I reach an age
and a life
that makes me
want to stop asking
so many questions
and start living
the answers.
Makes me realize
that people say
anything
and will do everything
just to accomplish
nothing.
I start loving
the mystery
because if it
was easy and
uncomplicated
then I would be, too.
I run deep in the veins
of the earth and those
who love me,
within which forgetting our
tangled raw nerves
is an impossibility.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Day Dreaming
Am I...making this up? Today we made bread for my family to sell. I was watching my aunt knead a mass of dough the size of a toddler in a big plastic bowl. She pieced it out in hunks and gave it to my cousin and myself to knead further on top of some elevated wooden planks. Bathing my hands in melted grease and pulling at the white-ish elastic mass, I looked over my shoulder at a gigantic beehive oven. The heat waves pealing off the sides were almost unbearable in this morning's ninety degree weather. The chickens...always the chickens. I looked at them as they poked their way out from underneath a nearby table, the little ones weaving in and out underneath our feet. And that's when I took stock of what was going on, of the whole past week and I thought...This is definitely a dream.
I think it's just because so much lately has been outside my normal frame of reference that I keep having moments where I'm like, “Naw, this can't be real.” But do people really dream outside their frame of reference anyway? I've dreamed I was a deep-sea diver in an old fashioned diving get-up. I was attacked by sea snails in that dream and I sunk to the bottom of the ocean, my air hose coming loose from the hands of the people on the surface. I've never done that, but I know what one of the suits looks like, I know that sea snails exist. This whole world here in rural Costa Rica is something I never could have imagined. Ever. There are things here too complex, too good, too gross. I'm totally fascinated and overwhelmed by it because it's just. So. Real.
I don't know if my schedule will stay like this, but I can give y'all a glimpse of what a day in the life of Lily/Kathleen has been like. Since Monday, I get up around 7:00am and then feel instantly guilty for being a late riser and a non-exerciser (that's what living in the Central Valley on a Peace Corps Training schedule will do to you). I shower, put on bug repellent, and get dressed. The first meal is probably my favorite part of the day – my host mom shows me how to cook something new every morning so far, and now I make tortillas as part of a balanced breakfast. I get gallo pinto, too, which makes me immensely happy. From 8:00ish to 10:00ish I sweep and mop my house/patio and wash my clothes from yesterday. Then, I usually try to read some on the front patio.
This has not worked out so well – there are a million kids around and they're not yet bored with me. So they ask if I want to go to the river and we go to the river. They ask if I want to go to see the school and we go to the school. I ask if they're tired yet and they say no, let's go see the cows.
So that's until lunch, when I sometimes manage to shake 'em off. Lunch is usually awesome, there's no other word for it. I sit and play with my ten month-old niece and talk with my host mom. In the afternoons there's been people to meet or errands to do. It rains after that, and I get some blessed alone time since everyone goes home during the rain. Mom might call from the U.S. or I'm texting with another Volunteer. However, since I live in my own house (two steps from my host mom's house, but still apart) it doesn't take long for me to feel anti-social and try to find someone here with whom to talk. Maybe there's cafecito with some aunts and uncles and cousins.
Tomorrow is my first official visit to the school and so I spent some time in the evening preparing an activity for the kids. Then, around 7:00pm it's dinner and some time spent with family at the table. After that it's not too long before I'm writing a blog and finding out that my couch is, in fact, an ant hill.
Excuse me one second.
Ok. And now it's bed time. It's the ants that sealed the deal, I can't lie. But mostly just going over how I do nothing and everything in a day makes me feel pretty beat. Within that day there are a million things that take me by surprise, or they surprise me because they feel natural already. So now I gotta sleep and dream real dreams, or rather, really dream about imagined things. Apparently a Volunteer described the next two years as “realismo mágico” and I really want to thank my AP Spanish teacher for forcing that phenomenon on us Senior year. Because I know what it is, I can appreciate the connection and it's expanded how I process even the littlest happenings. And seriously, Wikipedia that term because I can't think of anything that could be more appropriate to encapsulate the past few days. And what I'm looking forward to for the next two years!
I think it's just because so much lately has been outside my normal frame of reference that I keep having moments where I'm like, “Naw, this can't be real.” But do people really dream outside their frame of reference anyway? I've dreamed I was a deep-sea diver in an old fashioned diving get-up. I was attacked by sea snails in that dream and I sunk to the bottom of the ocean, my air hose coming loose from the hands of the people on the surface. I've never done that, but I know what one of the suits looks like, I know that sea snails exist. This whole world here in rural Costa Rica is something I never could have imagined. Ever. There are things here too complex, too good, too gross. I'm totally fascinated and overwhelmed by it because it's just. So. Real.
I don't know if my schedule will stay like this, but I can give y'all a glimpse of what a day in the life of Lily/Kathleen has been like. Since Monday, I get up around 7:00am and then feel instantly guilty for being a late riser and a non-exerciser (that's what living in the Central Valley on a Peace Corps Training schedule will do to you). I shower, put on bug repellent, and get dressed. The first meal is probably my favorite part of the day – my host mom shows me how to cook something new every morning so far, and now I make tortillas as part of a balanced breakfast. I get gallo pinto, too, which makes me immensely happy. From 8:00ish to 10:00ish I sweep and mop my house/patio and wash my clothes from yesterday. Then, I usually try to read some on the front patio.
This has not worked out so well – there are a million kids around and they're not yet bored with me. So they ask if I want to go to the river and we go to the river. They ask if I want to go to see the school and we go to the school. I ask if they're tired yet and they say no, let's go see the cows.
So that's until lunch, when I sometimes manage to shake 'em off. Lunch is usually awesome, there's no other word for it. I sit and play with my ten month-old niece and talk with my host mom. In the afternoons there's been people to meet or errands to do. It rains after that, and I get some blessed alone time since everyone goes home during the rain. Mom might call from the U.S. or I'm texting with another Volunteer. However, since I live in my own house (two steps from my host mom's house, but still apart) it doesn't take long for me to feel anti-social and try to find someone here with whom to talk. Maybe there's cafecito with some aunts and uncles and cousins.
Tomorrow is my first official visit to the school and so I spent some time in the evening preparing an activity for the kids. Then, around 7:00pm it's dinner and some time spent with family at the table. After that it's not too long before I'm writing a blog and finding out that my couch is, in fact, an ant hill.
Excuse me one second.
Ok. And now it's bed time. It's the ants that sealed the deal, I can't lie. But mostly just going over how I do nothing and everything in a day makes me feel pretty beat. Within that day there are a million things that take me by surprise, or they surprise me because they feel natural already. So now I gotta sleep and dream real dreams, or rather, really dream about imagined things. Apparently a Volunteer described the next two years as “realismo mágico” and I really want to thank my AP Spanish teacher for forcing that phenomenon on us Senior year. Because I know what it is, I can appreciate the connection and it's expanded how I process even the littlest happenings. And seriously, Wikipedia that term because I can't think of anything that could be more appropriate to encapsulate the past few days. And what I'm looking forward to for the next two years!
Insanity
Yesterday was the swearing in ceremony. If you missed it but would like to see it, I believe that the embassy still has the recording posted online. You can find out more information from http://www.facebook.com/sanjose.usembassy.
Whoa. Nelly. The last twenty four hours have been surreal. I expected to be physically tired after the ceremony, but I thought that as usual I could keep my emotions on lock down. I was so wrong! In the middle of swearing the oath, I was overwhelmed by an intense feeling of the “now”-ness of things. Everything had a sharper outline to it, and time passed neither too slow nor too fast. My hand raised and the backs of my friends in front of me, I felt like I was cemented to the spot – like I couldn't have walked away if I wanted to. Again, and a recurring theme in my blog, it just felt right.
This marks, however, the beginning of two years with really high highs and really low lows. And what's on tap for this week is taking my thoughts and emotions on quite the ride. On the one hand, the rest of my life starts tomorrow. Woo! A huge boost of excited energy and confidence in my own abilities – I made it through training. On the other hand, I say hasta luego in a more final way to my friends (this is particularly difficult) and family in the US as well as my host family and newly-minted volunteer friends. Boo. Arriving in low or confused spirits isn't a great start in an environment that already seems alien.
“Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?”
MGMT gets the credit for expressing in words something that I've always had floating around inside, but could never quite capture. The song has obviously got a different slant than the one that I put on it, but I guess that's art, too...you put something out there and people take it for what it's worth to them. Or at least that's how I conceive it, and I'd welcome other points of view on the subject. But I digress. This song considers the consequences of pursuing exactly what your dream is, nothing more and nothing less. It's not a completely happy song, but it's hopeful in its own way. It'd be such a relief to give up and give in and be something less than what I ought to be. But there's something deep down that fights that, maybe an instinctual abhorrence of intellectual and spiritual death – and it's everyone's right to look for what it is in this life that saves us from that, to throw ourselves wholeheartedly in the pursuit of life, joy and peace. To realize our potential and actualize it. Which, when I bend the lyrics of MGMT to fit my own circumstances (remember my uneducated concept of art), is what I hear in those lines.
So that may sound a little nuts-o, but it's what keeps me from really losing it today. Low spirits have a weak bite compared to grand notions of destiny, haha.
Getting down to business, this week is going to be ca-razy. Tomorrow I take a bus for Santa Cruz – I haven't been able to get in touch with anyone from my community, but they know I'm coming tomorrow. There's an fund-raiser planned for the evening of my arrival and I'll definitely be helping out with that however I can. Then...the week. Meeting all the families in my community, eating my weight in pancito and drinking gallons of cafecito. All part of the job, ladies and gentleman.
Whoa. Nelly. The last twenty four hours have been surreal. I expected to be physically tired after the ceremony, but I thought that as usual I could keep my emotions on lock down. I was so wrong! In the middle of swearing the oath, I was overwhelmed by an intense feeling of the “now”-ness of things. Everything had a sharper outline to it, and time passed neither too slow nor too fast. My hand raised and the backs of my friends in front of me, I felt like I was cemented to the spot – like I couldn't have walked away if I wanted to. Again, and a recurring theme in my blog, it just felt right.
This marks, however, the beginning of two years with really high highs and really low lows. And what's on tap for this week is taking my thoughts and emotions on quite the ride. On the one hand, the rest of my life starts tomorrow. Woo! A huge boost of excited energy and confidence in my own abilities – I made it through training. On the other hand, I say hasta luego in a more final way to my friends (this is particularly difficult) and family in the US as well as my host family and newly-minted volunteer friends. Boo. Arriving in low or confused spirits isn't a great start in an environment that already seems alien.
“Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?”
MGMT gets the credit for expressing in words something that I've always had floating around inside, but could never quite capture. The song has obviously got a different slant than the one that I put on it, but I guess that's art, too...you put something out there and people take it for what it's worth to them. Or at least that's how I conceive it, and I'd welcome other points of view on the subject. But I digress. This song considers the consequences of pursuing exactly what your dream is, nothing more and nothing less. It's not a completely happy song, but it's hopeful in its own way. It'd be such a relief to give up and give in and be something less than what I ought to be. But there's something deep down that fights that, maybe an instinctual abhorrence of intellectual and spiritual death – and it's everyone's right to look for what it is in this life that saves us from that, to throw ourselves wholeheartedly in the pursuit of life, joy and peace. To realize our potential and actualize it. Which, when I bend the lyrics of MGMT to fit my own circumstances (remember my uneducated concept of art), is what I hear in those lines.
So that may sound a little nuts-o, but it's what keeps me from really losing it today. Low spirits have a weak bite compared to grand notions of destiny, haha.
Getting down to business, this week is going to be ca-razy. Tomorrow I take a bus for Santa Cruz – I haven't been able to get in touch with anyone from my community, but they know I'm coming tomorrow. There's an fund-raiser planned for the evening of my arrival and I'll definitely be helping out with that however I can. Then...the week. Meeting all the families in my community, eating my weight in pancito and drinking gallons of cafecito. All part of the job, ladies and gentleman.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Guanacaste...BOMBAAAAA!
"Rural" is on my mind in a big way, especially now that we've been given our site assignments and visited our future communities. I won't try to build suspense for the big reveal, mostly because I know that it's pretty much only family reading and I'll be surprised (erm, I mean, proud of) Mom if she's been able to keep a lid on this.
So I am bound for a small town (300-400 people) about an hour outside of Nicoya, Guanacaste!
Ok, so that's the info and now...let me try to process what happened during my site visit.
But jeez, process it? I'll consider myself lucky if I can just get down a sequence of events, much less make sense of it right now. When we first got assigned our sites, I was like, “Damn. Guanacaste really kicked my ass when I went on the volunteer visit.” So I was...numb, a little, you know? I was so pumped to know my site and then the news just froze it up, that crazy emotional high I'd been feeling. If you refer to previous blogs, I'm pretty sure I mention just how HOT, dry and dusty Guanacaste is. It was slightly disappointing to be assigned somewhere that I'd visited and thought, “I could never be happy here because of the physical conditions.”
Could I express that without bringing down the mood of the group or that of my friends? Nah, it was easier not to say anything. So I decided to let the glass rest at half-full at least until I got to visit my site that same week. I'd get to get out of San Jose, see a different part of the country, meet some new people, etc. “I'm sure that if I get to a place where I know I can settle in, it will be different than the volunteer visit.”
And it was.
How can I ever describe the feeling of getting off the bus in Las Pozas? Actually, getting off the bus wasn't when it hit. It was when the bus pulled away and I was in cloud of dust standing in front of a poorly kept soccer field that I thought, “Ok. I am going to call this home.” I was really grateful that my host sister had met me in San Jose at a Peace Corps workshop and had traveled back with me, because...dang. Without someone there to start tugging my suitcase across the dirt road to an opening in a fence, I think I would have stayed there all day. I was on as much sensory overload as I've experienced in places like New York City or Las Vegas.
Sensory overload didn't stop the whole five days I was in my town. My host mom seems like the example of everything that I've come to appreciate about people in the rural areas of Costa Rica. First, she didn't stop trying to feed me the whole time I was in her presence. Second, and more importantly, she works so hard to keep house and take care of her family. I cannot wait to learn from her and become part of her family.
The houses where my family lives are all grouped together, and I have my own house to sleep and shower in (kitchen and area to wash clothes are over at my host mom's place, right next door). I have my own patio. It's excellent for entertaining the mass of curious small children that I swear were tagging out with others in the community to maintain a minimum threshold of noise. And occasionally, I found out, I will be called upon to shoo chickens out of my house, including my bedroom. They just kind of wander where they please and, I didn't know until this past week, are panicky as all get out.
I'll get used to the chickens, I think. Maybe I'll get used to the steers that wander into the yard and eat up all the fallen green mangoes. Soon I'll be receiving my Stetson in the mail and after two years I'll finally have a chance to wear it in – Guanacaste is big cattle country and with that comes horses. It'll be difficult to wear a helmet (a Peace Corps mandate) and my hat, but I'll figure something out. There are supposedly big horse parades called topes in which everyone with a horse gets dressed up to show off themselves and their ride.
I have yet to see one of the howler monkeys that I hear at night and in the early morning. And I could keep writing, but the truth is I just don't know how to stop talking about something this huge that's happened. So I'll just leave it at the howler monkeys, haha. I know it's probably uber unsatisfying, there's no moral to this story. It just is, and it's awesome.
So I am bound for a small town (300-400 people) about an hour outside of Nicoya, Guanacaste!
Ok, so that's the info and now...let me try to process what happened during my site visit.
But jeez, process it? I'll consider myself lucky if I can just get down a sequence of events, much less make sense of it right now. When we first got assigned our sites, I was like, “Damn. Guanacaste really kicked my ass when I went on the volunteer visit.” So I was...numb, a little, you know? I was so pumped to know my site and then the news just froze it up, that crazy emotional high I'd been feeling. If you refer to previous blogs, I'm pretty sure I mention just how HOT, dry and dusty Guanacaste is. It was slightly disappointing to be assigned somewhere that I'd visited and thought, “I could never be happy here because of the physical conditions.”
Could I express that without bringing down the mood of the group or that of my friends? Nah, it was easier not to say anything. So I decided to let the glass rest at half-full at least until I got to visit my site that same week. I'd get to get out of San Jose, see a different part of the country, meet some new people, etc. “I'm sure that if I get to a place where I know I can settle in, it will be different than the volunteer visit.”
And it was.
How can I ever describe the feeling of getting off the bus in Las Pozas? Actually, getting off the bus wasn't when it hit. It was when the bus pulled away and I was in cloud of dust standing in front of a poorly kept soccer field that I thought, “Ok. I am going to call this home.” I was really grateful that my host sister had met me in San Jose at a Peace Corps workshop and had traveled back with me, because...dang. Without someone there to start tugging my suitcase across the dirt road to an opening in a fence, I think I would have stayed there all day. I was on as much sensory overload as I've experienced in places like New York City or Las Vegas.
Sensory overload didn't stop the whole five days I was in my town. My host mom seems like the example of everything that I've come to appreciate about people in the rural areas of Costa Rica. First, she didn't stop trying to feed me the whole time I was in her presence. Second, and more importantly, she works so hard to keep house and take care of her family. I cannot wait to learn from her and become part of her family.
The houses where my family lives are all grouped together, and I have my own house to sleep and shower in (kitchen and area to wash clothes are over at my host mom's place, right next door). I have my own patio. It's excellent for entertaining the mass of curious small children that I swear were tagging out with others in the community to maintain a minimum threshold of noise. And occasionally, I found out, I will be called upon to shoo chickens out of my house, including my bedroom. They just kind of wander where they please and, I didn't know until this past week, are panicky as all get out.
I'll get used to the chickens, I think. Maybe I'll get used to the steers that wander into the yard and eat up all the fallen green mangoes. Soon I'll be receiving my Stetson in the mail and after two years I'll finally have a chance to wear it in – Guanacaste is big cattle country and with that comes horses. It'll be difficult to wear a helmet (a Peace Corps mandate) and my hat, but I'll figure something out. There are supposedly big horse parades called topes in which everyone with a horse gets dressed up to show off themselves and their ride.
I have yet to see one of the howler monkeys that I hear at night and in the early morning. And I could keep writing, but the truth is I just don't know how to stop talking about something this huge that's happened. So I'll just leave it at the howler monkeys, haha. I know it's probably uber unsatisfying, there's no moral to this story. It just is, and it's awesome.
"Effing. Bichos!" is my constant refrain.
My computer has a bug. Actually, it has several. And they're all ants. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime between yesterday morning and this afternoon, a bunch of ants decided to build a colony in my laptop. All the keys came off in order to give it a good cleaning. I debated whether or not to open it up underneath to see if there were ants inside, too, but decided not to do it. There have to be ants inside, though. It's like I'm making them angry when I type and they come marching up onto the keyboard. So like right now, I have to pause and flick them off the keys.
Pause. Flick. Shudder.
I don't know if it's because I just didn't want to look before, but I have been noticing more and more insects in my house. Usually it's about 8:30 or 9:00 at night, just when I'm getting ready to go to bed that I let my gaze wander upwards, towards those dark and dusty corners where I dared not look before. And sure enough, there's a spider the size of my palm. Trying not to think about it but gagging nonetheless, I grab my toothbrush and toothpaste and enter the bathroom. The lights pop on and the cockroaches go berserk trying to hide themselves, which I believe is kind of considerate. Returning to my room, I turn the lights off and feel relieved that the light bulb is no longer attracting mosquitoes and moths from outside – in fact, I can't hear any bugs hitting the bulb anymore. Delicious silence. Oops, wait. I do hear the buzzing of the termite colony in my desk. I'll have to remember to get out any important papers tomorrow, something I've said to my sleepy self every night for the past month.
Those are only the ones that I typically encounter between 7:00 and 9:00 pm.
Part of me is proud that in the last month I've gotten over some of my bug fears. But another part of me is like, “Waaaaait a second, hold on – you have NO IDEA about the insects that await you in your site.” Which is absolutely true. Central Valley, the area around San José where I'm living, has got a lot of bichos but definitely not as many types of little bugs as the rest of the country. Sigh. We'll see.
In more positive news – I live in Costa Rica. Which is the perfect thing to tell myself every time I start freaking out about something.
Pause. Flick. Shudder.
I don't know if it's because I just didn't want to look before, but I have been noticing more and more insects in my house. Usually it's about 8:30 or 9:00 at night, just when I'm getting ready to go to bed that I let my gaze wander upwards, towards those dark and dusty corners where I dared not look before. And sure enough, there's a spider the size of my palm. Trying not to think about it but gagging nonetheless, I grab my toothbrush and toothpaste and enter the bathroom. The lights pop on and the cockroaches go berserk trying to hide themselves, which I believe is kind of considerate. Returning to my room, I turn the lights off and feel relieved that the light bulb is no longer attracting mosquitoes and moths from outside – in fact, I can't hear any bugs hitting the bulb anymore. Delicious silence. Oops, wait. I do hear the buzzing of the termite colony in my desk. I'll have to remember to get out any important papers tomorrow, something I've said to my sleepy self every night for the past month.
Those are only the ones that I typically encounter between 7:00 and 9:00 pm.
Part of me is proud that in the last month I've gotten over some of my bug fears. But another part of me is like, “Waaaaait a second, hold on – you have NO IDEA about the insects that await you in your site.” Which is absolutely true. Central Valley, the area around San José where I'm living, has got a lot of bichos but definitely not as many types of little bugs as the rest of the country. Sigh. We'll see.
In more positive news – I live in Costa Rica. Which is the perfect thing to tell myself every time I start freaking out about something.
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