I lay on the floor because it is the place I feel the best.
I look at a cockroach that is sharing that floor with me and don't do anything about its existence.
The dishes pile up in the sink.
Everything that I see on facebook reminds me of home and how I think I miss the things I never even liked in the first place.
I feel like there is a hole inside of me that can't be filled by anything I do.
Deep down, I know that this will pass... but, right now it doesn't feel like it will. It feels like I will lay on this floor forever and the cockroach and I will enter the apocalyptic world of Wally where we will become best friends and eat Twinkies that will never expire.
Do Twinkies even still exist or have the cockroach and I already outlasted them?
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Brushing Teeth and Smelling Papers
...Just some random observations I enjoy noting.
Teeth brushing is a cultural phenomenon. People brush their teeth after every meal and even snacks. Everyone has a toothbrush in their purse or bag and bathrooms that charge to enter even sometimes have a cheaper price listed for teach brushing usage. The schools have big outside sinks (kind of like water troughs) for teeth brushing. Students and teachers gather around after breakfast and lunch to brush their teeth. This amuses me.
I don't know if this is Tico thing or just a coincidence, but I have also met several people who smell things that I had never thought of smelling. One of my friends smelled my students' journals. After, I tried it. They actually each had different smells. One of my students smelled the exam when I passed it out. Now, that, I just don't understand.
Teeth brushing is a cultural phenomenon. People brush their teeth after every meal and even snacks. Everyone has a toothbrush in their purse or bag and bathrooms that charge to enter even sometimes have a cheaper price listed for teach brushing usage. The schools have big outside sinks (kind of like water troughs) for teeth brushing. Students and teachers gather around after breakfast and lunch to brush their teeth. This amuses me.
I don't know if this is Tico thing or just a coincidence, but I have also met several people who smell things that I had never thought of smelling. One of my friends smelled my students' journals. After, I tried it. They actually each had different smells. One of my students smelled the exam when I passed it out. Now, that, I just don't understand.
A Theatre Adventure
One of my favorite aspects about living here is that when I wake up in the morning, I never know what adventures the day may hold. Even if I think I have a day of classes and meetings, by the time I go to sleep at night I may have traveled to another town with a touring outreach show.
That is exactly what happened today. I had a student scheduled for 9:30 who didn't respond to my calls or show up to class. I got a text message from the theatre saying, meet us and we'll all go in a busetta (a van) to Parrita (a town about a half hour away). We're leaving in 5 minutes.
They were performing a short children's show for El Dia Internacional De Los Libros (the international book day) which I didn't even know existed. The play was starring two of my very own improv students :] which made me really happy because they are involved in the theatre because of the group that I started. It was adorable and the kids loved it. It was called The Lost Books or something like that and was about how if you don't read books, they die - along with all of the stories and characters in them.
This type of theatre outreach is soooooo important everywhere, but especially here. Reading, here, is not a common pastime. Most houses don't even have any books. Quepos doesn't have a library. The fact that this theme of reading is even being presented is exciting.
On the way home, I had a conversation with one of the actresses about how I first saw theatre when I was really little at a mall and how I fell in love with it all the way back then. We talked about how, now, these little kids are seeing theatre and how that may inspire them in ways we will never know.
The type of work that I really feel passionate about is happening here in these little towns. And I get to be a little part of it and that makes me feel very blessed.
The quote that the school had on the invitations to the play that were really bookmarks:
"Un libro abierto es un cerebro que habla;
cerrado, un amigo que espera;
olvidado, un alma que perdona;
destruido, un corazón que llora..." - proverbio hindu
"An open book is a brain that speaks;
closed, a friend that waits;
forgotten, a soul that forgives,
destroyed, a heart that weeps."
That is exactly what happened today. I had a student scheduled for 9:30 who didn't respond to my calls or show up to class. I got a text message from the theatre saying, meet us and we'll all go in a busetta (a van) to Parrita (a town about a half hour away). We're leaving in 5 minutes.
They were performing a short children's show for El Dia Internacional De Los Libros (the international book day) which I didn't even know existed. The play was starring two of my very own improv students :] which made me really happy because they are involved in the theatre because of the group that I started. It was adorable and the kids loved it. It was called The Lost Books or something like that and was about how if you don't read books, they die - along with all of the stories and characters in them.
This type of theatre outreach is soooooo important everywhere, but especially here. Reading, here, is not a common pastime. Most houses don't even have any books. Quepos doesn't have a library. The fact that this theme of reading is even being presented is exciting.
On the way home, I had a conversation with one of the actresses about how I first saw theatre when I was really little at a mall and how I fell in love with it all the way back then. We talked about how, now, these little kids are seeing theatre and how that may inspire them in ways we will never know.
The type of work that I really feel passionate about is happening here in these little towns. And I get to be a little part of it and that makes me feel very blessed.
The quote that the school had on the invitations to the play that were really bookmarks:
"Un libro abierto es un cerebro que habla;
cerrado, un amigo que espera;
olvidado, un alma que perdona;
destruido, un corazón que llora..." - proverbio hindu
"An open book is a brain that speaks;
closed, a friend that waits;
forgotten, a soul that forgives,
destroyed, a heart that weeps."
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Dear New Gringo(a) English Teacher,
There is a lot you need to know about working in the Costa Rican high school system that probably nobody will tell you. This is why I am compiling this letter... so that maybe you won't have as difficult time as I have had for the past three months.
1. You need to win the respect of your students. It might be a slow, long process, but hang in there. In some cases, they may have experienced teachers who didn't know what they were doing, didn't try to connect with them, left them partway through the year, or even partied with them on the weekends. That is what they see when they get a new gringa teacher. Stay strong, do what you think will work, and they will settle down eventually. There will come a day when you hear a glimpse of silence while they write, they will start to ask you questions, and you will notice that everything you do is no longer una pelea (fight). When the class starts to laugh together instead of at each other, you just may have won. That feeling makes the whole thing "vale la pena" (worth it). It is a pride that is unexplainable when you experience something that you were so close to quitting, going well.
2. You will not understand the framework in which you are working. There will be expectations and rules that nobody will tell you about, even when you ask them directly - "What exactly do I need to give the students when I assign this project?" In fact, you might walk in the morning you were giving out the assignment and find out you have to follow a certain procedure. You rush in those 10 minutes before the bell rings to follow the procedure so that you can assign the project which MUST be assigned that day because you must give them exactly one week to complete the assignment and you are not allowed to give work during exam week which is coming up after the day off that you didn't know existed.... (Are you out of breath just reading that sentence? I wanted you to feel how I feel). You also have more pressure on you than any other teacher because you have a student in your class who's mother is on the assessment committee of the Ministry of Public Education. So, even though you are the one with the least experience in the system... your work has to be flawless.
3. Relationships are more important than tasks. It is more important to greet someone and ask about how they are doing than to ask them a work related question. Always relate to the person first. Then, you can talk about work.
4. As far as I can tell, Tico teachers don't complain very much. They laugh a lot, work well together, and seem to enjoy what they do. Many of them have a lot of different teaching jobs (working at the HS in the day and a night HS at night). They seem to be grateful for the work, even if it is very tiring or very from from where they live (up to an hour and a half drive in a car).
5. Student behavior that we may consider super weird is actually relatively normal. For example, I thought it was extreme when a student started sweeping the floor near her desk so that she could lie down on the floor during the middle of class. When I told the story to another teacher after class, she didn't seem surprised at all and told me that was a common happening in schools. I was just supposed to not let her do it... but it wasn't out of the ordinary. Here I was, thinking I had never seen anything like that in all of my schooling.
Another example - I used to think that this one sound that students would make when they didn't like something was disrespectful towards me... but then I started doing impressions of it to some of my Tica friends. They told me it was just a sound that meant you didn't want to do something or didn't like something. I started asking friends and the teenagers in my improv group to help me practice the sound... because as weird as it sounds, I couldn't make it correctly. The more I was aware of it, the more I watched interactions between friends or family members; with each interaction, I began to understand this sound more. It really wasn't a big deal at all... The thing that sounded SUPER disrespectful to me, turned out to just be a mild and completely common expression of a desire not to do something. And while this might sound like a weird thing to be excited about, the understanding and acceptance of this one sound has really started to make my classroom a more pleasant place to be. And now, I hear it less and less :]
6. You might have a work meeting that will be located in a pool, talking about hiring a "guapo" swim teacher (hypothetically), and drinking Imperial. This is a good work meeting and is very important in order to build a strong teacher community. This is also when the Tico teachers learn that the Gringa teachers are not "aburida" (boring) like they thought they were before they knew them.
7. Even though the rules of the school system seem almost militaristic (which is ironic because the country has no military), things will still be disorganized and will happen at the last minute. That is ok. At least I have decided it is ok. For example, not all of your students will have books until after the second month of school because the copy store ran out and the supplier won't send more. It then becomes the students' responsibility to take a classmate's book to the copy store to illegally copy.... but that's ok, too. You'd understand that if you bought the DVDs that are filmed using someone's cell phone in a movie theatre. So, then the least proactive students who were without a book for a long long time have already failed the first test when they finally have the material they need. Somehow, though, everyone gets a copy of the book and the third month of school begins to go a bit more smoothly.
8. Even though life here is "Pura Vida" everyone is working really hard and many hours beyond what they are paid.... just like in the US. Even the students work really long hours and go beyond what they would be expected of in the US; students have to go to the copy store to print out their own packets... so that the school doesn't have to make copies and they actually do. I can't imagine sending my old students to Kinkos to copy their own language packets. It would have been a disaster and maybe one of them would have come to class with the packet. They didn't even come to class with the packet when I hole punched it and stuck it in their binders!
9. Costa Rica loves rubrics!!!! I thought rubrics were important in the US, but that is nothing compared to here. Even the tests have to be written by using a "tabla" of data which specifies how many class periods you spent on each topic... delegating how many questions you can ask about that topic. The students have to receive the "themes" of the test a week before so that they can study. There is a very specific cover page format to the test with rules and percentages, a place for the parent to sign that they saw the grade, and the school's crest. The percentage delegated to each test and each project, homework, etc is clearly laid out and can not be changed. When I had to give an additional test because the first one went so badly, the board had to discuss it and approve a change in percentage allotment for my class. Did I mention that it seamed a little militaristic?
10. There will continue to be more weird, surprising, funny, interesting, and amazing moments along the way. So, fasten your seatbelt..... wait, we don't use those here... and enjoy the wild ride that is working within a culture that you did not grow up in.... where you are a player in the game who thinks he knows the rules, but actually doesn't. Once you accept this, you can breathe, learn, and enjoy the best you can. I think that "poco a poco" you will learn the rules of the game and "va volando."
1. You need to win the respect of your students. It might be a slow, long process, but hang in there. In some cases, they may have experienced teachers who didn't know what they were doing, didn't try to connect with them, left them partway through the year, or even partied with them on the weekends. That is what they see when they get a new gringa teacher. Stay strong, do what you think will work, and they will settle down eventually. There will come a day when you hear a glimpse of silence while they write, they will start to ask you questions, and you will notice that everything you do is no longer una pelea (fight). When the class starts to laugh together instead of at each other, you just may have won. That feeling makes the whole thing "vale la pena" (worth it). It is a pride that is unexplainable when you experience something that you were so close to quitting, going well.
2. You will not understand the framework in which you are working. There will be expectations and rules that nobody will tell you about, even when you ask them directly - "What exactly do I need to give the students when I assign this project?" In fact, you might walk in the morning you were giving out the assignment and find out you have to follow a certain procedure. You rush in those 10 minutes before the bell rings to follow the procedure so that you can assign the project which MUST be assigned that day because you must give them exactly one week to complete the assignment and you are not allowed to give work during exam week which is coming up after the day off that you didn't know existed.... (Are you out of breath just reading that sentence? I wanted you to feel how I feel). You also have more pressure on you than any other teacher because you have a student in your class who's mother is on the assessment committee of the Ministry of Public Education. So, even though you are the one with the least experience in the system... your work has to be flawless.
3. Relationships are more important than tasks. It is more important to greet someone and ask about how they are doing than to ask them a work related question. Always relate to the person first. Then, you can talk about work.
4. As far as I can tell, Tico teachers don't complain very much. They laugh a lot, work well together, and seem to enjoy what they do. Many of them have a lot of different teaching jobs (working at the HS in the day and a night HS at night). They seem to be grateful for the work, even if it is very tiring or very from from where they live (up to an hour and a half drive in a car).
5. Student behavior that we may consider super weird is actually relatively normal. For example, I thought it was extreme when a student started sweeping the floor near her desk so that she could lie down on the floor during the middle of class. When I told the story to another teacher after class, she didn't seem surprised at all and told me that was a common happening in schools. I was just supposed to not let her do it... but it wasn't out of the ordinary. Here I was, thinking I had never seen anything like that in all of my schooling.
Another example - I used to think that this one sound that students would make when they didn't like something was disrespectful towards me... but then I started doing impressions of it to some of my Tica friends. They told me it was just a sound that meant you didn't want to do something or didn't like something. I started asking friends and the teenagers in my improv group to help me practice the sound... because as weird as it sounds, I couldn't make it correctly. The more I was aware of it, the more I watched interactions between friends or family members; with each interaction, I began to understand this sound more. It really wasn't a big deal at all... The thing that sounded SUPER disrespectful to me, turned out to just be a mild and completely common expression of a desire not to do something. And while this might sound like a weird thing to be excited about, the understanding and acceptance of this one sound has really started to make my classroom a more pleasant place to be. And now, I hear it less and less :]
6. You might have a work meeting that will be located in a pool, talking about hiring a "guapo" swim teacher (hypothetically), and drinking Imperial. This is a good work meeting and is very important in order to build a strong teacher community. This is also when the Tico teachers learn that the Gringa teachers are not "aburida" (boring) like they thought they were before they knew them.
7. Even though the rules of the school system seem almost militaristic (which is ironic because the country has no military), things will still be disorganized and will happen at the last minute. That is ok. At least I have decided it is ok. For example, not all of your students will have books until after the second month of school because the copy store ran out and the supplier won't send more. It then becomes the students' responsibility to take a classmate's book to the copy store to illegally copy.... but that's ok, too. You'd understand that if you bought the DVDs that are filmed using someone's cell phone in a movie theatre. So, then the least proactive students who were without a book for a long long time have already failed the first test when they finally have the material they need. Somehow, though, everyone gets a copy of the book and the third month of school begins to go a bit more smoothly.
8. Even though life here is "Pura Vida" everyone is working really hard and many hours beyond what they are paid.... just like in the US. Even the students work really long hours and go beyond what they would be expected of in the US; students have to go to the copy store to print out their own packets... so that the school doesn't have to make copies and they actually do. I can't imagine sending my old students to Kinkos to copy their own language packets. It would have been a disaster and maybe one of them would have come to class with the packet. They didn't even come to class with the packet when I hole punched it and stuck it in their binders!
9. Costa Rica loves rubrics!!!! I thought rubrics were important in the US, but that is nothing compared to here. Even the tests have to be written by using a "tabla" of data which specifies how many class periods you spent on each topic... delegating how many questions you can ask about that topic. The students have to receive the "themes" of the test a week before so that they can study. There is a very specific cover page format to the test with rules and percentages, a place for the parent to sign that they saw the grade, and the school's crest. The percentage delegated to each test and each project, homework, etc is clearly laid out and can not be changed. When I had to give an additional test because the first one went so badly, the board had to discuss it and approve a change in percentage allotment for my class. Did I mention that it seamed a little militaristic?
10. There will continue to be more weird, surprising, funny, interesting, and amazing moments along the way. So, fasten your seatbelt..... wait, we don't use those here... and enjoy the wild ride that is working within a culture that you did not grow up in.... where you are a player in the game who thinks he knows the rules, but actually doesn't. Once you accept this, you can breathe, learn, and enjoy the best you can. I think that "poco a poco" you will learn the rules of the game and "va volando."
 |
| They're working together!!! Well, mostly. ;] |
If Tucson were Quepos
If Tucson were Quepos...
Everyone on your street would sell something different out of their houses. They would signify this with hand drawn signs - pencil on paper.
It would be completely normal for your neighbor to be watching the soccer game on their front porch as if it was the inside of his living room.
You would kill a minimum of 5 cockroaches a night. It would become so normal that you would look for them to great you as you came home from work.
You would finally get tired of this process and give in, spending an hour and a half's salary on roach traps.
Your friend would invent an air conditioner made out of a styrofoam cooler, frozen things from his refrigerator, and a fan.
Chickens would walk down your street as if they owned it. The roosters would begin crowing at 1 am to let you know that morning would be arriving in anywhere between 1 and 4 hours.
Some people would still burn their trash.
Some people would cook outside, and not on a bbq.
You wouldn't really be able to tell, sometimes, what was inside and what was outside... since walls often wouldn't go all the way up to the tin roofs.
You would be able to fix anything out of anything.
Everyone would greet you as you passed by their houses.
And everyone would LAUGH a lot more often!!! About EVERYTHING.
*Guess what grammar point I have been teaching.... ;] (Answer: 2nd conditional - hypothetical situations)
Everyone on your street would sell something different out of their houses. They would signify this with hand drawn signs - pencil on paper.
It would be completely normal for your neighbor to be watching the soccer game on their front porch as if it was the inside of his living room.
You would kill a minimum of 5 cockroaches a night. It would become so normal that you would look for them to great you as you came home from work.
You would finally get tired of this process and give in, spending an hour and a half's salary on roach traps.
Your friend would invent an air conditioner made out of a styrofoam cooler, frozen things from his refrigerator, and a fan.
Chickens would walk down your street as if they owned it. The roosters would begin crowing at 1 am to let you know that morning would be arriving in anywhere between 1 and 4 hours.
Some people would still burn their trash.
Some people would cook outside, and not on a bbq.
You wouldn't really be able to tell, sometimes, what was inside and what was outside... since walls often wouldn't go all the way up to the tin roofs.
You would be able to fix anything out of anything.
Everyone would greet you as you passed by their houses.
And everyone would LAUGH a lot more often!!! About EVERYTHING.
 |
| Air Conditioning - Tico Style |
*Guess what grammar point I have been teaching.... ;] (Answer: 2nd conditional - hypothetical situations)
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
To Granada...and back
Tica Bus’ Version of a “Flight Attendant”
One of the drivers walks down the aisle selling chips and empanadas from his cooler. I found it funny.
Another Odd Experience to Check off on Life’s List of Odd
Experiences
In my life as a traveler I have had some interesting
experiences in hostels, but staying in a hostel dorm room with 5 adult men (as
in 30s – 40s) had not been one of them.
I felt like I had been placed in a male’s dorm room. It was a mixed dorm, but I just happened to
be the only female. Though I started out
a little nervous, I quickly realized that they were friendly and all very chill. I was, then, just thankful that it was not a
room of frat boys.
There is no soap in the country of Nicaragua
I have decided that there is no soap in the entire country
of Nicaragua. Ok, I know that sounds a little bit extreme
and it is. But, from my very small
sample study of 3 days in one town, that is the conclusion I have come to. It’s ok, though…. That is why a traveler
always needs to be prepared with this important supply – hand sanitizer!
Joining the Nicaraguan Swim Team
One of the days that I was in Granada, I took a day trip to Laguna de
Apoyo. It was beautiful. The shuttle from one hostel in Granada dropped us off at
another hostel on the volcanic crater lake and it seemed as though we were the
only ones there. After spending the day
Kayaking and swimming and eating with the other Gringo travelers, I decided to
explore a little bit. I started walking
along the bank and just past a few rocks, I started to hear music and saw that
there was actually a public beach where all the locals were. As I walked by, 30 Nicaraguan men jumped into
the water with lifeguard floats and began swimming. One asked me to join them, so of course – I
did. That was the day I became, if only
for just a brief moment, a member of a Nicaraguan men’s swim team. Is the theme here that I am turning into a
man? Hm…. But if that was the case I wouldn’t have gotten cat called so many
times on the streets of Granada.
All By Myself in a “Haunted Hostel”
The last night at the hostel in Granada, I was the only guest. That was also the night that the creepy
hostel man came back to work. I thought
he would certainly have a night off after having been there the previous night. That is why I stayed. I was incorrect. He was back and just as creepy. The way he slowly walked around and tried to
strike up awkward conversation in a monotone voice was just a little
unsettling. That last night, I thought…
ok, I just have to chill out, go to bed early, and get on the bus at 6am. Then, I will be back in Quepos where I feel
more secure. There I was, just sitting
in the hammock reading, when he came and sat down next to me. He proceeded to tell me not to worry if I saw
the ghost. Great, just what I needed to
hear. Like being in a foreign country
(even more foreign than the foreign country I live in) alone in a hostel with
this creepy guy wasn’t enough…. Now there were ghosts to think about?! That was it: I locked my door, went to bed,
and hoped that the morning would arrive soon and that I could go home.
My Favorite Part of the Trip
My favorite part of the whole trip was actually riding the
bus from Granada to San Jose
with a high school student from Granada. It was her first time leaving the country and
sharing that with her was such a meaningful experience for me. She was traveling with an organization called
“Soccer Without Borders” and was with a few friends and three volunteer
coaches. For some reason, though, she
couldn’t sit with the group and instead sat next to me. I helped her fill out her immigration forms;
we shared the music she played half the journey from the speakers of her cell
phone… probably mildly annoying the other passengers, but I didn’t care. I liked it. I liked sharing her music. I liked
inviting her to an empanada from the “flight attendant” with the cooler. I
liked being a part of her first adventure to a new land.
And Finally....
Even though it wasn't the most relaxing trip, it was very beautiful and I got to take some pretty awesome pictures walking around the city for two days.
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