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.