"But at night I have these wonderful dreams, some kind of sensuous treat..."
Cheeseburger in Paradise
This might begin to describe my current feelings towards a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you know me even a little, you know I think and talk about food a lot. Not like a foodie, per se – even when presented with a crappy doughnut, I can get pretty excited. It's not something I can help, although it's not completely unconscious, either. I think it's right to balance a diet and find an outlet to exercise. But I also believe that it is awful for a woman to feel guilty eating something because she thinks it reflects poorly on her - as if it makes her a bad person for wanting to eat! I highlight the experience of a woman because, well, duh, I am one. And it almost goes without saying that the societal pressures to be figure conscious are overwhelming and very little effort is comparatively spent on being health conscious. Definitely a reason why I am vocal about my interest in eating is because I absolutely refuse to suppress it.
Although I have to say, when I conjure up the image of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, there are more things that come to mind than just the food. I think of either football or NASCAR, reading Harry Potter at the table, or sitting and chatting with my mom. And when I think of family eating events, of course buffalo chicken cheese-steaks are an essential component. Burgers, hot dogs, mac'n'cheese, mom's pizza, hoppin' john, funnel cake and boardwalk fries, grilled ham and cheese from the bakery...these all have connotations which are bigger than just the food element and recall memories of awesome times spent with family and friends. So that's another reason I think and talk about food a lot. Sitting down to eat a meal with people is a way to show people you want not just to partake of the food, but also share your time with them.
Not to mention a third reason which is real easy to define – some foods are just goddam delicious.
That was a long way of saying that there are foods that I am really passionate about. Having not had, for instance, a PB&J for a few weeks is kinda making me crazy. It's weird, maybe my food cravings have become more fixed as I've gotten older, because when I was in Bolivia and Ecuador I definitely did not "miss" food the way I am now. But I could probably daydream for quite awhile about a PB&J and some cheese curls on a paper towel, a classic in my home in the U.S. With like, a cherry coke. Yeah.
But you know what? Even though I miss what's familiar from home, my host mom here is a stellar cook. There has not been one thing she's served for dinner that I've been like, "Erm...no thanks." It is true that spaghetti and rice makes for a lot of carbs on a plate, but none of the foods I currently miss make for healthy eating all of the time. And I've had memorable meals here that were really meaningful to me, at least, and that I'll remember. It's only the third week, and I just need to give it time to find my favorite foods here. I'm positive that when I go back to the United States, I'll be missin' me some pinto and the chifrijo., Jimmy Buffet
Monday, March 21, 2011
Weather. And more insects.
It's really windy outside. If I shut my eyes, it makes me feel like I'm back at home and the wind is whipping the snow in icy circles around my house. Except! I can also hear bugs hitting the light bulb suspended from the ceiling in my room, and that's definitely not a sound from winters in Pennsylvania.
It was "cold" today, a concept I was ready to accept when I was standing at the bus stop, but upon further reflection might also reveal the extent to which I've been able to integrate in the past three weeks. I could see my breath this morning – it was a surprise to me that it could get that cold in a tropical Central American country. Survivorman would slap me across the face if he read that. "Hypothermia can occur anywhere!" I'm paraphrasing, I think, but that definitely sounds like him. When we left classes later in the afternoon the temperature was probably floating somewhere around the mid 60s F (if it was even that low) and we were standing there – a big, shivering group of gringos that couldn't stop saying, "¡Qué frío!" I have to say, I was prepared for occasional cooler weather when I left the U.S. But in Pennsylvania in mid-February, the idea that one has of what "cool" means in Costa Rica might be a smidge off. I would have been quite comfortable today if I had the scarves and jackets that I chose not to pack because I thought my definition of "chilly" was not all that dynamic. There are posts in Costa Rica that are colder than the communities we are in now, too, or so we've been told.
OH MY WORD. I just had to stop writing for a few minutes while I killed the biggest ant I've ever seen. It was just hanging out on my foot. I need to investigate the area it was probing lest there be some residual ant gross-ness. It took several attempts and a hefty Bible to kill. It is definitely time to get under the covers and go to sleep.
It was "cold" today, a concept I was ready to accept when I was standing at the bus stop, but upon further reflection might also reveal the extent to which I've been able to integrate in the past three weeks. I could see my breath this morning – it was a surprise to me that it could get that cold in a tropical Central American country. Survivorman would slap me across the face if he read that. "Hypothermia can occur anywhere!" I'm paraphrasing, I think, but that definitely sounds like him. When we left classes later in the afternoon the temperature was probably floating somewhere around the mid 60s F (if it was even that low) and we were standing there – a big, shivering group of gringos that couldn't stop saying, "¡Qué frío!" I have to say, I was prepared for occasional cooler weather when I left the U.S. But in Pennsylvania in mid-February, the idea that one has of what "cool" means in Costa Rica might be a smidge off. I would have been quite comfortable today if I had the scarves and jackets that I chose not to pack because I thought my definition of "chilly" was not all that dynamic. There are posts in Costa Rica that are colder than the communities we are in now, too, or so we've been told.
OH MY WORD. I just had to stop writing for a few minutes while I killed the biggest ant I've ever seen. It was just hanging out on my foot. I need to investigate the area it was probing lest there be some residual ant gross-ness. It took several attempts and a hefty Bible to kill. It is definitely time to get under the covers and go to sleep.
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.
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.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Wow. This is awesome.
So...DANG. Where do I begin with this one?
Today is Saturday, March 5th. On February 28th, this past Monday, I reported to my Peace Corps Staging event in Washington D.C. At 12:30 pm. I'm marking out specific days and times because the concept of time has been nearly erased for me this past week and I'm trying to establish in my mind how all of this has come to be. At 2:00 am the next morning the group of Trainees was down in the lobby, loading up bags onto a bus for the airport to catch a flight for Costa Rica. It was go time then and it hasn't stopped since. This week has been a whirlwind of new people, new and old emotions and information. Not to mention the sleeping schedule – waking up at 5:30 am due to ruckus the parrots were making (I know, my life's awful, right?) and going to bed sometime around 9 or 10 pm...well, all of that can make a person's head spin and just forget about time or days.
But man, I can say without reservation that regardless of how mentally whiplashed I feel, I am part of the luckiest group of Peace Corps Trainees on the planet. It would take a lot more than an intense week of Pre-Service Training to distort that one, clear refrain in my mind. Costa Rica is truly a paradise and I've only seen a fraction of it. Claro que not all parts of the country resemble the idyllic resorts that you may typically think of when you hear “Costa Rica”. But today I was sitting on a bus with the other Trainees and looking out the window in wonder as we drove around a bend in the highway and the trees opened up. Out in front of my eyes were green mountains around a green valley and I don't think I'll ever want to see anything else. Maybe it's partly from living through the rough winter back home and I'm overcompensating, but there was definitely something about the sunshine and everything living around us that felt...right. So for me, that's paradise.
And then on the bus we started getting dropped off at our host sites where we'll be for the next ten weeks during training. As each Trainee (“Aspirante” en Español) was dropped off in a group in their host communities, the desire to meet my family grew and grew. There's six of us in the farthest training community, a semi-rural town about an hour and twenty minutes by bus from San José. We're rural enough that they ended up dropping us off one by one. I was not the last (thank goodness or I would have been out my mind with anticipation) and my family lives down a dirt road maybe two minutes walk from the road. I was nervous about getting into conversation with the family, but man. They did that for me. I got all kinds of questions from my eleven year-old and fifteen year-old sisters about my family at home, which telenovelas I like, how old I am and whether or not I have a boyfriend or if I like to drink. My host mom and my host grandmom were sitting in for 20 Questions and I got to ask a lot of stuff about them, too. My host dad was around and you know what a man in a house full of women is like, so I won't go into that, haha. Then my younger sister “helped” me to unpack and we talked for about two hours while I did that.
My very first cafecito with real Ticos followed and I know this is a common thread, but...I am such a lucky Trainee.
So just to wrap this all up, before we left for our families today, the Peace Corps had us thinking about what commitment means to us. I thought a lot about people at home (y'all know who you are) and I think that as much as relationships are a reason to go home, relationships are also what's keeping me here already. There's a definite bond a;ready with the other Trainees which doesn't happen by accident. And knowing that one day I will, I can't wait to start thinking of this host family as my real family. So yeah, that's where I am right now physically, mentally and emotionally.
Oh! And freaking tired. So that's that for now.
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