3 weeks in La Fila down, 7 more to go

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 about how best to coordinate with the country’s Ministry of Education, and practice lesson planning and communicative activities. For many of our fellow trainees, this is their first introduction to teaching, so it’s pretty neat to hear their point of view on things. Our facilitators are relying on assistance from those of us with teaching experience to help co-facilitate and teach certain lessons, so Kevin and I have both had the opportunity to help out in that way.

One of the main assignments the TEFL facilitators give us is to observe local English teachers at work. It’s been great meeting those teachers and spending time in their classrooms; we’re learning a lot about the Costa Rican education system and exactly how we can (hopefully) help. The teachers so far have been really open and welcoming and are more than happy to let us observe. Within the next week we’ll start actually teaching some short activities in the English classrooms, which will be a pretty neat experience.

On Thursdays we have classes about health and safety, Costa Rican culture and non-formal education. Yesterday some of the current volunteers (from TICO 19 and TICO 20) came to visit and to introduce us to some the committees that we are able to participate in. It was pretty neat to see some real live volunteers.

This weekend we are traveling out of La Fila toward a town called Sarapiquí to visit my mentor and her husband, both current volunteers. We’re staying until Tuesday in order to get a real taste of Peace Corps life. It should be tons of fun! I’ve been in contact with my mentor for over a month now and she seems great. We’ve been told to expect hot weather and lots of bugs.

It’s been a busy week for birthdays around the house. Sunday was our host mom’s birthday (we made pizza for the family, a big hit!), then Monday our youngest host brother (José) turned 6, and today Mario turned 8. They both got bikes for their birthday and have been biking maniacs all week, with only a few minor catastrophes. Tonight we went over to the grandparents’ house (next door) and celebrated an aunt’s birthday as well. After a little persuasion, the grandpa got out his guitar and serenaded everyone with beautiful Costa Rican songs and some that he had composed himself. It was pretty special!