June 23-29: Fiestas de San Juan & Visit to Acosta

This was a pretty eventful, roller coaster of a week! Usually working with young students keeps me on my toes the most, but it was everything outside of the class that really made things interesting. In fact, I didn’t really host any formal classes due to tightened schedules because of townwide celebrations for Dia de San Juan - my community’s trademark event. 

This week took off with some humble beginnings. On Monday, there was a community-wide water shortage. Later in the week, we had back-to-back days with power blackouts because of blown transformers nearby. We’ve entered the rainy season, and I’ve been told these are pretty common phenomenons this time of year, so it’s something I’ll need to adjust to. (My living situation is still undoubtedly luxe compared to other Peace Corps sites around the world, so I am in no way complaining.)


Tuesday was my town’s Super Bowl, El Dia de San Juan Bautista. I was originally slated to host the second session of our new Amigos Sin Fronteras club, but we had to postpone until next week because of the fiestas. Like I alluded to earlier, I actually didn’t facilitate any classes this week at the escuela. But to be honest, it was great to have a bounce week to re-set, prepare lessons for upcoming sessions, and to do some administrative reporting work on my activities for Peace Corps. The town’s celebrations were short, but fun. The key moments of the day included the explosion of bombas in the plaza and live bands parading through the city and even through my escuela. Lots of people in town took off work for the day and started partying as early as 5am, when bombas first woke me up. The closest thing I can relate it to is Mardi Gras given the religious, musical, masked, and inebriated vibes of the celebration. (This was a workday for me, so I observed rather than joined in on the fun.)



Nothing too noteworthy happened during the rest of the school week as students were busy wrapping up exams. I filled in as a substitute English teacher of sorts one day, but that’s about as exciting as it got. However, the weekend was much more involved. 


On Saturday, my running group in San Jose celebrated its first anniversary. Several Peace Corps Volunteers were already in town for various trainings and conferences, so a few of them came out and ran with the club, which was fun. Afterwards, I headed about 90 minutes south to the cantón of Acosta, where a fellow Peace Corps volunteer lives. This volunteer is semi-retired after a career in banking and has been a great resource for all of us in our cohort. (He’s pretty much the cool uncle of our group.) He was nice enough to invite me down to stay at his site, and I took him up on the offer. He showed me around the town, introduced me to some friends, and cooked me some great meals. It was the best I’ve eaten in awhile, and it was great to catch up with him.




On Sunday, I headed back into the San José area to meet my parents who will be in Costa Rica for about the next month or so. During their first couple weeks here, I will be working at site while they take Spanish classes in Heredia, which is on the opposite side of San Jose. After that, I’ll take a week or so of vacation to travel to Costa Rica’s Zona Sur with them, which I’m excited for. After they arrived, we quickly shopped for some groceries and found a food hall where we watched the USA vs Costa Rica soccer game in the Copa del Oro. (I’m happy to report that the US won, so I’ll have bragging rights at school for a while.) Fortunately, my site is close enough to where they are staying that I was able to return home that same night to get ready for school the next morning. I’m super excited to have my parents in Costa Rica, but I’m not quite on vacation yet, so I’ll be prioritizing my work at site until my leave officially begins.

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