- Our Sodexo staffing fiascos of late: Our recepcionista (receptionist), Vivian, had some personal family issues, and thus had to leave us after just a short few weeks; we will miss her dearly. We now have a temporary replacement, Priscilla, who has to be trained and instructed on tasks to do in order to fill her day (while we're otherwise occupied recuperating from Nicaragua, taking care of student issues, welcoming and planning for our CASP guests, and fielding the many other tortas that arise...). One of our cooks, Aldo, fainted in the kitchen and has since then been out all week, therefore bringing our cleaning staff member, Rosi, to work in the kitchen--and not do the normal cleaning--for our increased numbers with CASPers, their parents, and our regular students and staff members for this week.
- Our printer decided to run out of toner (oh, so THAT'S the reason why it's been making strange squeeking sounds for the last few days!?) just when the CASP students had essays due, our CRC students needed to make copies of handouts for presentations, and Dinorah needed 28 packets of readings printed for her lit classes for the rest of the week! The Canon Copier service man fell ill and didn't get up to the center to see to the issue until after two days had passed.
- One of our two washers has been on the fritz--stuck on the rinse cycle--during a period of peak usage when 22 CASPers were in desperate need of doing laundry (and by that I mean they were REEEEALLY dirty stinky after a week in a hippie town along the beach!). The repair man came on Wednesday and told us to just push down really hard on the lid, because it's a factory default on this model washer, in which the lids bubble and don't close all the way, making the water run endlessly.
- Although we were greeted by steaming, hot, and deliciously strong water pressure in our dorm rooms--as a result of the solar panels and new hot water tank being fully installed during our time in Nicaragua--we were also greeted with lakes on our bathroom floors. Apparently, the old pipes couldn't quite take the newly-found strong water pressure, and therefore we had to turn off the hot water in many sinks so that those pipes wouldn't continue leaking. We still have hot showers though, thankfully!
- At the start of the week, Loquito's brakes went out for the third or fourth time, so we've been down one car throughout the duration of one of our busiest weeks yet!
- On top of it all, we had many students in need of doctor visits after our time in Nicaragua (+ CASPers), and scheduling appointments and transportation for a variety of visits proved difficult and time consuming!
The more positive images of the week include:
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| The bus that comes all the way up to the CRC at 9am and 5pm for our students now! Yay, thanks to one of our host moms for advocating for us! |
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| The gorgeous flowers and varied foliage that have been planted by some of our dear students in the last couple weeks |
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| (which the wind is now trying to tear up, regrettably. This darn wind ruins everything!) |
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| My workspace: the ambiance of tranquility amidst the tortas (we still don't have blinds in our office, so the late morning glare makes my computer screen difficult to see and creates quite the strain on the eyes... thus the need for the umbrella inside). |
In summary of the week:
Sunday, March 13: the CRC was filled with over 70 people coming and going from our facility: a women's retreat group of 30 left at around midday, and the 22 CASPers arrived four hours later. Staff members bustled around cleaning and readying the rooms for the incoming group.
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| CASPers were willing to just jump right in there an help out in the kitchen washing dishes! |
Tuesday, March 15: a grand fiesta de cumpleaños (birthday party) was thrown in the honor of a few CASP students who'd had their birthdays over the last month, most while in their home stays in Honduras. We all went out for drinks and came back to the CRC to continue the celebrations, complete with piñata and quite the dance party in the CRC rotunda! SO wonderful to spend time with these fantastic people!
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| Fiesta de baile y piñata! |
Wednesday, March 16: a day of errands, speakers and guests at the CRC, an evening of music from one of our Tico friends (and Lindy's co-culture class professor).
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| Fernando playing us some classic Latin American cultural songs. |
Thursday, March 17: There was little luck of the Irish yesterday, as a series of tortas fell upon us... After a morning full of work and phone calls, and meetings, I had left in a taxi to take a sick student to the clinic in Heredia (Loquito is still out of commission, getting his frenos (brakes) fixed for at least the fourth time in the duration of our ownership--due to the steep mountain we traverse on a daily basis). Upon returning to the CRC around 5:00pm, I was greeted by an eerie darkness in the dusk; yup, the power was out! Not an irregular occurrence, especially since it's been monstrously windy the last few days. What perfect timing for our Parent's Weekend welcome dinner that we were preparing! Parents were arriving, and we were awaiting the arrival of all our CASP students who had yet to get back from their day in San José! So we had around 15 studentless-parents milling about in the candlelit shadows, with us escorting them around the center with our headlamps for about an hour before we went out in search of some of the group, who were trekking up our mountain after the last bus dropped them off in the rainy darkness. Finally, by 7:00pm, padres (parents) had reunited with their hijos (children), and we were serving (a warm!) dinner, thanks to gas stoves. The ambiance of having a full comedor (dining room), lit by candles and cozied by the warmth and additional light of our open fire in the comedor, really added to the memory of the night. The torta of the power outage actually made for a lovely, candlelit dinner! Afterwards, we taught Juan, our cocinero (cook) how to make s'máses (my Espanglish version of s'mores- remember the Maria-Nutella-Marshmallow sandwiches I'd blogged about before?). He thought that the whole concept of "s'máses" was hilarious (we're teaching him key words and phrases in English, and when we explained the concept, he thought the play on words was just so funny).
This was also the St. Patrick's Day on which we failed in our efforts to be festive, slight as they were. #1: I don't think I was even wearing any green, and nobody noticed, or at least didn't pinch me! #2: it was also dry. Well, I mean, it rained enough up here, but it was dry in the alcoholic sense... We tried to go out to the one Irish bar we'd found in the Heredia area, Flannigans, but sadly, it had closed! So last night, our TA St. Paddy's excursion resulted in just a very lengthy drive to take Juan home at the end of the night. We came home to a dark CRC (power was out for at least 9-10 hours in total), and sat around the dying hot embers that remained of the fire as we hummed along to some guitar melodies.
However, we did see this spectacular rainbow that graced our sky for the better part of an hour. We didn't see any pot 'o gold at the end, but it was a gorgeous, full arco iris (rainbow)! One of our students captured it as it was fading away in the late afternoon, above a vivid rising moon:
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| Photo credit: Heather Kennison |
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