I'm BAAACK

Bienvenidos  Todos!

Well having pressure to start a blog again, here it goes!

So I arrived in Costa Rica on the 5^th of June. So say I was an excited is an understatement. I had so many emotions and thoughts’ running through my head it’s not even funny. We had staging in Washington DC the day before and my group seemed pretty chill. There were definitely some Alphas from the first minute of us knowing each other. One immediate thing that bonded some of us together was the book “Fifty Shades of Grey” by EL James. About 4 other people and I all bought the book and from there on started a really relaxed relationship based on the fact we could laugh and talk about sex without the awkwardness that comes with normal life co-workers. After arriving we were taken to Tres Rios to start our Orientation. There isn’t much I need to say about that, besides every hour I would get up and walk around due to the fact the shit was MAD boring and I cannot sit still for that amount of time.

I was placed in the Spanish level Novice High, which didn’t surprise me. I hadn’t spoken Spanish and gods know how long and was pretty rusty. I’m sure people were not happy with their placements but as I always say with things such as Language, art and music, it’s all very individual and one cannot judge based on a wack ass test. My training community was Cooperativa, which was a small little cute community, BUT I live 30 mins away in San Isidro Centro. Right off the back I felt isolated from my sector because they all lived near each other and all hung out. On the other hand I grew close with the other sector in my cohort Community Economic Development. I probably forgot to mention that I am in the Youth Development Sector.

Ok now to be ADD and talk about that really fast. When I was applying, I was originally suppose to be in the Medical Sector based on my background of volunteering with an AIDS organization in Seattle and my major which was Medical Anthropology. I was supposed to leave for Eastern Europe in August of 2011, but on the account of laziness (not turning in medical papers for a few months), I got placed in Costa Rica for Youth Development. No big deal since I had been working with youth my entire working career minus Lowes and actually countless other jobs I have held. I figured I could just morph health into whatever I was doing in CR.

For 11 weeks we trained in these communities. Training was long, boring and I was completely done and sick of it by week 2. Jaja, no but really I just wasn’t having so much fun. I had really made that tight of friends with the expectation of a few people and wasn’t really feeling my YD sector. Anyone who knows me know I like to geek out on economical/racial/class/injustice stuff so it was hard not talking about that stuff. There were a few occasions during training when conversations would get heated in a good way but we got cut off by our PM or PMA because we didn’t have time, which was extremely discouraging. No pasa nada though. Finally got to swearing in and finally in my site starting my CASA. I am living in Sixaolo, Talamanaca in the Limon Providence. I should actually say that I live in Panama, since it is literally one minute away. I am pretty excited about being here but it's going to be a hard ass two years.