Independence Day is coming up this Tuesday (the 15th), so there's been a ton of preparation for that. Last week was devoted to cramming as many school assemblies as possible into five days, celebrating everything from the abolition of the army and death penalty, Costa Rica's first astronaut, and something that involved a life sized drawing of Pope John Paul II:
I would have gone with one of him skiing with the sick child on his shoulders, but that's just me. Anyways, I was in charge of the assembly about the abolition of the army, which involved me reading some info I found on the internet, most of which I didn't understand. This also happened to be the day that the guy from Boruca's radio station came to the school with equipment to broadcast the assembly to the rest of the village, since apparently listening to Americans stumble over four paragraphs of Costa Rican history is a popular radio format here.
There's a large parade to go with the Independence Day celebration, and somehow I was named a coach for the school's flag-bearers/marchers. Think of them as a less precise color guard. How I got this job is beyond me, as I have no experience with that sort of thing. Also, I can barely walk in a straight line without tripping over something. But I do have patience and a loud voice, so for a week after school I had 7-10 kids marching around the cement plot in the back of the school. I even changed some of the instructions to English when they fit into the beat of the march better than the longer Spanish words. Pablo, my first grader, has a habit of continuing to march along after I've called for a stop, either oblivious to the command or just really happy to be marching. Anyway, we'll see how it turns out, but I'm not too worried. The fact that 90% of the town is actually in the parade leads me to believe that if we do mess up, not that many people will notice.
Some other pictures from the week:
Some of my first grade boys: Jafet, Quehat, and Stiven left to right. (I've noticed that most of the girls here refuse to pose for a picture without their hands over their face.) Jafet is probably my smartest first-grader, and he recently saw the video to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" for the first time. He is now obsessed with the dance move where Jackson leans almost all the way forward, so about five times a day he asks me to sing the song and hold his arms as he leans forward. After a week he has yet to become sick of this, so I've taken to calling him Jafet Jackson.
Since I am 24 going on 9, I use most of my free time playing jokes on other teachers. This one, for example, started about a month ago when I made fun of the first grade teacher's drawing of a tiny man on a huge horse. While she was out drinking coffee during recess, I recreated/slightly exaggerated the drawing on her board, and left the question of whether it was a large horse or a small man. To her credit, she later responded by writing that the horse was just a large Teacher.
The pre-school girls have apparently not developed the sense of shyness yet. I usually don't teach preschool or kindergarden, but the preschool kids asked for a class with Maestro Teacher a couple of weeks back. We read a book about baby animals and learned some various simple verbs, which was basically an excuse for them to act out things like running, jumping, swimming, and stabbing. OK, that last one wasn't true.
And this one, just because it's the closest thing to a good photograph I took all week.At least the first two days of classes this week are cancelled for the celebrations, which means that Wednesday probably will be too. There's a whole group of volunteers heading to Manuel Antonio to take a TEFL course (which I decided against because I'm an attendance fiend with my kids, so I couldn't justify taking two weeks off myself), but I'll be heading there next weekend to celebrate two of the vols' birthdays.
Internet hasn't really been working at my site over the past two weeks, but thanks to those who are still sending along messages. Talk to everyone soon.
