Dec 15-21: First Week of "Summer" Vacation

After 10 months of classes, this week marked the first week of summer vacation for students and teachers (and Peace Corps volunteers in Youth Development). It’s nice to have more free time, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I enjoy having more of a structured schedule sometimes. Work wise, my main primary for Peace Corps this week was reporting my data for the school year. I’ll probably write a separate sidebar for this at some point, but quarterly, we must submit data to the Peace Corps regarding our projects and activities in our communities. This plays a large role in general oversight and can provide evidence to Congress on what Peace Corps volunteers do. Our reporting deadline isn’t for a couple more weeks, but I wanted to aprovechar some extra free time to turn mine in before the holidays roll around. Fortunately, I was able to finish this part of the job here since I’ll be traveling home next week and I don’t want to worry about that while I’m stateside with family.

Despite more flexibility in my schedule this week, I wasn’t too active when I wasn’t working on reporting my Peace Corps data. Pretty much the entire week I’ve been battling a cold, but I’m glad that (hopefully) I’ve gotten over it before traveling abroad. However, there were still some really fun moments this week as well worth sharing. On Friday, I went to the house of my girlfriend a couple towns over from my community to do a Christmas gift exchange. Since I won’t be in Costa Rica for Navidad with her this year, this was a nice way to celebrate. She gifted me a hat and lanyard of my favorite Costa Rican soccer team, Alajuelense, as well as a stuffed sloth. Accordingly, I was able to sport this hat the next day, when Alajuelense (or Liga) won the domestic championship in Costa Rica for the first time since the pandemic. Liga is one of the most popular clubs in the country, so there was widespread euphoria (and lots of celebrations) across Costa Rica. And then on Sunday, I enjoyed a nice, sunny afternoon in San Jose with my girlfriend where we grabbed a cafecito at one of the many artisan coffee shops in the trendy Barrio Escalante neighborhood and walked around the city looking at Christmas lights. Late tomorrow night, I leave Costa Rica to make my way home to Springfield, Missouri. It will be my first time back in the Ozarks in a year and a half, so I am looking forward to spending time with family, celebrating the holidays, and (hopefully) running in cooler weather.







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