Tamaaaales.

You know those super ants that you see on Discovery shows? Like, the ones that can lift 40xs their weight...I just saw one of those in my bathroom hefting a dead bug all over the place. It was incredible, I spent like six minutes watching it.

Anyway.

I also have things on my mind other than super ants. And you'll have to forgive me if I'm repeating themes at all from previous blogs during these next two years – I'll rarely have internet and it's days between when I first write my blogs and then post them. And I didn't re-read the one I posted earlier today. Oops.
Today after Spanish classes and after a good long talk with some other trainees, I headed back to my house to eat dinner and spend time with my family. It ended up being mostly my host mom and her aunt (who are like mom and daughter) and I. We were drinking coffee after dinner, and as usual the "cafecito" was a great way to bring up questions and begin extended conversations. After an hour or so we dispersed and here I am now, typing up this new blog. And I realize that what I most want to write about is how much I don't want to disappoint this group of people in my life. We're very newly acquainted, it's true. But this is their country, man. And this family has taken me into their home and they're getting me prepared in so many subtle, culturally complicated ways. So I really don't want to mess up the place that they call home!
Which means I got work to do. I was feeling pretty damn sure of myself until a couple of days ago. And while I still feel confident in my ability to learn the necessary skills to swear in as a volunteer, that confidence has definitely been checked by the mountain of assignments to complete in the next ten weeks. And the Spanish! Geez, you think you know a language, but it just turns out you only know it better than the next gringo. With language training and technical training both my days and nights are pretty full. And while it is a little overwhelming, at least I know that I'm building the capacity to meet expectations and, perhaps in some cases, supersede them. Which would not leave people disappointed, so I guess there's nothing to do but do it.

So apparently I'm leaning some English too, because "building capacity" would definitely not have been part of my lingo two weeks ago before all this training started.

But onto more fun and lighter stuff - this weekend there are parties for the patron saint of my town and things are getting wild here in the pueblito. Comparatively to how things are normally, I suppose. The church is doing a massive fund-raiser and is selling hundreds of tamales. The really awesome part?
Today my group of gringos and I went with our Spanish instructor to see how tamales of Costa Rica are typically made. It starts with the huuuuge banano leaf which gets a little toasted over an open flame to cook it and make it more flexible. Then you grab the edge of the leaf and pull upwards, starting at the bottom. If you get a whole big piece of the leaf off in one piece, then you graduate to assembling the tamales (that might not be true for all Costa Ricans who are making tamales, but I think that's what happened for us. Or maybe they were like, "Oh God, they're ruining the leaves, let's get them out of here.")

Each of us was charged with the responsibility of putting one ingredient of the tamale in the center of two pieces of leaves placed on top of one another. First a spoonful of the corn-dough-stuff, then the chile pepper, then some pea-beany things, then big slices of carrots, and also some seasoned pork – the last of these elements delivered like an expert by yours truly. I think the other trainees cook, but I definitely don't so I was very proud of the role I had to play. Especially when we wrapped the tamales and tied them up. Given my history with making/eating tacos, wraps and jelly donuts, the fact that everything stayed inside when it was all tied up made me feel quite accomplished.

You know, the fact that they let us crash their tamale party brings me back to this idea that I don't want to fail these people. It won't always be this wonderful and perfectly set up and whatnot like the tamale demonstration today. But if the people in my town are any indication of the Costa Rican people at large – man, I can't wait to start building relationships with the people in my future community. And definitely the people in my training community (especially my family) are serving as my motivation and inspiration even if they don't know it.