End of classes, end of service, video

Above is a video project I did with my second graders (or at least the ones who came to class) as a way to show everyone, including the 2010 volunteer, around town.

(There was more actual update here, but then everything crashed and it got deleted. Such is technology down here. I'll try to update it more this week.)

Winding down

If I were to choose one sound to describe the last month, it would probably be ¨mehhhh,¨ or any similar sound that signifies a mix of indifference and laziness. October is usually the rainy month in Costa Rica, and by rainy, I mean the hardest rain you´ve ever seen, every day. Since the country is basically subjected to Noah-level rains for thirty days, I´m pretty sure they adjust their schedules to have as little work as possible in the month of October. This year however, as I´ve been told by the Ticos, is different. A mix of global warming and the El Niño climate phenomenon (which, for those of you who don´t habla español, means... the niño) has caused October to be relatively mild. It still is raining a good majority of the days, but it hasn´t been of the usual torrential variety. The problem is, nobody knew this would happen when they made the schedule, so our school has basically been a joke over the past four weeks. I usually have a four day work week. The past four weeks: 2 days, 2 days, 3 days, 0 days. While such a schedule looks awesome, I long ago became vacationed-out, especially when I have a lot more material I want to cover with the end of classes coming up in about a month. This upcoming week is finally looking to be a full one, but exams are coming up, which invariably means that at least some of my classes will be cancelled.
I took a good chunk of my free week to head to Bocas del Toro, Panama. Bocas is a set of islands just over the border that is a prime stop on the ¨Gringo Trail,¨ or the key vacation spots for the 20 to 30 year old backpackers who make their way through Central America. I needed to leave Costa Rica for three days to get an extension on my visa, as it expires on December 31st and my flight home isn´t until January 5th. Just in case you´re wondering, it´s reallllly easy to border hop, but considering that the official border is a sketchy old train bridge with dozens of ways to fall to your death to the river below, why would you ever want to do such a thing? I´m now back in Costa Rica, completely over-ready (is that a word?) to head back to Boruca, eat nothing but rice and beans, speak Spanish, take cold showers, and chase chickens out of my classroom.
Messages and e-mails are always appreciated, especially at this late point in the year! Until next time...

Mmmm pictures

There's been a lot going on in the past twenty or so days since I've updated. Unfortunately, as some might have heard, the internet has basically stopped working in Boruca. Every once in a while, there'll be a good enough connection to load up and read a few e-mails, but almost never enough to actually send anything back or be online for more than a minute at a time. At this point in the year, though, I'm pretty much over my American internet ways, and the couple of minutes every few days is good enough. (This does not apply to weekends away at places with wireless internet, where I go crazy downloading anything that will entertain me for the following two weeks.)
As far as school news goes, we've just started up a school project to improve basically anything we can think of. I can usually follow these meetings but not chime in too much, but this time the teachers took the time to ask me what I though could be done better. I'm not about to use this space to rail against the educational practices of Costa Rica, so let's just say that I gave them a few pointers on how I would run things differently. Within an hour or so, we had eight points to improve upon - including the schedule, types of instruction in the classroom, communication with parents, use of technology and the new library, and ways to promote more reading and creative writing. Each task was split up between the teachers, and I helped (/pretty much did everything) on most of the projects. I had the schedule to myself, and came up with one for next year that gives the kids more consistent hours at the school, English class every day, a space in the day for extra help/projects/acto civicos, and ends the day for most teachers almost two hours earlier. (And don't worry, I didn't take away any of the kids' recreos) Since most of the ideas that I shared are pretty much foreign to Costa Rican education, I probably have a ton of work ahead of me to get this all going... but the teachers and my director were pretty excited about it, so it's a good start.
I mentioned in my last post that Independence Day was coming up. We had two days off of school, the 14th and 15th, in order to celebrate. The 14th is dedicated to lighting a torch in a nearby community, having the kids run up and down the mountains in 95 degree weather to deliver said torch to another community, then having the directors advise the kids that the best way to rehydrate is to drink coffee. This was a fun time. We even set my "most people in a pickup truck" record for the year, when we fit in 25 students and staff in order to drive to Bella Vista, our neighboring town. The night of the 14th was dance presentation/lamp contest/parade with the lamps lit up. If you're wondering if overzealous parents exist in Costa Rica, your answer is 'yes.' There were definitely some 4 year olds in the lamp contest with lamps made of intricately carved balsa wood.
The 15th is the actual independence day, and we celbrated with a big parade that made a loop through the town. This parade definitely had the lowest spectator/participant ratio in the history of parades, but the kids still loved it. I was at the front with my group of flag-bearers, but I still managed to take about 200 pictures. Here are some favs:
Alannis is ready with the torch.

Yup. No way she made that.



Kid stole my sunglasses. (This is the same kid who once scratched me, looking to uncover my browner, non-white skin. We're buds.)
The two dance teams from the colegio battle it out in an epic "Worst Outfit Ever" contest.

The rest of October is a bit of a joke as far as actual school goes. October is traditionally the month where it pours down rain Noah-style, so I think they schedule a ton of meetings and days off to avoid the double whammy of working in what amounts to a monsoon. In any event, we have two days off this week, the following Monday off, and then three days off two weeks after that. I need to get an extension on my time in Costa Rica to stay for New Years, so I'll be heading to Panama or Nicaragua for one of those trips.
About time to check out of the room and head to the beach one last time. We're hoping to catch the Pats game (or any football) before we head back to the pueblos again. Until next time...

Semana Civica

It's been quite a while since my last post, so I figured I check in. I've been busy, but as second trimester just came to an end, it's been mostly grade-related.
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.

The computer is... what?!

I'm back in Buenos Aires for the second straight day. My laptop has a virus and the plan was to see if the computer shop could do anything about it. Unfortunately, after the two hour bus ride down, and waiting another hour for the place to open up, I found out that on Sundays only the internet cafe is open, not the shop. Oh well.
With time to spare, I figure I'd do another quick blog update. Seeing how part of my update yesterday was highlighting some funny 'English-is-a-long-process' moments from my class, it's only fair that I share one of my weaker moments in Spanish:

Since the English Laptop has been up and running, there's usually a mob of students racing to my room as recreo starts to ask if they can use it. The usual drill is to pretend I have no idea what they're talking about until they ask me in English, at which point it's all theres. My classroom only has one working wall outlet, and since my personal laptop (the cheapest computer I could find after my old one died in September 2007, and I needed one for school the next day)has the battery life of early-90's Sony Discman, the English Laptop usually runs just on battery. Last week, I had forgotten to give the English Laptop a charge during lunch, and the battery gave out right as recreo was starting. As the kids came rushing in, I wanted to let them know that they had to wait a few minutes, since the computer was charging... or, "el computadora esta cargando" in Spanish.
That's what I meant to say.
What I actually said was "El computadora esta cagando," which, despite the absence of just one little 'r,' means a very different thing. Since I strive to keep this blog family-friendly, you can have some fun with Google Translator finding out the difference between:
"El computadora esta cargando."
and
"El computadora esta cagando."

Needless to say, the group of fourth graders thought this was the best thing in the world. I now know not to let that 'r' drop, despite my Boston roots.
Time will tell if my computer makes it through the week with this virus, but send along some e-mail or whatever anyways!

Chickens

This is my second straight weekend (and third in the past four) that I’ve kept a low profile and mostly stayed in Boruca. I’ve headed down to Buenos Aires for the morning to use the internet, hit up the ATM, and attempt to find the restaurant that a teacher at the school told me about that apparently serves “really good” pizza. What constitutes such a rating in Costa Rica, especially in a dusty, cultural wasteland like Buenos Aires, remains to be seen. I’m half-expecting a slice of white bread with ketchup, cheese, and a side of rice.

For all the crap I give Buenos Aires, it’s not the worst place in the world to spend five hours after a week in Boruca. The internet is about 80 cents an hour, and there’s a really good restaurant that specializes in seafood where I can get a huge plate of rice with shrimp for about $4.30. I will, however, lodge my official complaint against the ATM lines. While ATM lines in Costa Rica are always long by American standards, the fact that Buenos Aires has the only two ATM machines for 50 miles in either direction makes the situation bad. The Friday-morning lines are the worst; they easily stretch 25 feet to the street corner, take a turn, then go for another 25 feet. Easily a two-hour wait. My longest wait thus far was a 45 minute one, which was amplified by the fact that I was the only one shortsighted enough to not bring a hat or umbrella to shield me from the 90 degree heat.

Time continues to fly by in Boruca. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost September, which, as my American hard-wired brain tells me, is the official start to the ‘end’ of the year. Second trimester is winding down, and with it came another round of reviews, tests, and kids deciding to show up to class after not coming since April. (Not kidding.) My favorite in-class stories from the past week or two:

-As I was doing the daily warm-up question about the weather with my second graders, Davort, a short, toothless, usually aloof ball of ADHD remarked, “Teacher, estoy morriendo de hot.” Which was his Spanglish way of of saying, “Teacher, I am dying of hot.”

- Felix, who pulls double duty as both my craziest and smartest 6^th grader, makes constant use of the question “How do you say …. in English?” No matter what the word is, though, he immediately practices is by using it in the sentence “Teacher is …,” regardless of context or whether the word is a adjective, noun, or verb, and always leaving out ‘a.’ This week alone, we’ve had “Teacher is moonwalk,” “Teacher is scarab beetle,” and “Teacher is itch."

- And finally, in my “I am definitely teaching in a village on top of a mountain” moment of the week, comes Brandon, one of my favorite 4^th graders. We’ve been learning words that have to do with places in the village and the verbs/grammar that goes with them. Brandon was working on a worksheet with the question “What is your house near?,” with me looking for answers along the lines of “My house is near the school/store/police station.” It should be noted that Brandon can’t do anything at less than 130% speed, as evidenced by his spending recess, barefoot (as if to say that shoes and socks could never hope to contain him), simply bombing around the school and screaming, chasing what ever it is that might have his attention. When it comes to translating English, he does it with the demeanor of someone who truly believes that a bomb will go off if he doesn’t have his sentence correct in the next 30 seconds. After checking with me to make sure he understood the question, he ran back to his desk and spent a minute or so working on an answer. When he came back, I asked him, “So, Brandon, what is your house near?” He looks me dead in the eye, and, with a pause after each word to ensure he’s saying it right, tells me “My… house… is… near… chickens.” Seeing how animals weren’t part of vocabulary set (I had skipped over them entirely with fourth grade this year), I switched over to Spanish to make sure that he wasn’t confused or something. He flipped over his sheet and drew me a picture of his house, and explained how his house was on the outskirts of the village on top of a hill, not near any of the places that we had learned in class. There was, however, a spot next to his house where the chickens usually hung out. That works, I guess.

This internet cafe is roasting, so I'm off to find this magical pizza place. For those not in the know, my sister, Deborah, is due to have her first child within the next week or so! I'm wishing her the best (as should you), and it's a scant four months until I'm home to spoil Baby. Until next time...

Quick photo update

I've come to San Jose for the weekend to say goodbye to the WT Summer Volunteers (who leave tomorrow) and have a going-away shindig for our Assistant Director Paul, who's heading back to the States in just over a week to start graduate school.
(The mere mention of those words frighten me. Grad school is in my future since I want to continue teaching, but sitting at a desk in a class or writing a paper is about the furthest possible thing I can think of compared to what I'm doing right now. I mean, this time yesterday I was visiting the first grade class during their lesson on the dangers of walking from their house to school: packs of stray dogs, horses, snakes, and the river.)
Nothing notable to write about at the moment, plus I have limited time to write before I head off to a (free) lunch with the summer volunteers. The highlight of my week was the Materno students (Pre-K, so about 4 years old) starting to call me "Maestro Teacher." Costa Rican students usually refer to their teachers as "Maestro" or, for example, "Maestro Carlos." I, on the other hand, am simply "Teacher," so all the Materno kids think that 'Teacher' is my actual name. So now when I visit them during snack time, I'm greeted by a chorus of "HELLO MAESTRO TEACHER!"
Here are some pictures I took on a a walk outside of town to my favorite spot along the road down the mountain. The road follows the spine of a mountain, then drops off steeply to each side with the resulting valley filled in with endless green and views of distant mountains. Pictures don't quite do it justice, but have a look anyways:

(Clouds coming over the mountains back towards Boruca. Turned to my right, in the same spot as the first photos.)

Here's a couple of photos of the new English Computer in action. If you look closely, you'll notice that I've now outlawed shoes in my room, since they just bring in mud and cause our two cleaning ladies to make fun of me for having the dirtiest floor. I've noticed that the weird lighting in my room makes it nearly impossible to get a clear photo. Such is life.)

Can't believe that it's already a week into August. September is usually when my mind starts to think that the year is coming to an end, so I might enter what-am-I-going-to-do-next mode soon. But until then, keep up with the messages, and I hope everything is well back home.