Here's a usual weekday for me:
Alarm goes off. I hit snooze and sleep for 10 more minutes in blissful denial.
7:10am
Alarm goes off again. Was that really 10 minutes? I need more sleep.
7:20am
Ten...more....minutes....
7:30am
On a bad day, I'll really push it and hit snooze again. Usually, I find the inner power to turn off my alarm, open my eyes, and attempt to keep them open without relapsing back into sleep.
(Ahhh, some things never change, no matter where you are in the world. It's just like waking up for school every morning!)
7:35am
Eat breakfast, which is usually a fruit salad of papaya and banana, yogurt, or leftover gallo pinto with fresco or a glass of water.
7:45am
Throw on virtually the same outfit I wear every single day: a pair of baggy Royal Robbins khakis, tennis shoes, and here's the tough decision - Amigos polo shirt, "peace love penguins" t-shirt, or my button up blouse.
Getting dressed every morning has never been easier! (or as boring)
7:50am
Head out the door and begin my walk to work. Primary objective is to pay attention and not be my usual clueless self, so that I don't get run over by a camioneta, motorcycle, or taxi. Secondary objective is to get to work without stepping on poop, because like I've probably mentioned one too many times on my blog, there is a lot of random poop in the street. Avoiding stepping on poop is a VERY serious part of my life right now.
8:00am-12:00pm
Working at the office of Mpowering People. Typically involves sitting at a desk in front of a computer and doing stuff like writing agendas for community meetings, creating invitations for said meetings, planning things, sending files to Ingrid via Facebook messenger, and occasionally getting distracted and looking at Facebook. Ingrid usually plays Spanish love ballads from her computer, and her and Gabriela belt out tunes together.
12:00pm-2:00pm
Go home for two hours and eat lunch, the biggest meal of the day. Sometimes my family makes me a fried fish (yum), or something with eggs. My food is always accompanied with raw sliced tomatoes or cucumbers. I noticed that nobody else in the family eats this except for me, and I think they prepare it for me every day because I'm vegetarian, which I really like because this gives me a good serving of fresh fruits and veggies that I wouldn't be able to get otherwise. The traditional diet is usually heavier in starches like rice and beans and accompanied with meat, usually chicken.
Massive slab of fried fish (1 pound) with a lot of sliced tomatoes, limes, and fresco de arroz con piña
Lunchtime is usually the hottest time of day, unless it's going to rain, which makes the afternoon cooler and much more comfortable (that's how you can tell whether it will rain that day, is whether or not you spend your afternoon sweating constantly)
In my free time, I surf the Internet or play "Cook Serve Delicious". I downloaded Steam on my family's home computer, which is cool because I could sync all my saved data and start playing right where I left off at home! I now have a four star restaurant. (Hmmm, waking up late, playing computer games....it really is starting to feel like home here)
Most afternoons, Jhostyn and Isis will come over (my host sister's cousins).
Isis dances up a storm and manages to fall down every three minutes or do something potentially dangerous and/or unsanitary in her attempt to entertain herself and explore the world around her. She also has a music playlist that we play for her everyday, which consists of Beyonce, a music video of a song called "Me Gusta" which involves a lot of twerking, some Spanish kids songs that I almost have memorized, and Shakira. (Her dance is so funny and cute - I posted some on my Facebook if you want to see. I recorded it so that my host family could save it on their computer and watch it in the future!)
Isis y sus abuelitos
Jhostyn and I bond over video games. We play Plantas Contra Zombis (the whole family plays this game) and it reminds me of playing computer games with my brother Matthew when we were kids. I tried teaching him Cook Serve Delicious but there's no Spanish language option, so it ends up being very confusing for the both of us.
2:00pm-5:00pm
Usually the second half of my work day involves going to the communities.
I used to travel to the farther communities with them, Tamarindo and Ceiba, but because transportation coming home is unreliable, I don't go there with them anymore. This is because typically Ingrid goes to the communities on her motorcycle, but since Amigos doesn't allow volunteers to ride them, we have to take buses, which don't always come when you want them to! Thus, the return home usually requires a combination of hitchhiking, walking, and searching for buses.
Now, I am focusing on working with the two nearby communities, Adiact and Sutiaba (the community I live in).
6:00-onwards
We'll have dinner around 6-6:30, which is smaller and more casual than lunch. Some days, dinner is simply tiste (cocoa and corn drink) with pan simple (plain bread) or pan dulce. I like having gallo pinto with tostones, which is even better when I have hot sauce to go with it! My family doesn't like spicy food, so it's like my own personal bottle of hot sauce. They won't even go near it! It was funny how surprised they were when they learned I love hot sauce, and even more surprised when they saw how much I like to pour onto my food.
Evenings are spent writing in my blog, journaling, surfing Internet, checking Facebook, playing videogames, and talking to family. Before we go to bed, we also spend an hour or two making decorations for Milena's upcoming quinceñera in December. We're making these tissue paper flower ball things right now!
The whole family also loves dancing. Even Bebe the dog likes to dance!
Lastly, some nights I get to see and talk to my family back home, thanks to Skype!
I find it amazing and beautiful that people all over the world can use Skype to talk to family and friends that live far away or in other countries. When you're missing the ones you love, there's nothing better than being able to see their smiles and hear their voices (other than being with them, of course). I'm really grateful for this kind of technology, which allows us to connect over long distances in ways we never could before.
That concludes my very long blog post about my daily life! I hope you enjoyed walking through my day with me.
Thank you to everyone who has been following my experience through these blog posts - I love being able to share my journey with you. It's exciting to put my experiences into words, and to turn interesting occurrences into (hopefully) entertaining stories for you all. Writing has always been a comfort to me, ever since I decided to keep a daily journal when I was about 12. This is my first time keeping a blog, but it is so similar to keeping a journal that I truly enjoy writing posts and don't mind updating it frequently! It gives me great perspective, and I feel happier knowing that my experiences are something that I can share rather than keeping all to myself. It's like a journal that can be shared with everyone :)
Comments