I just gave my first session in Spanish. It was on the subject of calculating compound interest rates. A lot of Ticos quit school around the second or third grade and they lack the skills to calculate interest and understand what a bad deal it is to have 24 to 35 percent interest accruing per month. Its a major way that companies take advantage of people here. Anyway I thought it went pretty well except for my halting Spanish. My friend Dan freakin nailed it. My wife has a lot of experience with public health and she did her talk on the advantages and proper use of condoms. You would think that would be a pretty standard thing to learn but Costa Rica is heavily Catholic. Still if they are going to avoid a major overpopulation problem and reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy then its an important thing to learn in my opinion.
Speaking of getting adjusted to Spanish, Im currently writing this in an internet cafe using a Spanish keyboard. Things are not quite in the right place and Im struggling with making it give me the punctuation I want so sorry to those of you who are correcting my grammar. Its not really my fault. We also were lucky enough to have a project fair here where one of the subjects we covered for economic development are the absolute negation of private funds for Peace Corps projects. We can apply for grants but it takes a soul crushing 6 months or more for that stuff to come through so we will be into the second year before I could get any programs started on my own. I have some ideas of how I can get local Ticos who want to fund projects sooner than that to raise their own funds but we will have to see how it goes. I hate to think that a great business idea would have to go by the wayside just because we have to wait for the government. On the other hand local lenders can be unscrupulous. See above comment on interest. If I do have to wait a year I hope we get a beach site. Heres hoping. Damn I really need to figure out how to work this keyboard...exclamation point.
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