Overseas Volunteers 2012

  This is what 2 weeks of sweat, laughs and tears look like. The work is not done but our team work made an impact! Roxana promised to send the final picture when the house is done.

My love affair with rice and beans has come to an end. After cenar or dinner at our Costa Rican family home, I was almost nostalgic about the rice and beans that were served up. I am a TAD sad. One thing that I will not miss is my boots. Man I was happy to see them go to shoe hell. They served me well though. Leaving them behind was a happy occasion although the end of the day was …

Today we finished our work on the building site with a spot of cementing the septic pit. Having dug that pit (with Nadina) I feel quite close to it and glad to be seeing it nearing completion. Over the two weeks we’ve really got to know one another, the family we’re building for and our families as well as some of the other volunteers in the RealGap program who are based in San Ramon. It’s been a great two weeks …

.. was my response on seeing this 2.2m snake on site today. Mercifully it was already dead, but an absolute beauty. Hoping we can do a tonne of concrete mixing tomorrow. One more day to go!

I read a book last year by a food journalist who spent time working on a self-sustaining organic farm. The journalist’s wife dubbed this experience his “Paris Hilton adventure” (after the television series in which Paris and Nicole Richie undertook low paying manual jobs for the benefit of cameras and viewers). Before our trip to Costa Rica I wondered whether we would achieve something genuinely helpful or whether we would accomplish little other than to make us feel better about …

I’m really enjoying Costa Rican food. The staple dish is Rice and Beans (arroz y frijoles), which you can get for a breakfast, morning break, lunch and/or a dinner. It can be the main meal, or just a side for any other dish. In fact, it’s hard to avoid rice and beans during the day. It’s all really yummy, so no complaints at all – just the oposite. A typical day would start with a pancake with maple syrup and …

…there’s only 3 days of building left!  we’ve come a really long way and our boss has been impressed with how fast we’ve done things.  today was fun because one of the kids was excited to help us move rocks (can’t get more exciting than that!) and he was able to pitch in.  i was quite dirty again today though, so we’ll see if i can just break my record for getting dirtier each day!

Today we rocked but it’s not what you think… We moved rocks, that is big heavy rocks down the hill and into the septic tank. George tried to creatively pass one of them to me (that is see if I can catch it) Well let’s just say I don’t think he will try that again…

Today was day five, with four days to go. It’s so rewarding to see how far we’ve come in five days from a patch of dry bare earth to a site with all foundation trenches dug, septic pits complete and ready to start prepping the wall foundations tomorrow. Less rewarding but proof of hard, hard work are the thumb callouses, flaked nails, odd patches of sunburn and multiple ant bites. Dang those ants. At one point today the team ‘up top’ actually …