Thursday, November 27, 2008

happy thanksgiving, gringos!

i thought i would try to post again before i leave the city. i'm here in san jose with some other volunteers for thanksgiving... a couple who work for the US embassy invited us to dinner and we ended up going with them to another embassy official's house where there were about 20 of us - almost all of them working for the embassy. everyone was SUPER welcoming and nice and the food was great. and it was just real nice for us to feel so comfortable there.

so i go back to my site tomorrow and have a busy few days coming up. tomorrow i have to give the oral part of the english test to my adults and then this weekend is our fiesta weekend. we have dances, futbol games, bull riding and running, and lots of food sales. it'll be my first bull action so i'm excited to see that. then the mayor comes to meet with us about fixing our roads. the rainy season here is really attacking this country and, compared to limon and other towns, our town is being let off super well. buuut, the river is real full and everyone is worried about it overflowing. sooo, the municipality got us these huge round cylinder like things that are somehow gonna prevent the flooding...we'll see what the mayor has to say about all this. thennn, im gonna meet with some ladies from fuerza y luz who, i'm hoping, are gonna work with us to get a playground, or parque infantil, in my town. im real excited about this project so hopefully it'll go well. then i have my host nephews baptism slash birthday... so, it should be a pretty full next few days.

the point is, happy thanksgiving! i hope the turkey was great and everyone is sleeping safe and sound in the food comas :)

Friday, November 14, 2008

whoops, forgot 2 pictures

i went to volcano arenal with my school...heres a group picture and then you can see the volcano erupting.


...celebran la vida, celebran la vida...

¨celebran la vida¨is a song that means celebrate life that the kindergardeners are learning for their graduation in december. and i thought it would be a good title for some of the photos i´m posting...
not too long ago, we had an all volunteer conference where all 90 something volunteers met at a campsite, got to know each other, and received some more training. most of us went a day early to be together on election day and get some cable. that will explain the first picture and first celebration. the next one is from the halloween party we had at our training. there i am in the middle celebrating yet another huge success!! then, you´ll find a picture of a new bridge and one then one that fell 13 years ago. the only bridge connecting us to the next town over is FINALLY almost done after more than a decade of needing it. motorcycles and people can now cross and we just have a little more to do before cars can cross too. and finally, you´ll see me modeling lovely botas that are completely necessary in these rainy months. buuuut, it looks like the rain maaay be dying down, the sun is shining, and my feet are nice and dry. so, there you have it. there are a lot of celebrations in order!
in other news, we are having another futbol tournement in my town, this time out in the outdoor plaza. the women and i from the womens group are going to sell food to make some money for the group. so that´ll keep us busy for the next 14 sundays, haha. we also will be having festivals in our town at the end of the month which should be quite an experience. we are also head deep in project proposals for a medical facility in our town so hopefully there will be good news soon with that. soooo, hope all is well with everyone back home. keep up the phone calls and start checking on flights to come visit!! :)