Pictures of my Family!

Here are some of my favorite pictures with my family!

A weekend get away with my family out of the city and into the beautiful mountains.

And rollerblading with my family : )

You can send me mail at....

Amy Duncan
Latin American Studies Program
APOD. 54-2070
Sabanilla, Montes de Oca
San Jose, Costa Rica

A Beach Weekend in Limon!

This past weekend the 41 students and myself took a well needed break-vacation to Limon. Limon is about 3 hours east of the capital, San Jose on the coast of Costa Rica. It was really nice to get out of the city and actually see this beautiful country I´m in! The ride there was so beautiful, we drove through all the gorgeous mountains!

On our way there we stopped at coffee, banana and pineapple plantations! It was really neat to see these. When we got to Limon we checked in at our hotel and had the evening to venture out in the city for dinner and interview people on the streets about poverty for a report for class. I enjoyed interviewing people and getting their different opinions.

Saturday we went to an Indigenous tribe, where preserve Iguanas. Then we went to the beach!!!! I love the beach! It was awesome! Scenery like you see on postcards! And the water was so clear and warm! While I was there I saw a really gross black snake in the woods, which creeped me out! Monkeys came to visit us when we were eating lunch and tried to snatch our food. We also saw a sloth in the trees. And then some girls and I went for a little hike in the jungle! It was quite an adventure!

Saturday night after dinner, we danced the night away! It was so fun! We rented this whole restaurant out and had our very own live mariachi band! I had a blast! Part reggae part salsa music. This very old guy was dancing was with us. And boy can he dance!! Every time he would shimmy my friend and I would just look at each other and laugh hysterically because he could shimmy better than half the girls including me! He had some sweet moves.

Sunday we went to church and headed home, it was a relaxing weekend away from school work, studying and the nosiey city.

Now its back to reality and into the swing of things for school, papers to write and lots read. This program is challenging but I´m glad they are pushing us because I am learning a ton.

So tonight when I got home from class my tica mom and sister and I went to the parade in town. It was really fun. Dancers, drums, fireworks, lanterns and tons of people. Tomorrow is the actual independence day for Costa Rica! It is a really big holiday here and we have off from school!

Oh another Holiday they have here and not in the US is Dia De Los Ninos. Just like mothers day and fathers day, they have a Holiday for the kids, where you buy the kids gifts and celebrate them. My tica mom went to the city to buy my tica sister a pair of new headphones.

Next Monday I am heading to Nicaragua for 2 weeks! The trip will help us get a better understanding of the diversity in Latin America. I am only allowed one backpack for the trip and get to experience another home stay with a new family. When I return to Costa Rica I will return to my same host family I have now. From what I have heard, its extra hard because these families really don't have much. Like dirt floors, no running water or electricity, but that is just what I heard and I'm sure it differs from family to family. But if you can pray for me those two weeks I would really appreciate it, as much as I'm excited to experience it, I am anticipating that its going to be really hard, uncomfortable and frustrating at times.

Thank you for all your prayers and support!

An entry from my Journal

Here is something I wrote in my journal tonight....

When I decided to study abroad in Costa Rica I was thinking of the exotic, beautiful, tropical, peaceful paradise. However, what I have encountered so far has been far from these expectations. I am living in a loud, dirty, dangerous, huge city.

This week has been challenging and I need time to process some of my experiences this far because so much has happened. The material we are learning in class is not easy stuff to take in. One of my peers today described the week as ¨heavy¨. We aren´t breezing by classes. Even though at times it is very hard, I appreciate the struggles because I am learning so much. This week in class one topic we focused on was poverty and to be honest it has taken a toll on me emotionally. For me growing up poverty seemed to be something that was very distant, as if it was something that happened to other people that lived far away from me. However, now I am experiencing it on a very personal level.

Today Don Elmer was our guest speaker in class and he shared with us about poverty. Now when I heard that we were going to have a speaker talk to us about poverty I was not expecting that the speaker was going to be poor himself, I was expecting some government official to come and give us statistics on poverty and how the numbers keep increasing. However, this was not the case, we had a poor man speak to us. This surprised me because so often I associate the poor with not having a voice but that class I heard the voices of poverty. Don Elmer is a 40 year old poet and very talented artist who grew up in El Salvador in a garbage dump. Here he would wake up early to shift through garbage for food and things to resell in the city. For his family a can of rusty sardines was a huge blessing. And often ate spoiled jarred baby food. He was thankful for the rich who threw away things that were not fully used and prayed they would continue this habit. What was very interesting about Don Elmer was that he wasn´t ashamed to be poor either. He embraced it. He came right out in the beginning and stated he was poor. He lives in a tin shack with a dirt floor. Don Elmer believes that we should have a strong social commitment to where we live and to defend our culture and not to copy others. He emphasized the need to live with what we have and realize that we need to invest our resources in our neighbors.

Me experience thus far has made me look at my live and begin to reevaluate it. I have so much. I take so many things for granted. Yet I still seem to need more, I feel disgusted for this after witnessing poverty on this level. I feel overwhelmed and frustrated at times with this reality. I don´t know what I can do to help. Where do I begin? It seems to me that in American I tended to ignore poverty and not pay too much attention to it. I would push the issue to the side because it didn't concern me. Here in Costa Rica it is hard not to notice it.

There was a little girl about 4 years old who came up to me in a store in San Jose grabbing my arm and started talking to me. I didn´t know what she was saying so I simply smiled thinking she was just being friendly and asked my little sister what she was saying. She explained to me that she was homeless, lived in the streets and went around asking for money. After I didn´t give her any money she later went around to every other women in the store to ask for money. She left empty handed. So many old, sick, handicapped, dirty men have gotten in my face and asked me for money in the streets. One child was sitting by my bus stop yesterday with a cup help out for change. Poverty is all around me. So what do I do with all this? I want to help but where do I begin? Do I pass by the people on the street and ignore them or do I give them the change that is in my pocket?

We all have this call from Christ to be more like Him. But what does this look like? Often we have no idea because we need to go out of our comfort zones first before we can understand it. Americans are all about being comfortable and they rarely do things that make them uncomfortable. But Christ went out of His comfort zone for us so maybe we should start by doing the same.

Este Fin De Semana

Last night my sister and I were so pumped to watch "She's The Man!" So we brought out her mattress from her room and placed it on the floor of the dinning/living room to watch the movie. They don't really have comfy couches to sit on, only hard lawn type furniture in their living room. So it felt nice to just relax on her mattress and watch a movie. I was exhausted from the week so of course I feel asleep but I made it through about 3/4 the movie which was good! Before the movie we watched the end of Aladdin in Spanish! I love that movie : ) But we watched "She's the Man" in English. My sister doesn't speak English so I wonder how much she could understand. But it was a soccer movie so I think she liked that.

Last night after I fell asleep in my room I was woken up by this loud noise!!!! It was sooo loud, it shook the house and my room! At first I honestly didn't know what it was I thought it may have been gun shots or something. It was just this continuous banging that lasted a 1/2 hour or so that gave me a headache. After I kept listening I realized that they were drums! The loudest drums I have ever heard in my life at 11:30 at night! They just kept on playing them and I figured they were playing them going up and down the street because they would get louder as they got closer to our street. Along with the drums were whistles and people screaming! At first I was startled and was annoyed they were keeping me up. I figured it must have been a parade for the soccer game that is tonight.

This morning around the breakfast table I asked my family what it was. They said their neighbors were having a party. A party?! I have never heard of a party this loud. He said yea and that a few of our neighbors called the police because they were so loud!

So far today I walked to the market with my sister to buy some food goods. Again they don't have much food in the house, they buy only essential food right before the meal. We are going to have a little party watching the soccer game tonight at 8 and I decided to make guacamole and chips for my family so Pamela and I bought the ingredients at the store today. And tomorrow morning I asked my family if I could make them breakfast and they said yes very happily, I'm going to make french toast!

Pamela has math class till 3 today. I would hate to have classes on Saturday. But after classes I asked her if she wanted to go to a dance class with me. She already knows how to dance but I don't so we are going to go to class to learn the salsa, merengue and tango! It should be fun and I'm glad I have a sister that I can do activities with.

I was asked what my favorite thing I did so far by one of the students and after thinking about it my favorite thing to do is laugh with my family! Even though I can't understand everything that is going on all the time. I can always understand a simple smile or enjoy laughing. My family is very hospitable and gracious and when we start laughing it makes me feel right at home!

Costa Rica vs. Mexico

This weekend is the soccer game between Mexico and Costa Rica! Everyone is getting pumped! Yesterday a few of us went to the mall and the guys bought jerseys!
Soccer is so big here.
And the stadium is right in my town Tibas! I minute down the road, so I bet this weekend is going to be pretty exciting!
I'm not going to the game though because tickets sold out 2 hours they went on sale.

Thank you all for your emails, prayers and support its means a lot : )

Classes

Classes are going really well so far!

I have to wake up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 to be at class at 8 and then I home around 6:30, its a long day!
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I have Spanish at 1 to 4.

For my Core Seminar class we have a lot of readings to do but it's on some really interesting topics. Today we talked about colonization, neo colonization and poverty. We took this survey on poverty and it amazed me on some of the statistics. Did you know "Over 125,000 children die a week because of malnourishment" and "3 billion of the world's 6+ billion people live on less than $2 a day" These stats striked some really interesting reactions and good conversations in class.

I have had some really interesting bus rides so far! Oh my does the driving here make me nervous!!!! My mom tried to ask me if I had my license and if I could pick up my sister at church, little did I know she was just kidding and then we just started joking about how crazy the roads are here! They tend to not have any laws regarding the way you drive. So next time you think people drive ridiculous in the states, think again!!!! My bus driver yesterday was the worst! He was driving all over the road, going through red lights. It's incredible how close we get to another car without actually hitting it!

The streets are soooo crowded. People beeping, motorcycles cruising by, people selling fruit in the middle of the street, of people putting on a acrobatic show in the intersection for money while people wait at a red light, its crazy!

Today I figured that I probably spend about 10 bucks a week for buses, which isn't bad but I wish I was closer so I could walk, but I live way to far away from my classes to do that.

Rice and Beans!

So its a good thing that I like rice and beans because that is about all their meals consist of. Lunch rice and beans, dinner rice and beans....yummmmy

We sometimes have other foods with the rice and beans but there is normally rice and beans served with the meal. So my mother is a great cook. I never knew you can make rice in beans in so many different ways, last night we had rice and bean soup and it was actually really good.

One thing that I have to get used to is the amount of food. I am normally used to eating throughout the day whenever I want, a bunch of small snacks here and there. But here my family doesn't have any food laying around their house. We have little stores right down the street from us and whenever we need milk or bread for a meal my mom or I will go out and buy it just for the meal we need. So that I am going to have to get used to. I miss my munchies and snacks.

Another thing is they eat dinner really late. Last night it was 8:30 when we sat down. Granted it was delish, but I was hungry when I got home from class at 6:30.

Anyways the food is good so I can't complain, I just have to get used to their eating schedule still that's all. The fruit is so ripe here! And there are lots of new fruits that I have been trying. My family likes a lot of fruit juices as well, they tend to be really too sweet for me though.