My new life in El Cortezo

August 2nd

Haven’t written in my blog in a very long time … every time I’ve attempted to upload a new blog from my memory stick, things have gone awry mainly because the computers here SUCK. But nevertheless, I am more than surviving and learning new things every day… I've moved out of my first family's house and into my 2nd... and in 2 weeks I move into my 3rd host family's house. Lots of moving ... then after my 3rd host family, I find a house to live by myself, and I'm still lookin because there are not that many options. If I can't find an unoccupied house in a month in a half, I have to build my own, yikes! Which a lot of volunteers have had to do and its not as hard as it sounds because the whole community helps.. but I still would much rather take over a house that is already built.

Here every thing is done by hand and that takes time, I’m learning the hard way. For instance, most of the cooking at my host families house is done on an outside stone stove which you need wood for, every day - so chopping wood is a daily activity. If you want eggs you have to own chickens - most of the time if you want chicken you have to go out in the yard and kill it yourself, which I have yet to do because I‘m the world‘s biggest hypocrite. I’ve prepared a chicken to eat after the killing - but I’m not ready yet to kill it myself. A lot of the food we eat is made of corn, which has to be collected, peeled and prepared by hand from the fields nearby. There are also endless ways to make things from corn and my 2nd host family is trying to teach all of them to me so I can't survive when I live by myself. If you wait too long to do laundry, you are shit out of luck because it has to hang dry in the sun long enough to dry, and guess what? Its rainy season! So the little sun you have you have to take advantage of, or you wear wet clothes … which I’ve had to do several times.
I’ve switched host families from El Cortezo to a smaller community next door called Agua Caliente. I love my new host family, and I’m a lot busier here than I was in Cortezo. There is an iguana project here that I help with every day, and this week is my host mom’s turn to feed and take care of the iguanas (the members switch off weeks). We also spent half the day yesterday catching all the big iguanas so that we could pick the ticks off them and wash them - THAT was fun! However, I ended up having a lot of scratches and welts on my body from their tails, those guys are touch! I've been trying to run every day, but if I wait too long it either starts raining too much or it gets way too hot to run. People look at me weird when I run, because NO ONE here runs for “leisure,” only if they are getting chased by a bull or something worse. However, one of the volunteers before liked to run and so some people know that gringos do weird stuff like that for exercise, and they always like to yell out to me while I’m running by “doing exercise?!”
Communication to the outside world is still very sparse - there is one place along the road that if you stand on a stump you can usually get at least one bar on and off - which is extremely frustrating sometimes when you are in the middle of an important call and signal cuts out suddenly and you have to wait 3 days until it stops raining to call again.
I’m finally starting to feel more comfortable with the people here, partly because my Spanish is improving a tad bit but mainly because I‘m just hanging out with them more often and I‘m getting to know their personalities. For instance, “pasearing” is becoming a little easier, and I don’t get as anxious before. There is a little old lady that lives alone next door, and I try and go over there every day and talk to her (even though I can’t understand most of what she is talking about) just to keep her company. I’m finding that pasearing to different people’s houses is the best way to learn Spanish because you are forced to talk about yourself and whatever is going on in the community - but I thought I could get away with not studying Spanish at all and winging in, but I’ve found that I keep running into words/phrases/verb tenses that I just cant figure out without looking them up. So I’ve made the goal of finding either new vocab or a new verb conjugation every couple days and practicing it though out the day. I’m still a little uneasy about busting out some of the technological “tools” I have, like my Ipod and laptop, which these people will never have. My host sister went into Cortezo today by horse to find a radio so the family could listen to music at night, and I almost just said “don’t worry, let me get my computer and speakers I brought and we can listen to that,” which I probably should have done to save her the time and effort, but I just don’t feel comfortable flashing around things that I so easily take advantage of.
So the volunteer before Jonathon was named Jenny, and my community LOVES HER. They talk about her all the time, and they are right, she was a fantastic volunteer and a really nice girl… but its really annoying because my name has become “Jenny, eh Jessi.” They are so used to talking about Jenny that it takes them a second to realize that my name isn’t Jenny, its Jessi - which I’ve shortened because its easier than “Jessica” and much easier for them to pronounce than “Jess,” I have no idea why, but it just is. All the men around here have sobrenombres (which I think I’ve mentioned before but I’ll mention again) which are like nicknames, but more girly, and its custom to always deny your sobrenombre if someone calls you it. For example, the sobrenombre of one of the men is “Azucar” which means sugar, and every time someone calls him Azucar he says “Fuera!” which means “get outa here!” I’ve told them I want a sobrenombre even though none of the women have them, but I want them to get to know my personality a little better before they give one to me. I’m expecting a name like “clumsy” because I fall a lot, but we’ll see
I’m starting to really appreciate the landscape of my community, rolling hills of cattle farms and mountains in the background. I feel like I’m straight out of a western movie sometimes because everyone uses horses for everything. If you go by the local cantina on the weekends (which are always just a roof over a bar) you’ll see several horses tied to the side and hear tipico music blasting out. There’s always a herd of cows plowing down some part of the road being moved to a different corral. When the sun does come out its such a beautiful place to take a walk. The walk from Agua Caliente to El Cortezo (where I’ll be spending my last month with a host family and hopefully find a house to live in for 2 years) is about 45 minutes but I really don’t mind it because it has such beautiful scenery. I should have more pictures put up on facebook, and I really want to open up a separate Photo Account so everyone regardless if they have FB or not can see them. Until next time!