Visitors!!!!!!!

VISITORS!!!!!!!!!
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Katie Pastorious came down to visit Ian Ritz (who works as a journalist in Playa del Coco) and me and we all spent the weekend exploring the beaches and bars along the NW coast of Costa Rica.

Romina and Marina... (see Nicaragua trip entry)

Flat Aliza (a traveling journal doll) came to visit all the way from Massachusets (via Texas and South Africa). The 4th-6th graders at Linda Vista (my Wednesday school) were very excited by her visit and we are working on making traveling journals as well!

In March my Mom and Gary came for Spring Break and we traveled from Chilamate (my home) to Monte Verde cloud forest and on to Playa Samara on the NE coast of Costa Rica!!!!!!!!!

Panama City

Pile of tourists at MiraFlores Locks of the Panama Canal. Panama.

Boat from china passing through the MiraFlores Locks of the Panama Canal.

Hello all!

I’m back!

I know, I know, you were probably worried sick. I guess I did leave rather abruptly, but I had to exit the country to renew my visa. Law says visitors can stay here for up to 3 months, but must leave for 72 hours, and can only re-enter paradise if in possession of a ticket to exit the country again. This is to prevent too many gringos from settling here. Too bad for the Ticos that wealthy Gringos, who are buying up the waterfront on the nicest beaches here for vacation and retirement homes, have figured out how their bodies can stay planted in their mansions in front of their flatscreens while their passports pass bodiless, across the border for the obligatory 3 days. Oh, the things money can buy.

But enough about ghosts, I walked over the Costa Rican border into Panama, in the flesh, at 4 am last Tuesday morning and spent the week in Panama City. On the excessively air-conditioned over-night bus from capital city to capital city, I met up with a Scotsman and a Dutchman and over the hours we argued politics, cursed each others cultures, exchanged stories, and laughed a lot! In PC we shared a stinky sweaty room in the hostel and spent half the night rolling around giggling in our bunks, and probably would have been up the whole night but the people next door told us to pipe down; it felt like the first few weeks of college. We spent the next few days touring the city, country side and beaches with a private Canadian escort (friend of the Scotsman) and sleeping (for free!) in his posh apartment in the fancy suburbs.

View of the Panama City skyline from posh apartment.


On Saturday I lost my companions to the call of the open sea (they took boats southward) and spent the day wandering alone through the "old town". The site is a waterfront of tragically beautiful ruins of old mansions left over from the US and French occupations of the country, surrounding plain-old-tragic looking ruins of apartments which are currently home to thousands of Panamanians.

"Municipality of Panama" trashcan on it's side, overgrown ruins, water, high-rises. Panama.

Tourists and bike vendors. Panama.

Some boats, abandoned docks and apartment buildings at low tide. Panama.

I don’t have any descent photos of these newer buildings or neighbourhoods, because I wasn’t aloud anywhere near them. Police on bicycles and horseback guard every corner of the tourist areas, stopping people from crossing certain streets (poor Panamanians and tourists alike). The closest view I got of the poorer residential areas was from the window of the Canadian's LandRover. I saw kids playing "bola" (soccer) in bomb-pocked ruins of buildings taken out by U.S. arsenal during the 1989 invasion of the city. Odd that “gringos” are not exactly welcome in these neighbourhoods.

Peeling paint in "Casco Viejo" (old fort).

The wealthy, touristy areas of the city were hot, ugly and crowded with people, shiny, poorly constructed casinos and expensive stores full of foreign products. I had a great trip but I didn’t like what I saw of Panama.

The country side, too, was ugly: burned and barren. Completely stripped of living things, and replanted with rows of who knows what. gross.

Urban Panamanian nature preserve. Eat your heart out, Minneapolis.

A farm... or something. Out the bus window. Panama.

Now I’m back.
Somehow, this place seems more beautiful than when I left.
Hope you’re all well and loving where you’re living!!!!!!!

Still missing you.

My Weekly Schedule!

Students running to look at a gecko nest in front of the lunch room at Escuela Linda Vista.

I was just sitting here admiring my life as depicted by my blog and I realized that it looked really, really fun. Not that it's not really, really fun, but it looks like all I do is hang out at the swimming hole and go on exciting touristic adventures and visit the hospital. While these things happen from time to time, most days I go to work ( see fotos from Feb 6).

I haven't told you what I do all day yet, so I wrote up a generalized weekly schedule.

Please keep in mind that all of this is occuring in the context of Costa Rica which means none of the activities actually take place on time, there are always disruptions (ex: the cows that broke free and wander into classrooms) and sometimes activities don't happen at all (ex: I showed up at a school only to learn that the countries' schools closed for the week because the government's computer which houses the entirety of the teachers teaching assignments was stolen, and so they closed schools until they could call every school and get all the teachers names).

That being said, here's what my schedule is supposed to look like:

Mon & Tues :
I run a before and after school Eco clubs here at the community center for the elementary school down the block and we do agriculture/ environmental education lessons in the green house (vivero). The before school kids suck, but the after school kids are awesome!

Wednesday:
I bike 20 min to another elementary school (Linda Vista) to teach agriculture/ enviro ed to the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. There are 6 of them. all girls. They are awesome!!!! We are going to do the sweetest projects and field trips!!!

Thursday:
I bike 35 min to a third elementary school (Kay Rica) and teach ag/ enviro ed from 7:30- 2. a 40 minute period with each grade from 1-6. Thursdays are very long days!

Friday:
I'm supposed to be working on a community education project on Fridays, but mostly I'm waiting for people and things that I need to go forward. So, for now I usually complete a couple of projects in the green house and garden, and prepare them for the before school kids on Monday, then rotate the compost, and do odds and ends stuff till mid-afternoon, then I usually go to the river to swim or out to play!

Saturday and Sunday I spend sitting alone in my room missing you guys (°college roommates and mr blums, please take note--not on the couch drinking a beer with the red lights on°). When I can pull myself out of my "missing you" stupor, I go biking or swimming and on occasional Sunday afternoons, if I'm really lucky I find an activity like the community bingo game at the local high school. WOO-HOO!!!
It's a party down here!
Miss you.

Organic Farm Community

Since I've been back in Sarapiqui I've been busy catching up w/ work!
I'll catch you up on stuff I have good pictures for first:

I attended a meeting of the San Juan Biological Corridor Directors where I learned tons about biological corridors (I don't have the time to explain it all now, but I'm going to designate an entire entry to teaching ya'll about it soon!) On the way home we checked out a community of organic farm in the mountains. The people gave us personal tours of their farms and we ended up spending hours learning about their methods of creating natural pesticides from fermented mushrooms!

Organic banana trees, greenhouses, and ponds for raising Talapia (fishes).

An organic farmer teaching among his green beans.

Vines growing up strings in a green house.

Club Ecológico

Hi All!
I'm back to work and am putting the kids to work!
Here are some photos of our before-school eco'club working on preparing the SCLC garden for an exciting year of learning!

Escuela Chilamate kids spreading compost in the SCLC garden.

Escuela Chilamate kids goofing off while they're supposed to be cleaning out the vivero. There were smiles all around until the the little one pelted Mr. purple bucket with a board full of rusty nails. Do kids in costa rica get regular tetnus shots? I'm um.... learning lots.

sick

i've been in bed and at the clinic for the past 11 days so not much to report. i'm sick. they're taking me to the capital to see a new dr. on friday.

Hacinedo Papel (Making Paper!!!!!)

I spent a day with the "Grupo de Mujeres" learning to make recycled paper. This local women's group is working to learn new crafts so they can create stuff for the tourists to buy. Tourist dollars are the main source of income for the Sarapiqui community, and account for over half of the country's yearly income.

We took a bus, then a taxi an hour out into a small community of homes in the center of the Chiquita Banana Plantation (agro. exports are the country's number 2 money maker) to learn the craft from a woman who learned the craft from a continuing education class. There are very few native crafts/ visual arts practiced in Costa Rica, and there is a national movement to increase buyables for tourists to pick up as they pass through.

Though we were in the middle of a sea of banana trees, we did not use banana products in the paper, we created paper shreds of used paper and piña (pineapple) leaves. I have yet to learn why.

Outdoor kitchen where we cooked the piña pulp.

Blending the recycled paper pieces.

Draining the water from the pulp.

Laying out the paper. Bad photo, but you can see the room we were working in and some of the surrounding yard.

That's the end of the sequence 'cus my camera died.