Volunteer Abroad Blog

On Wednesday October 5th we were contacted by Gail Keller, a counselor from Eugene, Oregon. She was visiting Costa Rica for a few days with her brother, husband and niece, and wanted to share the work she does with an orphanage in the US.

On this day, I met Gail early in the afternoon and took a taxi to the orphanage in San Ramón. The home is managed by Doña Roxiris  and four tías (aunts) that also live in the orphanage.The home hosts twelve children who are no older than 13 years old. Our volunteers work in the orphanage helping with babysitting, cleaning, tutoring or just giving a hand with whatever is needed. The orphanage is funded by government resources for the protection of childhood and there is also a community group that also fundraises for the home. Volunteers work with the aim of making these kids life as good as it can be while being institutionalized.

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Almost 270 people have been reported dead from the major floods in Thailand, while 3.4 million acres of agricultural area is now covered by water. It is one the worst disaster in Thailand in the last 50 years. More than 30 out of 77 provinces are now under water. More than 700,000 families have lost their home and their family members. Some area has been under water over a month, and some areas have flooded twice this year. These floods in Thailand have badly affected the Thai economy.

The has been a lot of rain in Trat, where our volunteer dorm is based, but because Trat is located near the sea water can be drained to the sea and we have not been had experiencing any floods in the central Trat area. There are a few areas outside Trat that were flooded for a few hours.

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Since I had never been to a retirement party before, I didn’t know what to expect from the Wat Aw Yai School retirement party which I was invited to. On Thursday 29th September, I was picked up by P’ Wiseht at 4pm. When I arrived at the party,  some teachers and students were already there. The students were going to do the dance show and thus they were getting dressed up and started to put their make up on. I was helping them and talked to the director of the school. “I am very sad to see p’ Nid leaving”, the director said to me. P’ Nid  has been the only English teacher and was working at the Wat Aw Yai school for 30 years and 13 days.

There were more than a hundred people from other schools at the party, including the Aw Yai community. A lot of typical food and drinks from Trat were served at the party, and of course there was karaoke. It was amazing to see how relaxed and joyful the teachers and directors were during the celebrations. They were singing karaoke and telling jokes. It was such a different experience to see them like this, as opposed to when I encountered them during school times. The crowd insisted that I should sing a song as a uVolunteer representative, and so I did.

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Last Tuesday was a great day. I got up early to prepare breakfast for the volunteers in the dorm. Our Dorm Mother (Dona Isabel) was on vacation so I had the honor  to cook breakfast, it was great to see everybody wake up and leave for their projects.

Today, Stuart was changing his construction as the project he was working on the house was completed.  We walk to the bus stop by the university, waited for the bus to San Pedro and got off at the grocery store called Los Rombos.

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In Costa Rica, English has become one of the main requirements for most job applications because the tourist industry increases every year. uVolunteer started a project in 2007 in which our volunteers teach English to people in San Ramón according to this economic and social context.  The population to which the project is addressed are to those who don´t have the time or money to pay for private education.
The English community class is a great opportunity to interact with the locals and explore Costa Rican culture. The project began with 20 students and two classes. The project opened as a conjunction between the uVolunteer volunteers and local volunteers like Danilo and Daython, and has been growing since then.   The first volunteer to teach at the Evening class was Joachim Mowinckel whose experience can be read about at http://www.uvolunteer.org/costa-rica/volunteer-stories/joachim-mowinckel.php.  More than 50 volunteers have contributed with the program during the last 4 years. uVolunteer would like to say thank you so much for all your help. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was Kathleen Stanford`s first day at Simón Bolívar kindergarten. We arrived at the project at 7 am and we were welcomed by a small crowd of six years olds. In Costa Rica public education is quite good and children start receiving it when they are 5 years old when they enter the educational system in “Pre-kinder”.  Kathleen’s volunteer work was taking place with the kids at kindergarten, or as the Costa Ricans call it “kinder”.

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As I was getting ready for one of my weekly duties ‘The Project Visit‘ , I could sense that today was going to be a beautiful day, though it was a bit foggy early in the morning you could actually sense the warmth rising. Meaw and I were taking Tiffany one of our volunteers to her project on the first day, Environmental Conservation Project in Madre Verde in Palmares. Read the rest of this entry »