A Note to Readers

As you're reading this, you can think of it as a note to you. (Just you!)

I think that for many, the image of the Peace Corps is one of traveling around the world discovering new places, people, and food. It is-for the first month or two of training and then the first month or two at site. And then, well, one still meets new people, but the food and sites stay the same. I don’t think the Peace Corps does anything to misrepresent itself, I was never mislead about this during recruitment or training. Yet, when I think about what to blog, I realize this grand difference. And that’s mainly because I compare it to my two years in China-which allowed for lots of travel, both international and domestic.

Costa Rica is a wonderfully and economically manageable place to travel on a US/European budget. It’s not when you get paid about 60% as much as the average Costa Rican. Additionally, part of my job description is learning about Costa Rican culture in order to share it with Americans (yes-writing on my blog is work, actually a pretty important part of my work-maybe I should be writing more often-oops). Another part of my job is sharing about America-nothing too exciting there for you-Joe Reader (aka friends and family) to hear about. Furthermore, as part of my job I’m supposed to stay in my site most of the time-I think one of my work documents says 80-90% of the time. So, both money and my job responsibilities keep me firmly planted in Puerto Viejo. Oh, yeah, and that it usually takes a fair amount of time to make local friends when a foreigner moves to a new country city, or maybe I’m just too disagreeable-I know I don’t make great first impressions.

In contrast, in China, although still making less than the US poverty line, I was making twice or more than a Changzhou local, and was in a country where traveling (transportation, restaurants and hotels) was significantly cheaper (and the transportation was better). So, economically going away for a weekend or during school vacations was a no-brainer. Additionally, at JSTU, my job was simply to teach my classes. Well, we were encouraged to go to English corner and participate in English activities, or activities where the school benefited from showing off Westerners-but often received cash in an envelope for such endeavors. So, in this aspect, working for the Peace Corps is much different, even if I had the money to take weekend getaways or go to other Central American countries every time school had a vacation-it would be contrary to the spirit (at minimum) of my job. Now, from a realistic standpoint, during some school vacations, all my teachers are away or unwilling to work on school related things (this is experience speaking) so taking trips is pretty much just an economic limit.

I make this note to my readers, mostly because I don’t like expecting one thing and getting one thing else. It’s not that I’m not constantly realizing and analyzing cultural differences, but as I’m not traveling, they are less frequent and not as obvious. And, sadly, my income/personal preferences haven’t placed a camera phone in my pocket-so I can’t take pictures that I would be taking if I was traveling-when I always have my camera in my pocket. So, I will most likely be blogging more about education-because I spend most my time either in school, thinking about teaching, lesson planning, reading about education, or talking about it. This may make some of you super happy, and please always feel free to comment or ask questions-I’ll always try to respond. For some of you, it may mean clicking on the blog, not seeing a picture of some ridiculous foreigners doing ridiculous things, and clicking back to the site you really want to be on.

Oh, and to complete my aforementioned task, for some reason this popped into my head: Costa Ricans really, really like sour cream. It’s not called sour cream, instead they say natilla, and it’s not exactly sour cream, but super close. They eat it with all sorts of things-but especially tortillas, pancake like pastries, and all sorts of other things. Like, lots of Costa Ricans start their day (along with gallo pinto), with a few rolled up corn tortillas dipped in sour cream. While we’re on condiments, every single Costa Rican house and even many well-adapted Peace Corps volunteer residences have a bottle of Salsa Lizano. Salsa Lizano is kind of like A1 sauce, but maybe a bit sweeter, a bit spicier, and honestly, it’s a difference that is hard to describe. Maybe if I cooked more I’d better know the spices that make the difference. It was developed in Costa Rica in the 1920s, but was purchased by the consumer product giant in 1991. Since about every Costa Rican eats gallo pinto for breakfast (Salsa Lizano is used for flavoring) and all Costa Ricans gorge on tamales during Christmas (Lizano is the condiment of choice for tamales) Salsa Lizano is in every corner store big enough to stock it and gets a few shelves just to itself in most supermarkets.

Last note-no I don’t know what is causing some of my posts to format differently (text size, font) than other posts-I sure do my best to format them all the same. There are some problems that I’m still working to get sorted out with my Google AdSense account, so that may be it, but, trust me, if I knew the solution, I’d fix it. I’m just as unhappy as you that every post isn’t the same format.