I'm back at Casa Yoses for the umpteenth time as I get ready for a week vacation in the Carribean town of Puerto Viejo. All of Costa Rica has Holy Week off, so a small group of us are heading off to one of the few places in the country that had any vacancy.
Nothing too big to report on, other than the first round of tests going pretty well - at least for the kids who regularly show up for class. For the regulars, very few scored under 90, which obviously I was happy about. The excruciating part was giving the test (they were all oral exams, basically short conversations with me using the questions/answers/vocab they know from class) to kids who decided to show up to class for the first time on the day of the test. Obviously, there was no way they were going to pass, but I still had to sit there and ask them if they knew what each question meant in Spanish, then wait to see if they could formulate a response in English. I wish I had written some of the worst answers down, but I heard more answers like "I am pencil" and "Yesterday is today" than I thought was possible. My favorite part was a 4th grader trying to explain to me that the test was unfair because all the words were different than they are in Spanish. Hmmm. Yes. That would be called 'another language,' Like... say... English? The lesson here: go to English class.
We've been learning colors, 1-10, and simple classroom objects in first and second grade. It's like herding cats sometimes, but at least they're cute cats. BINGO with a sticker as a prize is their preferred means of practicing, and we'e even made it all the way to the point where I've outlawed Spanish during BINGO games (ie no yelling out 'azul' after I call out 'blue'). Making the BINGO cards was an adventure. We needed 16 spaces on the cards: 10 colors, 6 classroom objects. Total time needed to make them in each class? One hour, ten minutes. Even then, we ran into problems like kids coloring in a whole column orange, or realizing after the fact that they only had 12 boxes in their card. No worries, though... they were content to place the markers on the paper and just yell out "BINGO!" anyways. One student who wasn't there when we made them showed up to the next class cardless and clueless as to what BINGO is. He was happy to put the markers on the random colors and drawings that he had in his notebook. His version of BINGO was 4 markers in any order, anywhere. He hasn't won yet.
Obviously, soccer is a big deal here, so when the school teams have a game, classes are more or less canceled. I learned this the hard/boring way last time, when I decided to stay at school and ended up having classes of 4 kids all day long. This time, I asked my director if I could cancel my classes and go along. He was surprised that I was even asking, and told me to go along and take pictures. The games were fun, the weather was scorching, and it was refreshing to see kids playing sports for the fun of it - no overbearing coaches or parents, no spots on more elite teams up for grabs, etc. A couple of pictures:
We headed up to a sketchy bridge after the boys team lost in a shootout to hang out for a while. As we entered town on the way back, the kids announced their return/loss with a chant of "perdimos" ("we lost!"). Video:Classes were canceled again the following week for National Sports Day, aka National Play Sports and Let the White Guy Get Burnt Day. Pics:
Action shot of two of my favorite first graders, after five minutes of tying.
Hockey, without the ice, puck, or sticks.
Mini-soccer games. My insane tallness compared to the students/Tico teachers made it easy to just sit by the goal and head the ball in. Also, I had a moral decision when I took the final penalty kick to win the game against the 6th grade boys: miss it and let them feel good about tying the teachers, or rocket the ball at the poor goalie's face and let him know that Americans can play soccer too. Obviously, I unleashed one on the goalie, and the teachers were victorious.And now, the obligatory Dooby picture:
He somehow got into my room and decided to take a nap on my backpack. I did not object.Heading off to Puerto Viejo soon. Apparently they have good wireless access there, and I'll be trying to set up a Skype account. Thanks for the tons of messages you've been sending. Talk to you soon!
