As promised, I will now tell you all about what has been going on down here. It has been far too long since I updated, but I’ll just be honest, I’m too lazy to go to the Internet. That’s why I don’t update or write you e-mails. Sorry. I’ll try to get better about it. Where I’m going to be living next has Internet access in the town and in the school where I’m working, so the chances you’ll hear from me will be exponentially increased come Dec. 18th.

Rain

So as you may or may not have heard, there was a huge rainstorm that hit Costa Rica. We thought it was just raining a lot, but it turned into a much bigger problem. I mentioned that there was a lot of rain when I wrote my last blog and that night when I went home the power went out at about 9 pm. The next morning when we woke up it still wasn’t back and the water system was also down. In my house we were very lucky because we have reserve water tanks so we had water coming out of our taps even if the water system wasn’t working. We passed that Thursday with out power until about 5 or 6 at night. It wasn’t a huge problem, especially seeing as we had water, but we had no way to cook. Here it’s a big deal for a wife if she can’t put a hot meal on the table. I saw nothing wrong with eating sandwiches or something for lunch and maybe dinner, but my host mom wanted none of that. As goes the saying, come hell or high water we were going to have hot rice and beans on the table. Fortunately we were able to cook at a neighbor’s house that had a wood-burning stove.

I must also mention that even more worrisome for my family than the lack of a way to prepare hot food was the lack of coffee. I’m glad that somewhere in the world I have found a group of people who worry as much as I do about daily access to coffee. My host parents reluctantly decided in the morning to have tea with water boiled at the neighbor’s house. This was a very hard decision, but everything turned around when I suggested we drink my instant Starbucks. Turned out to be a lifesaver. Everyone was much happier when we discovered we could in fact still have our coffee.

More important than all of that about food and coffee is what was going on with the weather around the country. Here where I’m at we were affected in that our water and power were out, but in other parts of the country it was much, much worse. There were terrible landslides on a big portion of roads in all parts of the country and flooding was rampant through the lowlands. Many people were killed in the landslides and the floods and the country was in a state of emergency for a couple days. It was hard to really understand at the time what was happening because we were without power for a while, which meant we were without news. There was also no way to leave our town because landslides blocked the roads to the towns on either side. I personally was in no real danger, and neither were most other volunteers and Peace Corps was taking the situation very seriously and making sure to check in with us often and ensure that we were prepared for anything that could happen.

Things were in a pretty fragile state for about five days, but about Wednesday of the next week things started to come around and normalize somewhat. There is still a lot of rebuilding to be done in communities throughout the country and many highways that are in disrepair, but I am very impressed with the efficiency at which they are putting things back together.

Spiders

I realize that on a list of concerns a natural disaster should rank way higher than spiders, but in my mind when I thought of what to tell you about in fact spiders came up second next to “nation paralyzing natural disaster”. You may not understand, and/or agree with the gravity that I place on the spider situation, but either way I know that you would not want spiders of the size I’m describing in your bedroom.

I have had two encounters with tarantula-like spiders since I’ve been here. I’m sure these are only the first of many encounters I will have in the next couple years, and while unfortunate that’s the way it goes I guess, and I have to say right now that there is no way I will get used to them. I would have to say, very proudly, that I am doing well in reacting to spiders. I don’t scream when I see a really big one. I just calmly leave the room, close the door and call my host mom. I call her in a calm voice so as not to upset anyone, and she comes quickly to help me. How calm I am about it might be influenced slightly by the fact that the two times I have seen tarantula-type spiders the house has been asleep and I feel really bad screaming bloody murder and having them think someone is dying or something. This feeling might also have something to do with the fact that one time last week I called Daysi to kill a large non-tarantula-like spider in the bathroom and she doubled over laughing. It went something like this:

Me: “Daysi, there’s a really big spider in the bathroom.”
Daysi: “I’m coming, let me get the bug killer. Where is it?”
Me (refusing to enter the bathroom): “On the shower wall.”
Daysi: “Where? I don’t see anything.”
Me “On the shower wall.”
Daysi: “Where? I don’t see anything.”
Me: “It’s right there!”
Daysi: “Oh… that little thing.”
Me: “No, that big spider right there in the middle of the wall. The big one.”
Daysi (realizes we’re talking about the same spider and doubles over laughing): “HAHAHAHA. That little spider. HAHAHA. I thought you said it was big. HAHAHA. (Much laughing, then a deep breath) Ok, ok…. I’ll get it. (Out of breath from laughter)”

I kind of smiled and laughed because I didn’t know what else to do, but that made me think I should not get to upset about spiders otherwise they will laugh at me. You have to believe me though that the spider was big. I measure spiders by making a circle with my index finger and thumb and if the fingers don’t touch because the spider is bigger it’s time to call someone to help. It was bigger.

So…that brings us to the tarantulas. I don’t know if they really are tarantulas. I call them that because they look exactly like the kind of spiders adolescent boys keep for pets in the US. My friend’s host mom told her that they are definitely not tarantulas because tarantulas are much bigger. Doubtful. Actually, I have no idea, but the spiders in this story are about the size of a baseball. And black. And hairy.

The first encounter I had with one was in the bathroom as I was getting done with my shower. I had just turned off the water when I opened the shower curtain to find a HUGE spider a foot from me on the ledge above the sink. I frantically grabbed my towel and clothes and ran to my room. It was 4:30 in the morning and I didn’t really want to wake anyone up. I was leaving at 5 for a weekend trip so all I needed was my toothbrush, toothpaste and face wash from the bathroom. I got dressed and decided I was going be brave, run in, get my stuff from the bathroom and be on my way. So… I grabbed a broomstick and I was going to stand in the doorway and use the broomstick to knock my stuff down and move it to where I could grab it. I got to the doorway, opened the door and stuck the broomstick in to turn on the light, but… I couldn’t do it. I was convinced the spider was gonna jump out, or worse climb right up my broomstick and on to me. So I dropped my broomstick and ran to call Daysi. She came quickly, may or may not have killed the spider (I’m pretty sure she sprayed it and it just ran away) and got my stuff for me. I packed quickly, the whole time looking over my shoulder, convinced the spider was gonna get me.

The second spider incident happened two nights ago. I was in my room with the music playing, making some birthday decorations for Daysi’s birthday. I stayed up pretty late, because I had to wait for her to go to bed so I could put up the decorations. As I’m on my bed drawing, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. I look over and there is a HUGE spider sitting on top of my shoes. I calmly, but rapidly, leave my room. I stood outside my room a minute deciding if I should wake Daysi up, then concluded I had no where to sleep if I didn’t. I called her, she came, and we (and by that I mean she, I just stood outside the room and watched) spent the next half hour chasing the spider around the room with bug killer (which by the way is not really made for tarantulas) and taking almost everything except my armoire out of my room. By the time the spider was caught we had all my books, shoes, bags and whatever else was on my floor out in the dining room so the spider had no where to hide. When finally caught, the spider was not dead and Daysi had to kill it with the broom. The bug killer may have weakened it, but I have serious doubts about this method. She swept the spider out the door and we checked my room up and down, even under the covers to ensure there was not, as I was convinced, a family of tarantulas hanging out in there. I slept with the door and windows tightly closed so as not to allow spiders in, and because of that incident I am pretty sure that every other night tarantulas have been coming in my windows and climbing over me in my sleep.


Being gassed out

So one the worst morning I have had in recent memory, I woke up after only 4 hours of sleep, to mariachi music. This is very normal in my house, but this particular day I was really tired and the music came on at 5:02. That is really to early to crank up the music. Especially music with mariachi howling. Not 10 minutes later my host dad's co-workers arrived and summoned him to the door not by knocking, but just by yelling really loud. My room is right next to the front door so essentially they were yelling into my window. This happened at 5:12. The proceeded talking loudly right outside my room until, at 5:18, a large truck arrived to pick up some work supplies which were right outside my room. The truck, according to my neighbor, sounded like an industrial washing machine and was parked approximately 4 feet from my window. If the sound wasn't bad enough the exhaust was coming right into the window. I was determined not to get out of bed. I had 30 more minutes to sleep and I was going to stay in bed until the last possible minute. I waited about 2 and a half minutes, until I really couldn't breathe and finally got up. I ran into my host dad right outside my room and he asked me if he woke me up. "No." I said "I've been up for a while." Yeah right. I proceeded to take a cold shower and head to breakfast where my host mom went on about what a beautiful day it was. I was not having any of that. It was not a beautiful day. To make matters worse I spilled my oatmeal all over me. At that point I considered just going back to bed. I decided to carry on... and fortunately all the bad things in the day were over before 7am.