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...