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  Cobano, Province of Puntarenas, Costa Rica
Saturday, December 10, 2011

Buenas Tardes, from sunny Costa Rica.  With my doors and windows open, allowing a pleasant breeze to check out my pad I feel very blessed right now.  If feeling a little blue ( a rare occurrence out here) all I need to do is look outside my bedroom window to see the happily playing chickens, bright colours of the tropical plants and the glow of the warm sun.  Costa Ricans have been claimed to be the happiest people on the planet  and I suspect the glorious weather and laid back lifestyle is largely to thank for this.  What a gift to be living amongst happy people whom seem so darn content with their simple lives, it sure is infectious!  The weather is quite literally predictably
wonderful - daily!  Coming from the UK and suffering so badly with constant pain for years, largely due to the cold, it feels that by stepping out my door each day I am given a big hug and the miracle is that PAIN is no longer part of my daily vocab.  WOOHOO!! I've done more physical activity out here in 4months than I have in 5years in the UK.  I now take part in weekly yoga and Zumba classes (how has this taken me so long to discover?) and yesterday I even played my first game in years, of football, during a staff and parents vs kids match.  So gratitude seems not a strong enough word for me right now.

I am staying and have been for the last 8 weeks, in a rather sweet little cabin in the middle of a field in a little town called Cobano.  Cobano is the central hub in this area of the Nicoya Peninsula and where people come to change buses, buy food, visit the bank or post office - you get the picture.  Its been handy staying here as everything is at my fingertips and yet when I'm in my house it still feels very rural.  Its also been easy for me to take weekend trips from here to the coast, where I have been spending considerable time chilling out, taking surf lessons and swimming.
I share my accomodation with the Director of the school where I am working.  Despite struggles with communication (my housemate speaks no English) we have muddled along well and this has been great at forcing me to use my Spanish even when I am tired.  Her constant sweeping has been a tadd irritating and has made me feel on edge a few times but generally I can't complain.   Our home is comfortable and has all the things one needs - a nice little porch for chilling out, WIFI, gas cooker, washing machine, fridge, tin opener - yep we're all kitted out.  We have frequent unwelcomed visitors -Cockroaches, lizards, dive bombing beetles, ants and mosquitos are the main contenders and a frequent reminder that I'm living in the tropics. Hands down the mossies take the prize for worlds biggest arse holes and if it wasn't for my mosquito net and toxic spray I'd be screwed because as night comes these little shites dominate. 

Chickens here are on a whole new level to what I've been used to thus far.  For a start there are more of them and they are way more noisy!!  The cockeral population seems to dominate other birdy species and they seem to fail at their one main task of waking people up as the day begins.  Instead, its basically a constant cockadoodoldoo 24 frickin 7!  A tadd irritating when I 'm trying to make a phonecall or take an afternoon nap.  They do amuse me on the whole however and yesterday saw one chasing a lizard which made me smile. 

Dogs are still in abundance but keep themselves to themselves on the whole, certainly in the area where I live.  The dogs up the road however are a whole different kettle of fish and one morning was literally followed most of the way to work by a possie of hungry dogs.  Not great as I'm not that keen on dogs let alone hungry street ones. 
 

Project wise its been overall a positive experience thus far.  I can't quite believe that after this week I will have been at the school for 8 weeks.  How time flies!  There have been the usual things to adapt too with any new job plus additional things to learn when working in a very relaxed country - 'Tico Time' has been a new concept to learn for me and basically involves not expecting things to be done quickly, if you double or quadrouple the length of time you think something will take you might just be accurate in your estimation.  The school is a fairly new development and thus at times it hasn't always been very clear what the volunteer role entails.  Those of us who volunteer at the school were assigned various tasks at the start of the term that needed organising, which is mostly afternoon slots of leading the extra curricular activities but this has left quite a lot of free time with not alot else to do.  Thankfully I have been busying myself during these quiet times with prep for the classes I do run or assist with.  Have been grateful that as the term has developed one of the more clued up teachers has been keeping us volunteers informed of developments in the school.  Its funny, the school is so tiny and yet at times communication has been incredibly poor - one of many differences I've noticed coming from weekly staff meetings, having minutes from meetings to browse through and a tray to receive notifications.  On the whole however I think the school ticks along quite nicely and the children all appear happy.  The children are taught in both Spanish and English with all the core subjects covered plus the extra curricular ones that myself and the other volunteers run (gardening, drama, PE, Yoga).  The children are offered healthy food throughout the day, have ample space to play and run about and have an awesome playground structure with slide, swings and other climbing bits.  Its not exactly been what I thought I would find when I committed to this project in the UK.  Although in comparison with mainstream schools in the UK its lacking some of the resources I'm used to working with the children here certainly don't go without.  I feel this is due to the fact that it is a private school and most of the children come from wealthy ex-pat homes. They have decent textbooks, pens and pencils, whiteboards up in the classes and regular events such as Science Fairs.  The band of willing, hands on parents lend support both financially and physically and I think this makes a huge difference.  Our Halloween party, the 2nd week I arrived, was a prime example and a quick demonstration that this was not the impoverished, needy school I had imagined it would be.  The Halloween party was incredible!  We had a stream of hardworking mums for days before creating various spooky paraphanalia that on the day of the event it became  a team effort to transform our little school into every childs spooky dream.  We even had our own haunted house in one of the classes - yes way!

With the encouragement of one of the volunteers I work closely with, I have been taking responsibility for organising the school performance that will be performed this coming Thursday at the annual school graduation celebrations. Given all my struggles with the Fear factor, and knowing the very simple solution to this, I wanted to use my experience to create a performance
demonstrating the power of Fear and the solution to that.  A Universal problem with a simple solution - Love, support and sticking together - an apt subject as some of the children are preparing to move on in the school and something that ties in very nicely to the chosen song 'All you need is Love' that will be sung at the end.   I would have loved more time to work on developing my confidence leading drama without the impending performance to work towards but hey -  ho hum, life goes on.  I've done what I can and have learnt loads.  The kids collectively are a lively bunch and there are some great little actors and actresses amoung the rabble.  Following on from work around dreams and who they would like to be when they grow up we have been working on creating a short piece allowing ALL children to own their dream, state their place in this world and who they want to be.  The loose idea is LOVE vs FEAR and I feel that throughout the performance we are working on demonstrating this well.  Our play demonstrates that dreams are possible and sometimes fear comes along to steal those but that with love and support we can all
achieve our dreams if we stick together and don't listen to those horrible fear-based voices. Cliche yes!- a full on cheese fest - indeed!-  but hey - I love it!!  The irony in all this is that the whole play is focused on Love Vs Fear and yet I have, at times, been losing focus of the theme and letting my own worries come in - will we finish in time? do they understand the idea? will the parents
understand? what about props - will they remember to bring them in? the list goes on. Guess I need to listen a little bit more  to my own message and trust that all will be well. This work is enabling me to face my fears and  take responsibility and when I let go of the outcome it has been actually proving to be an enjoyable process. 


I still am a little unsure as to what the rest of my time out here involves. If the school want me back in Feb after their 6week summer break I would very much like to continue leading drama activities and also possibly to start to lead more art-based creativity sessions as this is where I want my focus to lie with respect to working with young people.  I'll keep you posted on the latter once my vision is fully realised.  There have also been other additional projects I've started but not finished such as developing the school library (have big plans for that space) and helping the other volunteers complete our bottle brick Peace bench project.  This has been right up my street and has involved creating bricks by squashing rubbish into plastic bottles rather than into the bin and once it is all compressed it creates a brick which we then plan to use to make a bench.  I have no idea of the construction side of things but to see that bad boy being assembled is reason enough to try and return. 

My Christmas will be an unusual one this year - no family, roast din, crackers or Queenies speech.  I will however be in good company in one of my fav little towns by the sea, Santa Teressa.  Theres chat of a fishy feast and games at the hostel I've booked myself into, so hey - that sounds good to me.

I wish you all a very wonderful festive season whatever you have planned.

Ticket booked home for the 17th April so if anyone fancies a visit before then holla. 

Love to you all, Merry Christmas.

Holly xxx


    

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Preparing to plant melon	Stuffing bottle bricks thus avoiding hard work	Drama	Yoga relaxation
Footy match	Footy match

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