Volunteering with VaughanTown

Imagine this. On Sunday morning, you arrive at a non-descript office building in a business district of Madrid. There are people there from Spain and a variety of English-speaking countries. You may have met some of the English speakers at a tapas reception the night before, but you don’t really know them. You haven’t seen or spoken to any of the Spaniards until that moment. You’re all about to get on a bus to spend 6 very intensive days together.

Thus begins a week at VaughanTown. Vaughan Systems is a large English language school in Madrid and runs these immersion courses to help Spaniards improve their conversational abilities.

Everyone is wary as we board the bus. Some of the volunteers (or “Anglos” as we are called) have done this before and know what to expect. Others are apprehensive. The Spaniards look terrified. We Anglos are instructed to sit next to a Spaniard so their immersion experience can begin immediately. (In my particular group this was a bit tricky because we had 14 Anglos and only 6 Spaniards but the groups are typically more balanced.)

I was seated next to Antonio, a young man from Madrid. I expected to have the usual “getting to know you” cocktail party type of conversation, and we did start with a bit of that, but it quickly moved to a deeper level and before I knew it, we were discussing the philosophy of Stoicism. I realized that I’d be learning as much these next few days as I’d be teaching.

After a coffee/rest stop, and a shifting of seats, we arrived about 3 ½ hours later at the Izán Puerta de Gredos hotel, near the small town of Barco de Ávila, in the foothills of the Gredos mountain in the region of Castile and León. The hotel is lovely and the setting remote.

We arrived in time for an ice-breaker activity to get to know each other, lunch, and in true Spanish fashion, siesta.

At 6 PM that first day, there was an orientation for all, followed by 2 50-minute one-on-one sessions. These are the backbone of the VaughanTown program. For each session we were provided with an idiom and a phrasal verb (or compound verb, such as “to cut down on”) to help get the conversation started and then we were on our own. It was suggested that we stay away from politics, but that was impossible for this group of British and American volunteers. Spanish isn’t allowed to be spoken for the entire time we are away.

The 6 days progressed with one-on-one sessions, in addition to more scripted activities to help the Spaniards master additional skills on the telephone and in conference calls. We also had group activities, skits, performances, and presentations, most of which were pretty silly, but I saw how these activities help everyone to become more open and vulnerable. It was amazing to see the Spaniards’ fluency and comfort with English explode throughout the program.

Included in the program is a large comfortable private room (unless you request to share), and 3 meals a day with wine flowing freely at lunch and dinner. Breakfast was at 9 AM, lunch at 2 PM and dinner at 9 PM. Dinner was too early for the Spaniards and too late for everyone else. There was a break for everyone from 3-5 PM every day, and because of the unbalanced ratio of my particular group, quite a bit of additional free time for the volunteers. The hotels that VaughanTown chooses are generally quite isolated with not many distractions, so the groups do become very cohesive very fast. We were able to do our one-on-one sessions indoors, outdoors or walking around. There wasn’t really anywhere to go, but on our walks, we often encountered horses, cows, and goats along the road.

All of a sudden it became Thursday evening, when the Spaniards had to give a 5 minute presentation about a randomly chosen topic. They spent many of their sessions that day preparing for this and were visibly anxious about it. As I watched them deliver their uniformly excellent presentations, I felt such a sense of pride and was surprised at how emotional I became. After dinner that night there was a dance party which apparently ended around 3 or 4 AM. People needed to decompress but I needed to go to sleep a bit earlier than that.

Friday morning we boarded the bus back to Madrid, as friends and maybe even as something deeper. I’m not going to lie, there were tears. This time we were able to sit next to whomever we wanted to, and for the first time, Spanish was allowed to be spoken. I sat with Maria, the youngest and shyest of the Spaniards. We decided to speak Spanish and all of a sudden I became the shy one.

For information on volunteering at VaughanTown: https://volunteers.grupovaughan.com/

 

Return to a Tropical (and Rainy) Paradise — Costa Rica part 1

When I was last in Costa Rica, in March 2011, I found a lovely bed and breakfast, the Posada Andrea Cristina. One of the things that made it so special is that the owner Alex Martinez also runs an animal refuge sanctuary nearby, Tierra Hermosa, which I was able to visit during that trip. You can read about my time visiting the B&B and the sanctuary last year here: https://jilltravel.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/tropical-paradise/ When I said goodbye to Alex after that trip, he told me “You’re going to come back here to volunteer someday.” I kept that in the back of my mind, but didn’t make any specific plans to do so. This this past summer, I did have the idea of doing some volunteer work abroad, building houses for Habitat for Humanity, which didn’t end up working out. (That entire story is here: https://jilltravel.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/tropical-paradise/)

So when I found myself with a $400 credit on Taca Airlines that I had to use by this month, it was a pretty easy decision to return to Costa Rica with the plan of doing some type of volunteer work. Besides Tierra Hermosa, I looked into other options. There are quite a few turtle hatching programs that use volunteers but that work didn’t correspond with my dates, Others required a longer time commitment than I could give or were very expensive. I did find a few other possibilities working with animals, but once I got back in contact with Alex, it just made sense to go someplace that I really enjoyed and that I knew firsthand was doing really good work. I recognized that this, as a very small, grass roots project would probably be more flexible and less structured than other programs (which usually require you to start on set days of the week, with specific hours, etc.).

Over the past few weeks, I learned that this might not all work out as  I had hoped, despite my willingness to be as flexible as required. Tierra Hermosa is about a 20 minute drive from the posada,  mostly on an unpaved road. It also has a volunteer cabin on site, but since I don’t drive, I didn’t want to be isolated in a place that is so remote. My idea was to stay at the B&B (paying for my room, of course) and have somebody who works at the sanctuary or the B&B drive me back and forth. For reasons that still aren’t entirely clear to me, transporting me isn’t going to be so easy. When I found this out, I had to decide if I should try to find another volunteer project somewhere else or just keep my original plans, with the knowledge that things were most likely not going to go as I had envisioned. That is what I decided to do. I arrived in Costa Rica yesterday just of getting over an upper respiratory infection and with a very badly bruised knee, following a nasty fall almost 2 weeks ago. I started to think that a relaxing vacation might do me good and maybe it would also be an interesting experience for once in my life to not have everything planned out and every detail organized. So that is how I find myself back at the Posada Andrea Cristina for week without really knowing what I am going to do. I am still optimistic that I can get over to Tierra Hermosa for at least a few days and hopefully I can help out there as much as possible. Besides that, there are some tours I can take in this area, although I haven’t researched into anything yet. It has also been raining a lot, which makes lying on the hammock on my porch with a book sound like the most appealing activity of all.

Right now, I am just happy to be feeling awake after a long night and day of traveling, which started very early Wednesday morning with a 2:30 AM car service to the airport, a 5:15 flight, a taxi from the airport to the bus terminal in San Jose, an  11:30 AM bus ride to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui and a 20 minute walk to the Posada Andrea Cristina. I finally arrived here Wednesday at around 2 PM, feeling like a zombie. I think I crashed about 7 PM despite efforts to stay awake until a normal bed time. But now is a new day, I am feeling refreshed and rejuvenated and I’m excited to see what this trip has in store for me!

Why I’m Not Volunteering With Habitat For Humanity This Summer

I need to use at least one week’s worth of vacation time this summer and was having a hard time deciding where to go. Recently a friend emailed about what a great experience she was having building a house with Habitat for Humanity in Trinidad and I thought that sounded like a great idea, so I decided to look into it.

So on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I began exploring Habitat’s website, and while there were trips all over the world, not many met my criteria of being only a week, relatively close to New York. and during the time I needed to use my vacation. However, there was a trip available to Trinidad and Tobago, where my friend was having a positive experience, and it seemed to be a perfect fit for what I was looking for. I liked the tone set by the group leader, and what I read from her bio–she seemed to have quite a bit of experience with Habitat, and also has taught around the world. I liked that the program ran from Saturday until the following Sunday, but the work was scheduled only Monday to Friday, building in some free time. Even though I have no experience with any type of construction, the website emphasized that no experience was necessary. I checked out airfares for the dates, and there was even a reasonably priced direct flight. Very excited, I submitted my online application.

Of course, applying on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend meant that I would have to wait until at least Tuesday to hear anything from Habitat. I obsessively kept refreshing my email all day Tuesday, but nothing. On Wednesday morning, I did receive the eagerly awaited email, letting me know that I was matched with the trip to Trinidad that I had requested and that the next step would be to email the group leader to schedule a telephone interview. I did so immediately, and received a response from her the following afternoon, asking if she could call me later that day or over the weekend. I told her the times I would be free later that day, and made sure to have my phone nearby during that 2 hour window that I had specified. And..nothing. No call, no email. The next morning she sent me an email saying that she just recevied my email. That didn’t make too much sense to me…after all, she was the one who asked if she could call me Thursday evening but then she didn’t even see my email until Friday? Oh well, things happen and I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She then said she would try to call me on Saturday, but if we didn’t talk then, we would talk the following week. The weekend came and went without a call or email from her. I even wrote to her again on Saturday, with no response. Monday evening I decided to try one more time. I asked again if we could try to find a time to talk and explained that I was  I was locked into this week for my vacation and really needed to know if this was going to work out, so I could make alternate plans if it wasn’t. Furthermore, I had found a good airfare that I didn’t want to lose so I was hoping that we could find a time to talk. Tuesday morning she wrote back, asking when I would be free that evening to talk. I immediately responded that I had one thing I needed to do after work, but I would be available after 7:30 PM. I raced home to be available at 7:30 and once again, no call and no email.

It seems to me there are 2 possible explanations for what happened. One is that she really doesn’t want me to be part of her group for whatever reason, but doesn’t want to tell me that directly. If that is the case, I have no interest in joining her group. The other is possibility is that her behavior is indicative of her leadership style, in which case, I still don’t want to be part of her group. I understand that there is going to be frustration and hard work involved in doing volunteer work in a developing country. What I didn’t expect was to experience that type of frustration with the organization itself, before I even left New York. This trip would have cost me over $2000 for room and board, a required donation to the organization and airfare. I was very willing to spend that money and give up a week of my well deserved vacation time to do something challenging yet meaningful. However, the difficulty simply in communicating with the person who would be in charge of my group made me realize that this was not the week for me to do it. For less money, I can spend a week at Club Med in Turks and Caicos in my own room to relax and recharge.  And that is exactly what I decided to do.