Monica and Kaleb asked me what the schools are like here in Costa Rica. Let's take a look at some similarities and differences:

The School Year

How is it the same? Students are in classes about the same amount of time. This means that they get about 2.5 months of vacation, as well as a big two-week break halfway through.

How is it different? The school year starts in February and ends in December. This means that Christmas Vacation (as it's known to us) actually falls in July!

The School Day

How is it the same? Kids come to school and have classes under one teacher (except music, PE, and religion classes). There are recesses, and there's also a small cafeteria.

How is it different? The school is not big enough to handle all the neighborhood kids at once (no one rides a bus, because they're all close enough to walk). So half the kids arrive at seven in the morning and leave at 12:10. The other half arrive at 1:20 in the afternoon and leave at 5 p.m. Similarly, students visit the comedor (cafeteria) in shifts, because it's only large enough to handle one or two classes at a time. School lunch is free, but there's only one thing on the menu; so if you don't like it, salado. Recesses are 10 minutes long. There are two of them, so kids can't go far. Really, there's no reason to go far, because right now there is now playground in the neighborhood. Most kids just walk (or run) around the hallways, talking and playing with friends. Some come to the office or library to play the games that are available. I really like playing checkers and dominoes with kids on their breaks. They also love Barrel 'o Monkeys, which I brought back from the states.

All students have to wear uniforms. Kindergarteners wear a light blue one. Grade schoolers wear dark blue pants or skirts and white shirts. The colegio students have a pink shirt and dark pants.

The Building

How is it similar? All grades have assigned classrooms. There's a designated area for eating (called a comedor). We have a principal's office and an office for the guidance counselors. There's a spot outside where the kids have gym class.

My sister Becky and me in a classroom. There's an 'open' window behind us.

How is it different? Well, it's quite a small place if you consider the number of students that attend it. There are about 14 classrooms for over 1,000 kids. Luckily, it's not like Guinea, where they'd stuff 60-100 kids in a single classroom (wow!). As I mentioned before, they instead bring in half the kids in the morning and half in the afternoon. We don't have a colegio (middle and high school) here in Limon 2000, so the high schoolers actually receive classes right next to the grade schoolers. It might seem weird to run into 15- and 16-year-olds while running to the cafeteria, but everyone seems to get along just fine here.

Like many houses, the classrooms don't have closing windows. Just a grid of metal bars covering the space and curtains. This is because it's so hot and humid all the time that no one would even imagine closing a window. Only the principal's office has air conditioning, so that's not even an option. Some other reasons for this: it never gets too cold to need to shut a window, and windows are much more expensive.

Gym classes are held outside in the 'play', as in playground, because there used to be a playground there. Now it's just a broken down basketball court without hoops. The recreational areas in Limon 2000 actually in pretty bad shape. You should feel very lucky if your school has a playground, or a gym. Here, the kids and gym teachers make do with what they have. Usually, that's just some cones and soccer balls.

Education

How is it the same? Kids take math, science, English, Spanish, Social Studies, P.E., and music classes. There's a week of vacation at Easter, and a mid-year break of two weeks. Kids get lunch breaks and recess. They take tests and have school projects. There's a science fair, but only two kids from a few choice classes participate.

How is it different? Religion is a required class in grade school.

Most kids don't have books. Instead, they have to copy information word-for-word from the board into their cuadernos (notebooks). It takes a lot of time to do this, so that means less time spent on exercises and other learning activities. Another thing that I don't really like is that students get let out of class early a lot. This might sound exciting for you guys, but what you learn--even in 4th grade--is very important for your future education. If a teacher gets sick, no sub comes to take her place. The kids just miss class. A lot of teachers' meetings happen when kids should be in class, so the students just get let go for the rest of the day.

There's a lot less money to go around for public schools here in Limon, so a lot of the things we take for granted in the U.S. are not generally available here. For example, there's only one TV and one projector for the entire school. There's no computer lab. If a teacher wants to make copies for you she has to use her own money, usually at a copy store in Limon, which is a half hour away! It's very rare that kids get to go on field trips or do any extracurricular activities. Still, kids do learn a lot of interesting things. Last year the school focused on educational awareness, and kids learned all about recycling, making compost, and planting fruits & vegetables!

Planting in the school garden

So, what do you think? Would you trade places with a Costa Rican boy or girl and go to school here?

Are there movie theaters in Costa Rica?

Great question, Ali! Movie theaters aren’t too different from movie theaters in the U.S. They’re big, they have cheesy carpeting, and they sell a lot of popcorn. Those types of theaters are found mostly around San José in the center of the country. Away from San José big modern theaters are much harder to come by. In Limón we don’t have a regular theater. There’s one rickety old building, not very big, that has changing posters every once in a while, but I’ve never seen it open. Apparently you can knock on the door and the guy will let you in and show a film. I’d like to try it sometime.

A lot of people buy illegally-made DVDs on the street. It’s fun to watch the vendors in San José on the paseo (which is like a fancy street that no cars are allowed on). The people who sell movies don’t have a license to sell, so what they do is place all their movies (dozens, sometimes hundreds) on top of a blanket and shout, “Movies for sale! Action! Romance! Cartoons! Moooooovieeeees for saaaaaaaale!!” As soon as they see a police officer walking down the street toward them, they quickly grab the four corners of the blanket as if it were a bag for the movies and start walking the other direction. Either that or they just whistle and talk with their buddy, pretending it was any old thing to be standing under the burning sun with a blanket in their hand. When the cop passes, they unfold the blanket and start laying out their hundreds of movies again. Sometimes another police officer will be turning the corner before they even finish putting everything back in order. It’s goofy, but that’s how some people make a living.

Paseo de Colon - photo courtesy of flickr user Luis Alonso Murillo

In Guinea it was very different. Most people didn't even own a TV, let alone a DVD player. In the town where I lived for training there was one movie theater that would be open on Fridays and Saturdays. It was an event to go to the movies. The "theater" was one big room, about the size of an old church. It had a bunch of rickety wooden benches that were packed with people. The lack of a backrest and stale, stuffy air did not make for the movie experience you and I are used to. I went one time with my host brothers Alex and John. It turned into a 'double-feature' night when 3/4 of the way through the first movie, the DVD stopped working, and they had to put on another one on to prevent the audience from getting angry. Three-and-a-half hours--and two cheesy Bollywood movies--later we were on our way home with achy eyes and backs.

One of my favorite moments from my four months in Africa happened on the first day that I arrived in my training community. Three of my host siblings and I were sitting under the stars outside. They took turns asking me questions about my life in the United States. My thirteen-year-old sister Jaqueline (pron. jhach-eh-LEEN) began an exciting story about the one time--the only time--in her life that she got to see a movie. The movie was Titanic. She loved it. "Is Titanic the oldest movie ever made?" she asked innocently.

Jaqueline outside my bedroom window

In Spanish the word for pet is mascotas. Pretty funny how close some Spanish words are to other words in English. It happens a lot. Sometimes they mean the exact same thing, like restaurante, or nación, which I'm sure you guys can guess. You have to be careful, though, because there are plenty of false cognates. False cognates are words that look or sound like a word in English but actually mean something different. Some examples:

Rolling around on the carpeta might be difficult. It doesn't mean carpet, but rather 'folder'.Once actually is the word for number 11. It's pronounced 'OHN-say'. Éxito actually means success, not exit.Don't go asking for sopa if you're looking to wash your hands. They'll look at you funny for wanting to clean up with soup!Anyway, back to pets. Dogs, cats, and birds are quite popular as pets. I have my own place now and don't currently have any pets, but when I was living with my host family here it felt like we were in a zoo! She had two dogs (Rambo and Nina), two cats (Ruffina and Patty), goldfish, four parakeets, and two turtles on the back patio. And right before I left they bought a parrot! I don't have a photo of the parrot (her name's Lucita) at the moment, but she's a lora. Here in Costa Rica there are two types, lapas (scarlet macaws) and loras (green parrots). Some people keep loras as pets. Lucita is very smart. Very quickly she learned to say Lucita bonita! which means, "pretty Lucita," and "Upe!", which is what you shout when you're outside someone's house and want to ask if someone's there.

Pirula

Alli and Reese asked me a question I'm surprised more of you hadn't: is it hot? I'll bet a lot of you were possibly dreaming of warm beaches at that time. Your letters are dated January 21, and many of you told me how cold it was at that time.

The short answer? YES! It is hot. Costa Rica is a tropical country. What does that mean? What other countries are in the tropics?

From a living standpoint, it means that the weather doesn't change quite as drastically as they do in countries further away from the equator, like the U.S. Just like in Guinea, there are only two seasons: dry season and rainy season. We're in dry season right now, but that still means it can rain. During rainy season it can rain almost every day of the month! In Guinea the difference between the seasons was even more drastic. Conakry, the capital of Guinea, is the rainiest world capital, and it receives all of its 10 feet of water in about three months. During the other months it's so dry that all the grass dies completely and the earth is taken over by the colors red and brown. As soon as the first week of rains return there's an explosion of green as all the trees and plants wake up. Here, the rain is much more constant, but we still notice a difference between the two seasons.

Have you ever noticed that the days are getting longer right now? Up until June 21 that will keep happening. (Why so?) Well, it's true here too, but again it's not nearly as dramatic. The sun is going down a little later at night, but we barely notice. All year round you can count on the sun coming up around six in the morning and going down at six.

A beautiful Pacific sunset, just before 6 p.m.With all that we know so far about the climate, what can you conclude about the temperatures in Costa Rica? Take a look at this chart with Mrs. Stonecipher. It shows the average temperature every month in Puerto Limon, the closest city to where I live. Does the temperature change much from month to month?

Small restaurants in Costa Rica are called sodas, which I find interesting because they don’t even call soda (as in soda pop) soda; they call it gaseosa or refresco. If you walk into a soda and ask for a typical plate of food, they’ll serve you a casado (which literally means ‘married’). Casados consist of rice, beans, a little bit of salad, a piece of meat, platano maduro (which is almost exactly like a banana but it has to be fried up), picadillo (diced up potatoes), and a fruit drink. Meat of all kinds is used, but you will be served chicken, beef, or pork. The fruit drinks are delicious. Sometimes you get pineapple juice, or watermelon juice. There are also some fruits that aren’t very common in the U.S. like guava, papaya, tamarind, and soursop. They sure sound funny, but the juice tastes delicious!

A Costa Rican Casado with beef

The soda in our school

In fact, the fruit is my favorite part of the food here in Costa Rica. When I go on hikes with the Scouts, the neighbors will sometimes give us bananas that they’ve picked in their backyards as a snack. Have you ever heard of guayaba? It’s a type of passion fruit that’s often made into jelly for toast, but you can also pick the fruit right from the tree and suck out the pulp on the inside. Pipas, or young coconuts, are my absolute favorite. If you’re lucky enough to have one, you chop off the top with a machete (or just bust it on a rock if no). Then you can drink the juice from it as if it were a cup!

Guayaba Fruit with bars of guayaba candy

Pipas still on the treeRice and beans are very common here. The typical breakfast dish is called pinto gallo, which literally means ‘speckled hen’. The leftover rice and beans from last night are fried up in a pan and served on a plate with scrambled eggs. I live by myself now in my own house, so I cook for myself, but when I lived with my host family I was sometimes served rice and beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Ketchup is usually available, but most people spring for the chile panameño, which is a jar of pickled hot peppers. You take a spoon and scoop out the juice (or one of the peppers if you’re brave) to spice up your meal a little.

There’s a lot of food that we eat in the U.S. that is common here too, only it’s eaten differently. For example, have you ever eaten a plate of spaghetti piled atop a mound of rice? I doubt it. Pancakes? How about we serve them with sour cream instead of syrup? Does any of you like the taste of sour milk? My host mom, Doña Ivonne, saves the crusty stuff on top of the milk as her favorite part! I’ve never gotten used to the taste, nor have I gotten used to the taste of salt sprinkled on top of my fruit. The pineapple here is absolutely delicious. Just hold the salt, please.I live in a part of the country that’s quite different from the rest of Costa Rica, named Limón. Here the food is also quite distinct. Rice and beans are still very popular, but it’s cooked with coconut milk and spices to make the dish a lot richer. On the side are served patacones, or fried plantains. They taste a lot like french fries.

Patacones, photo courtesy of Flickr user Beth MAnd I’m sure you want to know about candy! Well, the fruit here is so sweet that kids are usually happy buying a bag of cut-up mangos or pineapple to munch on. A lot of neighbors in Limón 2000 make homemade ice cream. It’s a little more liquidy than regular ice cream and is typically sold in little plastic bags. To eat, you just bite off a corner of the bag and push the ice cream out. Kids like chocolate, but it’s expensive here so they don’t buy it very often. There’s one similar treat that kids just love, if they can get their hands on it: cocoa fruit. Chocolate is made from cocoa seeds, which come from the fruit of the cocoa tree. The seeds grow in pods about the size of a football. You can crack these pods open and you’ll find inside the seeds mixed together with the fruit—kind of like a pumpkin, but with bigger seeds. You pick out the seeds and suck the fruit off of them, and then spit them out. They taste nothing like chocolate but are still very delicious.

Cocoa fruit, photo courtesy of Flickr user Slipkjohn2

The following series of posts are responses to the letters I received from Mrs. Stonecipher's 4th grade class. Enjoy!

¡Hola muchachos! I absolutely loved reading the letters you sent me. Every single one was written very well, and I learned a lot about you, your families, and your interests. You’re a talented bunch, with so many athletes and culture aficionados (you sure love music and movies). And you come from some big families, I see too! Would you believe that a family with four kids is considered average size, or even small here? These days the families are smaller than in the past, but they still can be quite big. The librarian from our school comes from a family of twenty kids! Can you believe that? OK, most families aren’t that big, but it’s pretty normal for a husband and wife to have five or six kids.

I was also happy to see so much curiosity among you. You asked some great questions, and I hope to get around to all of them. Guess which question was asked the most times among all of you. “What’s it like sleeping under a mosquito net?” Well, it actually does feel a little like sleeping under a tent. I actually go to bed sometimes with a flashlight so I can read before going to sleep! Sometimes it gets annoying, because if you don’t tuck it in under the mattress on every side, the mosquitoes will surely find a way in. It makes my bedroom feel a lot smaller too.

Oh, and one quick note. I'll be putting some photos up to help explain things a little better, so I hope you get to see them; and hopefully we can fix the photos that you currently can't see on my blog.

Pura vida, Kevin

The following note is a message to the MS224 Mott Haven students who were kind and energetic enough to strike up a pen pal program with students from Limon 2000. Scroll down to see a video of our first session:

¡Saludos Nueva Yorkers!

Primero me gustaría agradecerles el montón de cartas recibimos de Uds. A los estudiantes les encantó aprender de sus vidas y gustos, además de responder a sus preguntas.

Igual que Señor Johnson, yo hice una presentación pequeña sobre The Bronx, enseñándoles donde queda en la ciudad de Nueva York y en el país. Además, vieron fotos de su barrio que Señor Johnson me había mandado. Les gustó ver una foto del número de casa escrito en vitrales encima de la puerta de un apartamento. Aquí en Costa Rica la mayoría de las casas y edificios no tiene dirección. Para recibir un correo hay que dar direcciones y descripciones (por ejemplo, del Banco Nacional, 100m al norte, 25m al este, casa amarilla con verjas verdes). Otro dato interesante: ¡hay bastantes costarricenses que viven alrededor de Nueva York! Muchas aquí en el país me han contado de su familia en Brooklyn, en Boston y en Nueva Jersey.

Bueno chicos, espero que las cartas lleguen salvas y sanas y que Uds nos puedan escribir pronto. Casi termina el año escolar en Costa Rica, y los estudiantes están esperando su respuesta antes de que se vayan. ¡Les quieren escribir de nuevo!

Atentamente,

Kevin

It's amazing how time flies when you're speaking Spanish!

Though I'm still in the same spot, a lot has changed with my correspondences back in the States. First off, I'd like to welcome a trio of new groups of readers to this page: Mrs. Stonecipher's 4th graders at Clark Elementary (near Indianapolis), Ms. Hoglund's new batch of 8th graders from Howe in Chicago, and the Mr. Johnson's 6th-8th graders from Mott Haven in the Bronx. I'm looking forward to hearing your questions and learning about all of you.

To Mr. Johnson and Ms. Hoglund: feel free to supplement any correspondences with my more advanced writing on my Guineagogy blog. I'll also post some links to some of the blogs of my favorite co-volunteer writers in my 'For the Bored' section.

For now, let me tell you all a little more about Limón 2000:

It's amazing how time flies when you're speaking Spanish!

Though I'm still in the same spot, a lot has changed with my correspondences back in the States. First off, I'd like to welcome a trio of new groups of readers to this page: Mrs. Stonecipher's 4th graders at Clark Elementary (near Indianapolis), Ms. Hoglund's new batch of 8th graders from Howe in Chicago, and the Mr. Johnson's 6th-8th graders from Mott Haven in the Bronx. I'm looking forward to hearing your questions and learning about all of you.

To Mr. Johnson and Ms. Hoglund: feel free to supplement any correspondences with my more advanced writing on my Guineagogy blog. I'll also post some links to some of the blogs of my favorite co-volunteer writers in my 'For the Bored' section.

For now, let me tell you all a little more about Limón 2000:

-The neighborhood is about three hours from the San José (the capital of Costa Rica) and a half hour by bus from Limón (the capital of Limón province). Limón is right on the Atlantic Ocean and houses the country’s largest port on the Atlantic side.

-Roughly 3,000 people live in Limón 2000

-The neighborhood turned 20-years-old this year. Beforehand it was private property.

-Some common jobs people have are truck drivers, house workers, office workers or retail sales in Limón, and construction workers.

-The grade school and high school take place in the same building. There are plans to build a new high school, but construction has not yet started.

-I work closely with the equipo interdisciplinario, which is a lot like a counselor’s office in the U.S.

-For being the most diverse province in Costa Rica, Limón is often called el cresol de cultura, or the melting pot of culture. There are strong populations of people of Costa Rican, Afro-Caribbean, Nicaraguan, indigenous, and Chinese descent. In the beach communities on the coast you can even find large groups of Americans who years ago escaped the U.S. for the slow Caribbean life. The most celebrated of these cultures is Afro-Caribbean. To date there are festivals and parades celebrating the region’s African roots. Still, there is a healthy mix, and it’s not uncommon to see a person with a mix of any/all of these cultures in her blood.

-Like in Guinea, I sleep with a mosquito net to protect against critters. Mosquitos here carry malaria and dengue fever, two tropical diseases that can be quite nasty. The malaria here isn't as bad as in Guinea (nor as common), but it's better to be safe than sorry!

Here are some photos that might do a better job of telling the tale:

My Limón host parents, Don Carlos (64) and Doña Ivonne (67)

Kindergarten students on their way to the cafeteria

In front of my host family's houseMy bed and mosquito net

Until next time! Pura Vida, Kevin

Hey again! It’s been over 2 months now, so I figure I’ve left you more than enough time to guess where I’m living now. Figure it out? I’m in Costa Rica, where the famous greeting is ‘Pura Vida!’, which means ‘Pure Life’ in English. Believe it or not, Costa Rica will be the 6th country I’ve had a chance to live in (U.S., Spain, France, Guinea, Peru, Costa Rica) and the 20th country I’ve visited! If you get a little time, do a little research about what Costa Rica’s all about. How many people live there? What U.S. state compares in size to Costa Rica? Is Costa Rica bigger or smaller than Indiana? In the meantime, I’d like to share a little about my experiences here.

I arrived on March 2nd, and boy was I surprised how different Costa Rica is from Guinea. It’s a very developed country (what does developed mean?). A lot of the activities that took a lot of time in Guinea are very easy here. For example, there is always electricity. In the town where I trained in Guinea, we only had electricity every other day; and in the site where I was to be living, there wasn’t any electricity, except when people ran electric generators. I used to have to go to a well to get water to take a bath or to flush the toilet. In Costa Rica, I find running water almost everywhere I go. In Guinea, only about 2 out of every 5 people can read. Here in Costa Rica, nearly everyone can read. If you lived in Guinea, you might expect to only live until you’re fifty years old. The typical person in Costa Rica, on the other hand, lives longer than a person in the United States (how old is that?)! Below are pictures of two families. The first one was my host family in Guinea. I lived with them for three months while I was in training. The next photo is a picture of my current host family. I’ll have lived with them for three months as well, here in a town called San Antonio. What differences do you see between the two families?

There are many similarities too. Rice is eaten at almost every meal; but instead of rice and sauce, Costa Ricans typically eat rice with black beans. It’s the national dish (dish is just a fancy word for meal), and it’s called ‘gallo pinto’, which actually means ‘painted rooster’. Strange, huh? There is also a ton of fruit here, and much of it is the same kind as all my favorites in Guinea. Mangoes and pineapples are very popular, and boy do I love mangoes and pineapples! Remember my presentation back in November when we were talking about seasons? What were the two seasons in Guinea? Rainy season and dry season. Here in Costa Rica, it’s exactly the same. What’s different is that dry season isn’t nearly as dry as it is in Guinea; it still rains a lot in places. Also, the dry season is from December to February, which is the wettest time of year in Peru.

My work here in Costa Rica is going to be very different. In Guinea I was going to be a physics teacher. Here, my job will be to work in an elementary school just like yours to work on projects with kids just like you! I’ll be living in a region of the country called Limón (it sounds like lemon, but it actually means lime) and can’t wait to get started with the kids. They’re in the middle of the school year right now, unlike you guys who are almost done with the 4th grade! I hope you’re enjoying your last few days at school and making big plans for the summer. I’ll keep posting in case you’re interested, so make sure you have the name of the website written down. That way you can check what I’m up to from your home. And remember, if you ever have any questions for me you can ask your teacher or leave a

comment for me on one of my blog entries, and I’ll answer it as soon as I see it.

Have a great summer!

Kevin

Alright! Guess what we get to see today? Another video!

You already know quite a bit about the Inca. Ready to see some more pictures of Inca ruins? Take a look at this one. In it you can see a kid about your age.

That’s a picture of a ruin called Saqsaywaman (pron. “Sak-SAY-wah-mahn”). Remember Pachacutec, whose dad took off and left him to defend the Incas by himself? Well after he began growing the Inca empire he decided to replan the capital Cuzco so it looked like a puma. Those jagged walls you see? Those are the puma’s teeth. They’re also part of what used to be a huge fort, where one of the largest battles between the Spanish and the Inca took place. Most of the stones are gone now. They were taken long ago down into the city and used by the Spanish for building homes and churches. But would you look at the size of them! Geologists say that some of them could weigh up to 50 tons! Apparently they were transferred from a quarry miles away to build the fort. How in the heck could someone move a rock that big into place without using a forklift?

Here’s another photo of some ruins named Pisac. I don’t remember exactly how these buildings were used, but I wanted to show you how high above the valley they were. There were even more ruins higher up! What are those step–like platforms called? They’re called terraces. The Inca were a mountainous people. Often times there wasn’t enough flat land for them to grow all their crops, so they would cut terraces into the mountain to give them more area for food. Because the elevation changed so quickly, they could grow different types of foods. For example, high up potatoes would be grown, and lower on the mountain you could find corn. The terraces also made it easier to defend themselves.

I saved the best for last. The most famous ruins in Peru are also the most famous in all of South America. They’re called Macchu Picchu. Every year thousands of people travel to visit the ruins. Some very lucky ones get the chance to hike to them on a road called the Inca Trail. It’s 33km long (about 20 miles), which doesn’t sound that long, but it took us more than three days. The hard part is the trail goes over three mountain passes, one of them almost 14,000ft high! It’s rainy season now, so most of the time it was misty and foggy, but when it did get clear the views were beautiful. In fact, the photo from my last entry with the rainbow is a picture from the Inca trail.

Remember how I said it was rainy season? Well, sometimes the rain gets a little out of hand. By the time I got to Macchu Picchu, we were told we had to leave as fast as possible because the nearest river was flooding so badly. We arrived in a nearby town called Aguas Calientes (which means “Hot Water”). Normally we would return to Cuzco on a train from this town, but the rains had caused mudslides that destroyed the train tracks. We were stuck! For four days I waited with almost 3,000 others for a way out of town. Finally, on the last day we were evacuated. I’ll let the video show you how we got out.

Pretty crazy, huh? I got to see Macchu Picchu from a helicopter! Luckily I got out of Aguas Calientes in time to catch my flight in Lima. The plane flew me to Boston so I could visit my sister and some of my best friends. After that, my mom and dad welcomed me at O’Hare airport in Chicago, and we went immediately to my favorite pizza place of all time. I sure missed good pizza when I was in Peru.

All in all, Peru was a pretty amazing adventure. It appears you guys are on your own new adventure: a new teacher! I hope you are having fun together and still enjoying our correspondence :) Remember that anytime you have a question, you can ask the teacher to send an email to me, and I’ll try and answer it as soon as possible.

So where in the world am I now? Well, I’ll give you a few clues to see if you can figure it out before my next blog entry. Last Tuesday I left for a new country to again serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. It’s more similar to Peru than it is to Guinea (though still quite different from both). They speak Spanish here, and the most famous expression is pura vida, which means “pure life”. Two words make up this Central American country’s name. See if you can find Central America on the map and start making guesses.

Pura Vida,

Kevin

Hi again,

I remember giving you a little bit of homework.

What did you find out about the Inca people? Anything interesting? How long ago did they live? Where did they live? What sort of things were important to them, and what happened to them? Let’s start with a picture of a beautiful valley.

This view overlooks part of El Valle Segrado. That means “Sacred Valley” in Spanish. It was here that the Inca people lived for many years. There were many other types of people who lived in other parts of Peru, but this valley was where the Inca called home. Quite beautiful, I’d say.

One day another group of people came to try to conquer the Inca and steal the valley. The ruler of the Inca people grew so afraid that he ran away, leaving his son to defend the entire empire (who knows what the word “empire” means?). I couldn’t imagine one of my neighbors trying to break into my house, and then my parents running away and leaving me there to defend it, crazy! Nor could I imagine successfully defending my house and then taking over every house in the whole neighborhood! You know what? That’s exactly what happened. The son’s name was Pachacutec, and he not only fought off the invaders, he took their land. Then he started taking conquering more groups and growing his empire. One hundred years later, the Inca empire was wider than the United States! Take a look at a map of South America. The empire stretched from the south of Columbia all the way down past Santiago, Chile. That’s over 2,500 miles, and not once did they have the luxury of a car--or even a horse—-to travel over those great distances. Its capital was a city named Cuzco. The Inca actually thought that this city was the center of the entire universe. Cuzco is high up in the Andes mountains—-over 10,000ft high, actually. Up there the air’s a lot thinner, so it was tougher to breathe. I was sometimes out of breath just walking up a flight of stairs!

The legend goes that the stones rose up from the ground to help Pachacutec and the Inca people defend themselves against the invaders. For that reason stones were very important to the Inca. There were different types of stonework. Some types were used for homes and warehouses. Another style, called the “imperial style” was used to construct royal palaces and sacred temples. Here’s a picture of two different styles of stone. Both are made of granite. My tour guide Henry is explaining how the building on the left was where a regular worker may have lived, while the imperial style stones on the right were where the royalty lived.

Here’s another photo of the imperial style. Look how well the stones fit together. You want to know what they used to cut these stones so fine? Other stones! The stones used for cutting were just made of a different kind of material, one that was harder than granite.

The Inca actually prayed to many gods. One of them was “Pachamama”, or Mother Earth. They also believed there was a god of the moon, of thunder, of corn, and many more. Can you guess the most sacred god of the Inca? I’ll give you a hint: you see it every day. Need another hint? The Inca built a temple to this god in Cuzco and lined it with the material they thought represented their god: gold. What’s a gold colored object that you see every day? I bet you already have the answer…the sun! Yes, every Inca city and palace had a temple to the sun, which probably had a bunch of gold objects in it. Not Here are a couple pictures from just a small section of Qorikancha, the temple of the sun in Cuzco. Imagine the walls of this temple lined with gold!

So what happened to the Inca? Well, the Inca empire was growing in the 1400’s, about the same time as the Spanish empire was growing. Remember what year Christopher Columbus discovered the New World? Well, about 35 years later a man named Fernando Pissaro landed his ship on the coast of Peru. There he saw much gold and silver, so he decided to go back to Spain and ask the king if he had permission to conquer Peru. The king said yes. So Pissaro came back with an army, and they captured Pachacutec’s grandson Atahualpa (pron. “Ah-ta-WAL-pa”) who was the emperor at the time. Eventually, Spain began taking all of the Inca’s sacred gold and silver objects and sending them home to Spain to turn them into money. The Inca were tortured and punished for not worshiping the same god as the Spanish, and they were also forced to work in fields and gold mines without being paid. They fought back for their freedom but never won the war. Eventually, their religion, history, and traditions began to fade away.

Walking around Peru, you can still hear the Inca language quechua (pron. “KECH-wa”) being spoken, but we still know very little about the Inca because quechua is an oral language. That means they spoke, but never wrote, their language.

Alright, I know this is a lot of information to take in, so I’ll wrap it up here. I didn’t get to the exciting video I wanted to show you, but I promise I will next time.

¡Hola todos!

Isn’t it strange that in Spanish a sentence that ends with an exclamation point starts with an upside-down exclamation point? The same is true for the question mark. ¿Did any of you know that already?

Peru was a pretty incredible experience. Yes, I’m home now, but not for long! And I made you a promise that I’d talk a little about the food. Who knows where potatoes are originally from? Any ideas? Many of us read about the potato blight in Ireland in the 1800’s and about “french fries”, but potatoes are actually from South America. The Spanish arrived in Peru in the 1520’s and found this strange thing growing high up in the Andes mountains that looked like nothing they’d ever seen. In fact, French explorers called it a “pomme de terre”—that means ground apple—and still do today. Anyway, you might guess that the feature vegetable in a lot of our traditional meals was the potato. Perhaps my favorite food that I ate in all my time in Peru was called puka picante. The name is actually a mix of two languages: “puka” is a quechua (what the Incas speak) word that means red; and “picante” means spicy in Spanish. The dish is made of a red spicy sauce served over potatoes and seared pork. ¡Delicioso! If you’re eating at a restaurant, puka picante, like all meals, is served with a ruby red juice that looks and tastes kinda like Kool-Aid with a little bit of cinnamon in it, called chicha morada. It’s actually made with the juice of boiled corn; later they add cinnamon and sugar to sweeten it up a bit. Corn is really popular down here, and it’s eaten in many different ways. The corn kernels are huge, a lot bigger than the stuff we drive by every day in Indiana.

Were there any words in the last paragraph you didn’t understand? How about Inca? See if you can do a little research with your teacher on the Inca people, and we’ll talk a little about it in the next entry. It’s an exciting one, I promise.

OK, back to food. Let’s talk about some of the other traditional foods in Peru. One food used in a lot of different ways is called quinua. It’s actually a cereal, but not in the way like you guys know. Usually we ate it on a cold morning, like a porridge. I know, the word “porridge” sounds disgusting, but it was actually pretty tasty—warms you right up. A cereal is a grain, just like rice. And although rice isn’t originally from South America, it sure is used a lot with food. Most of the time we would eat some type of meat, usually chicken, with a vegetable sauce, all served over white rice. Some other meats that were used were “trucha” (trout), “cerdo” (pork), “pavo” (turkey), and “alpaca” (alpaca).

…wait a minute…¿alpaca? Yeah, there’s no English translation for alpaca. In English, “alpaca” is alpaca. Know why there’s no translation? Take a guess, then scroll down, past the picture.

There’s no English word for alpaca because it’s not an animal from Europe that people had known about for a long time. So since it was this new animal that the local people were already calling alpaca we, just decided to start using their word for it. As you already know by now, we don’t have many alpaca in

America, so let me explain a little about them. They’re actually a lot like sheep here in the U.S. Clothes were very important to the Inca, so they used a lot of wool. And because they didn’t have sheep in Peru, they used alpaca wool to make beautiful textiles. Psst, “textiles” is just a fancy word for cloth. We adults sometimes say fancy words to sound civilized. Psst, “civilized” is just a fancy word for fancy. Anyway, because Peruvians didn’t know about chickens or pigs until the Spanish arrived, they often used alpaca for their steak meat as well as wool. Here's a photo of a man dressed in traditional Inca clothing weaving a textile from wool yarn.

Oh jeez, now I’ve done it…all this food talk has got me eyeing the fridge in the other room. I’ll sign off here and let you guys get back to the books. But don’t forget your homework! Next time we’re going to talk a little more about the Inca.

Hasta entonces, Kevin

Hi all,

Who ate entirely too much for the Holidays?? I did!! Oh well, that's what New Year's Resolutions are for. I hope you all had a wonderful break and are now refreshed and ready for the second half of the year.

It's tough to believe that I've been in Ayacucho now for almost six weeks. Sadly, my time here is drawing to a close. It sure has been fun, though. I work at La Casa Hogar de Los Gorriones (this means, "The Home of the Sparrows") five days a week, and we often have a lot to do on our days off given all of the holiday celebration. In the Casa Hogar are 27 children, from ages 3 to 22. It can get pretty rowdy at times, but we're always having a lot of fun!

There are three groups of kids: the Lupes, the Pequeños, and the Grandes. Each day I work with one of these groups. The Lupes require a lot of time and attention. These children all have mental and physical disabilities, so they need a lot of help just to do many of the activities we take for granted (like walking and eating). But the Lupes like to have fun just like any old kid! Some of our favorite activities are putting together simple puzzles, playing hide-and-seek, and playing on the merry-go-round.

Pequeños are between the ages of 3 and 6, and all are boys. As you might expect, the pequeños can also get quite rowdy! They actually share a set of bedrooms with all the girls in the casa. Imagine being six years old and having to share a room with your fifteen-year-old sister, sheesh. Now imagine having to share a room with seven other brothers and sisters! It can sure get crammed sometimes. Anyway, the pequeños love to play with their cars. They also enjoy when I chase them around like a zombie or, before bedtime, playing "This little piggy went to the market...."

The last group is the Grandes, who are between 8 and 22 years old, though most of the kids are 8-12 years old, the same age as you guys! When we´re not goofing around in the Casa, we loooooove to go outside and play volleyball. And, I´m proud to mention a new favorite activity: frisbee! We haven´t quite gotten to the point where we can play an actual game, but some of the kids can throw really well. They enjoy running as far away as possible to see if I can reach them on my furthest throw. That can be risky, because we play on a pretty narrow street, and the frisbee can go over a wall into one of the neighbors yards. Then we have to bang on the door to ask for it back.

I live in a hostel, which is a lot like a hotel. Many of the other volunteers rent rooms in a house not far away. In the morning we eat breakfast together. Usually, it´s just bread & butter, bananas, and tea, but I often can´t resist buying a mango, because they are so delicious here. For lunch we eat at the Casa, usually rice and a veggie-type sauce with a little bit of chicken or fish. I´ll talk more about traditional Peruvian food in my next post. For dinner, we take turns cooking at the volunteer house. It´s fun but, for me, stressful, because I´m a terrible cook. Last time I had to cook we made an "American Breakfast", scrambled eggs with pancakes. Most of the volunteers here are from France and Belgium, so they´ve never had pancakes before! Because you can´t buy maple syrup in Ayacucho, they ended up putting sugar and lime juice on the pancakes and rolling them up like a crêpe. It´s actually quite tasty this way. Do you know what a crêpe is?

New Years was a blast! We had a party at the volunteer house for all the kids, complete with balloons, dancing, and plenty of french fries. After the party, we walked to a lookout about 15 minutes away and watched all of the fireworks over Ayacucho as 2009 came to a close. It was pretty cool to have such a good view of the entire city.

OK, gotta run and get my shoes fixed before my big hike to Macchu Picchu. See if you can find a little information about Macchu Picchu; it´s one of the 7 Wonders of the World!

Hasta Pronto,

Kevin

On jaarama!

Well, I promised you I’d tell you where I was headed next. The winner is…{drumroll}…Peru! Today I’ll leave my house for the airport at 6 a.m. There’ll be one quick stop in Mexico City, and then I arrive in the capital Lima at 12:30 in the morning! Sheesh, that’s late.

See if you can find Peru on a map. Is it North or South of the equator? What countries are Peru's neighbors? On what continent can you find Peru? It will be an exciting time. Peru is very rich with history and also very beautiful. The Andes Mountain Range passes right through it. Many of the mountains in this range are taller than the tallest mountain in all the Rockies!

While I'm there I will be volunteering at an orphanage in a town called Ayacucho. Ayacucho is in the center of the country, so I bet you can spot it if you look hard enough. The elevation is 9000 ft! Have you ever heard the word elevation? Maybe you can use the internet to find the elevation of Indianapolis.

And the official language of Peru? I’ll give you a hint: I won’t be speaking Pulaar there anytime soon. What time of year do you think it is right now in Peru?

Alright, time to catch a little shut-eye. I'll be dreaming about Christmas presents, I'm sure. Santa definitely makes a few stops in Peru.

Wish me safe travels!

Kevin

Here's a video of the house where I lived during training. Whatya think? If you need to see a bigger version you can double-click on it, and the browser will take you to YouTube.

On jaarama! Tanaala ton?

Now I can say that and be completely confident you all understand me. How does it feel to know a bit of another language, spoken only in a little corner of Africa? I was happy to practice Pulaar with you, because it's easy to forget a language if you don't practice it.

First off, I want to send off a huge thank you to all of you for inviting me into your classroom yesterday morning. It was so much fun to share some of my experiences in Guinea with you. I can only hope you had as much fun as I did. Were all of your KWL questions answered? If not, feel free to pass your questions to Mrs. Lloyd, and she can pass them along to me.

Which reminds me...there was one question I couldn't answer yesterday: How many miles is it from here to Guinea? Well, I found a realy cool website that lets you calculate the distance between two places. Want to know what's even cooler? I was able to find both Clark Elementary and my little village of Bodie on the map. Ready for the number? 4888 miles! I know, I know. Huge, right?

Well, I'm not certain where my next travel adventures will take me, but I'll let you know as soon as I find out. Keep the people of Guinea in your thoughts and prayers, because they want to become a free country like America.

Until we meet again,

Kevin

July 15, 2009

Wo nu wali!

We’re going to have a little lesson in Susu, the local language of the town where we’re training. Wo nu wali simply means, “hi all!” It’s pronounced, “Whoa-new-wall-ee!” If you want to say hi to one person, simply say, I nu wali! (“Ee-new-wall-ee!”) The response? Simple. I nu wali!

I’ve been in Forecariah for two-and-a-half weeks now, and things are finally starting to settle down a little. We came here after a week in Conakry (“con-ah-cree”), the capital of Guinea. Conakry is crazy busy. Imagine a city of more than a million people without a single stoplight! The airport is really small compared to Indy’s. Normally, only one or two planes arrive every day. The day we arrived in Guinea, both planes arrived at exactly the same time, so the airport was absolutely packed. I felt like one of 200 sardines packeed into a can for five.

Forecariah has 14,000 people, and I’ll guess it has about 20,000 chickens, 5,000 goats, and 3,000 sheep. Everywhere around me are animals. Just outside the front gate of my house a goat and her two children are tied to a tree. Sometimes during dinner in the main room of my host family’s house, a chicken or two will stroll in to see if any food was dropped on the floor. We have one rooster at the house, and boy is he annoying! Between 4:30 and 5:00 every morning he likes to start screaming at the top of his lungs, and his pen just happens to be right outside my window. When the kids mock him, they scream, “co-ro-ki-co!!”

Every corner of Forecariah is alive with sounds. Mixed with the rooster’s crows at 5 a.m. are prayer calls from the mosque. Guinea is primarily a Muslim country, so at various times of the day I hear the imam’s (the equivalent of a Muslim priest) voice in arabic over a loudspeaker. Later in the morning the vendors begin selling their various items. My house is kind of far from any main road, so only food sellers pass by. On my first Sunday here, my host father purchased some buille (“bwee”) from a woman walking by, balancing a huge bowl on her head. Buille, tiny balls of rice in a sweet sauce, is commonly eaten for breakfast. At the market, street vendors balancing food bowls mix with a thousand others, selling anything and everything under the sun.

My house is also filled with noise from day until night. I’m living with a family of 12, along with about 15 chickens and 12 little chicks. My 2-year-old nephew loves to test the strength of his vocal chords, as does his 3-year-old cousin. Of my seven brothers and sisters, two usually stay around the house on summer days to do chores (like washing the bowls and fetching water from the well). Four walls surround the two small houses the family shares, and tucked into a corner of two of the walls is a small little room with an iron-barred window looking to the outside. Several times a day someone will shout “cawn!cawn!”, the Guinean version of “knock!knock!”, looking to buy something from the tiny store. Jaqueline (13 years old) or Daniel (10 years old) will run over to the room and sell a pack of batteries, fuel for a lantern, or maybe a sucker. There aren’t many toys here, so young kids often play by just helping with the chores. My 3-year-old brother Benjamin spent 15 minutes last Saturday helping me wash a handkerchief as I scrubbed the rest of my laundry outside on a washboard. He finally decided he’d had enoughafter the rain began pouring down on us.

Gotta run. Can’t wait to share more with you. À la prochaine!

Kevin

Hi Kevin!

I think I have figured out how this works now, and I am awfully excited about our communication over the coming school year! I know the kids are going to really interested to hear about the things you see, the people you meet, and and the places you visit. How often will you be able to update this blog? I hope everything is going well for you, and thanks for getting this all set up.

Hmm, let's start with the normal stuff.

As I said before, my first name is Kevin. My last name, Roche, comes from the very south of Ireland in a county called Cork. People say I look very Irish because I have red hair, but I'm also part German, French, and Czech. If I were a dog, people would definitely call me a mutt. Last January I was lucky enough to visit County Cork while traveling for a work trip. Here's a picture from the trip. It's of a fort!

I am 27 years old, and my birthday is Feb 25. This year I had an awesome birthday, because that was the day I received an envelope in the mail inviting me to join the Peace Corps and live in Guinea!

Before I joined the Peace Corps I worked at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis. Most days I worked alongside Mrs. Lloyd's husband. Mr. Lloyd is very funny and fun to jump on (we even did it at work!), so I encourage you all to plead with your teacher to bring him to school one day :) At Eli Lilly I was an automation engineer. Much of the time I made changes to computer programs so the equipment making the medicine would work better or so the people using the software could work more easily. It was fun and challenging work, but I was ready for a new challenge--one you'll soon be learning a lot more about!

I was born in Illinois but went to grade school and high school in Highland, IN, which is all the way in the Northwest corner of the state. Think of me if you ever drive to Chicago and see a big sign for Cabela's, because you're really close to my house!

When I was your age I involved with Cub Scouts (4th grade = Webelos, right?), karate, and piano; but my love was definitely baseball. I played first base until my coach told me I was too short, and then I had the time of my life chasing after fly balls in the outfield. All that running around must've payed off, because when I got older I started playing ultimate frisbee and liked it just as much. If you don't know what ultimate frisbee is, think of it as a combination of soccer and football, except you use a frisbee and are not allowed to hit each other. I also really enjoy running, hiking, reading, riding my bike to work, and taking pictures with my camera.

I have one older sister named Becky who lives in Boston, MA. It's a long way away, but I still get to see her quite often.

OK, enough for now! Time to run home and eat my last dinner with my parents before the big trip. Pork tenderloin and green beans, mmmmm.

To Mrs. Lloyd's 4th Graders,

Hello! My name is Kevin, a future Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea, Africa. I don't know about you guys, but the first thing that came to my mind was... Is that where guinea pigs are from?

The answer? Surprisingly, it's "no". Guinea pigs originated in the Andes mountains, all the way on the other side of the world in South America. I know, I know. Crazy, right? Sometimes the ways of the world just don't make any sense. It kind of reminds me of the rules of spelling. Just when you think you've got it all figured out ("I before E...ok, easy enough...piece, lie, tried..."), they throw the whole "except after C" loophole in there and the world just goes outta whack again!

Enough lamenting. I know that in the next couple years I'm going to find myself in plenty of situations where the world just doesn't seem to make sense anymore. Why? Because I'll be experiencing the world through the eyes of a different culture. Certain values very important to Americans might not be as important for someone living in Guinea. For example, if you were running late for a very important meeting but passed your best friend on the way there, would you stop to talk with her? In Guinea, it might be considered rude if you didn't stop, even if it meant you will be even later for your meeting.

Have you had the chance to look up Guinea on a map? If a map is available to you, go ahead now and take a look. Or, you can click here. Find it yet? If you haven't already, try and locate all three African countries with Guinea in the name. Hint: they all border the Atlantic Ocean. Here's a map of just Guinea:

Guinea's about the size of Oregon, the 9th largest state in the USA. It's also about the size of the United Kingdom. About two weeks after I arrive, I'll get the chance to visit the place where I'll be living and working the next two years. None of the new volunteers knows where we will be staying yet, but we're all pretty excited to find out! Guinea in WikipediaGuinea on the Peace Corps official webpage (what volunteers do)Well, I've already had a long day scrambling to pick up a few last minute items before the big trip (like a hammock that compresses down to the size of a softball!) and saying goodbye to my grandparents one last time. Next time I'll tell you a little more about myself and my project. Until then, I'd like to sign off saying that I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all.

Have a great school year!

Kevin