There are lots of good reasons to do interval training: boosts your metabolism, burns up calories, improves speed and endurance, gets you to the next level, blah, blah blah. When I came here and hurt my hip and wasn't able to run long distances anymore, I pretty much became hooked to interval and body weight strength training workouts. Then, right when I thought this type of exercise couldn't get any better, I discovered that most people were fascinated (and definitely confused) by the local gringa's crazy, spastic, motions in my backyard, and that they secretly wanted to join in on the fun. So when you walk by my house on any given day, at some point you are very likely to see something like the following...enjoy.
Día Internacional de las Mujeres
March 8, 2010¡Feliz Día Internacional de las Mujeres! Happy International Women’s Day! I hope everyone takes a minute to celebrate or at least think about the economic, political and social achievements of women in the past and today, and what we can do to secure equal rights for men and women everywhere in the future. Many of you probably know that Costa Rica recently elected its first female president, Laura Chinchilla. This is a big deal, especially given that Costa Rica is notorious for its machismo culture. Laura didn’t just win- she basically beat the pants off of her male competitors.
Disclaimer: As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I am not allowed to promote any one political party over the other. My decision to recognize her on my blog does not in any way signify that I support her politics, but the fact that the people of Costa Rica elected a female president does represent an achievement on their part, particularly given the disparity between men’s and women’s rights in this country. Therefore, I found this day to be an appropriate forum to provide people at home with some quick facts about Costa Rica’s new president-elect, Laura Chinchilla:
1. Her birthday is the same as my host grandpa’s…March 28. It’s comin’ up!
2. She served as the current administration’s Minister of Justice and one of the two vice presidents to President Oscar Arias.
3. As the National Liberation Party’s 2010 candidate, she won 46.76% of the vote.
4. After receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of Costa Rica she headed to the best city in the world, Washington D.C., to receive her master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University.
5. She’s big on safety, anti-drug and anti-crime policy reform, and is a supporter of free-trade policies which were a big focus of the current administration.
6. Her husband is OLD!!! I mean, he’s a handsome and smart, successful dude, and they seem very happy together, but he definitely looks like her Papa instead of her Poppa.
7. She is a social conservative (one would be hard-pressed to find a social liberal in office here). Last year she participated in the church-organized “March for Life and Family,” which voiced opposition to the legalization of abortion and granting recognition for civil unions to same-sex couples. Civil rights leaders, not so amused by this. Oh and if you’re looking for a morning after pill don’t ask her for one. I plan to talk about all of this with her next time we do coffee….
8. She looks and sounds like she’d be good at arm wrestling.
9. Like most Ticos, she says church and state are like peas and carrots (or rice and beans, cuz they don’t really eat peas and carrots mixed together).
10. Regardless of her politics, she worked her butt off to get to where she is today, and is an inspiration to many women and girls in Costa Rica who now feel more powerful or capable of following their dreams.
Gallo Pinto and Ruining Delicious Foods
Rice and beans – when cooked with some garlic, onions, peppers, cilantro and Lizano English Sauce even the hungriest, most active person is nourished, satisfied, and still left with enough money to buy that weekly lottery ticket. This is probably why “gallo pinto” is part (or all) of nearly every tico meal. Gallo pinto is the most traditional of all Costa Rican dishes. The word gallo means rooster and pinto means speckled/spotted. When the broth or caldo from the beans is mixed with the rice, the combination is the color of a speckled rooster. It is often served with fried plantains (which sometimes have squeaky tico cheese melted on top) and an egg that is fried or scrambled.
Another look at these ingredients might cause one to ask, “If Ticos live mostly off of rice and beans, why are diabetes, heart disease and cholesterol problems so prevalent?” It’s all about the ways things are cooked here: fried, fried, and fried a lil more. Gallo pinto, for example, is usually prepared in the morning using the rice and beans left over from dinner, but instead of leaving it as is to heat it up, it is fried in oil or margarine. It pains me on a regular basis to see people ruining foods that are healthy and delicious in their natural form by cooking them in a way that destroys their nutritive value. Not only is it unlealthy, it's more expensive!
Just take the preparation of white rice, for example. Most Ticos have a rice cooker, the advantage of which is my opinion is that you can make perfect rice without having to add any fat. You just add water, right? A tico would tell you, “wrong.” My host mom adds a half stick of margarine AND vegetable oil AND lots of salt to the rice cooker. The rice tastes good, but I would argue that it would taste just as delicious minus the 3,000 added calories. I’d rather get those extra calories from some ice cream and cookies. I went to a friend’s house for dinner the other day and she was making her own tomato sauce for pasta. I was stoked about the sauce until I saw her pull out a tube of lard and put half of it in a saucepan. I thought to myself, “Surely she’s not gonna….” I then watched in shock and sorrow as the delicious and healthy tomato sauce died a slow, painful death in the hydrogenated animal fat. It took all my strength not to scream out, “No!!!! Why?????? Why????????”
Why does this happen? I would argue for two main reasons: strong tradition and failure to actively seek out quality information. I love and fully respect that tradition is at the core of the Tico value system. Families are united, children learn to respect their elders and help around the house (well, girls do anyway), and everyone takes pride in all things and activities that are purely “Tico.” While having strong traditions is all fine and good, but it can get one into trouble if new ways of doing things are not also taken into consideration. Besides the trashy newspapers, people in my town basically never read, and while I cannot speak for other areas of Costa Rica, I’ve been told that this is very true throughout the country. It’s not that they cannot read (the literacy rate is over 97%), but it is not a part of their daily lives. Most of the information they receive comes from the television, which we all know is not the best source for accurate information. Today my host mom provided the perfect example of how misinformed people are about food due to what they hear on TV (she actually provides perfect examples of this all the time, bless her heart): She put a stick of margarine in a saucepan to make mashed potatoes and literally said to me (exact translation), “This doesn’t have any fat. It’s a healthy alternative to butter.” I politely told her that it did in fact have fat, and she gave me her usual, “Do you think so?” as though I was offering an opinion and not a fact. This type of conversation happens ALL the time here when it comes to conversations about food and exercise.
I guess my point is that it's a shame that Costa Rica, which is a Mecca of a million fruits and vegetables, has the potential to offer its people the healthiest of foods at a very low price, has medical professionals, large corporations, and a government that just don't seem to be making the necessary effort to provide people with the information they need to live healthier lives. I know this happens in the States as well, but even in some of the poorest areas back home there is better access to accurate information about nutrition and exercise than there is here. There are also more fast food restaurants and opportunities to live an unhealthy lifestyle in the States, but at least the information to life healthier is in exsistence.
I always try to incorporate nutrition and exercise information in my projects and daily conversations when appropriate, and take advantage of the fact that people often seek me out for this kind of information. It's a slow process but there are lots of people in my host family, exercise classes, and schools who have taken big steps to become healthier and are thrilled about the results. Women in my exercise class are now showing up 30 minutes BEFORE class to jump rope with me. My host newphew who never used to eat anything that wasn't white rice and egg now LOVES fruit (apparently because his gringa auntie does). My host parents caught on to my addiction to apples, and often reach for those instead of a fried empanada in the afternoon (they still eat plenty of empanadas, but still...it's something).
To get off my soap box, here’s a healthy recipie for making gallo pinto, which really is delicious. Costa Ricans usually make it with black beans, but sometimes with red beans (which is more common in Nicaragua). Go all out and have it with plantains and an egg. Hot sauce is also an excellent choice. ¡Buen provecho!
English, English, English
If I'm being completely honest, I would have to say that I do not like teaching English. I have an adult English class, and I adore them, and once I am in class I thoroughly enjoy myself, but if the work I did was completely up to me and not a function of community needs I would not teach English. Seeing as every single day about 5 new people ask me to teach them English I think I deserve it to the community to at least offer it a lil bit. I have my adult class (which also has some high school students) and my kindergarten classes and I try to leave it at that...until recently, that is.
These last few weeks have marked the end of summer vacation for the kids here, which means that the new school year is about to begin, which means that anyone who didn't pass a particular subject has one last chance to pass by taking an exam the week before classes begin. Seeing as English classes here are often taught by people whose English needs a lot of work (I give them all the credit in the world for their attempts, but I've gotta tell it like it is), lots of students struggle with the material. Many depend on the "last chance" exam at the beginning of the year in order to move on to the next grade level, and now that there is actually a gringa in town they turn to lucky ducky me.
Most of the students waited until mere days before needing to take the exam, so I was already committed to other work and could not help them, and others came earlier but lost steam after a while and I don't know what happened to them. One student, however, made all of the hours spent on my not-so-favorite topic completely and totally worth it. We will call her Mari.
When Mari first came to my house to study, I could not believe she was about to enter the 8th grade, not because she wasn't smart, because she obviously was, but because it meant she had been taking English since first grade (as do all students here) and appeared to have never learned a single word. I had my work cut out for me. We started going over all of her past tests and I taught her every study skills trick in the book. I often notice that kids here really just aren't taught how to study. The concept of notecards, for example, was completely foreign to Mari, and she couldn't believe how quickly she learned the vocab once we started using them. It was fun for me to watch her progress, and althogh I must admit I was not always excited about another English lesson, her persistance and work ethic inspired and motivated me to work hard for her. I became just as determined as she was to pass this exam, and we knocked out session after session, often studying for 3 hours at a time without stopping.
The day before her exam she came for one last tutoring session. She was nervous and although I certainly didn't tell her, I was too. She had come so far in just a few weeks, but was it really possible to learn all the material from the year in that time? I showed her nothing but unwavering confidence as we put everything away at the end of our session, and told her to go home and relax and not study anymore.
The rest of that day and the day of the exam I was completely distracted, dying to know how it went. In the afternoon she came to my house to deliver the news...she passed!!! She was literally shaking with joy. Not only did she pass, she got a B, which was WORLDS away from the grades on the old tests we studied. Seeing how proud she was of herself after such hard work was a beautiful thing, and I felt every ounce of her happiness. The usually quiet and timid Mari suddenly couldn't speak fast enough as she rattled off all the details of the day, from her nerves and prayers the night before, to her excitement and shock that she only had to look up 4 words in the dictionary during the test, and the anxiety-ridden hours of waiting between taking the exam and finding out her grade. She was adorable about thanking me for helping her, telling me that she was still going to make me something and give me a card, but she couldn't wait until she finished those things to tell me how it went.
I think that maybe after this experience I can look at teaching English in a different way. Even though it is not something I particularly enjoy as a job in itself, nothing is more enjoyable than doing work that affects others in a positive and meaningful way, and if teaching English does that, then how could I not feel motivated to do it? Will this make teaching Enligh my new favorite job? No, but it does help me to stay positive about it.
These last few weeks have marked the end of summer vacation for the kids here, which means that the new school year is about to begin, which means that anyone who didn't pass a particular subject has one last chance to pass by taking an exam the week before classes begin. Seeing as English classes here are often taught by people whose English needs a lot of work (I give them all the credit in the world for their attempts, but I've gotta tell it like it is), lots of students struggle with the material. Many depend on the "last chance" exam at the beginning of the year in order to move on to the next grade level, and now that there is actually a gringa in town they turn to lucky ducky me.
Most of the students waited until mere days before needing to take the exam, so I was already committed to other work and could not help them, and others came earlier but lost steam after a while and I don't know what happened to them. One student, however, made all of the hours spent on my not-so-favorite topic completely and totally worth it. We will call her Mari.
When Mari first came to my house to study, I could not believe she was about to enter the 8th grade, not because she wasn't smart, because she obviously was, but because it meant she had been taking English since first grade (as do all students here) and appeared to have never learned a single word. I had my work cut out for me. We started going over all of her past tests and I taught her every study skills trick in the book. I often notice that kids here really just aren't taught how to study. The concept of notecards, for example, was completely foreign to Mari, and she couldn't believe how quickly she learned the vocab once we started using them. It was fun for me to watch her progress, and althogh I must admit I was not always excited about another English lesson, her persistance and work ethic inspired and motivated me to work hard for her. I became just as determined as she was to pass this exam, and we knocked out session after session, often studying for 3 hours at a time without stopping.
The day before her exam she came for one last tutoring session. She was nervous and although I certainly didn't tell her, I was too. She had come so far in just a few weeks, but was it really possible to learn all the material from the year in that time? I showed her nothing but unwavering confidence as we put everything away at the end of our session, and told her to go home and relax and not study anymore.
The rest of that day and the day of the exam I was completely distracted, dying to know how it went. In the afternoon she came to my house to deliver the news...she passed!!! She was literally shaking with joy. Not only did she pass, she got a B, which was WORLDS away from the grades on the old tests we studied. Seeing how proud she was of herself after such hard work was a beautiful thing, and I felt every ounce of her happiness. The usually quiet and timid Mari suddenly couldn't speak fast enough as she rattled off all the details of the day, from her nerves and prayers the night before, to her excitement and shock that she only had to look up 4 words in the dictionary during the test, and the anxiety-ridden hours of waiting between taking the exam and finding out her grade. She was adorable about thanking me for helping her, telling me that she was still going to make me something and give me a card, but she couldn't wait until she finished those things to tell me how it went.
I think that maybe after this experience I can look at teaching English in a different way. Even though it is not something I particularly enjoy as a job in itself, nothing is more enjoyable than doing work that affects others in a positive and meaningful way, and if teaching English does that, then how could I not feel motivated to do it? Will this make teaching Enligh my new favorite job? No, but it does help me to stay positive about it.
It's the Simple Things: Watching the Moon
The other night I was in my house, feeling angry with myself for not doing enough work this holiday break. My head was flooded with ideas for projects, but instead of organizing them into a concrete plan I just continued to ruminate and obsess, which was obviously getting me nowhere. As I stared at the pile of manuals in my room, knowing that all of them could help me but not knowing where to begin, the electricity suddenly went out. The usual screams from the children in the neighborhood came and went rapidly and then there was nothing but silence and darkness. I started to reach for my flashlight when I noticed that outside of my window the street remained dimly lit. Intrigued, I forgot about the flashlight and my work and stepped outside. Directly in front of our house, nearly at eye level, stood the largest, brightest moon I have ever seen. I was struck by its beauty and size, and for a while could do nothing other than stand there, staring. I quickly felt the stress and anger and negativity I had been feeling melt away, leaving me in peace.
Just then, my host nephew came over and without saying anything gave me a big hug. We walked over to abuelo’s big rocking chair on the front lawn and sat together, memorized by the enormous globe in the sky, which was made all the more apparent by the fact that there were no other lights as far as the eye could see. Then, as if I wasn’t already happy enough, my host nephew says to me, “Morgan, did God turn off all the lights so we could see the pretty moon He made for us?”
At that point I had taken a complete 180-degree turn from frustration with myself to realization that I am not only here to work, but also to live, and be, and in that moment I felt more alive than I can ever remember. Pura vida.
First Lesson Learned in 2010
First lesson learned in 2010: Do not try to bike to the top of a mountain when you 1) have no cycling skills 2) have no brakes 3) are by yourself 4) have no cycling skills and 5) are using your PC issued bike made of lead.
It was not funny to me at the time, but anyone watching me the other morning would have had a real good time. I think I actually rode about 40% of the entire trip, and that would (sadly enough) include the descent. Only one of my brakes even remotely worked (and just barely), my bike chain was bone dry, and the bootleg road was composed of nothing but loose rocks which caused my wheels to slide anytime I so much an inched the handlebars to one side or the other.
I had never taken my bike on this route but when I hike this mountain the best part of the journey is to turn around and enjoy the beautiful view of my entire town. Not this day. My goal when I started was to actually cycle (using the pedals and stuff) to the top, however my butt hadn’t seen the seat since I reached the base of the mountain. On top of my disappointment in myself, I saw the cavernous rocky structure that lay ahead of me to make my decent on the other side. Taking these into account, instead of enjoying the view I said out loud (all by myself on a beautiful mountain top), "%^&* the view," and started the decent, which was much worse than the climb.
I forgot when I planned (or neglected to plan) this little outing that the other side of the mountain is not exactly bike-able (especially, again, with no cycling skills or brakes). The first part is purely made of deep craters and high grasses where, of course, all the poisonous snakes like to play. Due to the craters I had to carry the 4 million pound bike on my shoulders and, due to the possibility of snakes, ran (although you prolly can’t call it that) down the steep, uneven slope to reach the “road,” which was not close-by. I did this while making whimpering noises and nearly passing out from panic because if a nasty snake did bite me I was pretty sure that the only other animal besides me on this mountain, a big white bull, was not going to help me. Once I arrived at the at the road I destroyed my wrist trying to use the one brake that sort-of-but-not-really worked, which also made the most awful sound (if you listed closely almost sounded like, “you are duuuuuuuuuumbbbbb for doing this!!!!”).
I'm glad I didn't die that morning. I should prolly get a different bike, and stronger legs.
The Road to Water: First Step, Throw a Party
Many people who live in the shantytown are ready and willing to work, and that is great, but people willing to work do not always successfully work together. In order for them to raise enough money to get water in their community, they are going to need to work together as they never have before. I decided that a Christmas Party would be a good practice project for testing out our teamwork skills. Everyone would need to pitch in to raise money for food, games, decorations and then to cook, find materials for and facilitate activities, set everything up, take everything down, etc. When I presented the idea to the community they were definitely all on board. One idea that got thrown in was to try to find presents for all of the children. I knew this would be an incredible amount of work, but if they wanted to work together to find presents for the poorest children in my town, I wasn’t about to turn down the idea.
In Peace Corps, we are not allowed to privately solicit gifts/donations, so my role became the motivator/cheerleader to get people moving and organized (which is in fact slower, more difficult, and quite frankly more frustrating than asking for donations myself, but it builds character and stuff). Peace Corps does this in part to ensure that all the development is coming from within the community. For the same reason, we have very heavy limitations on soliciting funds from the United States (we are to train and motivate local people to fund their own projects, not to write letters home to grandma and grandpa asking for handouts).
Keeping these regulations in mind, I got together with my partner-in-begging-for things, Guiselle, and we came up with a list of every business in the area. We also made a list of people we personally knew in the community who could help us out. Guiselle also works for a development associasion, and (because I am not allowed to) they wrote letters asking for funds from local businesses. We then held a meeting with the people in the shantytown in order to divide up responsibility of going to the local businesses on the list to ask for their support.
I got my adolescent group involved, and helped them to ask local people for support. They were very much a part of the party, which is great for their own experience in service to their community and also is a way for other people in the shantytown to see that their young people are doing positive things (they didn’t always have such a positive reputation among their neighbors).
Sparing you the painful details of the nearly month-long preparations, we were able to assure that every child received a present on Christmas. The best part is that we did not solicit the gifts from “Rich Uncle Bob” in the States, or from any single big corporation or foundation (not that there is anything wrong with that). All of the help and support came purely from local people, most of whom did not even know that the shantytown existed in their own community. In addition, we acquired enough food so that EVERYONE in the community was able to eat rice with chicken and pork (the most traditional of Tico party dishes), tortillas, cake, and refreshments.
The kids got their faces painted, played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and pin-the-nose-on-the-clown, received goodie bags, had sack races and foot races, and enjoyed ice cream cones donated by the municipality. My group of adolescents served as DJs and helped run the activities. My favorite part of the whole day was in the morning when I arrived to help set up and found about 10 women in one family’s kitchen, cooking more food than any of us had ever seen all at one time. Seeing the smiles on their faces and the beautiful colors of the tomatoes, green beans, rice, beans, cilantro, onions, garlic, carrots, and spices was by far one of the most special moments for me as a volunteer. Many of them also appeared very anxious, but even that made me happy because it showed how much they wanted this event to be a success. I spent the morning making signs for all of the activities with the younger children, decorating and setting up the sound system with the teenagers, and making sure that the women cooking and other people helping to decorate had everything they needed.
This community was working together, and all of these materials and food were here because of that teamwork and the generosity of other people in our town. We partied all afternoon, and then I stayed around to clean up and enjoy the company of the people and bask in the success of our hard work. The whole day was long and exhausting, and planning this event was filled with lots of stress, running around like a crazy person, and things falling through, but it will forever remain as one of my best memories during my time here. They may not have been thinking about how this would help us gain water in the community, but it was very much on my mind throughout the process. I am now even more confident that we will be able to work as one unit in order to achieve this bigger, more complicated goal, as the experience of planning and executing the Christmas party gave us good practice and a chance to make mistakes on a smaller scale. Now it’s time to learn from the mistakes made and find success as we fry this much bigger fish – running water for 300 people. BUISINESS TIME!!!
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