Earthquake

Gah!  You know what's terrifying?  It's eleven o'clock at night so I'm the only one awake, watching a movie on my laptop.  And the earth starts to move.  Not a lot, just a little wiggle, but enough that I notice.  No one wakes up, there's no one to confirm that it just happened.  I am alone and the house shook.  Makes a person want to go to bed.  That happened last night.

But yeah, anyway...it's corn season and it's wonderful.  As a North American, I had no idea exactly how many things you could do with this small yellow veggie and probably never will.  Every day I hear of a new food that can be made from maíz and the following day my host mom usually tries to make it for me.  Of course there are the well known tortillas and tamales, but then there's also yol, perrereques, arroz de maíz, tanela, tamal asado, chorreados and so many more.  I've yet to see someone eat corn on the cobb, though, which is curious.

My favorite so far has been tamal asado, which I made with my boyfriend's mom a few days ago.  She had already mixed the ingredients by the time I arrived but she listed them with the fluency of a woman who has rarely used a written recipe in her life.  The thick, golden yellow liquid in the massive cooking pot over the fire contained ground corn, sugar, cheese, sour cream and vanilla extract (...These are a few of my favorite things!...).  From the goop to the good stuff, one need only mix the contents of the pot for twenty minutes with a big wooden paddle until the tamal asado batter gets cooked down enough that it's hard to push around.  When it got to the right consistency, we put the top on the pot (it was the size of a car wheel) and on top of that we placed a spare piece of the tin roof.  Shovel some of the hot coals from the fire on bottom to the roof on top and bam...this thing is really cooking.  When it's all finished it's about the consistency of something between fudgy brownies and pound cake and – to my gringo palate – not nearly as delicious as either of those.  However, it is sweet and fills me up fast so it's one of the best snacks I've found so far.

I'm going to assume that for some of you the tamal asado was not at all interesting compared to a certain statement that you may want me to expand upon.  Yeah, soooo...I have a boyfriend.  He currently lives in my town but pretty soon he's going to boot camp for the Fuerza Pública (aka the national police force).  Since he got his bachelor's in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, his English is stellar and he's up for the tourism police.  That's a sweet deal because then he'll more than likely stay in the area and work on the beaches of Guanacaste with all the benefits that a government job entails.

Friends from home – please believe me that I, too, never thought I'd be dating the fuzz.  I also said that after Bolivia I was absolutely done with dating Latinos.  And I'm probably on record somewhere as saying “It's stupid to shit where you eat,” meaning “Don't date within the small Costa Rican town where you work as a Peace Corps Volunteer.”  A textbook example of what it's like to eat your own words.

Yum.  Any embarrassment I would feel about being so wrong is outweighed by how awesome he is.

So a lot of neat things happening.  Corn harvest, relationship making, the English classes are still going well, In-Service Training is right around the corner and...oh yeah...There's going to be a new baby in my host family!  We found out this week that Genesis's mom, my oldest host sister, has got another bun in the oven.  Nothing like seeing a woman close to you get pregnant to make you wonder what the hell you're doing with your own life.  But, getting over myself and the five minute I-want-to-be-a-mommy-too crisis, I'm already so excited to meet the new bebé.  As someone who will be sharing a living area with the new baby, I hope he or she is just as calm, beautiful and pleasant to be around as Genesis.  As a second child myself, though, I guess I know better hehe.

Speaking of all things cute and cuddly, Doky's doing pretty well.  And he's getting pricey.  I'd like to take this dog back to the United States with me at the end of service (I don't think it'll be too hard to convince my host family to let me have him) and so I'm trying to do things right to keep him healthy from the start.  I went to get him vaccinated and the vet told me that Doky suffers from anemia, which means I needed to buy some liquid vitamins.  Doky should also be eating dog food and not leftover rice and beans, so I bought a kilo of dog food.  And finally, he needs to take some anti-parasite pills over the next month...which I could easily find for purchase at the same place.  Instead of $16 the trip cost me about $25, a healthy portion of my monthly budget.  But at least I have some papers now that list me as the owner and the dates of the shots and boosters.

Hmm...what else is new?  The time to write the diagnostic is drawing to a close.  The diagnostic itself is just beginning to take its true shape.  Until now I was typing but with no real aim and I think it was because I didn't understand what my work plan for the next two years was going to look like.  It made for some pretty vague and shitty text.  But after setting some definite objectives to include in my work plan at the end of my diagnostic, it feels like filling in the gaps rather than trying to re-create my town on paper.  Re-creating my town in black and white is incredibly daunting.  Explaining the things that are pertinent to a development volunteer's proposed work plan is way more natural of a document to write.  Change of focus at the eleventh hour – this is historically when I shine.