Trip to Volcan Irazu

During our training, which ended just last week, we were only allowed two nights spent out of our site (besides visiting a current Volunteer and visiting our sites and future host families). The limit of two nights was put into place so that we would spend more time integrating with our training families and the community, which we were supposed to do in order to be better prepared to repeat the process in our actual sites. So, a day trip was planned. I can’t emphasize enough how awesome it is to get trips planned by someone else. Although I do love the adventure of traveling in a foreign country, trying to get on the right bus, find the entrance to the museum, not offend the locals with my apparel, and all that jazz. Yet, I can’t deny how great it is to just be told to bring a lunch, show up at eight, and if I show up at eight, the worrying is over.

Kyle K. from Melbourne, FL is a really energetic, humorous, self-deprecating fellow Volunteer. His training host family was awesome (unless he told all lies) and his host dad was quite charismatic and gregarious (my judgments). Even better was that he had a somewhat Asian-esque mustache and always rocked a hip Quicksilver hat. Well, Arturo is his name, and Arturo planned a trip to Volcan Irazu for all of us trainees that wanted to attend. We (about 25 trainees and the families of maybe 10 of those) took a private bus to the volcano, one of the four active in Costa Rica, and the tallest of all Costa Rican volcanoes. Undoubtedly, the best thing about the day was the view from the top of the volcano. I walked up to the top with Barton R., a fellow Volunteer from Ventura, CA. Barton is among a good share of Volunteers who have Peace Corps in their blood. His parents met in Fiji, where his mother was a Volunteer and his father was keeping the Peace Corps dream alive, serving a second term after completing one in Thailand. On this topic, Kelsey I., another girl from my training community, is the daughter of a couple that met when they were both serving as Peace Corps Volunteers in…yes, believe it, Costa Rica.

Back to the sulfur and craters, Barton and I walked up to the highest point on the volcano, a ridge above the main craters, and took in a gorgeous view of layers of clouds above rich, green hills, meeting in the distance with the Pacific Ocean. Barton, being from California, might not have been impressed, but for me it was one of the more wondrous landscapes I’ve seen. On the other side of the proverbial coin were the clouds on the Atlantic side that blocked full views of the crater and the Atlantic Ocean. Volcan Irazu is among a few peaks in Costa Rica, which possess this quite unique quality: on a clear day you can see the world’s two largest oceans from them. Unfortunately as well, the main crater, with odorous sulfur coming off it, can not be fully appreciated from the views on the main plateau that sits atop the mountain-it declines too steeply to allow one to see much of it. After the Volcano, we also enjoyed a nice walk among the countryside on the road down the mountain-as I passed on paying to enter a “haunted” former sanitarium. I was actually criticized for my defiant refusal of any belief in ghosts. I guess I was wrong in thinking that belief in ghosts and the like went out of style a few centuries ago.

Without an entry fee, and much more entertaining than anything in the “haunted” sanitarium could’ve been were our frequent stops on the way home. Queso fresco (queso blanco) is superlatively popular here, and used in empanadas and cheese tortillas-two of the most popular Costa Rican breakfast and snack foods. Apparently, the highlands leading up to Volcan Irazu make great queso fresco, as we stopped four or five times to check the quality and prices of cheese vendors. I’d say roadside vendors, as two or three of them were, but not all. That’s because, I have noticed, that with some agricultural products, especially queso fresco, farmers will just paint “vende queso” (‘cheese sold here’) on a piece of plywood and lay it at their gate. So, our bus would stop, one of the training family parents would get out, walk up to the house, inquire about the cheese, walk back to the bus accompanied by a man with plastic bags full of blocks of cheese, and then some bidding and shouting would go on through the bus windows, cheese would or would not be sold, and we’d be on our merry little way. I think some of the other trainees might have been annoyed; I was nothing but amazed and entertained.

A Toda Maquina

So, Julia L. from Greensboro, NC, (another trainee in my training community), and her host sister, Elena, came over to my host family’s house one night in the second week of our service. I was eating dinner and only paid mild attention to the conversation, but it sounded like they (Elena much more than Julia) wanted me and my host mom (Xinia) to accompany them to a TV show. Elena claimed to have some extra tickets her friend had given her; so I didn’t see why she wanted my host mom and me to go. Well, as it turns out, I’m fairly sure that the “extra tickets” were just a front, and she really needed my host mom to get us into the show. It turns out that one of my host mom’s sons, Cristopher, has a marinovia (translate for meaning: live in girlfriend/life partner) whose daughter is the hostess of said show. I’d say host brother, but he doesn’t live at the house, so he’s really more like the host mom’s son. Yes, if you’re doing the math right, his live in girlfriend is maybe 25 years older than him, so that her daughter is his age…but let’s just say that my host family isn’t quite ‘typical.’ This TV show is A Toda Maquina, which can really just be translated as Super Variety Show. And oh what a show it was.

So, well, I said yes, the tickets were arranged and we headed out on the bus early on a Sunday morning, switched to another bus in San Jose, and then walked right past the brand new National Stadium, built by the Chinese (I haven’t quite figured out if the Costa Ricans think this is a good thing, but they always say it when mentioning the stadium). I generally think that if the Costa Ricans want anything done in any sort of timely manner, they’d probably better call the Chinese. Oh, I got yelled at by my host mom and Elena for commenting that the stadium was neither very big nor impressive. Apparently I’m supposed to lie about something that wasn’t a whole lot bigger, and less impressive architecturally than my high school’s stadium. Also, the aforementioned ‘we’ also included Julia’s neighbor, Yansi and Yansi’s daughter Fraychel. Who said you had to choose between Francine and Rachel when naming your daughter? We get to the building and get in line. As I later found out, if you dress up to dance and arrive early to line up, you can compete in one of the many couples dancing competitions during the show. There were also some people with dogs in line-doing the same thing for the stupid pet tricks portion. And, let’s just say that I’ve seen friend’s hunting dogs do significantly more and better tricks than the dog that won. Many people in line had brought snacks, and if not, there were some vendors mingling about the line offering up chips and fried plantains. Thankfully, I brought my Kindle (shameless plug) as we were in line for over an hour.

Apparently you don’t really need tickets, as my host mom just said something to the lady with the list of names, and we went in. Once we got inside, I realized I almost preferred the line. I’ll be sensitive and say that one must not be too burdened with intelligence to follow the humor and quiz games that transpire on A Toda Maquina. Without doing any thinking or processing one could be entertained by dancing by girls not dressed for winter, dancing competitions between older couples with various levels of skill, spelling contest, guess the liar contest, stupid pet tricks, break dancing, reading of posts on the A Toda Maquina Facebook page, dancing by women not dressed for winter and men dressed as if Prince was still a pop icon, a life size spider web climbing race (Yansi competed!), and a bunch of stuff I have forgotten because it was forgettable. For me, besides the brunette prize presentation girl (cash prizes are handed out during the show to activity winners), the most interesting thing was watching the cameramen move around to get the best shots. Was watching the cameramen a sign that the show wasn’t for me?

If it doesn’t seem like being immersed in A Toda Maquina for all of its three hours was peaches and cream for me, there is a reason besides the show’s content (although I’m not absolving the show). Pressed right next to me were a woman and her two kids. With whistles. I knew I didn’t like her from the beginning, for one prejudicial reason and one more legitimate one. The former, she, like many of her fellow female citizens, has apparently not been made aware that wearing tight fitting clothing that shows a little skin becomes less and less attractive as a woman’s BMI trends upwards from 26. The second reason I didn’t like her was because her kids were quite impolite. They were old enough to know how and when to say excuse me, sorry, etc. but not old enough for it not still be mainly her fault. And they had gosh darn whistles. Gosh. Darn. Whistles. For three gosh darn hours. At first it was kind of funny, how excited they got over what seemed to me a mindless assortment of lights, sounds, and uninspired dancing. After thirty minutes I wanted to pull the godforsaken whistles out of their mouths and throw them onstage. After an hour more I was clenching my fists, staring at the ground and breathing deeply. With an hour left I started looking at my watch every other minute counting the minutes left until this hell in Costa Rica was over. I also began mean mugging the heck out of them every time they blew their whistle at football match volumes. With twenty minutes left, it again became funny and I kept glancing at Julia whenever I surmised a whistle was coming up. Many of the people nearby looked incredibly annoyed, and I can only imagine I did too (hiding my emotions is not a strong trait) as I was the person whose ears were closest to the abomination. Although, sitting next to them did afford me a few chances to get in the audience shots-when was the last time you were nationally televised in a foreign country? Snap!

For both my host mom and Elena, this was not their first time watching A Toda Maquina live in the studio. The ability to view a live taping of this show is a cultural difference I cannot understand, nor plan on adapting.

My new home

I’ll be honest, for someone with a Spanish degree; I knew shamefully little about Costa Rica, Central America, or Latin America before I boarded my final flight in Miami Airport. Studying in Spain, and then taking most of my classes from a professor who studied Spanish literature did not provide for much knowledge about the Western Hemisphere that isn’t America or America Lite (Canada). I’ve obviously learned a couple of things in the more than two months I have been here (if not the training staff certainly has some questions to answer). Yet, I would say that because so much of my time has been interacting with other Americans and learning about Peace Corps policies and project goals, I have not learned as much during my first two months here compared with my first two months in Spain or China. But, I’m going to share a little smattering of what I’ve learned during my training and from reading the Costa Rica Wikipedia article a few times.

The land. Costa Rica covers a bit more than 50,000 km^2, and contains roughly 4.3 million people. For comparison, Iowa covers 145,000 km^2 and has almost exactly 3 million corn eating inhabitants. My last place of residence, Changzhou, covered 4,000 km^2 and had 4.4 million people. So, Changzhou packed more people into less than one tenth the area of Costa Rica, and Iowa is three times the size of Costa Rica yet has a million less people. Considering that I grew up in Des Moines, which has 400,000 people in maybe 2,000 km^2, Costa Rica seems very rural for me. And, these two months have been the first time I have ever lived anywhere that is at all rural. Also, it is my first time living somewhere at all hilly. Des Moines, Tulsa, Salamanca, and Changzhou are all reasonably flat cities. It is gorgeous here, but I have had trouble getting a sense of where towns are related to others, because I go up, down, around, and up again before getting to the next town. Also, Costa Rica’s less than desirable infrastructure (I’ll probably write more about this) combined with all these hills means that in a country a third the size of Iowa it can take ten or eleven hours to travel between places. For example, the bus from my training community, El Rosario, to San Jose, covers the 16 miles (25 km) in an hour and fifteen minutes.

More on the land. Costa Rica is roughly a rectangle 250 miles long (400 km) and 100 miles wide (160 km), bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the east by the Caribbean Sea, the north by Nicaragua and by Panama in the south. You can see both the Pacific and Caribbean from some of the highest mountains and volcanoes. There are three main mountain ranges that run through the center of the country, with the biggest population center being in the Central Valley, which is between two of these ranges. San Jose, the capital, as well as Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela, all major cities, are in this region. On each side of the central ranges are hilly zones that contain many of the rainforests and flatten out to the more cultivated plains, which lead right to the beaches. Bananas, pineapple, sugar cane, and rice are among the major crops cultivated in the flatter zones near both coasts, while coffee is grown in the hilly zones and the mountain ranges (which are not incredibly high ranges). Even with a fairly robust agricultural sector, one fourth of the land in Costa Rica is devoted to national parks or protected zones (what a nicely vague label). Many of these still have huge economic importance, as they are visited by tourists, one of the nation’s most important industries.

The people. 94% of Ticos are either white or mestizo, I guess they kind of consider it one race. I’d make a critical comment about this, but the US Census hasn’t really figured out how to deal with the Hispanic/Latino race thing, so I’ll bite my tongue for now. Blacks make up 3%, Asians 1%, Amerindian 1%, and the one out of every hundred Costa Ricans is ‘other.’ As for religion, the Internet tells me that 76% are Roman Catholic, which is convenient, because that’s the official religion, 14% are Evangelical Christians, there is a sampling of Jehovah’s Witnesses, other Protestant sects, other religions, and 3% are not religious. They love football, but aren’t all that great at it as a national team. They love rice and beans, or if they don’t love it, then I don’t know why they eat so much of it. They also seem to love playing the lottery.

The work. Until very recently, agriculture made up most of the economy, with coffee, bananas, pineapples, and sugar cane being important products. But, now, most people work more industrialized sectors especially in pharmaceutical, technology, and medical products manufacturing as well as offshored customer service and clerical work. Tourism is a huge industry here, now larger than agriculture, as over a million tourists visit annually. Related to this is the unpleasant fact that more US passports are stolen in Costa Rica than any other country. What’s more, no crime records are opened for theft under $500 because pickpockets and the like are so common. As for the energy for these industries, Costa Rica has harnessed its numerous rivers, and gets over 80% of its electricity from hydropower. Among its biggest imports is gasoline, but the Costa Rican government made the ambitious goal of being carbon neutral by 2021. A much less admirable fact is that this year the US government added Costa Rica to its list of major countries for organized crime. This is due to the transport of cocaine from Colombia to the place where people love cocaine: the USA. This was done to help the US work with the Costa Rican government against drug rings. Because, of course, we only should fight the supply side of the drug problem, and there’s no need at all to look at the demand side of the equation.

The cheddar. Costa Rica’s GDP per capita in nominal terms is $6,345 per year. When purchasing power parity is taken into account, it rises to $10,579 per Costa Rican annually. This places Costa Rica 86th among 181 countries in the world (according to the IMF). To me, what is very impressive and something worth remembering is how high of life expectancy (78.9 years) and a human development index Costa Rica has achieved with a lot less money than comparable countries. There are all sorts of things that contribute to these statistics, but I would suggest that not spending money on a military and also having had no civil strife for 60 years has really helped keep those numbers up. I’m not advocating abolishing every army, it’s just very interesting to see how much Costa Rica can spend on other things because they aren’t buying planes and tanks. Well, hopefully this has given you a better idea about how the Costa Rican people work on their land to make some cheddar.

My new gig, in detail

Well, it’s time to turn over a new leaf in this blog. But, before I get into telling my tales from Pura Vida land (as I like to call Costa Rica) I thought that I would expound a bit about my new employer (which is ultimately you, the US taxpayer) and my new country of residence. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the delightful buzz of the first snow, Salvation Army bellringers, the Amy Grant Christmas CD, eggnog for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and everything else that goes with Christmas. I’ll be honest, the Christmas trees and lights next to tropical plants and palm trees is just not yet acceptable to me, but so is the burden of growing up in a state where a white Christmases were all but guaranteed.

I think the most natural question that many thought (or asked) when I said I was going to work for the Peace Corps in Costa Rica, was “Costa Rica, really?” And, well, yeah, it does seem a bit odd to snag a Peace Corps post in one of the hottest tourist destinations on the globe. Additionally, Costa Rica is actually doing pretty well at fulfilling its “need for trained men and women,” (one third of the Peace Corps mission). Its Human Development Index (HDI) is highest of all the Peace Corps countries in Central and South America. With a life expectancy of 77 for me and 81 for women, it’s doing almost as well as the rich countries in that category. Its GDP per person is , but bumps up to if you take cost of living into account. So, your question unanswered, you may even more strongly ask: why the heck is the Peace Corps (aka my tax dollars) in Costa Rica.

Well, unfortunately, part of the answer is that it’s been here a long time. And well, people have a tendency to resist change and leave things as they are. Peace Corps Costa Rica started in 1963, when Costa Rica could still be called a third world country. (Side note: I loathe the statement that Costa Rica is a third world country, it’s not, it’s developing, or second world if you will). It started as an English teaching program, and with the virgin Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) program I am a part of, has kind of come back to its roots. In its 47 years, more than 3,000 Americans have worked as Peace Corps Volunteers here. In 1999-2000 there was serious talk of closing the program, as Costa Rica had developed considerably and Peace Corps thought its services could be used better in poorer, undeveloped countries. But, (and here’s

your answer) it was decided that Costa Rica was so important to US political interests (both as an ally and as a regional leader/example) that it would be beneficial for Peace Corps to remain here. So, in as many words: soft power. In my opinion the Peace Corps, with its missions of helping other countries understand America and helping Americans understand other countries (the other two thirds of the Peace Corps mission), is a form of very, very soft power. Some may balk at this idea, but that is a conversation for a discussion of the existence of altruism.

So, as it’s here, what’s it doing? My last blog talked about some of the cool peeps in my training group, but there’s also a heartier group of volunteers currently in country. There are ~105 volunteers currently serving here. They work in the areas of Rural Community Development; Community, Youth, and Families; and Community Economic Development. They are spread out throughout the country, with the largest group serving in southern Puntarenas and Limon. I’ll soon be working in the newest program, TEFL. TEFL was started because of an aggressive presidential mandate made in 2003 by former President Arias to have the country bilingual by 2017. Yes, the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) officials we talked to admitted that the goal is preposterously optimistic, but sometimes it takes giant goals to get people to make even small achievements. The TEFL program was constructed with the consultation and help of MEP representatives, but still is a Peace Corps program, with its own goals. This is kind of how the Peace Corps generally works: a country solicits the volunteers, explains how it would like them used, and then the Peace Corps tweaks with the demands to make them applicable to its volunteers’ abilities and institutional goals. The three goals of TEFL are to help teachers improve English skills and teaching methods, directly help students improve their English, and to promote and establish English learning activities or institutions in communities. So, that’s my job for the next two years.

Some people in our group will be teaching their own classes at rural elementary schools that lack their own teacher, and many, including me, will be more like an adviser/resource/support staff to the elementary or high school English teachers. Some will do a mix of the two things. The concept of teaching the teachers is to make the project more sustainable. Yours truly is working with a high school and a night school, and at both trying to be some sort of resource cum adviser to the English teachers there. I think there are two huge challenges to our job. First, trying to be an adviser/resource to teachers who very well have more experience than we do. Second, to find our place in each particular school-treated by the students as a teacher, while not actually doing much teaching, and helping the teachers out in a non-authoritarian manner while still hoping they will take our advice.

This job will be very different from my last job in a number of ways. First and foremost, Costa Ricans aren’t Chinese. Additionally, I will not have a simple schedule of classes to teach and then be free. At JSTU I was somewhat of a cultural ambassador, and helped out when I could with all sorts of activities. But, here, that cultural ambassador role is stepped up, as my job description includes representing America. What’s more, I’ll be the one expected to organize the activities, not just show up and smile-which I’ll also do, of course. The responsibility of representing my nation 24/7 is one that I take very seriously, and can at times be difficult when a Costa Rican asks a question that starts with “Americans like to…” or “In America, do people…” Luckily, I have two years of practice with these questions, as they were the same ones that almost every student in Changzhou would ask daily.

My new gig

Well, in just a few days I will (barring any major problem) be swearing in as a Peace Corps Volunteer for the TEFL program in Peace Corps Costa Rica. I’ve already expressed my disagreement with the term Volunteer, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere, so I’ll just have to bite my tongue lots these next two years. Like everything in life, you all (the readers collectively) have varied knowledge about this separate national program (it’s not part of the Department of State). So, in order to strive for some intellectual parity, I’m going to write a bitsy bit about the program. It was started in 1961 by then President Kennedy. There are a few (probably apocryphal) stories about what gave him the motivation to start the program, but according to the official documents:

“The mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship by:

-Helping people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and

women

-Helping promote better understanding of Americans on the part of peoples served

-Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans”

Whether you choose to understand “world peace and friendship” as exporting American liberal democratic principals to counteract Soviet communism is to be done under your own volition. Nonetheless, here it is on the eve of its 50^th anniversary doing, in my opinion, pretty much exactly what its goals say. Essentially, Peace Corps, instead of looking to provide bags of wheat to hungry villages, tries to send a skilled American to that village to teach them how to grow wheat. It takes the ancient Chinese proverb about fishing to heart. I’m very happy with the sustainable development aid model that the Peace Corps follows, because sending bags of wheat ad infinitum to poor countries is good for the Kansas wheat farmer, but pretty inefficient for everyone else.

It is my understanding that any country can solicit volunteers, and although I’d imagine that Peace Corps would cordially rebuff a request from Luxembourg or Singapore. But it is the host countries that really decide if they’ll have volunteers, and have some impact over the number and type of volunteers they’ll receive. Likewise, they have input on what the volunteers will do. Peace Corps of course analyzes the safety of the country, and this also limits the countries in which it serves. There are currently over 8,500 volunteers serving in 77 countries across the world. Even with this input from the host country, Peace Corps ultimately decides how volunteers act, where they’ll live, and what they’ll do. In fact, “because that’s what Washington says” is often a response given by my bosses or trainers to certain pointed questions. In order to avoid seeming sketchy in the future, I will proffer a few rules from the Peace Corps Handbook. First, if I seem a bit less frank than usual Ken it is because “Volunteers should remain culturally sensitive with respect to the material they post to any Web site” and “Volunteer-posted material on the Web should not embarrass or reflect poorly on the Peace Corps or the countries where Volunteers serve.” In the same vein, “[a]s a safety precaution, Volunteers must not include on their Web sites information about their precise living location or those of other Volunteers.” Sorry if it means my blog will be G-rated, but I’m not looking to get fired.

Now, with the economy and government spending being a central topic in our nation’s most recent elections, and sovereign debt fury spreading across the globe (well Europe really), I thought I would offer some food for thought as I am now a recipient of your tax dollars. The Peace Corps, except for its small management staff in DC, is pretty much spending all its money overseas. To many people this may be very unpopular and even treasonous, because, ‘American dollars should stay in America’. Without delving into the subject of how effective soft power versus hard power dollars are, the returns which development aid may or not pay, the cost of soft power versus hard power (regardless of efficacy), and other issues which I am happy to discuss with anyone and also am trying to learn about, I’d like to offer some more basic thoughts.

I wholeheartedly agree that managing the national debt is very important, as being burdened by debt both hinders our ability to act as a nation and our ability to manage our finances. The debt spiral might not be impossible to get out of, but when countries default, it’s not much fun for anyone. Let’s also not forget that other than the American people, America’s next largest creditor also possesses the world’s second largest army. In other words, I don’t really want to be Greek or Irish right now. So, let’s quit frivolously throwing money at these foreigners is what most Americans say. Here’s the problem: cutting all foreign aid saves America less than a penny for every dollar spent. The tax receipt (link) and a poll by the Economist display both of these facts. People want to cut spending (62%) and not raise taxes (5%), so, unless someone is proposing less bombs, planes, and soldiers or checks to old people, then he is not actually suggesting a viable solution to the national debt problem. So, from the bottom of my heart, let’s focus on the real costs and leave foreign aid alone, because I’m really enjoying my job so far.



As an addendum to this post I will include some information about the cheddar that Peace Corps spends from your hard earned tax dollars. Overall, in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, the Peace Corps' total cost is $373 million. This amounts to about $43,000 per volunteer in the field. Of course, we're not getting paid anywhere near that, as their is both the (probably highly bureaucratic) staff at headquarters in DC, and support staff in every country. Costa Rica's 2010 budget was $1.737 million for the ~150 volunteers here. In specifics, that money can be broken down into $700,000 for operations, $425,000 for the volunteer food, rent, and living stipends, and $200,000 for medical (includes the costs and the medical staff salaries. There are more items, but those are the big ones. For a more accurate perspective, the $425,000 divided by the roughly 150 volunteers amounts to our living costs being about $2,800 a year. So, I may be in Costa Rica, but paying $75 to rent kayaks or go rafting for a day is a cost that I can barely shoulder once a year.

Getting oriented

My journey to Costa Rica was missing one key thing: sleep. After coming back from a trip to Tulsa and St. Louis to visit family and friends from school, I had one last delicious dinner with the family (sans Petey), stayed up late finishing packing and Pops took me delightfully small DSM at five in the morning. I arrived in DC, took a taxi to the hotel, and registration was closing and our “Staging” meetings started immediately. That night, after getting to bed around ten or eleven, I was up at 01:30 to meet in the lobby for our trip to the airport, where we waited for a few hours and then flew to Miami and the San Jose. We then took a bus ride across San Jose (all of us flew from DC to Miami to San Jose together) to Tres Rios, which is a community in the hills east of San Jose.

(my host family's house-second story)

Tico 21 (that’s my training group-Costa Ricans call themselves ticos instead of costarricenses) spent its first week at the San Juan XXIII retreat center in Tres Rios. It was a beautiful retreat center, with amazing views of the city, and basketball courts and soccer pitches for fun. We spent the week going over nuts and bolts information, meeting the Peace Corps Costa Rica staff, learning a little bit about the country, and learning a fair amount about our projects. Evenings were spent playing basketball, soccer, getting to know other trainees, or getting those last emails sent using the center’s wi-fi.

My favorite part of orientation (aside from the awesome food (I have a weird penchant for cafeterias)) was the “diversity training” that Delia, our fiery, intelligent, and sarcastic ‘Training Specialist’ facilitated. What the diversity training consisted of was each trainee making a poster representing the challenges and successes of different phases of our lives. Some people don’t like get-to-know-you activities, but I love them. Because the better we know someone, the more willing we are to share with them, and well, that’s how friendships are developed. It was wonderful to hear about everyone else’s experiences, values, and to see their pictures. It’s well established that my ego could use a couple knockdowns, and the presentations did just that. I was amazed and humbled by the other trainees. So many had so many rich experiences. One was born in Kenya. One met her husband while they were teaching English in Korea. One is the daughter of a Paraguayan man who one day took up a friend’s offer to use an extra plane ticket to visit America, and then established a life there. One guy covered the Iditarod as a journalist in Alaska. One woman, who is a septuagenarian, was married to a Nigerian and a Mexican in her life (at different times). There are two people from Idaho (I know). One girl knows the Cutler boys from my high school. One spent part of her childhood with her grandparents in Mexico. One taught English in Hungary. Needless to say I was humbled by and excited to get to know Tico 21.

Some quick facts about the group I have spent the last two months with and will be with for a few more weeks. Our group consists of 46 people from 26 different states, from Florida to Alaska, Inglewood to Queens, and Washington State to New Hampshire. And Beth Dove is from Janesville, IA-near Cedar Falls, so we have an overabundant Iowa representation. We are split into two groups, the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) group I am a part of and Community Economic Development (CED). The average age is 26, with all but two people falling in the 22-32 age group. Our two outliers are both fantastic people. Patty M. is ~70, and has lead an incredibly interesting and atypical (if there really is such a thing) life. Brad M., who is in the CED group, is 51 and retired from working in sales and management with Cisco Systems. The TEFL group doesn’t have too many Y-chromosomes running around, with twenty women and only six dudes. The CED group is tilted the other way, with 18 men and 12 women, making the group totals 32 women and 24 men. Sarah B. is part of the TEFL group and is continuing with a third year of service after two in Tonga. Marie B., part of the CED group, is also adding a third year to her service, and was Sarah’s South Pacific neighbor in Vanuatu.

Closing the China chapter

The end is here. This will be my last blog about China. Phew. It was a great two years, full of challenges and fun. I am incredibly glad that I decided to go, and even happier that I stuck around for year two. Many people have stumbled on this blog because they have in interest in going over to the Middle Kingdom to live, teach, or maybe just travel. So, below is a Dave Lettermanesque list of reason to and not to head east. Now I just have to catch up on sharing about life in the tropics. Thanks again to all who read my blabber.

Top ten reasons to leave the States and teach English in China
1. Haircuts and shoe shines are so cheap you can always look dapper (if that’s your thing)
2. You’re such an outlier and it’s assumed you have money so you can wear pajama pants and an old t-shirt to fancy clubs (if that’s your thing)
3. Wonton soup delivery in January
4. The fact that even if you’re 22 it’s still totally cool to challenge the Communist Party Dean of your department to a baijiu shot contest
5. A twenty ounce bottle of Snow Beer only costs 1.9 yuan ($0.28)
6. A bachelor’s degree from any old American college or university catapults you to an upper middle class college professor
7. The opportunity to learn what one in every five humans thinks and does
8. The completely challenging and awesome experience of dealing with a writing system totally different from ours
9. Hard sleepers
10. Street vendor fried dumplings

And ten reasons you might want to pass on that ticket to Shanghai
1. Your clothes will get dirty almost anywhere you choose to sit down or rest your arm on, dust seems to cover everything, so you’ll just be dustily dapper
2. You’re such an outlier you will invariably get bugged to buy things, give money, and will hear incessant “Hellos” from everyone. Everyone.
3. No heat in most buildings in January. Or November, December, or February for that matter
4. Baijiu will give you a hangover like one you’ve never experienced before
5. Snow Beer tastes about as good as it costs. Getting good quality beer requires living in a big city and lots of cash money
6. Even though you’re upper middle class, you still have to breath the same dirty air, deal with the same horrendous traffic, smell the same dirty bathrooms (they’re almost all dirty), and deal with the same crowds
7. One out of every five people is Chinese. That means there are a whole hell of a lot of Chinese people. It can get overwhelming.
8. The completely befuddling Chinese writing system
9. Anytime hard and soft sleepers are sold out. Happens a lot. Can’t buy tickets more than 10 days in advance, can’t buy tickets directly on the Internet, can’t always get tickets unless you’re in the city of departure, etc.
10. At some point, you’ll trade 1,000 bowls of rice for just one loaf of wheat bread