Before Swearing-in

Volunteers waiting to know where were going?!

Howdy!

I know I mentioned in my last post I would talk about my swear-in ceremony, but before that I want to talk about our site assignments. Before I start, I want to thank all PC staff for the time and effort on developing our whole PC training. People don't notice little things like the logistics and the hours of preparation to get things done. From little things as getting your name on an envelope with your allowance to transported from one place to another. It's takes a lot of effort, thus I want to thank everyone who made all of our training possible.

           

Waiting...but happy :)

 A few days before our last training sessions...

Enjoying the pool at country club

As training was in its ending period, every single volunteer was curious from the moment they stepped out of the plane in Costa Rica. "Where will we serve?". After almost three months of training, PC setup a day out in a country club. There volunteers, staff and friends gathered for a day of good food, sports, pool and most importantly knowing where will we be for the next two years. After much anticipation, a whole event evolved in the process of knowing. I won't talk about it, so other future PCV can experience it. But it was full of happiness and joy. I was very happy with my site: Barranca, Puntarenas. A very big site with a population of over 40,000 people and a high index of unemployment and high welfare enrollment. This meant that there was a lot of work to be done and was very happy and scared as the same time. After knowing where we would spend the next two years, we enjoyed our day and spend our free night out of site in a hostel with other volunteers from other regions in an event called VACtail. Basically a welcoming party from other volunteers for the newbies "us". Next post I will talk about the process of the Swear-in ceremony. Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

Chilling @ VACtail or as we renamed it...Backsnail

Pre-Service Training - Part III

Howdy!

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Today I will write about a  usual week in PST. Like I mentioned before PST consisted of this two activities:

Spanish Training - Gain and/or improve Spanish skills, culture and ethics in Costa Rican culture.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
8 AM - 3:30 PM with an hour lunch.

Peace Corps Training - Theory, Methodologies, Ethics, Safety, Medical, etc...when move to site.
Tuesdays and Thursdays
8 AM - 4:30 PM (sometimes we would leave early or later) with an hour lunch.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

I would typically wake up at 6:45 AM and have breakfast and walk about a mile and meet my group in the "salon comunal" by 8:00 AM, it's a usually a classroom within the church's premises, were we would meet up with our Spanish facilitator and did several Spanish activities. For example: interviewing business and people, vocabulary, "dichos" (slang), day trips, etc. This part of training really gives you the confidence to go out there and talk to people. I honestly thought before coming to Peace Corps I would be shipped to a site and would start working on a project. But first part of the process is gaining the communities Trust. The day would end up at around 3:00-3:30 PM, my classmates and I would usually walk around our community, eat a snack; usually french fries and just talk about our day and our plans in the future. 

Tuesdays and Thursdays

San Isidro de Heredia Church

These days I would typically wake up at 5:30 AM, I would get ready, sometimes if I had time I would have some breakfast and be at the bus stop to San José at 6:15 AM. It would usually takes us around 1-1.5 hours to get to San José (its only 7 miles away, but would make around 20 stops or so). We would arrive at 7:30 AM or so and we get some coffee for a few minutes at a coffee/bakery shop called "La Colombiana" and walk to the FOV which is the Federación de Organizaciones Voluntarios, which is a place were volunteer organizations can use for activities such as teaching, presentations, events, etc. In other words, it's a bunch of classrooms. We would be there till 4:00-4:30 PM learning about safety, medical, methodologies, ethics, and many more subjects and leave back home. We would take a bus and one out of two times we would hang out in San Isidro de Heredia which is the community in the middle from were all the PCV resided. We would usually have some good food and drinks.

This went on for about three months, until we finally finished PST and went on to our Swear-In Ceremony. I will talk about that in my next post. Thank for reading.

Cheers!

Pre-Service Training - Part II

Howdy!

In my last post we were dropped off in our community, were we would live for the next 2 months 3 weeks of our lives.

San Rafael de Heredia Church

I was assigned to the Fonseca Family, they live in San Rafael de Heredia, I met my new family at the church. An interesting fact about Costa Rican towns is that the center of the town lays a church and a soccer field in front of it. San Rafael is about a 1.5 hour bus to San Jose. (Not because of distance, but because of the twenty plus stops it takes all around the area to pickup and drop people).

When I saw my host mom and sister for the first time I didn't know what to do. So I happily greeted them and kiss them on the cheek. Then we took a taxi to their house with my 150 pounds of luggage. We arrived and was showed around the house, and lastly to my room. I told them I would freshen up and unpack. Some hours passed and they told me to go down for lunch; I was super hungry from the long trip. We talked a bit about the living arrangements (what time they eat there meals, when do they do laundry, etc). I told them if it was ok to go upstairs and keep unpacking, I literally went to sleep around 4-5 PM and didn't wake up until the next day. I was extremely tired from everything, meaning an accumulation from to Staging until Now. It was the first time I could sleep and didn't have to worry about waking up to an activity first thing in the morning. It felt so good.

The schedule of PST goes as follows:

Spanish Training - Gain and/or improve Spanish skills, culture and ethics in Costa Rican culture.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
8 AM - 3:30 PM with an hour lunch.

Peace Corps Training - Theory, Methodologies, Ethics, Safety, Medical, etc...when move to site.
Tuesdays and Thursdays
8 AM - 4:30 PM (sometimes we would leave early or later) with an hour lunch.

This schedule would be for the rest of training. Some days you will do activities in other places, Saturday training (rare), travel to other PCV's sites, Trips to San Jose, etc...Weekends are usually free, 9 times out of 10 you spend them with your host family and go places and enjoy the real Costa Rican way of life.

On my next post I will talk a bit more in depth about what I did while living in San Rafael and a bit about what to expect from training. Thanks for reading.

Cheers!