TEFL Con Ticos

As we sit in our 90-degree apartment sipping care package tea and enjoying fresh homemade peanut butter cookies, it seems like a good time to think about where we’re at in our Peace Corps service, our successes, frustrations, and our plans for the future. Sometimes, when we’re rushing around from school to co-planning session to community class to school again, we find it hard to take a moment to reflect, to appreciate and think critically. (And lately, to write blog posts!) Kevin’s mom came to visit us last week and we had a wonderful time introducing her to our life in La Rambla. We’re coming off of the visitor high now though, re-immersing ourselves in our work and feeling the familiar excitement of another awesome community class, the thrill of a breakthrough with a local teacher, and the contentment that comes with riding past the elementary on my bike and hearing all of the children scream, “Hi Megon! Bye bye, Megon!” We’ve been fortunate to have experienced quite a bit of suc...

Flipping through a February issue of Sports Illustrated one recent afternoon, the headline “What Was He Thinking?” grabbed my attention. It was the story of why former Denver Bronco quarterback Jake Plummer retired early and walked away from $5 million in guaranteed money just to do something different with his life. The article got me thinking: 'Would we have done that?' Well, we kind of did. Though we didn’t walked away from millions when we left for Costa Rica nearly 11 months ago, we did walk away from a helluva lot to join the Peace Corps. Let’s face it: right now we could easily be teachers in the Anchorage School District, making decent salaries and living comfortable, convenient lives. But years ago Megon and I both knew that that kind of life could be put on hold. Our Peace Corps life is teaching us there’s more to life, more to money, than what we ever had in Alaska. Between the two of us we live on ¢424,000 colones a month, or about $850 (that was a month’s rent ...