A computer in my casa?! October 25

Yea! This is the first blog written from Santa Rosa! Habitat finally gave me a computer to use up here on the mountain! Granted, there’s no internet or anything, but at least I can blog more often, and also work on grant proposals and such from here! How many exclamation points do I need to use to express my excitement!!!!!!!!!? I would like to give my thanks to one Jose Montero, the new technology-guy/intern at Habitat, who made all this possible. Since he’s been in the office, things have actually been getting done! For instance, some of you may remember that when I first got here, I had a laptop for about 4 days, then it just stopped working. Since then, Habitat has consistently been promising to arreglar me one of the many broken computers that were sitting around, but Jose was the first person who actually put those plans into action. So, thank you José. Also on a happy computer-y note: my personal thumb drive hasn’t worked in the whole 4 months I have been here, and I was pretty bummed that it broke. However, when I stuck it in this máquina, it worked totally fine. My resumes and grad school documents and personal photos that I brought with me aren’t lost after all =) It’s a good day. On to more important issues:

On Wednesday we had a meeting with the whole Habitat Housing Community. I was much less nervous than the first time when I met everyone (at Eric's despedida in July). I was WAY more comfortable talking in front of everyone, and definitely made more sense that 3 months ago. Helen was going to come and talk to the committees about what Habitat can do to support them, but she had car trouble and couldn't make it. After an initial reaction where I was freaking out about what we would talk about, Abdon came to the rescue and managed to make it a very productive meeting, where we talked about a lot of issues that the families are facing right now. The global economic crisis is hitting these Costa Rican families hard. Many families barely make enough to get by, plus now the interest rates are going up on their houses (due to poor economic conditions everywhere). Some are seriously concerned about how they are going to pay their bills. This has lent some urgency to our projects in Santa Rosa. For instance, the hydroponics committee has pretty much decided that, instead of growing hydroponic lettuce, they want to join forces with more members of the housing community and start an association of organic farmers; they are going to grow mushrooms! I think that its a great idea- they have found a market where they really think they will be successful. They are in the process of legally forming an association (a lot like a farming cooperative). The proceeds will go directly to the families who participate. I am pretty excited about it, especially because this has been executed completely without my help- a sign that the project will be self-sustainable after I leave. I have offered to help however they need me, though. At the meeting we also decided to throw a fundraising BINGO to benefit the housing association. The recent torrential rains have trashed the roads in the Habitat neighborhood, and it looks like some of the funds from the BINGO will go towards these repairs. I also used this gathering to get the last few names, ages, and sizes of the kids in the Habitat neighborhood that I hadn't been able to track down when I went to visit their houses. There is a business that is going to donate Christmas gifts for all of the kids in Habitat Houses. I think its awesome that a business is so willing to look out for these kids, especially over the Holidays.

Ok, really, I don’t have all that much to write about, but am mostly just excited that I CAN write. This new addition to my household will mean that you all will get a more in depth picture of what I am doing, but that there will be like 4 new entries in one day… that I will upload when I drag my butt to the internet. Ok, love, love, love ya friends and family. Keep the emails coming!