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...