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.