Day 3

One of the weird things going on this week is that we have standardized testing. Except today, of course. We ended up having to cancel our testing period at the last minute (literally one or two minutes after school started) because so many buses arrived late today. I was a little stressed about having to teach during a period I had not prepared for, but it turned out to be a good thing. I had the students write about Cinderella from the point of the shoe. They loved it! As you can imagine, many of their stories involved sweaty feet and general smelliness. Some of the more creative also involved shoes that wanted to learn how to cook, a shoe/feet war, and one shoe getting married to another. I'm seriously thinking about not giving this assignment back to the students and bringing it home with me, just for laughs.

I also got to teach about empowerment today. After reading "Cinder Edna" (a story about a Cinderella-type girl who takes the initiative in living happily ever after), the whole class got into a great discussion about choosing to be happy and helping ourselves instead of waitng for someone to rescue us. The funny part is, most of them have already given this some thought and have very strong opinions about it. Empowered third-grade girls are pretty darn fantastic.

Day 2

Today a kid brought a pocket knife to school and took it out to recess with him. Three teachers, a counselor, and a vice principal later, we got the whole thing worked out. Another exciting day in third grade!

Takeover 1

Day 1: already behind schedule. Shoot!

Just so this post (hopefully series of posts) doesn't sound too confrontational or seem to be harkening back to colonialism, here's a quick bit of background on a teaching "takeover." Over the course of the semester, I have to do four weeks of total instruction in the classroom. Of course, my master teacher is still hovering in the back of the room while I'm up front all day. I guess a "takeover" could be defined as when I get to pretend that I'm the real teacher. Or maybe I could describe this takeover period as teaching-with-training-wheels. Either way, there's going to be a lot on my plate this week.

SLOTH!! (and Monteverde)

Well, check goal #1 off of my list. Let’s just stop for a moment and admire this progress: I have officially been in Costa Rica for just over one month and already I have successfully completed my first and second goals. Not bad, if I do say so myself. I guess my next project will be to come up with a few more goals…

Vocabulary phrase of the week:

Pura Vida: literally, it means “pure life.” However, it’s similar to the Australian’s phrase, “no worries.” Saying “pura vida” is appropriate in contexts where you wish to convey sentiments similar to: 1). No problem, don’t worry about it 2). totally awesome and completely cool! 3). well, that’s Costa Rica for you 4). way to be. Basically, there isn’t really a wrong way to use it. I suspect it’s a little more touristy than authentic, but hey: Pura Vida!

In terms of adventures, last weekend was an especially good one! The Westmont group joined with two other Lincoln teachers and we all drove up to Santa Elena, a small town near the Monteverde Cloud Forest. When you picture “rainforest,” this place is it! Santa Elena is a one- main-road town that pretty much just functions as a hub where tourists can sign up for fun things to do in the rainforest.

On Saturday, all of us participated in a charity run/walk for an international school in Santa Elena. It might be interesting at this point to stop here and take a vote to see who thinks I did the run and who thinks I did the walk.

However, that takes up more space and time than any of us can spare for a blog like this.

I’ll be honest: I walked. There is no way I’m a distance runner, especially at that altitude. The walk was lovely. It was fun to see some of the back streets and scruffy forest in the area. I’m especially glad I made the choice I did when I came to this hill. This picture does not do the hill justice. Picture a completely vertical line. Slant it about ten degrees. That is the incline of this hill. It was a killer, even for the walkers!

On Saturday night, three of us signed up for a night hike, which was one of the coolest things I’ve done so far on this trip. Not only did we see four sloths (one of which had a baby!), but we also saw lots of bugs, several birds, a tiny tree frog, two tarantulas that were bigger than my hand, and a poisonous snake in the tree above our heads (it was pretty windy, which didn’t make the situation any more comfortable. One kept imagining the possibilities of falling snakes…). To be honest, seeing all of these animals made me wonder how many were out there, close by us, that we didn’t see.

On Sunday, most of us got up at some unreasonably early hour and took a bus to Monteverde itself so we could be there when the park opened at 7:00. We were pretty much the only people the in the park and we hiked up some great trails. Of course, they call this the cloud forest because the mountains are literally in the clouds. Our goal was to hike the continental divide, and we did. We even saw the sign to prove it. However, our visibility was all of about ten feet. I’m sure the view was lovely; we just couldn’t see any of it. The hike, though, was worth it. We heard a howler monkey at what we thought was fairly close range, and got to spend the entire morning wandering around in the thick jungle. If you’re ever in Costa Rica, I would definitely recommend making a stop in this part of the country!

Goal 2: check, done!

This is Volcan Poas, one of the few active volcanoes in Costa Rica. We got to see it on a completely clear day, which is apparently pretty rare. As stated in my list of goals, we did walk up pretty close to it and hike on the nearby trails. Poas is about a 2 hour bus ride from San Jose and has a big change in elevation. It wasn't exactly cold, but I was glad that I had my jacket with me. We had a picnic at the lake in a nearby crater (picture on the left. The picture on the right also has some sort of lake, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly sulfur :)