Welcome to My Crib (Site Visit)

The week following our site assignment, I had the opportunity to visit my site for the first time. Whereas many of my peers in the Peace Corps cohort had to trek across the country via buses to go to their sites, mine was so close that Uber provided the most direct means of transportation. 


This was quite the week to visit our communities. The 15th of September is Costa Rican independence day, and the four-day weekend we spent at sites overlapped with the holiday. Unlike the United States, Costa Rica uses its public schools as a major vehicle to celebrate the day. Thursday through Sunday, these schools were actively involved in their community’s celebrations. These included patriotic assemblies (acto cívico), a lantern parade (faroles), and the running of a torch (entorcha). In many of these assemblies, I was asked to give a few words about myself and about Peace Corps, which was an unexpected surprise.


I think my site is a good fit for me. My preference would’ve been to serve in larger schools, and that’s exactly what I got. I will be serving in two different institutions, an elementary school (escuela) and a high school (colegio). The high school has expressed interest in conflict resolution programming as well, which was my concentration during my Master’s program, so I’m excited to lean into that. My community is much more urban than the communities of most of my peers. This brings certain advantages. I’ll have easy access to a gym, grocery store, parks, and more, in addition to everything nearby San Jose offers. On the other hand, in some ways it may be more challenging. Integrating into a larger community as a volunteer could be more difficult, and there may be additional safety and security risks that I need to be cognizant of too.



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