TEFL Con Ticos

“The secret of tasty tamales is in the dough.” This phrase was repeated to Kevin and me several times during our tamale-making session last Thursday with our new friends and co-workers, Ethel and José.  It became our motto and the driving force behind the day’s labors. There is a lot that goes into making tamales: one must prepare the banana leaves (burn them, slice them, clean them, and cut them), chop and cook the pork meat and all of the vegetables and cut the twine to the perfect length. The most important step, however, is the preparation of the dough, or masa . You’ve got to mix the corn starch and the corn flour, the water, salt, garlic and beef broth (which of course must be prepared beforehand and made extra delicious), and then cook it over a lot of TLC. After all, who would want to eat a tamale with boring dough? The actual tamale-making process only takes a few intense hours, but we made ours Tico style, with lots of chatting and breaks in between. Ethel and I made t...

Today we officially hit the one-week mark at our new site. What an interesting week it was with getting to know our host family, our community, and, of course, the local weather. At first, we thought one of our biggest challenges would be acclimatizing to the hot, sunny and humid weather Sarapiqui is famous for. But in the eight days we’ve been here, only three have had sunshine. We’re currently riding a five-day raining streak, and hoping it ends soon. With that streak arrived cooler temperatures and slower pace of life than normal. Thankfully, all those long winters in Alaska paid off this week. We switched into survival mode and rid ourselves of cabin fever before it even began. For instance, we didn’t let the rain deter us from our favorite routine so far, which is going for walks throughout La Rambla and Otoya. We do it not only for the exercise but to indirectly tell people that the gringos they saw yesterday weren’t just a pair of lost tourists. Seeing non-locals walk around t...

Yesterday Megon and I celebrated Winter Solstice from afar in our new site. One of Alaska’s most sacred of holidays, Solstice is celebrated for two reasons: it’s the shortest day of the year and every day after it equals more and more sunlight. But to the people in the tiny neighborhood of Otoya, Winter Solstice has absolutely no significance. (Note: Technically, according to Peace Corps, we live in La Rambla. But if you want to get real technical, we live in Otoya, a cluster of about two dozen houses in the country.) This year’s Winter Solstice was by far the most unique Megon and I have experienced. We wore shorts, T-shirts, flip-flops and caught ourselves about to complain about the heat until we remembered where we were this time last year. We were in Kenai, celebrating Solstice on the frozen beach of Cook Inlet, wearing our warmest clothing we owned. We froze our tails off in 10-below zero temperatures while standing next to a campfire with Megon’s family and friends, watching ...

We really lived it up during our last week as Peace Corps Trainees! On Wednesday, we met with all of the other TEFL trainees in Frailes, the biggest of the TEFL training communities, for a final Spanish class celebration. We played games involving astonishing amounts of teamwork and balance, ate delicious “gallos,” taco-like creations with sausage, beans and salad, played bingo and learned the Costa Rican national anthem. It’s actually a lovely song. We had a great time and enjoyed unwinding with our friends and fantastic language facilitators. On Wednesday night, we La Filers and our friend Ken from El Rosario caught the Christmas bug and decided that we needed to go caroling… immediately. (For those of you that know me well, this should be no surprise!) So we borrowed some Santa hats and went from host family to host family singing our hearts out. We didn’t have any music and most of our members didn’t know the words to the songs, but what we lacked in preparation we made up for in ...

As our time with our training host families comes to a close, we trainees were given the opportunity to throw a party for all of them thanking them for their hard work, patience, and acceptance. The Peace Corps gave us a budget to work with and we split up into several committees to handle all of the planning for the expected 150+ guests. Kevin was on the finance committee and dealt with all money-related matters, while I helped take charge of the food situation along with several other members of La Fila. It was a pretty daunting task at first, but I think we managed quite well. We in the food committee decided upon spaghetti with meat sauce (a la Barton’s grandpa), fresh pesto for the vegetarians and me, salad, picadillo (cooked chopped up squash) and bread. For dessert, coffee and brownies, chocolate chip cookie bars and more bread (some Ticos have just got to have it with their coffee). The training directors weren’t shy about letting us know that our plan probably wouldn’t work,...

Today was officially our final day as Peace Corps trainees. After tomorrow morning, Megon and I will be officially sworn in as volunteers. Then on Monday, we travel to our site in Sarapiqui to start our new life for two years. The big swearing in day, which to me symbolizes an emotional yet liberating end to what was a productive and educational 11-week training marathon, takes place early Friday at the U.S. Ambassadors residence in San Jose. Each volunteer is allowed to invite two guests, which means we were lucky enough to invite our entire family – our host parents and both of their boys. Oops … strike that. Megon just informed me the boys aren’t attending. They both have school parties to attend. Lame, right? School ended for the break last week. What would you rather do? Go to the U.S. Embassy to witness an amazing speech our friend Barton has created or go to school after it’s been closed? Well, here’s the kicker: At the U.S. Embassy, lots of stiffs wearing suits and ties. At s...

All of Tico 21 returned to the retreat center in Tres Ríos last Thursday for a two-day counterpart workshop. Our counterparts are people who are members of each future volunteer site who serve as our cultural and professional link to the community. All were invited to Tres Rios, but not all of them arrived. Sarapiquí, the region we will call home for the next two years, had severe rains and flooding and a bridge connecting it to San José was damaged, so the counterpart that Kevin and I will share ­– the principal of my environmental high school – wasn’t unable to make the workshop along with two other Sarapiquí counterparts. Fortunately, our friend Beth’s counterpart, a gregarious and ultra-friendly elementary principal, was a trooper and played the role for all of us. The counterpart workshop involved several sessions about Peace Corps safety and security requirements, TEFL and CED project goals, mutual expectations for our work over the next few years, and a few intercultural acti...

Last Saturday, Tico 21ers  left with counterparts for a four-day visit to their new communities. Because our counterpart wasn’t there, Megon and I hitched a ride to La Rambla with our program director, Kevin Brown (Yes, there are two Kevin’s in this story, so please try to follow along). The ride was quite an adventure. Once we left the main highway and followed a long dirt road, I knew we were in for a long one when Kevin stole my father’s words and said, “This is the scenic route.” But this wasn’t your ordinary scenic route. The scene was banana field after banana field after banana field. “Ever heard of the Banana Republic?” Kevin asked me. “Of course,” I said, hiding the fact that I was actually wearing a Banana Republic polo. “Well, you’re in the Banana Republic,” Kevin said. “The original Banana Republic.” Old abandoned railroad tracks that periodically cross the road are evidence of The United Fruit Company, started long ago by a Brooklyn man named Minor Keith . With...

Thanksgiving invaded La Fila on Sunday when 8 of the 9 trainees in La Fila used our mad cooking skills to put together a fabulous (belated) Thanksgiving feast for our host families. We gathered at our friend Bryson’s house, where his host mom kindly donated her beautiful outdoor kitchen for the cause. Our brave friends Barton and Bryson took charge of the turkeys (there were two!), stuffing, two kinds of gravy, biscuits and hot apple cider, and the rest of us brought dishes to compliment those. We had mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, cornbread dressing, improvised candied yams made from a similar local tuber, green bean casserole, roasted vegetables, improvised collard greens made instead with cooked cauliflower leaves, salad, and an amazing improvised pumpkin pie made out of a delicious local squash called ayote. It was quite the feast! I think everyone was impressed and really enjoyed the food. The best part is that we had tons of leftovers so we met for lunch again today to fi...

The wait is finally over! Last Wednesday, Megon and I found out where our new home will be for the next two years. Are you ready? Well, we’ve been placed in La Rambla, a tiny community that is hot, humid, rainy and known for its delicious pineapples, crocodile rivers, howler monkeys, geckos and lots of interesting bugs. It’s about 30 minutes from Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, a much larger hub that is an hour and a half north of San Jose. You might find La Rambla on Google Map, but I highly doubt it. We could hardly find it ourselves when we busted out our Costa Rica map. Megon and I will technically be living between two communities, La Rambla and Rio Frio, on a finca (farm) with a mom and her three teenage sons. Though we’re jazzed about living on a farm, we’re still not sure what kind of farm. Horses? Cows? Goats? Chickens? Gatos? I’m crossing my fingers for a cow or two. Lately I’ve been craving a big glass of milk with a side of Oreos. Our family doesn’t drink milk, so my calcium cr...

Another weekend, another adventure. These weekend excursions are yet another perk of staying with such an adventurous and fun-loving host family. How did we get so lucky? Yesterday we loaded up the “buseta” and made our way to Volcán Irazú, one of the nearest volcanoes to our house. It towers over the city of Cartago at an impressive 3,432 meters and, as we found out, has its very own microclimate. We left a gorgeous, clear and sunny morning in La Fila only to find that on top of Irazú, it was cold, windy and wet.  “You see?” laughed our host mom, “It’s not only cold in Alaska!” Kevin regretted wearing shorts the moment he stepped out of the bus. The chilly weather and blowing mist didn’t deter us, however. We walked around the rim of the main crater, which was huge and had a little lake in the bottom of it. Away from the edge of the crater we walked through black volcanic sand and a desolate area with little other than stunted shrubs and plants. The whole experience mi...

In six weeks of Peace Corps training, Megon and I have never been so relieved for the week to finally end. It was a great week, one that was filled with real Costa Rican teaching experiences and valuable ideas for lessons and strategies. But man, there were definitely long, and sometimes stressful days. The TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) crew had Tech Week from Monday to Thursday. Tech Week is a week Peace Corps incorporates into its 3-month training schedule for all volunteers. Traditionally, Tech Week involves trainees visiting real-life volunteers to observe how they perform in their jobs. Considering this is the first year for TEFL volunteers in Costa Rica, we had no volunteers to visit, so our program directors came up with a game plan that turned out to be absolutely amazing, especially with the nine trainees that live in our tiny town of La Fila. Here were the main two objectives: 1. Design and deliver two different English classes of about 150 minutes; 2. Defi...

As our big Tech Week comes to a close, both of us are anxiously looking forward to next week and the exciting events it will bring. Here’s a look at what’s coming up: Tuesday: Our friend Kristi and I have asked to be in charge of our session on classroom management during Tuesday’s tech class. Our tech trainer Becky has kindly given us pretty much free reign, so we’ve put together a panel of “experienced” teachers (those of us that have taught prior to Peace Corps) that will discuss their classroom management experiences and strategies. We’re very excited about this and hope that it will prove helpful for our fellow trainees! Wednesday: Site assignment day! This much-awaited event involves all of us trainees traveling to a recreational camp area outside of San José where we will, at 9:00 a.m., be told where we will be spending the next 2 years of our lives. We’ll be given information about our new communities, jobs, and host families, and then we’ll have the rest of the morning t...

Life in La Fila has returned, more or less, to normal. The rain stopped for a while, and though it’s raining again right now, it’s normal rain, not torrential cats and dogs rain. This rain shouldn’t cause landslides or flooding or mass destruction like last week’s rain. Our showers once again involve water out of a showerhead instead of a bucket and the toilet tank fills all by itself. What wonderful luxuries! We went back to Spanish class Tuesday and it felt very nice to get back into a routine. On Friday we took the bus to Tarbaca for Core and Tech training, our first time out of the community in over a week. It was pretty exciting to see all of the trainees and hear their crisis stories. Some are still without water and will be for weeks to come. Our favorite quote of the week: "I've run out of baby wipes!" I’m really looking forward to this week, which is Tech Week. For Tech week, we are changing our class schedule a little to accommodate some technical applicati...

I never thought turning 31 could be so much fun. Megon threw me a curveball on Monday and planned a surprise baseball birthday party that involved our host family and most of our Peace Corps friends who live here in La Fila and down the hill in San Gabriel. The afternoon plan was to take a walk with the family to San Gabriel. But what the walk turned into was a full-fledged baseball game in la plaza , an open green space in town meant for the kids to play fútbol and the cows to graze. Megon set up the entire party. She recruited Barton, a close friend of ours, to round up two aluminum bats and three baseballs his host family owns. Then she recruited Mario, our host dad, to help make the bases. He and Megonfilled four plastic bags with dirt and set them in the street – all while I was taking my birthday nap ­­– so our friends could pick them up on their way to San Gabriel. After our usual 3 p.m. coffee with the family, we got ready for our walk to San Gabriel. I wanted to wear pants, b...

Just an FYI for those of you who don't have Facebook ... Almost all of our "Best of Costa Rica"pictures are posted on Kevin's Facebook site. So if you don't have an account -- you know who you are -- get with the program and sign up ... if you want to see pictures, of course. As you can see, we post some pictures to the blog, but sometimes we use an internet cafe (like today) that doesn't allow us to upload pictures for some strange reason. For those of you who want to follow Costa Rican news (especially the national emergency we're currently experiencing), bookmark this site ( www.ticotimes.net ). It's the only English-only online news source in the country.

Our Costa Rican adventure took an interesting turn Thursday when Megon and I added two new words to our Spanish vocabulary: derrumbe and barranco . These are words most Ticos and Peace Corps folks would rather not hear. In English, Derrumbe means landslide, which brings down natural stuff like trees, dirt, mud, coffee plants. Derrumbe are generally a nuisance because they close roads and put schedules on hold. Barrancos, on the other hand, are very different. Though it technically translates as gorge, according to our host dad’s brother, in Costa Rica a barranco when a landslide destroys anything that sits in its path: cars, buses, houses, people, dogs, cows, chickens. Costa Rica experienced both types of landslides Thursday when a tropical depression arrived in the Central Valley area, which has caused our Peace Corps training to go temporarily on hold. Heavy rains that started Wednesday night and have continued into today have affected more than 50,000 Ticos by causing power and w...

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to visit two other married volunteers, Chris and Tarah, in their site. They have been in Costa Rica for 8 months now and have been living in their site, a very small town called La Colonia, for 5 months. Our adventure began at 7:00 am when caught a bus from La Fila to San José, then walked halfway across the city to another bus station that would take us to the region where Chris and Tarah live. We had about an hour to spend in the bus station, so I decided to look for some ginger ale to help my stomach, which was still motion sick from the windy, crowded, exhaust-smelling, lurching ride to the capital. During my search, I missed a small step coming down from a shop and rolled my ankle with a crack, crack, crack sound. Fortunately, my ankle was fine but I had completely bruised the top and side of my foot. It swelled up considerably and turned all sorts of beautiful colors, but it never hurt to walk or run, so I figured I was all right. Even so, it...

This has been another busy week, full of classes and time spent with the family. The majority of our time is spent in Spanish classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in a community room here in La Fila. My group spends the majority of it time reading and discussing articles pertaining to Costa Rica or having fiery debates about all sorts of controversial subjects (it’s great for our Spanish). Kevin’s class works much harder than ours does, I think, studying grammar and practicing continually. His Spanish is really coming along! He’s now able to hold his own in basic conversations, chat with locals, and he now knows basically every word relating to baseball, thanks to uncle Oscar, who is a Yankees fan. Given he’s family, Kevin doesn’t hold that against him. We spend the rest of our days in Tarbaca learning all sorts of important information about the Peace Corps and the work we’ll be doing once we swear in. On Tuesdays, “Tech Days,” we discuss our duties as TEFL teachers, learn abou...

Days before we left for Costa Rica, a well-traveled fellow we met at a coffee shop in Soldotna said to us, “Costa Rica? Oh, that’s an easy country.” Considering this was Kevin’s first time preparing to travel away from North America, he wondered what the guy meant exactly by “easy.” Was he trying to tell us Costa Rica culture is similar to that of the United States? Or was he trying to tell us it’s easy to get around Costa Rica? In the three weeks we’ve been living in Costa Rica, we have learned that yes, Costa Rica is easy. It’s easy to love. People are easy going. The colon is easy to convert into the dollar. Great food is easy to find. Getting around with public transportation is generally pretty easy. It’s easy to be pegged as an Outsider. And lastly, it’s easy to buy most things you really need. But what we’ve also discovered is that Costa Rica has its challenges just like any other country. As Peace Corps trainees, we’re getting a more realistic view of Costa Rica than what m...

Another week has passed in beautiful Costa Rica and both Megon and I commented today on how quickly it went. We've started to get into a nice groove here, getting to know things such as the people of La Fila, how much the bus ride to Tarbaca (where we do our Peace Corps and TEFL training) really costs, and how two straight weeks of gallo pinto feels on the stomach. For the record, we don't mind eating rice and beans everyday. Today the family took us on another adventure. Last weekend it was the beach, this weekend it was Cerro de la Muerte, otherwise known as Death Hill. No, our host parents don't want us to die. It's the name of the area where they own a cabin. The only deathly thing we saw was on our hike around the area. Megon pointed out a bunch of turkey vultures hanging around some canyon. Once we got closer we saw bones. Soon we found out it was just a dead cow that probably plummeted off the hill's steep slope. We, on the other hand, made it out alive. ...

When Megon and I first heard the Peace Corps selected us for Costa Rica, most reactions sounded like this: “Peace Corps in Costa Rica? Really? Two-year vacation!” Just to clarify, when people in the United States think Costa Rica, most think of white sandy beaches, beautiful weather and abundance of nature. We experienced all three Saturday when our family took us to la playa, otherwise known as the beach. However, when you live in La Fila – a tiny community tucked away in the mountains ­­– going to the beach is hardly like a trip to the grocery store. Going to the beach from here is comparable to Lewis and Clark’s expedition; you just never know what’s coming around the bend. The day started with a 3 a.m. alarm, and by 3:15 we were on the road to Quepos, a tourist/surfing town in Southeast Costa Rica where Megon lived for a month while taking classes at a Spanish-speaking school. Our goal was to be there by sunrise and return to La Fila in time for dinner. Mario, our host dad who t...