a city and seaport in northwestern England, on the eastern side of the mouth of the Mersey River

I believe I've mentioned it before, but this post will explain it: in mid-February I moved to a new site. At least in Peace Corps Costa Rica, and my general understanding is everywhere, volunteers are supposed to stay in one site for the two years of service. But, if a volunteer is having trouble finding project partners, or has relationship or cultural problems that prevent him working, he can ask to change sites. My site change came about for three main reasons. My new site, as I've said, is Liverpool, a small highway town in the Río Blanco district of Limón. 

The first is that I had been living with a wonderful host family since December of 2010 in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí. I got along really well with the mom and two kids and fairly well with the father, and not better because I didn't see him much as he worked a lot and also because he wasn't super talkative, or rather, we didn't have many things to talk about. Well, in May, the host mom explained to me that she and her husband might be getting divorced, and that she thus wouldn't be around a lot from then on, and might be looking for work. Thus, she wouldn't be able to provide meals for me anymore or at least not regularly. She also explained it would be better for the family to work through this tough time without me in the house, so I wasn't to enter the house anymore. So, as I had a separate entrance, I just stopped going into the house to chat, watch tv, eat, etc, started eating at the high school and the night school, and preparing my own food on weekends and the days I didn't go to the night school. I finished out the school year in this manner, but as it ended, in December, I contacted the office about any information they had about possible host families in my town, as well as exploring living options with a few of the people I knew in town. 

As a result of this communication with the office, as well as some other reports and communication I'd sent to my boss, we sat down and talked about my situation. My other boss (boss's assistant) had just come back from visiting me and the people at my school and was concerned about their commitment to work with me (a few had said they were too busy, others had said they weren't interested). I more or less corroborated all this with my boss and explained to him the challenges I had been having working with the teachers at both schools (I'll explain more on this later). He was very understanding and a good listener, and in the end said that he was open to the idea of me changing sites, in order to look for a better working relationship. 

The third reason for the change, and part of my boss's openness to the change is that a new group of volunteers are currently in training (have been since early March) and a group of them will be heading to Limón, so my boss was thinking it'd be helpful to have a volunteer get started in the region and be here to help guide the new volunteers as they get started with their work and life in the region. 

So, with these three reasons, I moved to Liverpool. I've asked around, but have yet to find out why the town is named as such. I'll post more about the town and my host family later. My host family is great though, and includes two canine members, whose pictures are placed throughout this post to make it more fun! Roby, is the golden retriever, and super hard to take a good picture of, because if you get near him he always jumps on your chest. Nico, is a miniature pinscher, and is my pal and sits on my lap when we watch TV.