Saturday, April 26, 2014

We woke up and actually paid for our hostel.  They’re not always very picky about when you pay for hostels here.  Afterwards, we ate some breakfast at a little joint next to the hostel that gave us a discount if we were wearing the bracelet from our hostel.  I had some delicious French toast.  While we were eating, there was this Toyota Yaris parked underneath a mango tree that had three pieces of fruit drop on it while we were sitting there.  I guess they do say more people are killed by fruit falling on their head than are eaten by sharks.  Afterwards, we entered the national park to check out some monkeys.  And check out some monkeys we did.  We saw a ton of them, including some that had little baby monkeys on their backs.  ‘Twas pretty cool.  We also hiked parts of the park that I had not hiked before, finding some really cool lookouts towards the ocean from higher up.  After tiring ourselves out, we went back to the hostel to get into our beachwear before going to relax on the beach.  Unfortunately, right as I was drifting into a nap, the tide came in all the way to where I was sitting.  That was a rude awakening from the ocean and made my towel all dirty.  Not long after, we got hungry and went to this place near the beach to find some lunch.  I enjoyed a quesadilla, which hit the spot.  We furthermore enjoyed a relaxing afternoon at the beach, catching a nap or two.  We went back to the hostel afterwhile to jump in the pool and get all of the sand off of us before getting dressed to enjoy a little bit of happy-hour.  We finished the day off with dinner before watching Ironman at the hostel.  I had not seen that movie and really enjoyed it.  A spent the rest of the evening stressing out about the Thunder as they went into overtime yet again.  Heavens to Betsy.  But they won, so I slept peacefully; pretty much.      

Friday, April 25, 2014

After teaching a lesson on the Gilded Age by showing a video a discussing it (because it is better for all parties involved if we just get through the Gilded Age), I spent most of the day enjoying life and helping out the 9th Graders in their continued quest to learn about the Mexican Revolution.  After sitting in on the teachers’ meeting which featured a couple of police officers coming and talking to us about drugs, I caught a ride back to Santa Ana to pack up and go catch the bus to Manuel Antonio.  After taking the bus to San Jose, we walked to the Tracopa bus station.  Zoe was busy dropping off loafs of bread that she did not want to random homeless people along the way.  We walked through an area that I had not seen before which was actually a lot nicer than what I had previously seen of San Jose.  We even passed by the Teatro Nacional which is their national theater, which was a really cool looking building.  At the bus station, we had to wait for quite a while because the bus was running almost an hour behind, but that was ok.  That just meant that it was major snoozeville when we did finally get on the bus.  Zoe and I found our hostel at the bottom of the hill in Manuel Antonio and got all checked in.  The hostel was pretty cheap, in a great location, had a pool, and played movies on a projector, but the rooms themselves were pretty outdated and the bunkbeds had some of the thinnest "mattresses" I have ever experienced.  But hey, we were in paradise.  

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Today I had the opportunity to teach the 10th Grade US History class so that I had a chance to teach a different grade level and subject.  I had the opportunity to talk about the era of Reconstruction, mentioning people like the carpetbaggers and scalawags and the Civil War Amendments.  After my PowerPoint lecture, we reenacted the different stages of technology during the Civil War.  Even though I was bs-ing these different stages a little bit, it was a good opportunity for these guys to throw paper wads at each other like the 9th Graders did.  After a little bit of tutoring this afternoon, I was on my way home.  When I got home, I finally got the last document that I needed for my Student Teacher Work Sample over email.  As I was excitedly opening up the email and downloading it to my computer so that I could include it, the internet went out at the house.  Just my luck.  So I waited five minutes for it to come back up and then hurriedly saved the document, included said document, and then submitted the portfolio.  Praise the Good Lord, that was a big weight lifted off of my shoulders.  I did my best happy dance before dinner.  That night, I had my baby brother Skype me in to the Thunder game.  He put his computer in front of the TV and went to Buffalo Wild Wings while I watched the game.  It was quite the ordeal, turning into another OT game.  After the disappointing loss, I gave Kelsey a lecture over the causes and consequences of World Wars I and II because she is about to teach the novel Remember the Stars.  It was definitely a lot of information and hopefully she got some of it, but it was a good indicator that I have a good understanding of WWI because I was spouting off dates like crazy.  It was like I just taught a unit on the subject or something.   

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

I watched Neena start a lesson on the Mexican Revolution.  That means that it was officially time to turn the 9^th Graders back over.  I had a nice time watching the class learn about the Mexican Revolution.  The cool thing about this school is that there are people here from many different countries and one of those countries is Mexico, so several of the students were super excited about the lesson and one student was even related to one of the key figures Carranza (or so he says).  That evening after school, I enjoyed life in Costa Rica by sitting outside and enjoying the weather.  Zoe picked up our bus tickets to Manuel Antonio, so we were good to go (it´s nice having a roommate who gets out early and is willing to go to San Jose to pick up tickets while seeing her friend). 

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

After watching Neena teach a lesson on the Civil War, I spent most of the day grading essays.  Because that’s the natural consequence for a teacher who assigns essays.  In addition, I also worked extremely hard on my Student Teacher Work Sample.  The end is near on that and now I just have a couple of editing spots and conclusions to make and then I can send that in and become a super happy man.  Unless you want to hear about my reflection of my job teaching as a result of the statistics of my students’ unit exam, I will conclude this day by saying that there was a lot of typing of questions that I essentially waited to answer until the very end for probably several different reasons.  

Monday, April 21, 2014

It was really nice to see my kids again after the long break!  I don’t know how excited they were to be in school again after the break, but I know that I had a good day.  This also happened to be my last lesson that I designed and led for the 9^th Graders, so that was very bitter-sweet.  We did a primary source document assignment in which the students found two primary sources to read and write a description over before comparing and contrasting the two articles.  That concluded their exploration of World War I.  Hopefully they learned a lot and can be ready to describe the war to their parents when the 100^th anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand comes up in about two months.  In the after school period of the day, I did my best to grade some of these assignments, but the Thunder game was going on.  So I Skyped my brother Jordan and he put the computer in front of the TV and we watched the game together and yelled at the TV and all that jazz.  Even though it was an OT heartbreaker, it was fun to watch it with my brother from 2.000 miles away.  

Sunday, April 20, 2014

The first thing that I heard this morning (aside from the shower running and my breakfast being devoured) was a series of fireworks to say “He Is Risen!”  So Happy Easter!  The firework/ cannon-bomb things were fired from the Catholic Church nearby and seemed to say “Hey, come to Church!”  It was kind of a neat Costa Rica-ism.  I did very little for the rest of the morning and afternoon; it was mostly just a good relaxing day, perfect for watching soccer and working on livetext.  Zoe got back into town right before dinner, so it was nice to see her and hear all about Guatemala and Belize.  Zoe had run into Sarah at the airport who told Zoe to come over after dinner, so over we went to hang out and see everyone after the Semana Santa trips.