It’s now the third week of school, and my schedule is finally fixed, allowing me to see my first and fifth graders for the first time. The third week is also the unofficial “official” start of school, meaning that introductory classes are over and most all of the students are now showing up regularly. It’s been weird having new kids show up three weeks into school, but the absence policy here (aka, nothing…) puts the onus on the students to catch up themselves, rather than the teacher having to create make-up work for them. I just got an official list of my students yesterday, so I’ve started my threats of notas malas if my students don’t attend class.
The classes themselves are going pretty well. I’ll admit that it’s been an adjustment teaching the younger ones (first and second grade), as they barely know Spanish let alone English. I’m not used to repetition to the point of insanity… for example, in a first grade class last week we spent 25 minutes working on the pronunciation of the line “I am fine, thank you” in a song called “Hello, Teacher.” Despite the frustration, it’s been nice to have the same kids sign the song to me as I walk home for lunch every day. The older kids are a blast, especially my 4th and 6th graders. (I don’t know the 5th grades well enough yet.) We spent last Friday writing pen pal letters to my former students in Cohasset, and some of them were going after novios/novias (boyfriends/girlfriends) pretty shamelessly. (Grades and ages are pretty fluid here… the way it works is that a student will be held back if they get below a 65 in any subject, so a student would be held back if they got a 100 in every other subject but got a 64 in English. Parents have no say. The result is things like 13 year olds in 4th grade, even when they’re bright kids.) I also decided to introduce them to some American music during the letter-writing, and since most of them like music they can dance to but can’t understand the lyrics (read: vulgarities), I decided that Girl Talk was an ideal choice. It was a big hit, and some of the kids could even pick out some of the rap songs in the mix.
Despite my initial concerns of not being able to speak enough Spanish to get by, I find now that I’m speaking too much Spanish in class, since English-only is ideally the best way to teach. The older kids have been really helpful, and usually hover over me in between classes to talk and help me with my Spanish. And when I say “hover over,” I mean it… my desk usually looks like a football huddle, with kids fighting for the attention of “Tichar.” I’ve been lucky enough to have a girl named Kelly visiting Boruca for a few weeks, since she’s trained in ESL teaching and is fluent in Spanish. She’s sat in on a number of my classes and helped me notice and correct flaws. Marcos, the Special Education teacher, has also been a big help, as he’s in the process of creating a guide to help future English teachers in Boruca with their transition.
So, that’s what going on with my “normal” days. Kind of boring, but considering I was expecting language barriers, insane kids, and small fires, boring isn’t too bad. Oh, wait… there’s always small fires burning outside of my classroom, since that’s how they get rid of the trash. I don’t think fires on the playground would go over too well in a U.S elementary school…
Some short bits:
1. Yesterday morning, a second grader walked up to my window as I was drawing some pictures for class. He casually handed me a six-inch retractable razor and told me it was a gift. It probably shows that I’m adjusting to the culture when I simply said “Gracias” and went back to coloring.
2. Last Wednesday, I showed up to school to find that no fifth graders had showed up to school. Confused but used to the unexpected, I went home and did laundry. I returned about two hours later for my second period class, and only three first graders showed up. Since none of them knew a word of English, we played alphabet and color BINGO… and be “we played,” I mean “I gave them cards and told them when to put a marker on a square.” They seemed happy enough, and didn’t seem to notice that all of their cards were virtually identical, meaning that they all got BINGOs at the same time for every game. At this point, I found out there were some races going on that caused the older kids to miss school. Even though the races were over at this point, our director had made the decision to cancel the rest of the day and have a “meeting” at a beach. So, at 11am, having taught all of three students that day, I boarded a minibus and headed off to the beach with the other teachers, where we swam, played soccer, and ate whole fried fish - heads, eyes, and all – until 9pm that night.
3. On Wednesday of my first week, I came down with an awful fever. I hate missing work, but I felt bad enough to stay home on Thursday. At this point, my family was saying that I was simply adjusting to the food. Saturday comes, I haven’t eaten in three days, my entire body aches, and I’m sleeping 18 hours a day. At this point, the general consensus is that my body is not, in fact, adjusting to the food… now, I’m dying of Dengue Fever. It just so happens that the phones are out in Boruca, meaning that I can’t get in touch with my English-speaking doctor. I decide to make the 6.5 hour trip into San Jose anyways, and just as I’m leaving Boruca on the last bus out that day, I spot Jeremy and John, two volunteers from down the mountain who had decided to visit me. I yell a quick apology, and their faces drop as they learn that I’m traveling halfway across the country while they’re stuck on top of the mountain with nowhere to go. (I find out later that they hitched a ride back down in the back of a maure truck.)
I eventually get to the hospital, and settle on the Emergency Room with my doctor nowhere to be found. I’m able to communicate pretty well with the doctors I talk with, at least enough to get the directions on where to go to make sure that I’m not dying. After a blood test and spending an hour shivering in the waiting room (definitely got some stares from the Ticos), I find out that I’m probably not next on the Grim Reaper’s list and head off to a hostel for the night. I get the final clearance the next morning, but unfortunately (or not) by this point I had missed the last possible bus for my part of the country… which means that I’d miss Monday as well.
Arriving back at school on Tuesday, I head to the director’s office to profusely apologize for missing two days of school. “Tranquillo, tranquillo,” he says. Turns out that he had been out of town both days and didn’t even know that I was gone.
4. I headed to Dominical this past weekend with Jeremy and John for some downtime. After 30 minutes of getting absolutely thrashed by the waves (Dominical is a famous surfing hub, and the stereotypical long-haired American surfers outnumber the Ticos 3 to 1 – what this means is that I was completely out of my league, having been surfing twice in my life), I managed to stand up on my board for all of 3 seconds. I eventually manage to burn my skin to a nice lobster shade of red, and I retreated to the shaded hammocks to sleep and read for the read of the weekend. After, um, forgetting to read it when it was assigned to me in high school, I ended up loving The Great Gatsby. I did manage to get a few great pictures in Dominical:
Three or four foot iguana hanging out in a tree near the bus stop. Not nearly as mean as they look... they scurried away once I got close.
River that fed into the Pacific. On the first day I wanted to take a little stroll around the area to see if there was anything worth seeing. I made it to the mouth of the river (for those of you who failed geography, that's where the river meets the ocean) and decided that it'd be a good idea to walk across. I made it about halfway before the bottom dropped out from under me, and I was forced to swim the rest of the way while fighting the waves and currents. (Don't ask me why I didn't just turn around...) There wasn't too much on the other side, so I turned back around and swam it again. This picture is basically an excuse for me to brag about the fact that I didn't drown.
I took about 20 sunset photos while in Dominical, but settled on this one. I intend to eventually start a blog called "cornysunsetsincostarica.blogspot.com."
That's it for now. Thanks for all the messages!
