Back in paradise

I finally arrived in Costa Rica! I left the airport and felt the hot and humid air immediately on my skin, I am in San José!

I took care of my visa directly then visited my friends in San José to get updated. I had the first culture shock in the office of the immigration because they work so differently here, than in Germany. But ok, I am in Costa Rica not in Germany. I have my visa now for one year, check! After that I took care of the package we sent from Germany with all the skateboards, wheels, trucks, clothes, shoes and everything else you need for skating. I had to pay a lot of customs duty to get the stuff out of the mail and it was killing my nerves to get these things done because they don’t really explain what you have to do. You have to find out by yourself which papers you need and where you have to go to get them. But its done, too, check. I wanna say thank you again to all the people in Germany who donated the stuff to our project and support us like that a lot! Very big thank you to skate-aid for the many years of support and the help!

After I spent two weeks in San José because of bureaucratic bumps in the road I finally went to Perez Zeledon, San Isidro to our project and to all my friends which I missed so much. It was a great feeling seeing them all again! After a short while I felt like I was never gone. It’s my second home.

I started working immediately. There is a lot of work to do. The first thing was calling everybody together for a big meeting to ask for their wishes, to make plans, workshops, languages classes and plans for the future. I am really motivated and I can spread my motivation to the rest. I feel very good here even though life here is not always easy because of the difference in culture and also because of the fact that I am a woman living alone and leading the project, not everybody respects that. But I am happy and my life here is very intense. I enjoy every day and every day is different. Not very often in my life maybe never before did I surrender a challenge like that and the work here satisfies me and demands me. I don’t feel like I can do it every day but exactly that is what provokes me and gives me energy. The little amount of real friends I have here support me very much and together we get over the cultural and communicative problems.

I teach three different English classes, kids up to 10 years, basic English and advanced English. Also German classes for kids up to 10 years and basic German. Together with the guys from Perez Zeledon I do workshops. There is a jewelry from skateboards workshop, a workshop of Parkour, which Vassilij teaches, a wood workshop with Diego where the kids are able to learn how to work with wood. Saturdays we have skate classes with Nona. All these workshops and languages classes arentaking place every week. Once a week we go to Hogar ama to play with the kids there, skate with them or just talk. All of these kids don’t have parents or their parents are drug addicts and cant take care of them or simply don’t want.

These last weeks we all were very busy with painting the skatepark. Our volunteer Christian Tegge built together with the youth the first only public Fingerboarding Skatepark in Costa Rica right next to Pura Vida Skatepark. That was a lot of work what he couldn’t have realized in such a short time without the help of the skaters, especially without Johan.