Thursday, March 20, 2008

happy Christ´s Passover night

hello everyonei hope that this email finds you well. i shoudl note that this keyboard is pretty worthless and so i am likely to have some ill spelled words. but it has been a long time sicne i have sent a mass email (actually, i think it has been at least a country since the problems that i thought i had in Tegus). but we are here in costa rica as we have been for some time now. i do not know the exact day when we arrived but it was about three weeks ago. the first thing that we did was to go to punta mona. punta mona is a hippie commune (basically) on the carribien coast of costa rica. there we learned a lot about sustainable living and tried to debrief the honduras home stay that i talked about in my last big email. that is something that we are still trying to deal with, but that isn´t the point. punta mona was a great time for our group to just enjoy being together and learning about sustainable living. i have never spend that much time that close to the ocean, but living in board shorts (only board shorts) for a week, is a great experience. we also kyaked, made chocolate, ate some great vegetarian food, and just loved the group. after a week of using the compost toilets and living in the wall-less yoga hut, we came back here to san jose for a week (this is something like the 10th or so) and had lots of lectures on everything from tourism to CAFTA to indigenous history. we also were fortunate to spend a morning with an amazing man named Don Juan Stamm who is a gringo who spend his life supporting and doing theology to help the people of central america and had some great stories. then in the afternoon we went to the american embassay and were fed a lot of disheartening and incorrect information from a worldview that i don´t know if i agree with anymore. (apparently the state department doesn´t have numbers on whether or not there is an increase in the number of illegal immigrants to the states, but yet they are building a wall...). We then packed up and went up to the University of Georgia´s San Luis Research Center which is also an ecolodge for groups. from there we did some more study on the importance of ecological sustainability, free trade, and ecotourism. we also spend a day riding on zip lines and eating really good ice cream (yea, we were tourists). then we spend two nights in home stays up in San Luis (the town). it was really interesting to see the difference between the families there and the ones that we lived with in Honduras. these were generally better off financially and had more material goods and really the kids were really happy. today, we came back to san jose and i tried to go to a soccer game between saprisa (the team from san jose) and a mexican team, but because the game was sold out, we didn´t have enoguth money to pay for all of us to go, so i hope that at this moment, the ones that we gave the money to are having a great time and we will see. so in the words of kelsey orr "Joe, that is so long, who is going to want to read that?" so i am going to stop. but happy holy week to everyone. all of you at whitworth, enjoy your spring break and to everyone please go out and remember the sacrifice that our lord made on the cross, but also remember how awesome easter sunday is. (Catholics focus too much on friday and protestants only care about sunday, find a mix). but Dios Bendiga. I love you all. check out the new pictures on the facebook profile and enjoy the face that he is risen and that we are saved. in himjoe

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018575&l=1c45c&id=59400432

Saturday, March 1, 2008

I am alive and well

so this post is actually two in one. for those of you who keep up on it here, you are in luck. after some internet craziness, i have found my other post and am now writing from here in San Jose, Costa Rica. we are just relaxing a bit before we head to punta mona in the morning. I will be off the grid again until next saturday at least, but i will keep you guys more informed when i can. so yea, here is my other, longer message from the other day.

hey everybodycontrary to the bet that we all had, i did not recieve any machete wounds during my time in the campo. first, i have to say thank you to all of you who send me messages in response to my messages or just to wish me a happy birthday. reading those has been a really happy experience to know that i still have people who i am close to back home. (oops, i just spilled someones 7up). so what happened to me. where do i start. on friday feb 8, we left copan ruinas (sorry, all city names will be in spanish) and went to La Entrada. there seven of us split off to go to our homestays which were close to la Entrada (that is me, Richie, Kristina, Cheri, Glen, Travis, and Gillian). we later became known (mostly to ouselvse) as the San Carlos Seven (more on the name in a few minutes). after going to a meeting of some local mayors, we were taken off in groups of 1 or 2 to our areas. i went with Kristina to an area known as trinidad de copan and after a little car switching, our mayor took me to my town called Quebraditas. The house that i lived in had a mom (who was about 45), a 20, 17, 12, and 10 year old sons, a 16 year old daughter and her 18 year old live-in boyfriend-fiance guy. honestly, the first few days were hell. i know spanish pretty well and i was having basically no problems understanding people before this, but the accent of the family and this region was REDICULOUS. the washington accent is based out of the front of the mouth pronoucing all s sounds very solidly, but they talk out of the back of their mouth. needless to say, we had some serous communication problems. it was a real struggle. the first morning, i woke up and wend to cut (i mean pick, but the word is cortar which literally means cut in spanish and so that is what we use) coffee. coffee looks just like a red grape when it is really ripe. the bushes are usually 6-10 feet tall and you just pick them off the tree and drop them into a bucket that you keep tied around your waist. when the bucked is full, you go and put it all into your bag and continue. we worked until about 11 when one of my host brothers would bring coffee and lunch to eat. then at about 2 we would pack up and walk back to the main station thing. there we would measure our cutting by five gallon buckets (known as galones). at first i was unaware that when they asked how many galones you picked, they meant how many buckets, not how many gallons. so when my 1 and a half buckets was multiplied out to be 8 gallones in my head, they were really impressed. then i learned. i usually picked somewhere between 1 and a half and 2 and a half buckets with a high of 3. we were not working on the land that my family owned so i was actually paid (about L. 250 or 12 bucks for 5 or 6 days). it really made the how little they make real to me. this was pretty standard for my life. but i would not cut every day. some days i did not do anything. others i worked around the house or went to find firewood. one day the San Carlos 7 got together at the loca fair just to hang out. this day was amazing and really important for my psyche because i had only been speaking apanish for over a week at this time and it was amazing just to relax with some of my favorite people (just like you all). this day was kinda funny because we went to watch a soccer game between the local mayors, and at half time, they just started handing everyone (players and spectators) tecate. it was a good day. my family was really cool. my mom was the local, governmentally designated know it all. this meant that anytime any agencies would come to the area, they went straight to talk to her. then i got to talk to them. so that led to some good info on loca economics and stuff. the downside of my homestay was that we had electricity and a tv. thus while other members of our group spent a lot of their evenings talking, my family would just watch telenovelas (spanish soap operas) or bootleg DVDs of either music videos or crappy movies. i really enjoyed my time there. i nad a lot of time to think about myself, the world and how everything came together. eventually some of the language problems went away (but i still have no idea what my mom said most of the time). i have some great stories though about the time my knocked a guy out, playing soccer for the towns team, going to a waterfall to drink beer with the mayor, and a crazy leaving confusion. needless to say, my life is a little fuller and brighter now. i really do not know how i have been changed, but we will see. thank you all for you prayers and such. we are flying out to costa rica tomorrow and i will leave email contact for a week again on sunday. so please, say hi, and all that stuff. i will email again soon, but i love you all and so does jesus.in the one that kept me safe and is shaping my life

joe