilia, which is a type of hummingbird that is found in the area. These women get a lot of english-speaking tourists and they want to be able to communicate better with these clients. None of the women knew any english so I taught them the basics (alphabet, numbers, colors, days of the week, and months). I also taught them phrases pertaining to their work (flavors of chocolate, kitchen utensils, and some basic conversation phrases like
hi, how are you, where do you live, do you need to use the bathroom, etc).
For a few days I was able to make chocolates with the women. I was able to see the process of liquid chocolate converted into bars or bonbons with wrappers. This volunteer work was my favorite part of the rural stay.
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| Teaching english |
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| Amazilia building where I taught English |
A normal day consisted of waking up at 4am from the roosters and falling back asleep until around 8am when I started to get ready for the day. I had breakfast which usually consisted of coffee, fruit, gallo pinto, cheese, maybe
arepas with
natilla (a type of pancake and sour cream). Then I walked 10 minutes to the building that the Amazilia women work. For a few hours I would teach them English or help them make chocolates. Then I would walk home for lunch.
I never went hungry here. More often, I was full and still felt like I had to eat what my mom prepared for me. I felt like I was eating all of the time. I think my host mom is like many Tica women whose job is a stay-at-home mom and believes it is her job to keep their kids and guests satisfied. For lunch I would eat gallo pinto, fried chicken, fruit, crackers or cookies. Sometimes I had beet salad, a sandwich, horchata. I enjoyed most of the meals, except that the portion size was huge. If I gained weight during the program, it was definitely here.
After lunch I prepared my English lesson for the next day, watch telenovelas with my host mom, read books in Spanish that I had brought, played with my sisters and their cousin who often came over. We played variations of tag, and hide-and-seek, and other games similar to what I learned as a kid in the U.S. I also used some of my teaching materials to make puzzles and drawings with my sisters. They really seemed to enjoy that.
Dinner was usually similar to lunch. Lots of food. Then we'd watch tv (sometimes Combate). Other nights we went over to the neighbors to hang out. They lived a block down the street and had 3 kids (Katherin-18, Karla-15, Jeremy-11 yrs old). It was nice to spend time with their family, especially since their kids were closer to my age. Karla taught me some dancing, the mom taught me how to frost cakes, they let me use their internet, I'd help the kids with their English for their
bachillerato exam (we were able to communicate in English sometimes which was fun). One afternoon both families went to the river together to swim. Twice we walked 20 min to a relative's house for dinner. While the mom's prepared the food and gossiped, all the neighborhood kids as young as 4 and as old as me would play freeze-tag or baseball. Although I didn't always know what was going on, everybody was very nice and inclusive.
After the night's activities I showered (cold water only) and went to bed. It wasn't very late, but I was always really tired.
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| Karla and I at the river |
Other memories:
One of the Amazilia women invited me to her house. I helped her daughters with English and they made me some great dinner. I went to church with them the next day. It was really interesting to see the differences between their church service and the one I attended in San Jose.
The mom of the neighbors who I spent a lot of time with is a hair-dresser. I watched her give my host mom a perm and color her hair. It didn't work the first time, so she tried different products a second time. My mom wasn't happy with the outcome, but I really enjoyed seeing the whole process done right outside the house.
One day when my host parents were gone, it rained really hard and the back room of the house. Yeimy and I spent a lot of time mopping water out and frantically moving the laundry that was hanging up. Despite not knowing exactly what Yeimy was telling me to do, the slight emergency was a good bonding experience.
Towards the end of my stay, I took most of my pictures. Once they saw my camera, Yeimy and Anyell wanted me to take photos of anything and everything they could see in their house and yard. I have pictures of stuffed animals, stickers, birds, grass, trees, ourselves, etc.
Driving with Katherin and her friends, Stella and Cesar, to an outlook just outside of town. The views were spectacular. I could see miles of
fincas (plantations/farms) of bananas, yucca, and cows. I saw monkeys for the first time while we were up there too.
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| Outlook above Pueblo Nuevo |
Sleeping on a bed with a mattress thin enough to feel the wood boards underneath with a mosquito net over it to keep the awful mosquitos out. I don't know how, but most mornings I still woke up with terribly itchy bites.
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| My bed with mosquito net |
Eating extra bits of chocolate that couldn't be sold because they were too small. Yum!
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| Chocolate squares |
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| Amazilia women and I with chocolate |
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| Filling chocolate bonbons with dulce de leche (caramel) |
New words:
gengibre- ginger
almendra- almond
mueca- funny face
aluminio- aluminum foil
barra-bar
mirador - outlook/viewpoint
toldo - mosquito net
abanico- fan
To read more about my experience and Adam's and Mateo's rural stays you can go to the following link on the ACM website:
http://www.acm.edu/features/feature/449?&programid=3&program=slacs
