Catching up on life in general

School is officially done for the kids in 6 1/2 days...I don't know if they're counting the days more than their teachers are, but everyone knows we're getting close. It has been an eventful month. One of the highlights has included checking blood off the list of students' bodily fluids that I've had to deal with this year. One of the boys got his hand smashed in a door and ended up fracturing two fingers. Luckily his mom was also on campus and she was able to take him to the hospital. Another highlight included successfully completing the big second grade Rivers Presentation. It's become a tradition that the whole second grade shows off what they've learned about rivers at the end of the eight-week unit. I can't say my students were crazy about the idea of dressing up as the "Upper Section" of the river or as a "Riverbank," but they were pretty cute for all of that.

Here is a smattering of pictures from the last month and a half:

Rosa and the family took us on a trip to the nearby private beach of Punta Leona. It got a little cloudy, but was still a fun day. It's not often we see wild macaws, but it does remind us that we are in a Costa Rica!

Puerto Viejo is a small beach town about four hours south of San Jose. It makes a fun weekend trip! A group of us went to Puerto Viejo for a three day weekend and rode bikes up and down the coast to some of the nearby beaches.


During Semana Santa I did a lot of traveling by myself. I had so much fun on the last river rafting trip I did that I decided to do the two-day trip. We stayed at a beautiful little hotel right on the river and got to do a short zip line and hike to a nearby waterfall as well.











After the river rafting I went down to the Ojochal area and stayed in a nice B&B run by a Dutch couple. Aside from being in the middle of nowhere, there was also very little electircity and no internet connection. It made for a fun, if slightly more rustic trip than I had originally imagined as I traveled by myself. However, I also got to do a beautiful snorkeling trip to a nearby island. We saw so much wildlife! During the hour boat ride to the island, we saw turtles, dolphins, and lots of fish. This day definitely made up for any inconveniences in accommodations.

River Rafting on the Pacuare

My housemate Laurie and I decided to go on a river rafting day trip. The Pacuare River is on the Caribbean side of the country so it was fairly humid and warm, even though it was overcast for much of the day. It was such a fun trip that I decided to go on a two-day rafting trip during Easter vacation. Updates on that adventure to follow!

Baile Typico

One Sunday I went into San Jose to see the summer festival that had been going on for several weekends. The highlight of the morning was catching a concert by the National Orchestra. Among the pieces they played were the suite from "Westside Story" and the theme for Star Trek. So yes, overall a really fun concert to listen to. Afterwards I went outside and watched a group perform some traditional Costa Rican dances. Here are some of the pictures that I got from it:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

My kids really missed me while I was in San Francisco! I came back to find a good portion of my whiteboard covered with miss-you notes and pleas to NEVER leave again. It wasn't until I went to take the notes off the board that I discovered they'd been glued on.

San Francisco

These photos are from a trip I took to San Francisco a few weeks ago. The job fair itself was a pretty intense experience. I'm still waiting to hear back from several schools, but in the meantime, here are some photos I took in my off time.

I of course had to get some clam chowder in a bread bowl while I was in San Francisco. What made it even better was getting to watch the sea lions from the restaurant!











The hotel where the conference was held was very close to the Embarcadero. It had some great views.

My other hotel was literally across the street from a big entrance to China Town. Since it was very close to Chinese New Year, there was always a lot to see there.

I ended up having a whole free day to myself. Since I've only been to San Francisco a few times, I've only seen a small smattering of the tourist attactions. Feeling on the adventurous side, I signed up for a trip to Alcatraz. In the evening, I went to see the San Francisco Ballet Company. All in all, I'd have to call it a pretty successful day.

Feria de Guadalupe

Although not quite as exciting as seeing gargantuan turtles or millions of monkeys, I still enjoy a trip to the local farmer's market on Saturdays. This is a fair that doesn't mess around! With squashes so big that the vender uses a handsaw to hack you off a couple of kilos and piles of platanos bigger than I am, it's a lot of fun to wander around. Here are some photos to give you some idea of the local color.

Tortugero

We finally went on our first trip! Last weekend my housemate and I went to Tortugero on a turtle-spotting expedition. It was a fantastic trip. Not only did we get to go tool around some cool rain forest canals, we also saw tons of wildlife, had good accommodations, were accompanied by the tour organizer who was a self-proclaimed expert on everything, and visited with an odd assortment of traveling companions that seemed to be included for free in the tour. Some of our group included:
-the taciturn Swiss who was a civil engineer. He didn't really help to make the dinner conversation any less awkward than it already was.
-the pessimistic Brit who complained about everything, especially about the fact that people in this country did not know how to make a decent cup of tea.
-the honeymooning Israeli couple. The recent groom had a great command of English and added a lot of jokes to otherwise boring tour lectures.
-the drunk couple from Colorado. The wife was scared of everything!

But aside from the human oddities, the wildlife was great. The only thing we didn't see was a manatee. Of course, the turtles were the star of the show. They were huge! When I heard that the endangered green turtles were big, I was picturing something slightly larger than a serving platter. It came as a bit of shock then, when I saw turtles about four feet long and at least three feet wide. I'm pretty sure that these turtles could have squashed me flat if they'd really wanted to. We went on a night tour with a local guide to see the turtles and got to see several turtles digging nests, laying eggs, and then going back to the ocean. We weren't allowed to bring lights or cameras with us, but I did manage to take this picture of a baby turtle during the afternoon. We just happened to be walking down the beach and were near a spot where some eggs were hatching. It's hard to believe, but these little guys were flying down the beach. I think they covered about a hundred feet in under a minute!

Here are some of the other fun locals we got to see:

A sloth with its baby was just chilling beside the road. We pulled the whole van over so we could take advantage of the photo opp.

Can you tell what's looking at you?

A sign at our hotel (which as you can see, was right next to one of the canals). No big deal, right?

This is the "town" of Tortugero. It has one main street. The Tortugero area is really a bunch of islands surround by the ocean on one side and a network of canals on the others. The only way to reach this town is by an hour and a half boat ride, so it's a little weird to think that some people live their entire lives in this one secluded spot. Our local guide was a third generation member of one of the founding families. He said his grandfather had originally come to the area as a pirate who was looking to hunt turtles. Now all of the inhabitants are working to save the turtles since Tortugero has been turned into a national park and one of the only ways to bring in income is to be a guide for the tourists.

Overall, quite a fun trip. If any of you happen to be in Costa Rica between late August and early October, I would highly recommend it!

Independence Day

While most of us in California are familiar with El Dieciséis de Setiembre (Mexican Independence Day), most of us do not know--and formerly I was also part of this group--that Costa Rican Independence Day is on the fifteenth of September. However, I now count myself as having been one of its most enthusiastic celebrators. Lincoln School, wishing to instill patriotic spirit in all of its young children, declared an entire independence week of activities.

Guess who was put on the organizing committee for this week.

Ironically, in the group of seven organizers, three are gringas, and another three (with some overlap) are new teachers to Lincoln. You can guess how organized and gung-ho many of us felt about this. In the course of a week, we organized two assemblies, daily announcements, authentic music to be played fifteen minutes before school every day, and a lantern parade. One of my specific jobs was to teach my children some kind of poem about one of Costa Rica's national symbols. On the recommendation of the Spanish teacher I chose a poem about the yiguirro (with an umlaut over the u), the national bird. For those of you who don't know, the yiguirro is an ugly and ungainly type of brown robin. I let you judge the bird for yourself:
Anyways, I couldn't even say the word correctly, let alone lead the class in saying the poem. After my initial reading of it to the class, we had to have the discussion about the students not laughing at my accent because I don't laugh at theirs; we're all here to learn together, etc. etc. It was a very teachable moment. However, despite the language difficulties, my students not only learned the poem, but had it memorized for both assemblies. On assembly days, the students came in their "typico" outfits, and were really rather cute. Ask me to show you pictures when I come home; I'm not allowed to post them on the internet.

Luckily, we also had the actual 15th off from school. I celebrated by going to the local park and listening to some live music, before going downtown to San Jose in search of merrymaking. My housemate and I stumbled upon a parade, which mostly was made up of drum corps and flag-wavers with varying degrees of talent. However, I've always loved bands and drum corps, so I had a lot of fun. One of the best parts was seeing tons of kids wearing their typical outfits. It's neat seeing a custom that really is part of the local celebration, rather than something that's put on for tourists. But despite the fun, I think I'm pretty independenced out. I'm glad that I'll actually be able to get back to, oh yeah, TEACHING during these next few weeks.

This is a picture of my classroom all decked out to celebrate. The homeroom parents helped organize the collecting and putting up of the decorations. Sadly, most of the streamers fell down within the week...

My First First Day of School

Well, it really is official: I'm a teacher. In fact, I'm a teacher with and classroom and 23 students of my very own. This is of course, an important distinction to make because for many teachers in California (and some here at Lincoln, for that matter) this is not the case. Teacher, classroom, and students are no longer three items that can automatically be put into one group. But I digress. In the past two weeks, I've also started school and had my very first Parents Night. All in all, it's been a good--but very hectic--start of the school year. Here are before and after pictures of my classroom.

I'm not sure what the security guards thought of me as I trundled up to the gate with my classroom luggage, but it all started here. Of the four suitcases I brought, two were taken up with fun teaching things that I thought would help me get a leg up in the world.

Note the bare, stark look of things.

Now note the happy and welcoming atmosphere

that says, "hello small children and parents; this is a nice place and the room of caring, creative, and competent teacher."

I have to admit that I was almost ridiculously proud to see my name on the door.

And of course, a first day of school picture.

As I mentioned, I have 23 students in my class. Of the 23, I have four native English speakers who are officially classified as SSL (Spanish as a Second Language). One of these students started school a week after everyone else, so we've had fun doing some catch up there. The other students are a mix of four ADD students, one barely English proficient student, and a miscellaneous mix of huggy, affectionate children.

So far, the parents are almost as nice as their children. Parents Night was a little scary, but by putting in what felt like a million extra hours, I had a lovely, presentable classroom and an attractive powerpoint to show them. Since many of the parents speak less English than their children, I'm not sure how much actually got through of my well-spoken presentation, but oh well. Let's hope that the parents still like me by the time I have to brave Parent/teacher Conferences!

Victory!

The luggage has arrived! All of it, and in one piece. Thanks for the prayers!

Back Again

Traveling, I have heard, is supposed to be a "broadening" experience. Of course, no one ever says in which way you are supposed to stretch. It looks like my first few days in Costa Rica will be teaching me how to make do with very little. I knew I was tempting fate by taking down so much checked baggage; hoping to get all four pieces on time and in good condition was really rather optimistic. However, I didn't expect that I wouldn't get any. Luckily, I was not the only one to be missing bags. Based on the long, sleep-deprived line that queued outside of the Frontier office at 5:30 yesterday morning, there were quite a few of us that were less than pleased about being stranded without luggage. The best that the airline could do was to assure us that it would come soon and that they would deliver it to my house. Being the skeptic that I am, two doubts immediately came to mind: 1) Costa Rica doesn't use addresses in the same way we do, therefore leaving the exact location of this house a little vague, and 2) Costa Rican time is distinctly longer than California sense of time. By "soon," I'm hoping for sometime this week.

Nevertheless, I'm here in one piece and, after a good night's sleep, feeling in pretty good spirits. A little prayer about all (any!) of my bags getting here would be much appreciated, of course. At least I'll have a lot of time to recoup and take it easy until the bags arrive: nothing to unpack, either here or in my classroom!

Costa Rica: the sequel

It seems a little odd to be thinking of sequels before finishing the first story, but we have come to an important moment in the narrative: is it time to bring things to a close and shut the book, or should we hope to continue the story in many more block-buster volumes? I’ve heard that every good author is always looking ahead while they work. While it would certainly not be true to say that this author had the end in mind when she started this saga, it would be true to say that I’ve been giving the “what comes next” question quite a bit of thought. In the end though, it’s come down to this: I have decided to come back to Lincoln School next year and the story will go on. I don’t know what grade I’ll be teaching, but I think it will be in the lower-elementary area. To be honest, it’s kind of exciting to think about really having my own classroom. The idea that I will be personally responsible for 23 small children does seem a little intimidating, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it (in six weeks, actually). I will still be coming home for the summer, but I’ll be coming back here to Costa Rica during the last week of July for orientation. I’m realizing though, that many of you don’t know very much about the school where I’ve just spent the last four and half months of my life. So, here’s a quick overview:

Lincoln School is an American-based school that was set up in 1945. We use an American curriculum and every Monday morning, bright and early, we all sing the U.S.’s national anthem right after we sing Costa Rica’s anthem. There are slightly less than 1,300 students (about the same size as Westmont) and includes grades K-12. Costa Rica also has an extra grade between kindergarten and first called “preparatory,” which means that since students start school at about the same age as they do in the States, almost all of the students are a year older here than what we’re used to in California.

Lincoln has quite the impressive bus system! Over half of the students take the bus because many students live 45 minutes or an hour away. One of the funniest parts of the day is watching the convoy of 35+ busses leave school at the end of the day. It is quite the parade! I also take the bus to school, but I get to ride the teacher bus that stops close by my house.

Because Lincoln charges a fairly high tuition, it has pretty incredible facilities. There are two libraries (one for the elementary, one for the high school), two gyms (again, one for the elementary, one for the high school), and a science lab. Students have “specials” everyday where they go to another teacher for art, Spanish, music, and technology. These facilities are way beyond anything I’ve seen in California. Hopefully with all of the extra support teachers and time I’ll have to teach fun lessons, this will be an easy first year.

Looks like I can’t hang up my blogger’s hat quite yet…

Funny quote of the day

On the whole, my students are really pretty intelligent, and are all much better at English than I am at Spanish. However, sometimes we all struggle with translations. For instance, today one of my students asked me another way to say "bald." We'd been talking in class about how we should be polite with the things we write about people, and that sometimes our descriptions of others, even though we don't mean them to be rude, may include things the other person wouldn't like. So this student asked me if he could say "bald."
"I mean, Teacher, how else can I say it? He doesn't have much hair? His hair is unavailable?"

"Yes," I wanted to tell him. "Just like that. It makes it sound like you're saying his hair can't come to the phone right now, because it's currently unavailable."

I may not have told him exactly that, but he thought it was a pretty good joke when I explained why I was laughing. Good times in Costa Rica!

Arenal

Hello once again! I’m sorry that it’s been so long since I’ve updated the blog. Never fear; I have been using the time to complete big projects for Westmont and plan units for my students. I’m hoping to follow this entry with a longer one, but just to tide everyone over, here are some photos from a trip I took two weeks ago to Arenal. It was a great trip! Although it is the rainy season, we get several good looks at the (still active) volcano. One of the coolest moments was hiking through the jungle, looking at the volcano, and being in the middle of a huge thunder and lightening storm. I feel like I should make some metaphor here about battling elemental forces, but as I can picture most of you rolling your eyes at this point, I will refrain at this time from doing so. Another great story is the saga of the lost key, but this story loses some of its humor and vitality from just being written on the page. Ask me about it when I get home though, and I will be happily to tell it!

Toucans! We did a long hike through the jungle, but the only exciting wildlife we saw were a few toucans. Still, they’re kind of cool to see in “the wild.”

I took this photo (to the left) especially for Dad. Our guide pointed this tree out to us: a naturally-growing jungle bonsai. I did kind of want to correct him and say that anything can be turned into a bonsai, but for the sake of politeness, decided to keep that comment to myself.

Another exciting adventure from the trip was our hike to Arenal Waterfall, otherwise known as Catarata de Arenal. As a side note, I think “catarata” has become one of my favorite words in Spanish. You say it with very pronounced “t’s,” which just makes it fun to say and listen to. Our guidebook merely said that it was a nice three mile hike, easily done on foot. What the book didn’t mention was the three almost vertical hills that were part of the hike. Also the fact that the humidity was probably at about eighty percent, that there would be absolutely no shade at all, and that we should factor in our high altitude. I will be honest: I was hurting by the end of our trek. However, the waterfall itself turned out to be worth the pain of getting there. We hiked down a million steps to where there were several pools and spent much of the afternoon swimming in the river. How many times in your life do you get the chance to swim in a relatively warm river in the middle of the rainforest?

Day 3

Back to normal today. I got to actually do quite a bit of teaching, which was fun. The highlight was finishing the powerpoint that I'd made about the California Gold Rush. It goes along with a story we're reading this week, so I've squeezed in a few extra social studies lessons about it. Students' biggest concern so far has been the havoc that the miners wreaked upon the environment. I wish I had a mining pan...

Day 2

Never fear, the lice did not get me...yet. I realize I'm posting this a day late, but we had a field trip yesterday and I was pretty tired when I got home. The Spanish teacher organized a trip to the Museo de Cultura Popular, which was actually a museum about Costa Rican traditions. It was kind of like the haciendas that we study in California. There was an old house with lots of traditional things in it, and the students got to make a traditional pastry. We then went and had lunch at a restaurant that had traditional food. It was pretty fun, and I would say it was ultimately successful. We didn't lose anyone, the kids got to run around all day, and I didn't have to be the responsible one for this trip, even though it's my takeover week. Of course, the students' attention span was pretty much shot by the time we came back at 1:00, so we spent the afternoon doing different kinds of reading (my students' favorite). I had secret fears that the students would never come off of their sugar high.

Takeover, take 2

Day 1: Lice outbreak. We're in for a good week!

Luckily, only one kid has it at this point, but of course, we couldn't get ahold of her mother and so the girl was in class all day. Cue foreboding music here...

Semana Santa

After some consideration, I’ve realized that almost all good books have some sort of suspenseful chapter. I guess my chapter has been our Semana Santa trip. Because the student teachers don’t get visas to come to Costa Rica, at some point during our first three months we have to flee the country for 72 hours. We decided to do our fleeing to Bocas del Toro in Panama, followed by a several day trip to Puerto Viejo, back in Costa Rica. Of course, two days before we’re scheduled to leave, we’re still trying to find places to stay and ways to get there. Luckily, this story has a happy ending, and as often happens in these types of adventure stories, everything turned out well. I will admit though, that when we left at six in the morning on our first day, I did still have my doubts.

This trip turned out to be exactly what I needed. Talk about an island paradise; Bocas del Toro was gorgeous! Bocas del Toro is actually several islands located on the Caribbean side of Panama. Our hostel wasn’t on the main island, so we had to take two water taxis to get there. This picture shows the main town on our island. We, however, were around the other side of the island in what was scarily referred to as “el projecto.” When we heard this, we were afraid we’d booked ourselves some place in the ghetto. It was worth the trek though; our hostel turned out to be in the middle of the jungle, about five minutes from the beach. This beach was more idyllic than I thought could exist in real life. The sand was white and so soft that you would sink in up to your ankles as you walked. The water was slightly cool (however, by “cool,” I don’t mean like back home where you can stay in the water without a wetsuit on for about five minutes before hypothermia sets in. In this context, “cool” just means compared to other beaches we’ve been to. The water was still probably about 70 degrees) and a beautiful clear blue.

However, let’s go back a little. This is a picture of our border crossing into Panama. The border itself consists of a hut on each side of the river where they stamp your passport, and this bridge. Although this picture does convey quite a bit of the actual experience, it might also help you to picture this bridge if you think of the Pismo pier, with several boards missing every few feet, and many of the boards not nailed down all the way. Add about 20 pounds for the bags we were carrying with us and you have a pretty decent idea of what our experience was like. Minus, of course, the multiple hours spent in the hot sun waiting to get our stamps, only to find out we needed to be in another line first and come back to the one we were in.

This picture is much happier and was taken on the day that we went snorkeling. We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves and got to spend the day snorkeling and looking at cool fish. The coral wasn’t as colorful as I was hoping, but because the water was really shallow, we got to see the fish pretty up close and personal. It was a trek and a half to get there though. I kept waiting to hear the Indiana Jones theme song play, but apparently the sound effects crew had taken the day off. We hiked along the beach, through the ocean, over dead trees, through shoe-eating mud, and in a jungle of ensnaring vines. Although consistently the over-packer, I was nevertheless disappointed that I had neglected to bring my machete on this little jaunt.

All in all, this was a pretty fantastic week. I don’t know when, but Bocas is definitely somewhere I want to come back to sometime in the future. Anybody have any plans for next year’s spring break? :)

Feliz Pascual!

Jesus Christ is risen, he is risen indeed! I have never seen people as happy about Easter as I have seen here. On Friday I stumbled upon a Good Friday procession. It involved hundreds of people, accompanied by centurion soldiers, an angel, drum corps, and band playing dirges, walking around about six blocks with statues of the body of Christ, Mary, and John (I think—I’m not very familiar with my saints. Maybe it was Peter?). Last night my housemates and I went for part of a three hour mass dedicated to Christ’s resurrection. It was beautiful; the liturgy readings started in the book of Genesis and traced God’s plan of salvation from the creation of the world through the stories of Abraham and Isaac and God bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt. I have to admit though, that I had some trouble following the prophetic readings from the book of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Those kinds of vocabulary words never seemed to make it into my Spanish classes in high school.

I’m not sure exactly how we’ll be celebrating today. Apparently last night was more of an important liturgical day than today is. However, I think our day will probably include a large and delicious lunch, followed by going to mass with our señora. However all of you end up celebrating today, I hope everyone has a very happy Easter!

Day 5

Made it! I think the students and I are both ready for a break.