Shaking things up

Thanks again to all of you who have written and followed the blog! We hope all of you are doing well and enjoying fall! It sure is nice to be able to email/post every night, but this won't last long. In fact, tonight is probably our last post in a few days. We did, however, get some fantastic news today -- we're headed off to our new host communities tomorrow!

We were placed into our language groups this morning, which was a much-awaited event. Kevin was placed into the novice group with 3 other new-to-Spanish volunteers, all of whom have the potential be great friends in the near future. Megon was placed into the advanced group with four other proficient Spanish speakers. We've both already formed great bonds with all of our fellow language group trainees, which is a good thing because we'll be living in the same village as them and taking training classes with them 5-6 days a week. 

We got to leave, or "escape" as some have said, our retreat center in the mountains today for the first time since we've arrived in the country. We loaded into three buses and drove to the city of Cartago, which used to be the capital of Costa Rica before the giant earthquake of 1910 basically destroyed it. Each group of us was given some tasks to complete, such as finding the market (el mercado) or the ex-president's house and doing some research on them. We were given a small stipend (3,000 colones, about 6 dollars total)  to find lunch and buy a phone card, and lucky for us, it was gorgeous and sunny the whole time. The excursion was a huge success overall and it was Kevin's first experience exploring a city outside of the U.S. and Canada! It was a little overwhelming with all of the Spanish, but definitely a confidence booster as well.

Back at the retreat center tonight, the fun really began. We were given the names of our training villages and our new host family assignments! To our surprise, Kevin's group and my group -- nine of us total --were both placed in the same village of La Fila. (Don't bother looking on the map, it's probably not there because it's too small!) This means that neither one of us has to travel to another village for training every day, which is great news. So we'll live and train in the same village but go to different places for class each day. 

Our host family consists of a young mom and dad and two young boys. We were given a picture of them, and despite the fact that none of them are smiling (the Costa Rican way), we're sure they will turn out to be wonderful people. We're super excited to meet them and are glad to live with kids because they are such wonderful language teachers, willing to correct a gringo's Spanish mistakes whenever they are given the opportunity. La Fila is one of four communities that the TEFL volunteers will live in and all four are connected by a bus route we will get to know very well. Our training schedule for the next 10 weeks will look a little like this: 

Monday: Spanish class in La Fila

Tuesday: Teacher training in a town called Tarbaca

Wednesday: Spanish class in La Fila

Thursday: "Core" training (involving all of the TICO 21 Peace Corps group) in Tarbaca

Friday: Spanish class in La Fila

Sounds great, doesn't it? With all of those Spanish classes, plus conversations with our host family and interaction with the community, Kevin will learn Spanish in no time!

After the host family and village assignments were given out, the TICO 21 group was in a super good mood and just so excited! The Peace Corps trainers had a great outdoor barbecue planned for us with lots of typical Costa Rican foods, bottled sodas (what a novelty) and fun music. Just a few minutes into the party, we were hit by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake! It was quite a roller and it was many of the volunteers' first earthquake, so it was pretty darn cool and only added to the excitement of the evening.

Lots of dancing to Latin music followed, which was a blast. It was a perfect way to end an amazing week of intense orientation and the start to our real training and life in the Peace Corps! Wish us luck on our next adventure as we explore la Fila and get to know our host families! We'll write again when we figure out what our internet options are!