Haitian Childrens Home

At the moment a team from our office and some other volunteers for the USA are working on a master plan (including orphanage, school and church) for the Haitian Children's Home (HCH). Haiti is the poorest country in Central America, with 75% living in absolute poverty. It's hard to believe the such poverty exists so close to Miami.
The following video shows something of the work of HCH.

And the water is off....again

One of the nice things about living in Costa Rica is that it's a developing country, rather than an undeveloped country, so where I live has power and running water. The problem is that it's not a developed country, so the water and power go off regularly. Which makes things very annoying when you work on computers in a basement office. Early this week the water was off for 2 days, about a week earlier it was off for 3 days. Without water, everything and everyone in this tropical climate tends to smell a bit. I find it especially amusing when there are advertisements everywhere telling people to wash their hands well because of swine flu, but you can't because there is no water.
However there are some advantages to lack of water.
1. It gives you something to talk about with everyone you meet and the vocab is really very simple.
2. It creates a sort of community feel as everyone waits for the water truck together or visit the few people with tanks.
3. Everyone in developed countries feels really sorry for you.
4. You get to change lunch plans because you can't prepare food in the office, or wash up the dishes- change is as good as a holiday.
5. You get to write a blog like this, or this, or even this (yes, someone came up with the idea of a little blog competition on the lack of water).

Granada, Nicaragua: Europe without the price tag

On Thursday last week I found out my visa had been denied and I needed to go Nicaragua for a few days. On Friday afternoon I was looking through a guidebook which told me Australians needed a pre approved visa o get into Nicaragua. It was at that point I began to worry. Some quick calls to various Australian embassies which were open assured me I would be ok and the rules had changed. Saturday I was all day with some of the staff. On Sunday I left my host families house at 4:30am. It was sort of a rushed thing. I’ve never been to another country without that little notice.
We crossed the border at about 12 noon. As we were coming from Costa Rica where there is Swine Flu we all had to get checked and fill in medical forms. They took our passports, told us to get off the bus, and we waited for 90 minutes. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America behind Haiti. While waiting people tried to sell us food, phone calls, shoes and our passport were stamped we worked out which local vendors to support.The poverty was fairly confronting, like the 8 months pregnant woman trying to sell hammocks she makes to feed her children. On Sunday afternoon we arrived in Granada, a city settled in 1524, and known for beautiful architecture. We crammed a lot into the following 38 hours; wandering the streets, going to the markets (local and tourist), walking and swimming along the sore of Lake Nicaragua, lying in hammocks, visiting a few churches, eating pizza, accidentally gate chasing a private party at a bakery and listening to the music, going to an ancient pottery museum and touring by boat some of the 350 Islands of Lake Nicaragua. We stayed in this great little hostel which was super cheap (like everything in Nicaragua). Complete with hammocks and a beautiful court yard.
One of the best things about the hostel for me was that we got to meet David, a Modern Orthodox Jew in Nicaragua for a few days travel and some volunteer work. He spent Monday with us. All too quickly our time in Nicaragua came to an end, and it was time to head back on the 6am bus and the relative wealth of Costa Rica. Next time my visa get denied...I might not complain so much.

Internship poster

Marcos made this cool poster to be displayed in the office once we leave.

Some notes;

"Pura Vida" literally means "pure life" in Spanish, but in Costa Rica it means anything from "good" to "how are you?"

Rancho Arbol de Vida was the organisation we did the design work for (another others) so alot of the photos are taken from that trip. Arbol means tree in Spanish, hence the tree in the poster.

The verse up the top is taken from Isaiah, it's somewhat of a theme for us here, and it's on the back of our eMi T-Shirts.

The photo in the middle was taken on project trip but he added all the extra people that have been part of this time for us. The photo of the 4 of us at the bottom was taken after running between bus stops during some heavy rain.

You might want to click on the poster to view it full size.

Celebrating Tico style

As many of you are aware, I turned 22 last Saturday. My host family decided that they wanted to put on a party, I'm not really into parties but apparently it was all organised. They invited the other 3 interns and their respective host families, plus the minister at the church and his family. Two of the host families ended up not coming so I thought I'd be in for a quiet afternoon. I hadn't banked on the fact that extended family would just happen to turn up as they tend to on Sunday afternoons. I'd also missed the cultural point that everyone invited would bring some friends. So 80 tortillas and a whole lot of boiled pork later we had about 30 people. At about 6.30pm, (that's getting late here- considering people go to bed at 8pm) someone got up to leave and my host mother said "wait til we sing happy birthday to Susannah" the conversation then followed something like this..
"This is a birthday party?"
"Yeah, it's Susannah's"
"Who is that?"
"Her" and point to me
"oh the foreigner"
Then they prayed for me to have many more birthdays and to find a spouse.
On the birthday front, thanks must also go to the lovely Port Arlington SUFM-ers who sent me a bunch of cards, and everyone else who sent emails/facebook messages. Fellow intern Sarah took me swimming for the morning and out for cheesecake after lunch. Plus the lovely Dan and Sarah (permanent staff) took us both to a neighbouring town, home to the biggest ox cart in the world and even organised a cake for James (fellow intern, whose birthday it was on the friday) and I at bible study last night.

What exactly I do...

Due to popular demand I thought I'd give you all some information on what exactly I do here.

Firstly, a little background information on the organisation, Engineering Ministries International (eMi) that I'm working for. eMi provides free architectural and engineering services to Christian ministries around the world. Generally this is orphanages, hospitals and schools. I'll be posting soon on a feeding centre and school in Guatemala I've been working on. They are 6 offices around the world; Costa Rica, India, Uganda, US, Canada and UK.

The way the projects (school, orphanage etc) work is that after the project is accepted, a group of architects, surveyors and engineers head to the site of the project. They are a group made up of permanent eMi staff and interns (people like me) from an eMi office and a bunch of volunteers who come from places like the US or Canada just for the week (or up to 10 day) long trip. During the "project trip" week, the site is surveyed, missionaries who were working for are conferred with about what they actually want, soil is tested, the avaliability of utilities is accessed and plans started. Then we all head back to the office or our homes and keep on working on the project. While we are still working long distances with volunteers in other countries it is very difficult. We have to polish or change the architectural plans. Most of the structural engineering design needs to be done when we get back. In simple terms this involves making sure the columns and beams are big enough to hold everything up. The water engineers need to decide where the water will come from and where all the waste water will go. The electrical need to look after power supplies and wiring. At the end of the project, reports have to be written up, detailing why we chose to do what we did. And providing all the plans and details of how everything is to be done.

While all the design is happening, everything needs to be drawn up on a drafting program called AutoCAD. Things are constantly needing to be changed and corrected. This is where red lines come in. The plans and details are printed off, and someone checks over them and marks all the problems with a red pen. Then someone else fixes all the mistakes and highlights them as they go. Then they print off a new copy, ready for more redlines. This process continues until everything is perfect. At first, I did quite a few redlines for other people. Then about 6 weeks ago, I got to redline for someone else- oh the power of a red pen! It felt great.

For those of you thinking I'm just drafting, don't fear. I do some design work too, looking at the beam design and the number of bars in them. Sometimes my boss Dan calls me and James, the other structural guy over and gives us a bit of an engineering lesson, showing how he designed where the reinforcement went in the column for example. I've also calculated loads and looked at loading factors set out in "The Code". Loading factors are what Engineers apply as somewhat of a safe guard, like if the steel is not as strong as you expected, or you get more people and furniture in the building than expected. The Code gives details of what loading codes to use in what circumstances. It's basically a big rule book. I also got to look at seismic loading, which was really fun. I even designed an excel program so calculating won't be so involved next time.

So there you go, my daily working life.

The holy week experience

I love experiencing how another culture lives everyday and on special days. So spending Semana Santa here (the week leadig up to Easter, holy week) was exciting. As 75% of Costa Ricans are Catholic, in some ways it's a bigger thing here than in Australia. Most people have the whole week off and the shops close on Wednesday afternoon. Even buying alcohol is banned for part of the week. The television was full of movies portraying the life of Christ and the lives of various popes. Town was quite as alot of people headed to other parts of the country to be with family. The neighbours visited with gifts of sweet breads and pastries. My own host family had various relatives coming to stay and cook . They asked me about traditional Easter foods in Australia, and all I could think of was hot cross buns! So they asked me to make some, which turned out quite well. After all the lead up I was expecting things to just get bigger and bigger until Sunday, but everything stopped on Friday night. The shops opened up again on Saturday and people came home. Apparently the focus is more on the crucifixion than the resurrection. Sunday church for us was a bit of a non-event, apparently most protestants down play Easter because the Catholic church plays it up so much. To make up for this, all the staff families had lunch together, exchanging "He is risen!" "He is risen indeed!" and hard boiled coloured eggs. I ended up socialising til about 8pm (considering this is bed time normally, that was a big deal!). I learnt more about how North Americans celebrate Easter too!

The week was filled with a few unexpected, pleasant surprises, involving other cultures.

Some of you will be aware I'm slightly obsessed with Jewish culture and traditions. Before I came to Costa Rica I thought it would be really cool to meet some Jews in Costa Rica, but I didn't think the chance of this happening was very high. I considered asking God to send some my way, but decided I should perhaps focus on Latin culture for these 6 months. Well Thursday night I went to a Seder at the home of a Messianic Brooklyn Jew and his Cuban wife! Turns out they actually know someone I know in Melbourne, which was exciting! The Seder was a very intimate affair, with just eight of us. I only got to go because my boss got sick and thus his family couldn't attend. An absolute bonus for me was that I was the youngest present so I got to ask all the cool questions. Plus James and I were the kids (well we were at least 25 years younger than everyone else there) so we got to search for the afikomen. To hear again how passover points to Christ was wonderful, and to know we were celebrating with millions of people around the world was something really special.

The next surprise was a concert taking place in Vienna. I spent holy week in Vienna 6 years ago and visited lots of sights which were shown throughout the concert. The conductor spoke in German, which to my delight I understood. I got a bit of a "I love Vienna moment" and sort of home sick for it all even though I'd only spent 7 days there.

He is risen! Hallelujah!