It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been in Costa Rica for three weeks! Training so far has been a pretty intense whirlwind of new people and places to get to know as well as a lot of information to process. My week is divided up between language classes that are held in my training town on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, technical training with the other rural development trainees in a nearby town on Wednesdays, and then Fridays I catch a 6:15 am bus –yikes!- to San Jose for general Peace Corps information sessions with all of the trainees.

I am living in a small, “semi-rural” town that’s about 24 kilometers from San Jose. It’s really beautiful up here and I love walking out of my house every morning to see the sun rising over the mountains. (I’ll try to put pictures up soon!) I live with a retired couple who were both widowed and married each other three years ago. They are very cute and affectionate together, love to sing karaoke, always have family over visiting them, enjoy 80s music videos, and almost religiously watch the telenovela El Ultimo Matrimonio Feliz (The Last Happy Marriage). I have to admit that while at first I resisted watching the novela, and then became distressed by some of the questionable messages it sent, I have now become emotionally invested in it and every night I find myself huddled on the couch with my host parents- our eyes glued to the screen.

There are four other trainees living in my town and we all get along really well. We like to go to each other’s host homes to sing karaoke or have coffee, and it’s amazing to me how welcomed we always are. I used to worry about dropping in unexpectedly to visit someone or inviting one of the trainees to my house without checking with my host parents first. But after seeing how happy people are when you stop by to see them and how eager my host mother was to meet the other trainees, I learned to rethink my understanding of respecting people’s privacy and not imposing on them. A great example of this was when a couple of trainees in my town were invited to come over for “cafecito” (a cup of coffee and light snack in the late afternoon). The whole group of us ended up coming and we spent a good three hours there talking with the family, receiving an extensive a tour of the grandfather’s garden, and setting off left over fireworks.