(Written on Saturday, posted on Monday)
Nothing too exciting in the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of updates. But I’ve finally stayed in Boruca for the weekend because I have various things to do… create the first tests of the year (done), make some new posters (not done, and likely staying that way considering the shop was closed yesterday and today), and laundry (in the process of being done, in true 24-year old style: wait all week until I’m on my last piece of clothing, then do it all at once). The washing machine takes a while to fill up, so I’m tied to the house for the time being. Not that I’d leave; it’s 90 something degrees outside, and I’m currently sweating in the shade of my room.
Classes have been going pretty well, and the third through sixth graders all have their first test this week. To give you an idea of what I teach on a day-to-day basis, the third graders’ test is ‘what is your name/how are you (with 7 emotions)/what day is today/tomorrow/yesterday’. They’ve got it down pretty good, except when they have to say the days of the week in order without the help of me singing our Days of the Week song. The sixth graders are a smart bunch, so they have all of the above questions plus year, month, classroom objects, weekly schedule questions (‘I have math on Fridays’), and describing the emotions of other people (he/she/it/we/they). This is the first time they’ve had English class two years in a row, so they’re doing pretty well.
I’ve also introduced a daily slang word for the 4th through 6th graders in a section of their notebooks I call “Talk Like a Gringo.” Gringo is a general word for an American. In some places, it’s more derisive, but in Costa Rica it’s the same as calling someone is Irish or Italian. (And don’t believe what you hear: the word didn’t come from Mexican soldiers yelling “Green, go!” at American troops during the Mexican-American War – army uniforms were still blue at this point, so the true origin of the word is a mystery. OK, I’ll stop being a history nerd now.) In any event, so far they’ve learned “What’s up?,” ‘cool,’ and ‘wicked’ in the Bostonian sense, of course. ‘What’s up’ and ‘wicked’ were pretty easy to demonstrate, but ‘cool’ took some work. After getting suggestions of cool people like Madonna and Michael Jackson, we eventually settled on ubiquitous reggaeton artist Daddy Yankee to be our beacon of coolness. I happen to hate Daddy Yankee and his one beat that he uses in every song with the passion of a thousand bad telenovelas, but at least they got it. My fourth grade class and I were practicing how to describe a group of people on Thursday when a random group of Canadian high schoolers walked by our window. I asked them if they could describe the group using ‘Talk Like a Gringo’ words, and to my delight they all said, “They are wicked cool!” Success. After school, my director gave me some stickers and bookmarks that the Canadians left for me. Awesome, I thought… until I saw that the stickers were all Canadian flags and the bookmarks had the Canadian national anthem printed on them. Some of the kids saw me getting them, so word is out that Tichar has stickers. Next week, it shall be my shameful duty to hand out Canadian propaganda to a group of malleable young minds. Will you let them grow up singing the “O, Canada” as they walk home from school or naming curling (or, worse yet, hockey) as their favorite non-soccer sport? No? In the spirit of good ol’ fashioned American imperialism, I beg you to send down all the patriotic nick-nacks you have. From a plastic flag to stealing the medals Grandpa won for storming Normandy, this is a cause worth fighting for.
Besides school, the thing that’s been taking up most of my time is fruit. Finding fruit, eating fruit, asking for fruit, thinking of new ways to get fruit, looking like an idiot while attempting to hit fruit off trees with a ten foot branch – if it has to do with fruit, I’ve done it. Not only is fruit healthy food, it’s free food. Considering that I try to live on $2 a week when in Boruca (no, really, $2… I’ve gone over only once), free food is the key to getting from lunch at 11am to dinner at 7pm without starving. My first fruit source was an orange tree behind my host grandmother’s house. The tree was technically in the neighbor’s yard, but the branch hangs over into her yard. Not that it matters, because neither of them use it, but I still felt bad. This is the tree that requires the huge branch and a good amount of work to get a single piece. After deciding that I looked stupid/criminal while doing it, I figured it was better to have children standing next to me so it looked like I was getting them fruit instead. Nashaly (my host sister) or my students were happy to oblige, and since they never wanted fruit anyways, it worked out pretty well. Considering the time it took and the fact that it was only possible to get one or two oranges a day, though, I needed to come up with other ways. Among them:
1. Combining learning with fruit-finding - My first graders are learning colors, so I set up a team scavenger hunt where they had to find an object of each color they were learning. One of them, of course, was ‘orange,’ and there just so happens to be an orange tree near our school. So as I watched proudly from my classroom, 14 six year olds hurled sticks at the tree in a desperate attempt to be crowned English Champion for the day. Result: seven oranges.
2. Translate for fruit - One day during class, three girls from the colegio (high school) knocked on my door. One of them is applying to a leadership program in the US and needed help with the application and essay, both of which needed to be done in English. I headed over to one of their houses a couple of nights later, and the two of them that were already there showed me around as we waited for the one who actually had the application. It turns out that they have orange, apple, mango, and avocado trees in their backyard, and that their backyard extends indefinitely outward because there’s nothing but mountains behind them. Upon seeing my delight at the amount of fruit, they said I could take whatever I wanted. As we sat there waiting, I ended up eating about 10 apples (they’re smaller and softer here, and a lot more addictive), two small mangos, and shoved as many oranges into my cargo shorts that I could fit. The third girl didn’t end up coming, so we had to reschedule for two nights later. Result: One essay written, lots more fruit.
3. Drop obvious hints on students – My sixth graders love to hang around my classroom and practice their English/teach me Spanish. One of the questions they knew from last year was ‘What is your favorite food,” which, as you can probably guess, I immediately jumped on. “My favorite food is… oranges. No… apples. No… avocado.” First, I learned that avocado starts growing here around May, at which point you will stop hearing from me because I’ll be eating it 24 hours a day. The next day, though, a sixth grader named Francisco stopped by my class before lunch and handed me a bag of about 20 apples. Result: Francisco gets a 100 in my class, I get 20 more apples, and many more likely to come from the students that saw my reaction.
700 words on fruit… nice. The only other big news I can think of is that today I opened a refrigerator for the first time since arriving in Costa Rica. I didn’t even think about it until now. Well, that about does it. My clothes are clean, and Dooby the puppy looks like he wants some hammock time with me.
