TEFL Con Ticos

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...