I decided that my homecoming in November for Thanksgiving will be like that of the prodigal son (gender discrepancy aside). Think about it - I've used up all my money. I've moved around a little bit the past year. There's a pig in my back yard and I frequently fall asleep and awaken to the stench of this animal. My clothes are in pretty bad shape. I'm going to come home and y'all are going to meet me with a coat. And then we're going to have a big feast. Everyone will rejoice that I'm still alive, even if they secretly wonder what the hell made me want to leave in the first place.
In the meantime, being in site is way more fun than I remembered prior to AVC. Today I had a great conversation with a community member and we started planning a culture, health and environment fair for the kids from our school and three other nearby schools. This is part of a larger project called, ''Las Pozas es Pura Vida'', Las Pozas being the name of my town. The project was not my idea, but I'm definitely throwing my name into the mix and trying to get this thing off the ground. It's a project that our water committee wants to do and it focuses on environmental education, reforestation and solid waste disposal. Part of the education is this day-long fair, and I am SO EXCITED that other people in my community are the ones who thought this up. Motivated people + Peace Corps Volunteers' time and energy = something beautiful.
The coolest part is that ''Las Pozas es Pura Vida'' is almost like a branding campaign that we're trying to do in the community. Like, every time that a government institution comes to our town to have health talks or give a workshop on how to treat recyclables, we can put up posters that say this phrase and people will hopefully begin to identify with it. Pura Vida, b-t-dubs is just to say, ''Hip and with it'' or ''Alright'' and maybe even ''Really cool, man.'' With a lot of hard work and a benevolent higher power, this might work.
It's officially cold here in my beloved, booming metropolis of Las Pozas. 76°F and I'm thinking, ''Maybe I should put on sweatpants.'' Like, legit goosebumps. And with all the rain all the time, it just is a damp kind of chilly, too. No joke – earlier this week it rained for three days straight. With frequent downpours. It stopped today for a few hours. But I'm expecting it to start again at any moment. Which makes the refrigerator an essential element of my daily routine. What? Yeah. You know the fastest way to dry something during rainy season is to drape it over the coils on the back of your fridge? Now you do. Although that actually only applies if you don't have a dryer that tumbles and heats your raiment to a fluffy, luxurious perfection.
Mmmm...remember the days that I relied on the dryer to shrink my clothes. Remember the days when I put on jeans and did a dance of pain because the buttons were still hot. Remember the days that clean laundry smelled clean and underwear took two years to fall apart instead of two months. The only thing that Costa Rica has on the U.S. in terms of laundry is that they've come out with new money, plastic bills that can survive a round or two of washing when mistakenly left in pockets.
I've had this thought several times and I'm too lazy to go back and see if I already blogged about it – but what I'm doing, all the clothes washing and mopping and manual labor and stuff, it's not novel to the Alcock family. You know? Like, several generations ago if I had said to my then mother, ''Mom, mom! I got the clothes in before the rain came and they're dry! They're still dry, I noticed the rain coming and I got them in before they got wet again!'' my mother would have looked at me and might have thought, ''This one won't be such a liability to the family after all.'' Certainly I would not get praise that my host mom offers when she sees my victorious swagger through the front yard with twenty rescued garments hanging off me in various ways as the rain starts to pour down. She is way too nice to me and far too understanding.
Also another reason why my host mom is baller – I had lightly fried ham for dinner. Not like ham cold cuts, not bacon or salchichón. Like, on the bone proper ham. Like it would be at Christmas. Still had rice and beans, no asparagus or cheesy scalloped potatoes. And the pig is still out in the back yard, so that's kind of a bummer. But ham. Ham. Ham. It was so wonderful.
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