I am a returned Peace Corps volunteer

Sitting on the couch of my house in Philadelphia, I am trying to write a last blog entry to sum up my Peace Corps experience and sign off. It's a hard thing to do since I have only been back from Costa Rica for just under a week but, here it goes.

My last few months of Peace Corps was full of finishing up projects, spending time with friends from town, and thinking about what would be next. Living and working in a small rural town in Costa Rica was an incredible experience that I would highly recommend to anyone thinking about joining the Peace Corps. I became a completely integrated part of my town and was looked at as another resident there by the end of my 2 years. I never really expected to create such dynamic and important friendships with locals but that was definitely my favorite, and most memorable, part of my time.

Please feel free to contact me at emilyhaimowitz@gmail.com if you have any questions about the Peace Corps or rural Costa Rica. Thanks for reading over the last 2 years :)

quick hola

I´m not sure why I haven´t written or posted pictures in a while. Time just goes by and I don´t even notice. So, sorry about that. This is a going to be a quick one since I only have a few more minutes at the internet before my bus comes.
My service here ends in just over a month which is very hard to believe. I have loved almost every day of it so it´s going to be a hard thing to leave. The last few months have been the usual work, play, and life. Now I have the job market on mind and a list of to do´s and goodbyes before I leave.
Quickly, holy week was a few weeks ago. That´s the week before Christmas and everyone has off from work on Thursday and Friday of it. Buses don´t run and everything is closed. So I went to Tamarindo beach on Wednesday and stayed until Saturday which was really nice. It´s a beautiful and (but) very developed beach. Other than that and a great visit from the states, life has been pretty much the same. The recycling project we started has turned out to be very successful and the other projects are moving right along.
I hope everyone back home is doing well. I´ll see you all soon!

Happy 2010!

A lot has happened since my last blog post. December here is full of holiday prep. A couple weeks before Christmas, there is an annual festival called festival de la luz in San Jose… it’s kind of like light-up-night. The whole city is decorated in lights and at night, theres a huge parade with tons of floats made out of lights. I will post some pictures next time I get to internet. The 24th at night is the big holiday event with a family dinner full of pork and lots of people. This year I got to share that with my family who came from the snow to the sunshine. Together we made a lot of tamales – the traditional Christmas food wrapped in banana leaves. Christmas here means lots of lights decorating people’s homes, portales (which are the baby jesus scenes that everyone puts in their homes), presents for those who can afford them, a day off from work, and good meals.
A week later comes similar celebrations for New Years. Again, this is mostly celebrated within family settings… parents, grandparents, children, etc have parties in their homes with a big meal as well. I went with some friends in my town to my big city (Ciudad Quesada) where there was a huge concert in the central park with fireworks. There were tons of people dancing to the variety of cumbia, salsa, merengue and reggeaton music. We had a really great time there and got to do the 10-9-8-… countdown.
In December we also had graduation from 6th grade and Kindergarten. We have it in our indoor salon that we decorated with balloons and posters. The kids each year dedicate their graduation to one person and this year they decided to dedicate it to me. So I walked in with them and sat with them during the ceremony. It was a really nice afternoon and I will post some pictures of this too next time I can.
Well, I hope this year is a great one for all. 2010 will be an interesting one for me as I finish my service here in May of this year and then at some point well end up back in the states hopefully working somewhere… OK, hope you all had a great holiday season and are staying warm :) Stay in touch!

happy holidays :)

i hope everyone is (or had) a great hanukah, merry christmas and a happy new year. i will post another blog about my christmas here but now i just wanted to post some websites for you all. these are the blog and website of brooke and donny - the ones that came to my town and worked with us to help us start a recycling project, amongst other great projects like composting and environmental education. they have a great blog about their time here and on their website they talk a lot about their projects here. so check them out... they do some real great work :)
www.growinitiative.org
1love1world.blogspot.com
have a great start to 2010!

a few more...

here are some more pictures. im not really sure why i cant get them in the order i want but oh well. you´ll see the joys of the womens business... chicken farm. here they killed 22 chickens and i unfortuntely took part in the pulling out the feathers part. yuck! theres also some pictures from our schools festivals...like of the tamales that we sold, our ¨mechanical bull¨ if you will, and one of the cement tables and benches by they playground getting cemented in. we have 3 of them in total... there are also 2 pictures of gringos...or people from the states. the girl, brooke, was on semester at sea with me and then did peace corps in jamaica where she met donny. they have been traveling south ever since january and made it to my town about 2 and a half weeks ago. they have been doing a few educational projects with the kids and women about recycling and composting and will be funding our recycling project soon.
oook, enjoy the photos. happy thanksgiving... eat some extra turkey for me :)

some pictures :)

so here´s my last few months in a nutshell...

This is from the first communion in my town.. there were 9 kids getting their first communion...





These next 4 are from our trip to Nicaragua. The first one is on the lago de nicaragua... anyone want to buy an island on the Nicaragua Lake?? Next you´ll see the absolutely beautiful Laguna de Apoyo... id definitely recommend it if you´re gonna make your way down here. Then you´ll see the active volcano that we hiked up and then sandboarded down. nuts! Finally theres a shot of all of us in Leon. Id def recommend a trip to nicaragua!

so, clearly october and november have been busy as well since i haven´t gotten a chance to update in some time. i will try to get back soon to post some pictures... in october, i spent a week traveling in nicaragua with a few other ladies of tico 18 which was super nice. the rest of the time has been getting some more projects done in my town. we have almost finished the medical center, gotten the playground fenced in and accompanied by some tables and benches, and have legalized the womens group. this past weekend was a school fair where we had a bingo, food sales, a beautyish competition for the kids, and lots of sales of old clothes, plants, etc. they even made a mechanical bull using one of those big metal trashcans. we´ve also had a few dances and soccer tournaments and are planning fiestas for the end of january. so whoever wants to see some bull running, you should come the last weekend in january haha. the women´s association has some businesses that are going well, one being a chicken farm. tomorrow we have to go kill a bunch of chickens, ick. oh and boy and girl scouts has been up and running as well. so all in all things have been really successful recently. theres a lot more to do in these last 6 months (crazy!!) like getting the library up and running, working with the rest of the womens businesses, getting our recycling project working, trying to fight to get a computer lab, and lots more. any ideas are welcomed hahaha.
check back soon for some pictures. also, come visit!