Another update (again via the mom...)

Took a day off today and went snorkeling and walking in Cahuita National Forest with some other volunteers. Nothing groundbreaking, but good fun. Tomorrow night is another beach bonfire (provided it doesn't rain), and there's a waterfall I'm hoping to go with some local friends to on Sunday. Also hoping to do a zipline tour, since it seems like the 1 thing in Costa Rica that I haven't done. Stuff is going well, first sign done, just going over a little entrance sign and going to start on the other one. Have enough volunteers now (7 including me) to split them up for various jobs, from cleaning the education centre's walls to yardwork/gardening at the volunteer house to painting to working on a business plan for Judy and Louis to ignore :) . Borrowed a book from Judy on the founding of Costa Rica's national parks, which should be insanely boring but because its Latin America it's full of intrigue, yellow journalism, corrupt politics and machetes and so is pretty cool. A good Tican swear word to end the email on: "carapicha", literally translatable to "dick face"

Checking in (via the mom...)

Stuff is pretty good here. Finished the sign to go out front, been doing a lot of rowing down to the beach, bonfiring, kyaking, sloth holding (duh), tour giving, and bossing around/translating for what will soon be 6 volunteers with little to no spanish. Mostly just good fun, my Spanish has gotten a fair bit better and I´ve started picking up Panchuco, the Tican slang, as well as a bit of the accent (the ¨r¨s are almost gringo and the ll´s and y´s are slurred like in Chile). In terms of grand projects I haven´t come up with much (although the sign, and the next one I´m doing, are somewhat a big deal since they are people´s first introduction to the place and being able to paint (which I fortunately gambled correctly on being able to do) has gotten all the construction guys interested and they´re always in watching and chatting during downtime, which is cool).
Lots of adventures (last night, biked with a couple of the guys down to a bar about 15 minutes away...in the dark on potholey roads with semis whizzing past and a broken bike seat-at least I´m staying safe :) ). This trip has at least gotten me really interested in the ecology side of Sustainable Development (thinking about maybe weedling in a alternative energy project for Aviarios some summer...borrowed some books from Judy on stuff like canopy expoloration and the Costa Rican national park system), and interesting ideas about guide stuff (where a company will pay you to travel around Central/South America with a bunch of gingos, which could be really cool...one of the volunteers here knows a guy, but guides have to be 21 for his company).

More from the Land of the Slowest Internet in the World

5 new volunteers get in tomorrow. The 2 who were here when I arrived (2 girls, from Canada and England) left this weekend. I feel like I am finally getting into a good position with the staff. I feel like because so many people pass through, everyone here is a bit reticent about making friendships, and so just having been here for a while and having a while left is what I need to form relationships. It´s also interesting interacting more in Spanish...I feel like I´m in middle school again, where I wasn´t exactly shy, but just didn´t have the first idea of how to make small talk. Also, Tico slang.

Got my first tip of $10 from a tour...nice! Pretty unexpected, considering that I only did half of it and the people were quite-mmm-pushy, maybe is the word. Louis, the grandfather, was on the news lately over an issue of closing off some of the property with a fence and more building which the neighbors (mostly squatters) are really unhappy with. Last week was entirely crazy with running around doing a PR job on that, so hopefully this week I´ll be able to move along with my projects. It´s looking right now like the Arryos are going to have me work on the entrance, painting a couple of signs and looking at ways to try to make the gate and general entrance from the road more attractive. I´m reading a lot and writing at least a page a day, which adds up nicely. But I find I´m not that worried about ¨productivity¨, partly probably because figuring out the social scene is project enough, and partly because now I´ve moved on a bit to thinking about stuff to do back in St Andrew´s (job? auditing classes? theatre company? street theatre?). I find myself quite content at the moment. We´ll see what the arrival of new volunteers does.

Still not sure how I feel about volunteering in the 3rd world, or animal rescue, or ecotourism. The road to hell and all that. There´s got to be a way to make it all WORK.

Reaggeton is good. Cahuita rum is not really, although I´m not a rum person so I´m biased. Sloths are good. Tourists are at least interesting. Adam Sandler is perhaps not as deplorable an actor as I once believed. The book Darkmans by Nicola Barker is awesome so far. I wish I could live everywhere at once, always.