safe and sound in my new home

Well, it’s been a while since I posted a blog with anything more than pictures so it’s about time for that. I’ve been in my new community for a little more than a week now, and I’m really enjoying myself. I’ve been spending my days meeting a ton of new people each day and taking in the gorgeous sites. And, on Tuesday nights they show Grey’s Anatomy on tv so, how could I complain??

I’ve learned a lot in the last week, too. Everything from new Spanish words to how to get frogs out of the house at night. I have also observed a lot of interesting tendencies that we were told about but that I hadn’t really seen so much in my training community. I don’t want to say it’s a characteristic of people in rural communities, because that would be wrong and I’d be guilty of the same thing. But, a number of people that I have met tend to generalize people into specific groups. For example, “Chinos (people from China – although they would call a person from Vietnam ‘Chino’ as well) eat cats and dogs all the time” or “your parents must be really good lawyers because they are Jewish”. It’s an interesting phenomenon and I’m not exactly sure yet how I’m going to confront it, if at all. I think part of it has to do with the education here. For those in elementary school, it is very limited because they only have a few hours a day. Also, since there are only 2 teachers for 6 grades, many grades are mixed in classes, which again, limits what they can learn. The teachers seem to be doing really well with what they are given but, unfortunately, it’s not a lot.

So, clearly this leaves me with a ton of things I’d like to do in this community. And I’m sure a lot more will come up as I live here longer. But, when it comes to education, I’d like to do a lot of out-of-school things to help these kids learn a little more; things like life-skills, sports clubs, girls groups, book clubs, and so on. They also all want English classes, since they are not getting this in school either. The second part of my job has to do with organizational development. Under this goal, I will be working with all the committees and associations that are formed to help them in the projects they want to do. We will hopefully be able to get a medical center built here so that a doctor can come to our town more than once a month. Other things they have mentioned so far include improving the roads and bridges, working on finishing the church, and so on. Finally, the third part of RCD jobs is that of economic development. This will consist of trying to create more jobs for people in the town. We definitely need to work on this since there are very few jobs available in our community. This might get done by working in rural or eco-tourism. I’m obviously not so sure how we’re going to do this one yet but, hopefully we’ll come up with something. If you have any ideas or suggestions for any of these, I’d love to hear them!

Well, here are some pictures from my first week here. There are a few of the green-ness and then a bunch from a reinado (kind of like a beauty pageant) that we had this past weekend. It was for younger girls and boys and then grandmoms and grandpops. The older woman that won is my host grandmom. There is a picture with her and her 2 daughters (my host mom is the one on the left in pink). Then there´s one of her grandkids and great-grandkids. You´ll also see a picture of the 4 winners and one of a some younger kids. I hope you enjoy!

swearing in ceremony!!

last friday, we all become peace corps volunteers!! the swearing in ceremony was at the ambassador's house from the US embassy so it was absolutely gorgeous. here are some pictures that we took...it was nice to see us all looking nice for once, since we're so used to rolling out of bed, throwing on the same clothes every day, and heading to classes.



ladies in black.














here's my host family at the ceremony.














here are the four of us from my training community. don't we all just look great??













and here we are: Tico 18 RCD :)














thank goodness for bagelman's, the only bagel store in this country. this probably made the rankings for the best day ever.
















of course after a day like that, with graduation and bagels involved, celebrating was in order.










some of my favorite tico 18 CYFers...











and finally, some other RCDers who have been in the country anywhere from 2 years to a year.

training is almost over!

so here are a few more pictures for you to take a look at. right now, im at the peace corps office for our final interviews and stuff. the swearing in ceremony is this friday! which means noon-time on friday, i'll finally be a peace corps volunteer. crazy! then i am moving to my new site on monday. im super excited to get there and meet everyone who i haven't met yet and get to know my new host family better and stuff. so anyway, just wanted to post some last photos from training. there should be more to come from our swearing in ceremony, though. so keep checking back!

here's a picture of all 18 of us from RCD.

the rest of these pictures are from the family party we had for our host families. here is team rio conejo! we did the relay races together :)


heres my host family when they got the certificate from peace corps :)

here is a picture of all of us from my training community. there are us 4 volunteers (me, matt, kelsey and megan) and then all of our families.

and here is the infamous water fight that we had at the family party. none of us left any less than absolutely soaked....and it was started by a host family!

just to make you jealous....

here are some photos of where i´ll be living, some birthday festivities, and peace corps training fun. i cant believe its almost over. at this time next week, i will just have been sworn in as a peace corps volunteer. nuts!





this is the soccor field at my new site. my house is just on the other side of it, too.



thats volcan arenal in the left corner. as you can see, i have a perfect view of it from my site.



here is a picture from a trip to the river during my visit. i went with these two young girls and my host mom.



this is called a maca or puente de amaca. its one of those foot bridges that shake when you walk on them. its sooo fun. when you all come to visit, ill take you here!



here´s a picture from my surprise birthday party that my tico friends and rio conejo friends threw for me. here i am hitting the elmo piñata they got me.

look how great megan is and the wonderful cake she made me for my birthday.

here we are perfecting the kareoke skills we have all learned over the last few months. this is from one of our rcd parties...

this is the group of costa ricans that i, and the others from rio conejo, have been hanging out with. this is the night of my birthday. we went to a bar to watch a soccor game and celebrate.

here victoria saved my life with a bagel recipe. and it was soooo good. so good thing i dont have to go 2 years without bagels. im not sure if i would have made it then....

more to come....

home sweet home

well, they don´t exactly say that here but oh well. my site is gorgeous. and the people are amazing. im living about 10 miles north of Ciudad Quesada but it takes about an hour to get there on the bus. my town is full of trees and green, lots of cows, tons of people, and lots to do. i cant post pictures right now because im at the slow internet but when i can, i will. and you´ll see how amazing it actually is.
my host family is great too. i will be living with a 43 year old woman and her 94 (!) year old mother. they are both super nice. also, one of the mom´s many sisters lives right below us and has 6 kids. and they all live within a minute radius of the house. so there are tons of people to hang out with... and tons of kids!
it is a pretty developed small town with electricity, running water, a mini store, church, common room with a basketball court and soccor field, a place for meetings and parties, a bar, and thats about it. there are 2 rivers that run through the town with some good swimming options and some of those wlaking bridges that you can shake as you cross called macas.

so i am back in my training site and will be here until May 16th, which is our swearing in ceremony. its unclear exactly what happens after that but, on May 19th, i think, i move to my new site. so until then, you can use the same phone number to reach me. i also have a new address at my new site:

Emily Fisk Haimowitz (it has to match the name on my passport...well maybe it doesnt but better safe than sorry)
Apartado 105-4400
21001/4400
Ciudad Quesada
Costa Rica

so keep on sending lots of mail and packages. its super appreciated. also, thanks so much for all the birthday wishes. i had a really good few days celebrating my birthday with my new host family, old host family, PCVs, and my Tico friends. and it was also so great to hear from so many of you all. and i can´t wait to hear from you all again!

i know where i´m going to be living!!!

site assignment day was yesterday! here are a few of the many picture we took. i got placed in a small town of about 500 people not too far from a pretty popular tourist destination. im really excited to go visit it next weekend...ill be there from april 25th to the 30th. so yes, ill be able to celebrate part of my birthday with my new host family.

i really dont know too much else about my site right now but will definitely post more when i get back from my site visit!

here we are anxiously awaiting our fates. this is from yesterday, site assignment day. its this really fun day where we go to a country club like place with a hot tub and pool! all 53 of us sat in this big room as they told us, one by one, where we will be living.

ok, so we were a litttttle excited about getting our site assignments. we get to go visit our new sites this coming weekend!

so this is where i´m going to be living. up north, about 4 hours from san jose in a small town. ill be pretty close to volcan arenal and lake arenal. look at up. and then get excited to come visit me!!

exploring costa rica!

I just got back from an awesome field visit – my first of 3. My group (RCD) got split into 2 groups of 9 and we each went to visit 2 current Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) and their sites. So 9 of us went to the province of Guanacaste where we went to 2 sites super close to Nicaragua. In fact, from the second site, we were able to see Lake Nicaragua! Anyway, it was a really great time. Aside from going to the beach (finally!), a lake, jumping down a waterfall, and hanging out with the other amazing PCVs, we got to see what a REAL rural site looks like. And boy is it crazy. To get to one of the sites, for example, we took the 5 hour bus from San Jose to La Cruz in Guanacaste. From there, we took a school bus for 45 minutes to another small-ish city. Then, we took this cattle truck thing (a huge open air truck that would literally be used to transport cattle) on a dirt road (that had just been constructed 5 years ago) for 45 minutes to get to the volunteer’s site. I stayed in a house without electricity or warm water, became one with dirt, and learned how to make pasteles de arroz con pollo (look it up). I have lots of stories about frogs in toilets, humongous spiders, the biggest pig I’ve ever seen, and WAY too many roosters to sleep.

While we were visiting the second site, we also got a chance to each talk one-on-one with our boss to talk about what we think we’d like in a site, what kind of jobs we’d be interested in doing, and so on. So it was really nice to be able to give some input into where I’ll be living for the next 2 years. Now we’re all so anxious to find out our site assignments! But, we still have a few weeks til then. The good news is, my ankle made it through all the hikes and traveling. Those PTs really knew what they were talking about!

Next weekend is our next field visit. This time we will be going alone to visit a current volunteer. I will be going to Alajeula. After that, we will have another interview and then, two weeks from yesterday (the friday before Passover), we find out our site placements! Nuts, huh?

Anyway, here are a bunch of pictures from our field visit to Guanacaste. I still dont know exactly how to format the page so ill just tell you all about the pictures here. The first picture is my host parents doing kareoke, haha. Then you can see some of us PCVs doing kareoke at a bar in San Jose. The two pictures of the river are from the first site we got to visit. It was the only way to stay cool! Next youll see some interesting animal pictures all from our first site. they only thing ill add to the pictures is to tell you that the frog was living in the toilet of Jake and my homestay. Next comes pictures from the beach - Playa Soley. Theres one of all 9 of us with the amazing view. The land on the right, by the way, is Nicaragua. Then youll see our mode of transportation to our second site, which happens to be a cattle truck thing. The picture of me with another PCV and 2 young girls is at one of our homestays at our second site that we visited. They were super cute. The guy with the leaf hat is my boss. And isnt that waterfall awesome? It took quite a hike to get there but it was def worth it. We got to climb up it kind of and jump off, it was awesome! You can also seem so gorgeous views from the second site.

OK, I think that about covers it. Hope everyone is doing well! Miss you all.
(And keep up the calls, emails and letters!)