Quest Blogger!

Haha!  I meant to write ''Guest Blogger'' as the title, but you know what?  Quest Blogger might be more accurate.  Stephanie and I just spent the weekend in San José together, occupied by distinct medical concerns.  I've gotten to know Stephanie pretty well, given that she is a volunteer in the Children Youth and Families program (the two programs that arrived at the same time were separated for most of training).  However, she and her husband Chris (who I did get to know throughout training because he's Rural Community Development like me and also like me, is an amazing human being) live in a community not too far from my own and it's given me an opportunity to get to know Steph for which I am forever grateful.

We were in San José when I was reminded of a thought that I had previously that sometimes I'd like to feature guest bloggers so that you can see what other volunteers are up to, feeling, thinking, loving, hating and just generally experiencing.  I think it'll be fun for you all too because it's a way for you to get to know some of the people I'm closest to.  They're my coworkers, but more than that, they're my extended family.
So without further adieu (because this was a lot of adieu)...here's Steph's brainworkings in her own words:

I love cities.  Minneapolis, Chicago, Omaha… and now San Jose, Costa Rica.  I think it’s beautiful.

The streets are a symphony of car horns and street vendors, sometimes accompanied by a descant of rain on asphalt.  The smell is an electric mix of fried food and diesel, unappealing to the appetite but a sensory experience all its own.  The real beauty, though, is the movement.

 Endless lines of cars following each other, flowing down Paseo Colón, the blues and greens and silvers blurring together, here and there a car leaving the flow as another joins, and all of it literally synchronized by the turning of the samáforo. 

Endless lines of people streaming down Avenida Central, the whole avenue seeming to undulate as bodies maneuver around each other to find favorite shops and stalls. 

The plaza filled with pigeons, hopping in syncopation until something frightens them to flight and the syncopation is in one instant overtaken by an almost frightening unity; as of one mind, the whole flock lifts up and circles the plaza in layers (some only two feet off the ground, others nearly twenty) until some imperceptible leader decides it’s safe to land and the syncopation begins again.

And then there you are, in the middle of all of it.  You can’t not become part of this organism.  Even if you stop and stand perfectly still, that only causes the movement to flow around you (which, I suppose, is how I’ve come to see all of this). 

And as beautiful as it is, as much as I loved growing up and living in cities, it still feels amazing to come home to a plate of black beans, white rice, and scrambled eggs in the campo.