Sunday, March 30, 2014

After a walk into town to buy some omelets for breakfast, we were ready to start our day.  We spent a little bit more time in the town going through shops before hanging out at the hostel for a little bit before it was time to check-out.  I enjoyed my last bit of hammock time while Katie and McCall enjoyed their last bit of trampoline time.  After a bit, we were packed up, showered up, and ready to hit the road.  We went for a Vegetarian pizza at a place called Latin Pizza.  It was really a pretty good pizza.  The two girls went on a mission-like hunt for more souvenirs and ice cream, while I stayed back and enjoyed the main park in the town that has the view of the Catholic Church in the foreground of the volcano.  From there, we went and got in line for the bus home.  I really don’t like when the bus company does not put the assigned seat numbers on the bus tickets, because then it becomes a bit of a mad dash to get on the bus and avoid having to stand.  Unfortunately, they are not shy about overselling the bus tickets, so there were a whole slew of people standing in the aisle.  One of these people (at least after she got picked up in a nearby town) was a bigger lady who essentially sat on my arm rest and was holding herself up on the chair in front of me.  She also smelled very strongly of hair gel.  In case you did not know, personal space is not exactly an important aspect of Latin culture.  Luckily, by the time we got to a town called San Carlos, most of the people in the aisle had gotten off the bus.  Unluckily, not long after we got past San Carlos, the bus tried to take a sharp turn and done broke itself.  After a little bit of traveling down the road to a safer place to stop, the bus driver stopped the bus and called a mechanic.  We sat at the side of the road next to a tiny town for half-an-hour until another bus came and rescued us.  Eventually, the bus stopped at the San Jose Airport (which is not too far from our house), so we hoped off and caught a cab, saving us probably an hour or so.  When I got home, I think Liliana was excited to cook for someone (neither Zoe nor I had been home for dinner since last Wednesday).  Aside from dinner, I spent the rest of the night skyping home, unloading photos, and preparing to teach tomorrow.  Not a bad end to the weekend.        

Saturday, March 29, 2014

The three of us awoke at precisely 8:00 and headed to town to find some breakfast.  We ate at this small coffee shop that served breakfast.  I enjoyed some pancakes and orange juice while the two girls enjoyed cups of vanilla tea and eggs.  After that, we went further into town and actually did the souvenir shopping and purchasing of gifts for friends and family.  We also purchased our bus tickets for the next day and enjoyed a very cool view of the Catholic Church in the middle of the town with the volcano in the background.  After returning to the hostel, Katie hung back and relaxed for a little bit while McCall and I got a taxi to take us to the waterfall close by.  After paying our $10 admission, we climbed down the 480 stairs to get to the waterfall.  I didn’t actually count them, but I trust the person who told us that statistic.  Despite feeling some fatigue in my legs, we enjoyed the green journey on the way down.  When we finally got to the bottom, the waterfall was absolutely worth it.  It was probably 50-75 feet tall and just plain magnificent.  The water came down in a thunderous roar that filled the almost enclosed valley.  The mist from the water’s impact reached further than Shamoo’s Splash Zone at Sea World.  McCall got in the little pool of water while I enjoyed the beauty from a relatively safe distance (mostly, I didn’t want to hike in my swimsuit).  When the beauty of the waterfall became such that we could not take it anymore, we made the 480 stair trek back up to the summit.  After that, I took a nap in the hammock, and I didn’t even feel lazy or bad about it.  It was justified hammock time.  For our afternoon adventure, we had a hike/ hot-springs combo closer to the actual volcano.  We had a guide named Jesús who was quite a character.  We admired the different ridges of Arenal, learning that it was inactive for thousands of years until 1968 when it erupted and killed 83 people.  With the eruption, the landform changed completely, creating ridges and crests where rocks had spewed out from the top.  In my non-scientist way of explaining this, Volcan Arenal did not spew out lava from the top like you think of from the Super Mario 64 video game volcanoes.  Instead, it would spit out really hot rocks.  Unfortunately (for the tourist, and maybe for the residents), the volcano has been dormant since 2010.  The first part of our hike consisted of Jesús showing us cool views of the volcano and other things surrounding us such as this cool lagoon just underneath us.  After showing us a colony of ants carrying leaves to their momma ant, and explaining to us that the area that we were looking at used to be flat farmland, but is now rock rainforest, Jesús started us on the hike.  We saw some toucans, which apparently they call corrers here because the sound that toucans make sounds like someone saying the Spanish word “correr” (I had no idea that’s what sound a toucan makes).  We also found some wild guayaba that Jesús picked off of a tree for us.  They were quite delicious pieces of fruit.  I felt like a wild monkey, picking wild fruit from the tree and eating it.  We continued on through the rain forest and learned all kinds of things about plants and birds and rocks and things that I probably haven’t heard since like 8^th grade science class (ok, that’s probably an exaggeration, I do have a Geography minor and we talk about this kind of stuff in the science-y geography classes).  We even saw a couple of wild monkeys in the rain forest.  Jesús told us to be careful of the monkeys because they might throw their feces at us.  How rude of the monkeys.  At the conclusion of our hike, we waited for an hour or so as our driver came back to pick us up and take us to Baldi Hot Springs.  This place was a huge resort type place with 26 hot springs pools and other things that resorts have such as restaurants and whatnot.  After a buffet, we checked out the hot springs.  The first one we went to was just not quite warm enough for our tastes, so we went to another one.  This one felt amazing at first because it was hot tub and a half hot, but after a while it was too warm for us, so we went to yet another one.  The last one was just right.  It was the perfect temperature to just relax in.  It even had a cool pool that was 20 degree Celsius (68 F) to help out on those tired muscles before you put them back into the warm pool.  After our Goldilocks and the Three Bears story of finding the best hot springs pool concluded, we caught the shuttle back to the hostel to enjoy the rest of the night there.  At about 10:00, they lit candles and put them in paper bags before killing all of the electricity at the hostel so that we could see the stars and probably to keep the electricity bill down.  After a little bit of that, I took the dark area as my cue to hit the sack.  I listened to a McCall and Katie verses the bugs episode, but I was on the top bunk and already half asleep.  My last memory of the night was someone yelling “Die bug, die.”              

Friday, March 28, 2014

Even though we had to say goodbye to Di, today was a lot of fun for me at school.  On top of what we did for the first half of the lesson for the 9^th Graders as described in yesterday’s blog post, I got to finish the lesson.  So for the first half of the longer classes, we reviewed some of the things that caused the war such as Imperialism, Militarism, Nationalism, and the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  After that, the students were placed in their countries and given the chance to research and strategize before issuing a statement to the entire class.  Each country then had to stand and give a brief statement about what their country felt about the ultimatum that Austria-Hungary placed on Serbia and what they planned to do to keep the peace.  Afterwards, the students were given time to act as diplomats to come up with ways to keep the peace and prevent World War I.  They could form alliances with each other, negotiate territory, and offer bribes, but they were forced to follow through on their secret underlined instructions.  When the negotiating died down, I had each group return to their desks and we had a formal UN-style debate where only one person could speak at a time and they could ask questions of each other, offer their positions, and more-or-less debate.  The kids did brilliantly with this and they kept the debate moving forward.  I even think they learned a lot about the Crisis of July 1914.  I had the opportunity to film myself teaching today as part of a project with my portfolio for OSU.  It was neat to go back and watch the debates and see a lot of light-bulbs go off when different ideas clicked.  After school and after a meeting, McCall, Katie, and I caught a shuttle taxi to La Fortuna/Arenal Volcano.  I was pretty exhausted, so I attempted to catch a couple of Z’s during the trip, but the roads were pretty crazy for such a feat.  At just about sunset, we arrived in town.  It was actually pretty clear, so we had the chance to see most of the volcano as we got close to town.  We checked in to our Hostel (Backpackers Arenal) and got settled into our 8 person dorm-room style room (aka four bunk-beds in a medium sized room).  Dinner was calling our name, so we went into town and ate some gourmet style pizza at a place called the Lava Lamp (get it, Lava. Volcano. Tee-hee).  After our scrumptious dinner at the Lava Lamp, we explored a couple of the gift shops for souvenirs and then returned to the hostel.  We met some of our Dutch and Swiss roommates in the hostel room and enjoyed the things the hostel had to offer such as hammocks (me), a trampoline (McCall and Katie), pool, eating/sitting area with tables, and all kinds of fun stuff.  After a bit of hammock sitting, I retired to bed on account of it having been a long day and I was exhausted.         

Thursday, March 27, 2014

I had my conference with my university supervisor (Di) and Cooperating Teacher (Neena).  It went really well and I got some good feedback that I can use going forward.  Di also stayed for my split in two, first half of a block, class.  For the first half of the alliance game lesson, I gave a PowerPoint Presentation about the different alliances and forces behind World War I.  After that, I gave the class the instructions for the Alliance game.  I explained that they were each assigned to a different country and that they were expected to do whatever they could to keep the peace and prevent a war.  They could form alliances, negotiate land deals, use money as bribes, whatever was needed.  The class had the rest of the class period to research their country’s stance in July 1914 and formulate a strategy.  It was interesting to watch them at work.  The middle part of the day was spent working on lesson plans and grading exams.  The last part of the day may have been my favorite.  The 10^th Grade US History class was given an early-middle 19^th Century topic to research and present over, with the instructions being that they needed to be creative.  The students did a fantastic job and I had a blast listening to and participating in their presentations.  One group did one of those RSA whiteboard presentations where they had a topic and drew a map of the US and drew other drawings to depict Manifest Destiny.  It was really fascinating to watch.  Another group had the Oregon Trail.  Instead of playing the Oregon Trail computer game (which you can’t find online anymore), the students created their own Oregon Trail by putting tape on the ground and timing each other doing wheelbarrow races while following the tape trail.  I must say, one of the students and I had the fasted time, so boom!  Not long after school, McCall, Katie, and I had an early dinner with Di at The Old West.  That was fun!  After dinner, Kelsey, Sarah, and I planned a surprise party for Zoe to celebrate her getting a job in Shanghai.  Naturally, Zoe went to San Jose to hula-hoop for the evening, so we had to wait for her to finally get back home to enjoy the surprise party.  Kelsey and Sarah also invited some of their Marine friends who guard the US embassy over as well.  We played Cards Against Humanity and had a jolly good time.  

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

So I got observed first thing this morning.  That was fun.  I also taught all three classes the first lesson in my official unit for my OSU portfolio.  By the end of the day, I was pretty exhausted.  So I went for a nice little run and then sat on the new porch chairs with the nice cool breeze and graded the unit-pretest.  Di drove up and told me that I looked like a teacher whilst grading papers.  I also had the longest conversation that I’ve ever had with my host-mom’s husband.  He chatted with me for over half an hour about soccer, basketball, the personality of gringos verses ticos, and all kinds of interesting topics.  I think that he thinks that now that he’s taught me how to properly open and close the gate, we can have a real conversation.  After dinner, Zoe had an interview with a school in China and got offered a job that she’s super excited about, so the mood of this house is a happy one.  I too did productive things like prepare for my lesson for tomorrow and Friday.  It’s got an alliance model-UN type game associated with it and it’s going to be awesome!  That’s your cliffhanger.      

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Today was a one class day, of which I actually mostly observed that class, so the school part of my day went pretty quick.  After I had that class, I made all my copies for the week and worked on some lesson plans.  I’m pretty sure I’ve heard my mom say that last sentence before, so I don’t know what that says about me.  Since Di was here and was free, I chatted with her about some career advice before and during lunch.  Can’t beat some good information!  For the last period of the day, there was a band concert from Snow College in Utah.  They weren’t the OSU Wind Ensemble, but they were pretty goodJ  I even got to point out what a Euphonium was to everyone around me that would listen.  For the last class period, Neena was also subbing for a “rock band” elective where the kids figure out how to play songs based on listening to them.  Sort of like a cover, I guess.  It was actually really cool and I got to help lead that rehearsal (even if it was short that they spent 10 minutes tuning a guitar and another 10 being drummers, banging on everything).  After school, I went and got a smoothie from the place by our house, because I really wanted one.  I went with the mango, strawberry, and guanaba choice.  You just can’t beat those delicious under $3 smoothies.  After that, I did some job research and mostly did a good job at not being very productive for the rest of the day.   

Monday, March 24, 2014

I woke up on this fine day to an omelet for breakfast.  You can’t beat that.  At school it was test day for the students, so I spent a lot of the day helping my kiddos with big words like “ballot” and whatnot.  But it was fun to help them out.  They got super excited when we went over the answers and they learned that they got them correct.  One kid even hugged a pillar next to the wall in the back of the classroom.  By the end of the day, our awesome university supervisor Di had arrived and gave us a ride home.  Afterwards, we got our schedule all hammered out and chatted for a little bit before she made the arduous journey back to the hotel.  I went for an adventurous jog and then had an early dinner before spending the rest of the night taking a vacation from this weekend’s vacation.   

Sunday, March 23, 2014

I woke up and promptly enjoyed the hammock for a little bit before we all got ready to head back to Santa Ana.  At around 10:00, the property manager Jorge showed up and we took a bunch of group pictures and were ready to go.  Katie’s parents and grandparents rented a car to go to Arenal and Monteverde while the rest of us rode in the van back home.  It was another long and relatively uneventful ride back.  I came home to Spongbob Squarepants sheets, so that was interesting.  The rest of the day was spent doing fun things like uploading photos and working on the blog.   

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Today I was a “sun goddess, err I mean god.”  I spent from about 9:30 to 4:00 outside either at the beach or by the pool enjoying the sunshine.  I took several catnaps and got through some more of my book.  I did go inside for important things like food and water, but I was getting some sun today.  Being ever observant of things like what cows look like, I have noticed that cows in Costa Rica do not look like the cows that I am familiar with in good ole Oklahoma.  They have weird humps on their backs and kind of look like Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars in their faces.  There were some cows nearby our beach house, so I walked over and took a picture of them.  Well, when I got back to the house, it wasn’t but 30 minutes later that a group of cows were on the beach.  (Different cows, I swear!)  So of course I walked out to get better pictures of the Costa Rican cows.  There was one cow who was eating leaves and whatnot from our property, so I got a pretty great close-up of him.  Unfortunately, he was ready to keep moving with the herd before I was done getting my picture of him.  The cow started walking right at me.  I started to back up, thinking that I could outrun the cow, so he kind of chased me in that regard.  What it really turned into in the end was one of those instances where you’re walking straight at someone and in an effort to avoid each other, each person goes one way, then you both try to go the other way, then finally someone says, “after you” and the situation resolves itself with words.  The cow did not know any words, so I just did my best to get the heck out of its way.  I may or may not exaggerate the story someday.  I enjoyed the sunset on the beach tonight and got some pretty good selfies with the sunset in the background.  After getting all cleaned up, we went to a place that was even moreso on the beach and enjoyed its deliciousness.  When we finished, there was someone sending fire-kite-balloon thingys into the air.  They went impressively far up into the atmosphere until they fizzled out.  While watching the balloon, you could not help but notice the brightness and clarity of the stars up in the sky.  It was amazing.  We were all exhausted and retired to bed shortly after.    

Friday, March 21, 2014

After waking up and enjoying the hammock for a little bit, we had a self-serve buffet style breakfast where I had some toast with peanut butter.  Tasty.  Next, I went out to the beach to read my new book that I got from the school library.  It’s called “Historia de Costa Rica.”  I may have also burnt the top of my head while sitting out there.  Thanks for that gene, dad.  I sat by the beach for a spell and then went and sat and swam at the pool attached to the house.  Around lunchtime, I came inside and took a shower and got cleaned up before eating some lunch and then trying to stream the OSU men’s basketball tournament game.  I almost wish that I had not done that because it was frustrating and painful to watch as they lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row, cutting short a trip to California.  At least I was at a beautiful beach in Costa Rica to suffer through my sorrows.  The sunset today had a little bit more cloud cover, so it was pretty in a little bit of a different way with the different colors in the clouds.  We finished the day off with dinner at a place a couple blocks away and then some table games late into the night.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

I spent the first part of the morning finishing up what I needed to finish for my Student Teacher Work Sample while the students were still in their extended homeroom class.  Thankfully, I got that turned in and done with.  The 9^th Grade class did a cool new review game in which they were divided up into groups.  There were four sets of review questions that were cut along the piece of paper to make a grass-skirt looking paper.  The students had to come up and tear off a review question, take it back to their group, answer it, bring it to the teacher to be verified, and then either take it back and correct it or get a new question.  The kiddos seemed to enjoy that review game.  When we were done with classes, Katie’s parents and grandparents picked us up in a tourism van with their guide Arturo and we were off for Guanacaste.  After a lunch stop near Puntarenas and 4 1/2 -5 hours in the van, we were at the lovely Casa Surfside beach house in Playa Potrero.  Once we were there, I met Katie’s cousin Yvonne and the family friend Kathy.  Both of them were very nice and fun to be around.  We all watched the beautiful sunset on the porch and then went off to dinner.  We ate at a neat little place near the beach and had a grand ole time.  It was a great first day of the mini-vaca.   

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Today I led another review session.  These kids better be ready for their exam next Monday, because this has been a lot of reviewing.  I also passed out a letter for the students to have their parents sign saying that they can be included in my portfolio video and have some of their work included.  I offered them Oreos for bringing it back signed.  It turns out that Oreos work as a great motivator for students because they were super excited to get Oreos.  It was also fun for me to be the one who gave them the Oreos.  I also sat through a very interesting meeting after school to listen to the process of becoming IB certified.  The meeting ran late and Katie’s family had gotten into town, so she and McCall headed back early and I just met Katie’s family when I got home.  I spent the rest of the night working on my Student Teacher Work Sample which is due tomorrow (hence why this was actually written on the following SundayJ).  It was a busy night of homework.  

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Neena was sick this morning, so I ran the show one more time for the 10^th Grade class that we had today.  They had to take a quiz, so I am sure that they were super excited about that.  The rest of the day I spent working on my lesson plans and other aspects of my student teacher work sample portfolio that I need to complete.  The unit that I will be teaching for this project will be over Imperialism and World War I.  I have some pretty awesome ideas ready to go that I can’t wait to try.  I’ll save describing these cool ideas as a teaser for the coming weeks.  With the exception of eating lunch, riding the bus home, going for a run (jog is probably the better description), and eating another delicious meal, I was working on this project in some form or another for the rest of the day.  Needless to say, I made some significant progress, making for a productive day! 

Monday, March 17, 2014

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  Especially considering that the Pride of Owasso Marching Band was marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin, I was wearing green.  Neena was on her last day of her mini-vacation, so I was the main guy again.  We finished reading the chapter and then started reviewing for the upcoming test.  Katie’s boyfriend got here today, so I probably won’t see her again until Thursday.  So McCall and I went to the bank and grocery store after school.  We even stopped and got smoothies at the smoothie shop next to our house.  They were super delicious, so I will be back again for sure.  Later in the afternoon I worked a little bit on homework for OSU and did other things to occupy my time.  Liliana sat and chatted with Zoe and I during dinner, so that was nice.  Finally, I gave myself a haircut, so I am back to sporting the buzz-cut.  The shaggy hair was starting to get warm.  Then it was bedtime.     

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Katie and McCall wanted to have a little bit of a weekend from the weekend, plus Katie’s boyfriend gets here tomorrow, so she wanted to get stuff done; therefore, we got up early and were checked out of the resort by 8:00.  We got the front desk to call us a taxi to drive us over to Jaco where we had perfect timing as we caught the 9:00 bus as it was loading up.  Unfortunately, this bus was not direct, so it took a while to get back.  Because we were so early, we were still able to catch the bus back to Santa Ana and be home by 12:30.  I walked over to the Onion Festival and took some pictures, because people need to see what kind of spectacle this was.  After that, I was able to watch some basketball, including Selection Sunday (Go Pokes! Beat Gonzaga!), fill out a tournament bracket, and work on stuff on my computer.  Also, I survived the fireworks for the Onion Festival during dinner.  Other than that, it was a less productive day than I would have liked, but sometimes you need those kind of days.    

Saturday, March 15, 2014

I woke up and sat outside by the pool where I got better wifi and could cause the least possible disturbance while I waited for the other two to get breakfast.  After I ate, we went to one of the private beaches on the property.  It turned into a little bit of a dud because there were rocks everywhere both on the beach and in the ocean.  After about half an hour, we decided that we were paying for the pools and they were not something that we encounter every day, so we went to the pool.  Katie has a knack for befriending older people, so we met this lady from Atlanta at the pool and chatted with her for quite a while.  The lady told us her life story and we told her about student teaching in Costa Rica.  It was quite the exchange of storytelling.  We worked on getting our tan on, swam some, and watched this massive five foot long iguana climb the small trees behind us and eat leaves.  We saw a lot of iguanas and monkeys at the resort.  I bought a hot dog for lunch.  It was an interesting hotdog because they put chips on it.  Eventually, Katie and McCall were ready to get their sandwiches, so they walked back to the room.  Only, they forgot a key, so they walked back and I decided to go back with them this time and change locations to the pool close to our room.  An hour or so later, I was ready to get all the sunscreen off of me and face any and all sunburns.  While resting, we watched a movie and ate PB&honey sandwiches.  We finished the day with a couple of drinks from the bar and another movie.  

Friday, March 14, 2014

Neena was taking the day off, so I was the main man today.  Unfortunately, the kiddos were riled up because they were going on a fieldtrip later on during the day.  They were crazy.  While the other classes were on the field trip, I worked on some of my OSU homework and did a few other things to keep myself busy.  After school, McCall, Katie, and I walked over to the bus stop to catch a bus to San Jose.  We were going to a resort called Punta Leona which is about 10 km from Jaco on the Pacific side.  Once we got to San Jose, we got tickets for the 4:00 bus to Jaco and enjoyed the bus ride.  We were able to get the bus driver to let us off at Punta Leona, so we were there by 6:00.  Naturally, since we got to the gates pretty early, it took forever for the shuttle to come pick us up at the gate and take us to the reception area and to get checked in.  It almost took as long to get into our hotel room as it did to get there from San Jose.  After that, we had our lovely $20 dinner and then walked around the resort.  There were about 6 swimming pools, a couple of bars, beach volleyball, an enclosed turf soccer field, supermarket, and two private beaches.  It was like its own little community.  We got some bread, peanut butter, and honey to make some sandwiches to avoid paying $20 for dinner tomorrow.  Before you knew it, it was bedtime after the walk around the resort.  

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Today was my brother Tyler’s birthday, so I woke up and wished him a happy birthday on Facebook.  During my first class period, I tried to get the kids to play the volleyball review game, but it turned into a little bit of a chaotic mess, which was unfortunate.  During the day, we did all kinds of grading and other administrative stuff before the 10^th Grade class finished up Last of the Mohicans.  After school, we sat in extremely heavy traffic on the bus.  It took us a full hour to go the five miles to get home.  When we did finally get home, I walked over to the start of the onion festival that was starting in Santa Ana this week.  There were a lot of onions there and they also had people carving chunks of wood with chainsaws.  After that, I FaceTimed with Tyler.  That was the first time I had talked to him since I’ve left, so it was good to catch up.  After a dinner of spaghetti, I went with Zoe, Kelsey, and Sarah to meet up with Neena and her cousin who just got into town at a rooftop bar in Escazu.  The bar had a great view and it was a lot of fun!  Unfortunately, I got home a little bit past my bedtime, so I was ready to hit the hay.  

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I woke up and put on my OSU shirt because Go Pokes, Wreck Tech! and I wanted to be part of America’s brightest orange, in an international scope.  During the first period, I finished grading and doing other plan type things with my time.  During class, we did a speed-read activity where students have 2:00 minutes or so to read a page of the textbook then they stand up, then we give them a question that they answer and then stand up again, and the cycle continued.  The students did ok with it for a little bit, but after a while, they seemed to get bored.  90 minutes is a long class period.  During one of the classes, four or five of the boys walked in late, and Neena went all bad-cop on them.  I got to be the good cop for that class.  I think Neena scared them.  After school, I watched a little bit of Netflix until dinner as it rained away outside.  For dinner, we had yucas, which tasted like potatoes, along with hot links, rice, and tomatoes.  After dinner, I walked to a store called Mas por Menos where I found exactly what I was looking for.  I needed a beach volleyball or a balloon to play a volleyball review game.  I found the beach volleyball, which was exactly what I had in mind when I made up this game in my head.  I can’t wait to play it later this week and next week.  Oh, and the Pokes did destroy Tech, so Go Pokes! 

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

I woke up a little later than I would have liked to this morning, and it was just one of those mornings.  I forgot my school nametag and watch; it was like a Monday, only it was Tuesday.  We only had one class period and it was the very first one of the day.  We watched Last of the Mohicans which is about the French and Indian War.  I think some of the students were confused since the Americans were allied with the British, and they couldn’t figure out who was wearing the red coats.  It’s the little things of the American culture that you take for granted.  I spent the rest of the school day helping grade stuff and do other outside of class teacher duties.  After school, I went for a run.  During this run I encountered a chicken free on the loose near the street.  I really wanted that chicken to cross the road, just so I could ask him the classic question of why the chicken crossed the road.  I have faith that I will have the opportunity someday.  I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing up my book while enjoying the cool breeze outside.  We had fried chicken (I feel like I had a chickeney day) and two types of picadillo.  When my mom was teaching me how to cook, she always told me to include something green on the plate.  My favorite green thing to find on my plate is avocados, which we also had.  Overall, it was a pretty good day.   

Monday, March 10, 2014

I woke up to a cold shower because the hot water heater wasn’t working, but that’s ok, because I have ice-water in my veins (not really, don’t worry mom).  We had the very traditional gallo-pinto for breakfast (white rice and black beans).  I even wore my purple shirt today, so it was safe to say that I was ready to lecture.  I finished up the final touches to my presentation during my morning period and then got myself ready.  We started class with a warmup where I had the students tell me what they knew about Capitalism.  Some knew too much for their own good, others were pulling up Wikipedia.  After the warmups, we finished up the newspaper article presentations as we learned about the happenings in Egypt, Syria, Venezuela, and the Ukraine.  Then it was my turn.  The lecture was about the Industrial Revolution.  I did my best to ask questions to keep the students engaged and drew on some pretty clever references if I do say so myself.  I talked about Kevin Durant shoes being better than LeBron James shoes when discussing the law of competition and how they have to compete with each other to make the coolest shoes.  After that, my kid with a broken arm challenged me to play basketball when he gets his arm out of its cast.  He’s on.  I had joke breaks in the middle to divide up the material.  For example, what’s the difference between a school teacher and a train locomotive?  The teacher tells you to spit out your gum, while the locomotive says Choo, Choo, Choo!  I even got to make a supply and demand chart during class.  The problem was that trying to get through an entire chapter in one class period was a little ambitious and it turned into an hour to an hour and ten minute lecture, much longer than the average attention span of 9^th Graders.  Next time, I’ll have to be less ambitious with getting through as much content, but that’s what student teaching is for I guess.  After school, I was exhausted.  I sat down to take off my shoes and change clothes, but that quickly turned into a 90 minute nap.  Oops, oh well.  For dinner, I had some steak and onions and they were delicious.  Liliana must be prepping for the Onion Festival that starts here in Santa Ana this week.  She’s super excited for it, and I am too just to say that I’ve been to an onion festival.  Well, that was just another exciting day in Costa Rica.   

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Today was Daylight Savings Time, except Costa Rica does not recognize Daylight Savings Time, so I got to keep that hour of sleep.  The only problem is that my email system thinks I’m an hour ahead, so those emails from the future are pretty cool.  After sleeping in a little bit, I got up to have huevos rancheros that were unlike the ones I’ve experienced in Mexican restaurants in the States.  It had eggs and then had all kinds of different onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and crazy stuff, plus you eat it with bread.  Afterwards, I walked over to the farmers market to check out the different fruits and veggies that they had for sale.  It was a good thing I was not hungry because everything looked delicious.  I proceeded to come back to the house and work on the PowerPoint presentation that I am giving tomorrow during class.  I have cheesy jokes in there, so the kids will love it.  Eventually, Katie and McCall had gone to the gym and showered, so we went to Escazu to go to the Multi-Plaza Mall there and then run by Wal-Mart.  Our first stop in the mall was McDonalds.  That was my first experience of having Costa Rican McDonalds.  This dude cut me in line and they were really slow, but other than that, it was pretty good for McDonalds.  After that, we wandered around different stores, some more fun for me than others.  My favorite was an international book store that we came across.  There were books of all types, in all types of languages that I could purchase.  It was fancy-dancy.  I even got to watch some of the Thunder game because it was on a TV at a food court.  It was perfect, I watched the Thunder game while the other two went to Forever 21 and Gap.  We even found the movie theater inside the mall with its array of movie choices that we could possibly come back to enjoy later in the week.  The girls got all the things they needed and we were off to Wally-World.  At Walmart, I got all of our shampoo and toiletries that I needed, along with lunch supplies to add to the PB&J mission.  We ended up taking a cab home because we did not want to risk the awkward trip home on the bus with all of our groceries.  I got to feel like I was home after that because we had Mac and Cheese for dinner.  I spent the rest of the night Skyping my parents, working on updating this blog, and finishing up the PowerPoint for class tomorrow.    

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Today was the last day of the AASCA Tournament and the Pan-American School Festival.  I got up bright and early and put on my new PAS polo and caught the bus with Katie and McCall.  They had to work the festival in the morning, while I wasn’t scheduled until 11:00.  I went ahead and watched some soccer games and worked on my tan for a little bit while I waited.  By 11:00, it was time for my shift so I helped out with a photo-booth event where people paid 500 colones to dress up and have three pictures taken.  By the time I got there, business had died down and by 11:45, the professional photographer just up and left.  It was a little bit sketchy, and a lot Costa Rican.  Afterwards, I helped cover the bean bag toss as that started to die down.  After cleaning up, I went outside to watch the girls’ finals.  It turned out to be a pretty good game as an American school from Costa Rica won the tournament.  The boys’ final was full of all kinds of drama as it featured our boys team verses Mazapan from Honduras.  As the opening whistle sounded, it started to sprinkle, so I made my way to the covered incline that connects two buildings near the soccer field with most of the rest of the faculty.  Not long after, it started to pour, like Costa Rica rain forest pour.  Pan-American School was able to overcome the rain to take an early two goal lead, but Mazapan was not about to give up.  During the middle of the second half, the referee called a very mysterious foul on one of my students actually (they called a lot of mysterious fouls, but I kind of expected that based on the reputation of Central American referees).  Unfortunately, Mazapan scored on the ensuing free kick.  Then with just two minutes remaining, Mazapan earned a corner kick, which they were able to capitalize on to knock the wind out of the crowd.  The tied score meant overtime.  The overtime periods were shorter than normal, lasting just 15 minutes total instead of the 30 minutes that FIFA suggests.  Naturally, no goals were scored so they had to make us all nervous and have the game go into penalty kicks.  We have a stud goal keeper who blocked their first one, followed by us making our first one.  Each team made the second one.  Our keeper blocked the second one, followed by us making our third one.  At this point, I told Katie and McCall (who had just gotten there) that if they miss we win.  Sure enough, the kid kicked it over the crossbar, making Pan-American School victorious!  All of the students in attendance rushed the field to congratulate their classmates.  It was quite a scene, and something that made me be proud to be a part of the school.  After everyone finally made it to the gym, we had an awards ceremony to recognize all of the participants.  There was ironically dramatic music as the 9 place teams went up to get their participation pins and so on until they got the third place team for the girls.  The Pan-American girls’ team had won their third place game as well, so they got bronze medals.  Finally, they got to the first place boys’ team as they played ‘We Are The Champions” while our boys’ team got their gold medals and trophy.  They finished it off by giving out sportsmanship awards (pretty much to the last place teams… “you lost, but at least you were good sports”) and MVP/Leadership awards to one member from each team.  After the awards ceremony, I had to go help chaperone a pool party/ after party.  It started late, and the band could only play until 8:00, so there was only music on for about an hour.  The kids got food and danced some, but it was too cold for the pool after the rain.  After the music stopped, the place was almost vacant except for the faculty.  The kids probably went to their own parties.  Since it was dead, McCall’s Cooperating Teacher, the two girls and I walked towards the bus stop trying to catch the bus.  After waiting for half an hour, we gave up and flagged down a cab.  By the time I got home, it was almost 10:00, making for a nice long day.  Lilliana’s grandson was there, so when I got home, I sat with her as she rocked him to sleep outside, watching the moon and the stars.  It was cool to see her in full on grandma mood.  Finally, it was bedtime for me, too.    

Friday, March 7, 2014

The crazy week continued.  The 10^th Grade class had the chance to work on their breakup letter/ text messages project before they finally got to see our rap at the end of the class period.  They really enjoyed it.  The boys soccer team played a match during the morning as well, with a 1-1 draw with a school called Mazapan from Honduras.  The 9^th Graders finished up their newspaper articles and a couple of groups had the chance to present them before going out to watch the soccer games.  Eventually, when my day was done, I went out and watched the soccer games as well while I waited for Katie and McCall to finish up with their day.  When they were done, we went to the little pizza place that we went to while Katie’s parents were still here.  We had some tasty pepperoni pizza.  After some dilly-dallying, Zoe and I had dinner that for me consisted of some rice, avocados, and ground beef.  I watched a random soccer match after dinner until Zoe was ready to walk over to the Old West.  We got a couple of well-deserved drinks for surviving la semana loca. 

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Today was Sports Day at school.  So I got to wear my recently purchased Costa Rica soccer jersey to school, because I’m cool like that.  I spent the first part of school bagging snacks that the students get after games.  The snacks include a Gatorade, granola bar, and an apple and are now in plastic bags that are all tied up.  Those kids better enjoy their apples, because I worked really hard on putting them in their bags.  I essentially spent the rest of the day outside watching soccer games that Pan-American was participating in.  The boys’ team is really good and won their games 3-0 and 5-0 and will likely win the tournament.  The girls’ team struggled in their first game, but pulled out a win in exciting fashion during their second match.  There is one girl who scored from a corner kick and from a break away after a free kick and I’m pretty sure she is in middle school.  She scored her second goal with 3 minutes left to give them a 2-1 win.  When I home I took a run in the rain.  It was the first significant rain that I’ve been outside for since we got here.  Now the whole house and all of the outsides smell like rain.  Dinner consisted of some fried chicken and that made me happy.  It’s been a busy week thus far. 

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

I woke up knowing that today would be a long day, but at least we got to wear jeans.  In class, our students worked on a newspaper article assignment where they compared the recent revolutions in the Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria, and Egypt with the Revolutions of 1848 that we just studied.  I must admit, those newspaper article were looking fantastic; I’m excited to have the students print them off and display them in the classroom!  At the end of each class, we showed them our rap and we got a round of applause.  It’s been a crazy week so the kids are super hyper.  I kept hearing them blurt out songs that I have no idea how they know.  One kid sang asked if I was from Texas in the middle of singing “All My Exes Live in Texas.”  Another made up lyrics to the song “I’m Blue Da Ba Dee” (which is a very 90s song).  In addition, some of the students are Catholic and it’s Ash Wednesday.  Several of them mentioned that they were fasting, probably another reason for their hyperness.  After school, all of the teachers hung around until 5:00.  They fed us Subway, which was probably my first American chain restaurant meal in over a month.  At 5:00 (well, actually it was closer to 6:00, yeah Tico Time!) we had the Opening Ceremony for the AASCA Tournament that the school is hosting.  This is an International Soccer Tournament for teams from throughout Central America.  The Opening Ceremony was really cool!  They had the students dress in traditional white dresses and white collared shirts.  The dresses and shirts were accented with different colors.  These students brought in the different flags of each country that is part of this Central American Association, followed by the students escorting each participating team while epic sounding music played in the background.  It was almost like the opening ceremony for the Olympics.  After all of the participants had been escorted into the auditorium, the students took a sportsmanship pledge and enjoyed a couple of dance team and musical performances.  When the ceremony was over, the students had different ice breaker activities that they participated in as each team was divided up so that each student was with people from different schools.  Some of these events included Musical Chairs (which I helped with), Twister, Face Painting, Wii Dancing, and inflatables.  In the middle of Musical Chairs, one girl asked me frantically where the coaches were meeting because she had tickets to the Costa Rica v. Paraguay game.  I had to help her find her coach and once we found him it was a good reminder that Costa Rica was playing a soccer game today.  As our role in the shindig came to a conclusion, Katie, McCall, and I caught a bus home.  I was able to eat a quick bowl of cereal and turn on the Costa Rica game.  Costa Rica played really well and defeated the Paraguayans 2-1.  By the final whistle, I could barely keep my eyes open.    

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Today was a further example of the craziness that is this week.  In the one class I had today, only 7 people were there.  We still had them work on a Breakup Letter between King George III and the American Colonists, but the lack of a student population was a little strange.  When that class finished, I had the main event of my day.  Neena and I dressed up like rap stars and filmed ourselves performing a rap on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  It was pretty epic if I do say so myself.  Those kids will have no idea what to think when we show it to them.  I spent most the rest of the day trying to get the video to load over the slow internet and planning away.  The weather today was pretty cloudy, so it made for good going on a jog weather after school.  Other than that, I read some of my book and ate another delicious dinner.  

Monday, March 3, 2014

I woke up like most Mondays, wishing that I had a weekend from the weekend, but I battled through it. Our school is hosting an International Soccer Tournament this week, so the kids are like that scene from George of the Jungle where he eats straight coffee and goes on a caffeine high.  We had an assembly during our first class which was for three members of a Costa Rican All-Star Basketball team coming and schooling three students at a time.  The students then started a three-on-three basketball tournament.  It was interesting to see these kids play basketball, because they don’t look they have been taught the fundamentals of basketball since they were in first grade like in America.  Instead, it was very free-going and unorthodox to the American eye.  Because of kids being in and out of class for the tournament and not wanting one class to get way ahead, the school part of the day was a little bit of a wash.  Oh well.  Oh, and there was a lizard in my classroom today.  I think he tried to sell me insurance.  We did catch the bus that we normally just miss after school, so that was exciting.  Other than that, the afternoon was spent uploading photos from the weekend, skyping my rents, and updating the blog.  

Sunday, March 2, 2014

I woke up this morning and my stomach was not feeling very good.  McCall had the same upset stomach, apparently this stomach bug was going around.  I did my best that morning to make myself feel better and by around 9:30 I was feeling a bit better.  McCall was still feeling crummy, so she stayed behind while Katie and I went to tour a coffee plantation.  The coffee plantation was really neat!  Apparently it takes almost five years from the time they plant a coffee bean until it is ready to sell to make your favorite morning coffee fix.  We had the chance to learn about the seasonal workers who pick coffee, as well as taste coffee plant fruits from the different stages.  Most of them were pretty bitter, but some of them were delicious.  We ended the tour by making a special chocolate recipe and trying some sugarcane juice.  During the tour, Katie and I met this older couple from London who kept asking about tea.  The gentleman, who was actually from New Zealand, made the comment that us Americans have been mean to tea since the Boston Tea Party.  With the exception of sweet tea, that’s probably about right.  After the tour, we checked on McCall and went into town to find her some medicine and go souvenir shopping.  I’m getting some of that done.  I have to commend the hotel that we stayed at because they let McCall hang out in the room past check-out time because she was sick.  This was definitely not something that they had to do, and McCall was very appreciative that they did.  We made the trek up to the bus station and survived the bus trip.  There were plenty of great views on the trip home from up on the mountain; I could even see the ocean.  When we got home, Liliana fed me some soup and let me go to bed because I was about ready to crash.  It was a fun weekend, but like always, it was good to be back in a familiar place.     

Saturday, March 1, 2014

This morning I woke up early, took a quick shower, and hung out in the hammock outside of our room.  The hammock was an excellent place to be.  The views in Monteverde were amazing and it was a hammock.  The weather was a little bit crisp, but otherwise beautiful.  It reminded me of being up in the mountains in Colorado at Rocky Mountain National Park.  Eventually the girls woke up and we went down to eat breakfast and find out where we could buy our bus tickets for the next day.  The trip to buy our bus tickets turned into a hike to find a special tree that was impossible to find.  After almost an hour and a half, we gave up and flagged down a cab thinking that we were way far away from our hotel.  It turned out that we were about two blocks away.  That was lovely.  We relaxed after that hike and then went back into town to find a little bit of lunch before our shuttle came to pick us up for our afternoon adventure.  It got there at about 12:30 and then we were off to Selvatura.  We started that adventure off by doing a hanging bridges tour.  This was essentially a hike that had eight bridges that were pretty high up that you crossed to get over canyons and rivers.  Although we did not see any animals, it was a fun hike that we took a lot of cool pictures of.  After our hike, we were right on time to catch our zip-line tour.  They equipped us with all the harnesses and helmets and gloves and whatnot and sent us to catch the short shuttle to the starting point.  They gave us the quick instructions and sent us on our way.  Naturally, I got stuck on the very first zip-line, but hey, I’ve done it before so I knew what to do.  I turned myself around and pulled myself to the platform.  This particular zip-line had you hold on to the line behind your head to keep yourself straight and that was a lot of work.  Every 3 or 4 zip-lines you had to wait for the workers to catch up, but otherwise the zip-line workers were pretty good about keeping you moving from line to line.  After 16 zip-lines, we watched McCall do a Tarzan swing and then finished things off with a full 1 kilometer zip-line.  After this full day, we were all ready for a shower and to get some food.  We did this and finished the day off by watching a movie while keeping a close eye on the score for the OSU v. Kansas basketball game.  A hearty cheer could be heard from our room when the game went final and the Pokes pulled off the upset.  Afterwards, I was exhausted and slept like a baby.  

Friday, February 28, 2014

Today we went to school with our stuff packed for the weekend, ready to boogie when we were done with class.  McCall was lucky and got to go on an 8^th Grade field trip to an amusement park.  Not that I really like amusement parks, but she had a blast.  After a day of quizzes and grading said quizzes, we were off as soon as McCall got back from the field trip.  We had one of the ladies at the front desk call us a cab so that we could get to the bus station as soon as possible.  When we finally got to the bus station to get to Monteverde, we were in some trouble because the tickets that we bought said “de pie” which means on foot.  We were worried, but they kept saying something about a second bus that we could not quite figure out.  Eventually they called everyone with a “de pie” ticket to a bus and we got on not really knowing what was going on.  Finally, this little old lady told us that we could sit anywhere.  It was a stroke of luck that called for some very relieved student teachers.  When ended up in the very back of the bus so that we could all three sit in a row.  The second half of the ride was very bumpy because it was essentially a gravel road that you could only go 30 kmph.  After a 4 hour bus ride, we finally made it and checked into our hotel, Cabinas Eddy B&B.  It turned out to be an excellent hotel.  Afterwards, we went to dinner at a place called Amy’s where I had an excellent plate of fajitas, Katie had a Hawaiian pizza with coconut, and McCall had cheese.  We picked up some Imperial (La Cerveza de Costa Rica) and watched Frozen.  I think we were trying to get into a cooler state of mind.