Bike Ride for Boredom

My friend Julia and I had been looking forward, if anxiously, to this weekend for a couple months. This weekend was our big 120k ride from my town to hers. She came down on the bus, with her bike, to stay the night on Friday and early Saturday we took off for her house where I spent Saturday night. We've been training for about 2 months to make sure we were ready for it, and turns out... we were! We did it! I was fun, if long, and we're already planning another bike ride during out winter break.

We called our ride the Bike Ride for Boredom 2011 because a few people asked us, "What kind of ride is it?", "How many people are there?", "Is it benefitting a cause? Like AIDS?". The answer these questions is: There are only three people. It benefits no cause. We are doing it because we think it will be fun. Since this explanation is hard for some people to understand, i.e.- 'Who on earth would ride 120k to Upala where it's hotter than blazes just for fun?!?'. Well, we would, mostly because we have a lot of time on our hands. Better than sitting around all the time, we figured, we could spend our time riding bikes. Cool, but why? So we created an event, a goal. From this was born our event:

Bike Ride for Boredom- 

Serving the recreational and exercise needs of Peace Corps volunteers, 

Curing boredom with every pedal stroke.

Bike Ride for Boredom- Photos

We carried our sign with us for commemorative photos

5:45am- We're off! Trying to look really bored. That is the name of the ride, after all.

Smooth sailing through the lowlands south of Agua Zarcas

Almost to Muelle, Stage 2

About 50k in we met up with another volunteer, Alex.

A spectacular view of Arenal Volcano

A little river where I stopped for water.

16k to lunch and 55k to the end. We were gonna make it!

Cresting a hill about half way through.

Thursday, May 26- No school...again...so this is pretty much my day

Wednesday, May 25- The sunset from outside my house. Lots of times I stop what I'm doing to go see it.

Tuesday, May 24 #2- My adult English class. Lots of laughs. They are surprised learning can be fun.

Stream of Conciousness Post (with bullet points to aid understanding)

• I made granola bars today. As a devotee of Quaker Chewy bars I was very pleased to see they turned out almost the same. When I have Chewy bars in the house I limit myself to one a day, I now have have an entire batch sitting here and a recipe...this could create an out of control situation.
• Biking and running this past week I have encountered 3 dead dogs, 7 dead frogs, 1 dead snake, 1 dead marmot-looking thing and 1 dead baby monkey. Bad week for the animals, good week for the vultures (which we have a ton of).
• My host Aunt, also our neighbor, has 2 chihuahua dogs who just had puppies. One of them had to have a C-section. My aunt and a friend asked me one afternoon if I wanted to go for a ride with them, just for something to do, but forgot to mention the fact that we were actually taking the dog to the vet. We arrived at said "vet", who I'm sure is a trained vet, but his "clinic" is a little room on the back of the house next to the horse stalls. Typical around here. I spent the afternoon watching the dog have surgery. I'm shocked I didn't pass out, seeing as I don't care at all for blood, but it was really interesting. She had two puppies. Only one survived. The whole thing only cost $60. Which, apparently, is neither cheap nor expensive for this type of procedure.
• I've started teaching adult English classes in my town on Monday and Tuesday nights. I waited to start them until I felt like I was well settled and known enough in the town and I'm glad I did. People, mostly, now know who I am and why I'm here and the classes are going well so far.
• This Sunday I went with one of they guys from my English class, and his female cousin, on a "hike". I put hike in quotations because it was mostly a: bush-whacking, log-crawling, stream and marsh crossing adventure. Hike does not appropriately describe it. The most interesting, infuriating and ironic part of the whole situation is that this adventure took place about 100 yards from a well maintained road. Why did we go the hard way? You ask. Well, I believe it was more about my companion being able to show off his machete skills. I repeatedly suggested we walk on the road, but my words were wasted, as that clearly was not an option in his mind. When we got to the top of the hill we were climbing we had a little picnic, on a cement pillar. There was much commenting on how beautiful it was to be in the unobstructed nature there at the top of the hill, but no one except me seemed to notice the whole way up we followed canals and piping that bring water to the town . Concrete and pipes are a really beautiful part of the natural landscape, if you ask me.
• Last Sunday we all went over to the "Fiestas" in Marsella, the town next to ours. There was food, fair type stands and snacks, a ferris wheel, dancing and handi-craft exhibits. I learned some interesting things:

1. Ferris wheels are called Chicago wheels in Spanish
2. "Shoshuy" means Chop Suey in Spanish
3. On fair rides, like the aforementioned Chicago wheel, it is acceptable to assemble them with bent nails where screws should be. I didn't notice this until I was about 30 or so feet in the air. Not going on one of those again.

That's all for now... more thoughts to come.

Pictures!

After deciding to take daily photos, I promptly misplaced the camera. Don't worry though, after a week it was found hiding in the couch. I knew it couldn't have just walked out of here on it's own!

Sunday, May 22
Back from a run

 Monday, May 23
Our coffee maker broke, so we got a new one. We call him Mr. Coffee.

 Tuesday, May 24
The lovely Lora, our parrot. She sleeps right here outside my window. She awakes every morning about 5:30 or 6 and greets the world with the two words she knows: "Hola" and "Lora". After about 15 repetitions of "Hola Loriiiiiita" I'm awake, and usually not happy about it.

Something good in the news

This last weekend I was listening to PRI's "The World" report and heard a story that made me smile. I wanted to share it with you becuase not only does it relate to my work here, but it gives us a little bit of hope in what continues to be a tumultuous situation in Afghanistan.

The report was about the U.S. Marine mission in Afghanistan. While there is usually not a lot good to be said about what is going on there, this story is quite an exception. The U.S. Marines in Afghanistan are using what they call FETs or Female Engagement Teams as part of their civic mission to rebuild the country. These teams consist of 2 to 3 women who go into towns and villages and talk with the people, find out what the community needs and help them create it. Since the teams are small and are made up of women they are looked at differently than other American forces. As females, they can gain access to the women of the country, which is something pretty much no one else can do since the women are very much confined to the home, and carefully protected by their male family members. The women are a huge part of the society, but often overlooked in all the policy-making, law creation and government rebuilding that is going on. Going into the homes of Afghan people is really the only way to get in touch with these women, see what life is really like and what the people truly want and need.

The project they highlighted in the broadcast was that of two women Marines who worked together with a community to open a school. The idea was that the school would be open to both boys and girls. On the first day a few students arrived, both boys and girls, but the grils went home at mid-day because of pressure from community members and fears of the families. While that doesn't sound like a great success story, it actually really is. These women Marines were able to, in cooperation with a community, open a school and invite young boys and girls in. This town previously had no school, and had these Marines not been there it is unlikely any school that would have been built. Any school that was built, would almost certainly not have welcome girls. The girls may not be attending school right now, but other students are and the project raised awareness and got people thinking about girls' education.

The fact that the US Marines are taking this approach in their initiative to rebuild Afghanistan makes me really happy. I have a really hard time with the idea that the US has so many troops, spends so much money and uses so much force in foreign lands, so to hear that there is an effort to work WITH Afghan people to help them rebuild is really inspiring. I think it's fantastic that women soldiers are connecting with women civilians and listening to their ideas for development. Rebuilding a society is impossible if the people of that society are not intimately involved in the process. Development of any kind is impossible without that kind of partnership. I hope that these type of missions continue and expand, and it sounds like the Marines might think there's something to the idea of a Peace Corps...cooperative grassroots development makes countries more stable and creates, therefore, a safer, more peaceful world.

This weekend in pictures

Friday, May 13
First time my host family had ever had rice crispy treats.

Saturday, May 14
View from the top of San Miguel on the first leg of a 50 mile bike ride.

Sunday, May 15
Sunday evenings at the house, fried chicken and a movie.

Pictures!

Today is the first day of a little project called: "Picture of the Day". I'm not very good a taking pictures, and even less good and sharing pictures. So...I'm going to start carrying around my camera and taking at least one picture each day of something I'm doing, seeing as my amazing writing skills can only go so far in conveying what I'm doing and seeing here...enjoy :)

Thursday, May 12-
Teaching in the computer lab with Freddy (a teacher at my high school)

Just look around

I was riding the bus home from San José yesterday morning and, despite being very tired since I got up at 4:30am to catch the bus, I found myself looking out the window and thinking about just how beautiful the scenery is. I do that a lot actually. Almost every time I take the bus I spend the majority of the time gazing out the window in wonder. The sky is so beautiful, the colors change, the clouds are always different, sometimes you see the mountains, sometimes the mountains are covered in mist, it's so green, there are always flowers and plants I've never noticed of seen before.

It's important to note here that I take the same bus A LOT. There's one main road trough my town and you can go east or west, those are your only choices. Riding the bus that much in only two directions you'd think that you'd get tired of the scenery. I guess some people would, but I don't. How could you get tired of seeing a new little waterfall between a bunch of vines, discovering a beautiful little creek you've never seen, seeing huge red parrots swooping through the sky? I don't know that I'll ever get bored of it.

In the same way my bus only goes east or west, I only have 3 or 4 roads to run and bike on, and I certainly don't get tired of those. Pineapple fields, cute baby cows, goats who look like the might at any moment decide to chase me, frogs, butterflies, palm trees, pine trees, babbling streams, seeing all the way to Nicaragua on a clear day, a faint distant view of a volcano, jogging 10 minutes from my house to a bridge that sits 100 feet above a lush ravine and class IV rapids... and my absolute favorite little kids and grandmas and grandpas on the porch who smile and say "Adios".

I heard two very interesting comments from gringo travelers this week about Costa Rica. The first was, "All Costa Rica has are beaches and volcanoes and rain forests. That's it." 'Hmm.' I thought when hearing this, 'Sounds pretty boring to me.' The next thing I heard was, "Yeah, I've been traveling around the country for about 3 weeks and it's getting kind of boring." Just like the first comment, I thought, 'Yea, really boring. I don't find anything interesting about miles of white sand beaches or volcanoes that spew red lava all night long' I don't really know what these people were getting at. Maybe they were missing their friends and family and were tired of traveling. I don't know, but what I do know is that it's really a shame that a person can't enjoy the beauty of what's out there, especially in a place like this, and I can't help but wonder what it is that they think when they're sitting there looking out the window of their little apartment in Detroit, or wherever it is they're from.