Teaching is a Divine Comedy

VWP: niña—girl (n.)  However, in the school setting kids do not call their teachers “maestra,” instead they call them “niña.”  So a child may raise his or her hand and say “Niña, puede ayudarme con mi tarea?” (Teacher/girl, can you help me with my homework?).  I realize it sounds strange to call your teacher “girl,” practically making her the equivalent as the student, but it’s the truth!

A classy-looking Dante Alighieri

This past week I began my new internship at Escuela Dante Alighieri, a public elementary school nestled in the Lourdes neighborhood.  That’s right, my school is named after the very man who wrote Divine Comedy in the 14^th century—pretty epic.  You might say that with the Costa Rican sun the walk to work can feel like an inferno sometimes…okay, I’m done with the Dante puns (for now).  My day starts at 7 am when I arrive at the school to assist Karla, an energetic and spunky Costa Rican, with her English classes.  During her college career at the prestigious public university here, University of Costa Rica, she majored in "Teaching English" and then lived in Wilmington, NC for a few years teaching Spanish.  Karla teaches three or four classes a day, five days a week, and rarely sees the same class twice in the same week.  With each class filling in around 15 kids, she's teaching more than 100 different first through third graders in a week.  Karla’s classes always begin with a kind of call and response interaction where she shouts out, very slowly, with a slight Costa Rican accent (I’m going to write how it sounds phonetically to me):

The classroom prior to
the daily student invasion

Karla: “Goooood morning!” (She puts a cupped hand to her ear to show she would like a response from the fidgeting, seated crowd.)    

Kids: “Gud moorning, teacher!” (There’s always a few who end a few seconds after the rest, causing a slight stadium echo feel)

Karla: “How are you tudae?”

Kids: “Fayne thanku.  Eand you?”        

Karla: “Whayt’s yur fahvoriet coulour?” This kind of question asking process continues on until we’ve covered the class’ favorite color, animal, number, day of the week, and month of the year. 

 During my first week helping out  Karla’s class she used me as a conversation model for the kids as they asked me “what’s your name?,” “what’s your favorite animal?” and “what’s your favorite number?” in order to get to know me.  Adorably, a few times kids would think they were asking a question to me, but instead they'd just say “My favorite color is blue” since they’d learned the response so many times but rarely had been the ones asking the questions.  After the third class (remember that we teach over 10 different classes in one week) of kids’ interrogating me about my favorite color, animal, number, etc. I soon learned that “My favorite animal is a dog” was a total crowd-pleaser, and in general kids approved of my favorite number being five by showing me a few smiles that were missing their front baby teeth.  Occasionally they were enthralled that “my favorite color is blue” and I would receive a short-lived applause.  It’s nice being the teacher’s assistant and not the actual teacher because I get to be the loved one and Karla has to be the heavy.  Being the good cop in the good cop-bad cop partnership when it comes to a classroom full of little kids is always a good thing; for my kindness and smiles I get rewarded by the kids with stickers, hugs, and small chats when they hunt me down during recess.  I have already started a sticker collection in the front of my journal, all donated to me by the kids. 

Behold two of my lovely stickers

Right now my favorite is a sparkly, slightly crumpled star-shaped sticker that says “You Rock!” Why, thank you.  

Karla does use me a lot even though I am just her assistant for the next month—because I have a true American accent, she likes for the kids to hear me speak as much as possible, and whenever we do an oral exercise (like reviewing the weather--sunny, cloudy, rainy-- or greetings--good morning, good afternoon, good evening) she always asks me to be the speaker.  It’s at times like this that I'm glad my accent is pretty much neutral between a Northern and Southern accent so I don’t shift all of these kids’ accents into Southern sweet tea mode. 

One downside to working in a kids’ classroom is my growing hatred for kids’ sing-along songs.  If you turned on a CD player right now and blasted “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” I might just smash the CD player to pieces.  You’ve all been warned now.  However, I have learned to appreciate the usefulness and effectiveness of using songs to teach little kids words, especially action words.   I have a feeling the kids will absolutely remember what an alligator is, for example, since every time we get to the part in “Five Little Monkeys Swinging On A Tree” where the alligator chows down on one of the monkeys, Karla always synchronizes the word “Snap!” (Alligator has caught the poor unfortunate monkey) with a large face-eating motion with her arms right in front of one of the kids’ wide-eyed, half-scared, half-excited face. 

After my lunch break I switch gears and help a fifth grade social studies teacher with her various classes.  I’m sure you can imagine that I appreciate the change in volume of the kids’ voices (at this point fifth graders are no longer screaming youngins—for the most part) and getting to return to Spanish can be quite the relief since English is really quite ugly sounding in comparison to the fluid vowels of Spanish.  I only work with the fifth graders for an hour and a half every day, so I’m still waiting to get a feel for the class.  However, the odd thing about the Costa Rican public school system is that they don’t have middle school.  Grades 1-5 are all lower schoolers and then grades 6-11 (or 12 if you decide to follow a technical skill career, not an academic one) are high schoolers. 

The kids participating in a reenactment of the Batalla de Santa Rosa during an assembly. 

Even though I can tell this school is struggling with certain issues, it is still an exceptional school in many ways.  For instance, the school is overcrowded, they lack green areas for the kids to play in, and they don’t have a physical education teacher at all.  At the same time though, the kids have a computer lab and on a weekly basis the school has mini-assemblies regarding the environment, civility, and peace.  More importantly, the kids themselves are affectionate and caring.  Some mornings I'm sluggishly making my way into school at 7 am, wishing I'd taken that last sip of coffee a bit more seriously, and then one of my students will run up to me and say "Good morning, teacher Kellie!" (They have trouble pronouncing Katie for some reason, so I'm generally referred to as Kellie).  Regardless of whether the English greeting was perfect or a little awkward or whether they call me Katie or Kellie, the students make getting up before 6 am totally worth it.  

A Game Played With Feet, Watched With Hearts, Loved By All

VWP: puta (n). -- whore. Don't worry, in a moment it'll make sense why I chose this harsh word.

Americans often seem to poke fun at foreigners' love of "futbol" or soccer.  It's almost like we can't imagine why anyone would take interest in a game that doesn't include helmet-clad men smashing into each other with 30 seconds worth of pauses for every 10 seconds of action (was that assessment of football a bit too harsh?).  However, here in Costa Rica, Ticos very much so prefer soccer: a game that applauds detail and precision as much as it does strength, requires teamwork as much as individual excellence, and commends sporadic decisions as much as preplanned plays.  I myself side with Ticos after gathering my fair share of tiny scars, shinguards, and soccer-patterned headbands from years of playing this sport.  While being here, I've watched soccer bring people together on a family, community, and national level.        

My first night back in Curridabat after a two-week long spree in the province of Limon was also the first day of the U17 Girls' World Cup Tournament, hosted right here in San Jose.  Even though my host mom here doesn't like to see girls getting all sweaty and "manly-looking" when they play soccer (I decided to keep my opinion to myself on that quote), my dad and I planned to set up camp in front of the TV and watch the 90 minute match with all the attention that we could muster.  We went to the grocery store and bought a few Imperials (the national beer) and a bag of lemon and salt chips--sounds oddly similar to the diet of Sunday football watchers in America, doesn't it?  Then we rested our voices for the rest of the day, only talking when extremely necessary, so we could really scream at the TV that night.  When I say "scream at the TV" I don't mean like, "Oh, come on!" or "What a crummy shot!"  Costa Ricans take the cursing during games to a whole new level, as any error committed by a soccer player receives a long drawn out "Puta!!!" (Whore!!!)  I'm not sure how this came to be the acceptable insult, but it sure is popular here.  While verbal smack-downs are expected and tolerated, many have also anticipated the probable physical violence that could result from such an intense fan base.  Some stadiums here actually don't let fans of opposite teams sit together in the stands!  Better safe than sorry, I guess. Even sitting in my family's living room watching the game on TV, I could feel the national support swell inside the stadium as the Costa Rican team battled against the adroit Venezuelan squad.  Whenever a Venezuelan player would be tricked by some sneaky Costa Rican footwork, the entire crowd would rumble with a boisterous "Aaaahhhh," further rubbing it in the poor girl's face that she just got humiliated on international TV. Sadly for the Costa Ricans, this only happened occasionally.  As the tied game (0-0 at half time) disappeared into a 3-0 win for Venezuela, crying and heavy-browed Costa Ricans were captured by the camera, many of them still with paint on their faces and the Costa Rican flag draped around their shoulders.   

I admire the way grown men in Costa Rica relate to sports because they don't play Fantasy Football. Instead, it's very popular for men all the way into their early 30s to continue playing soccer on a competitive national level, traveling to a different part of the country every Sunday to challenge another province's team. My host mom's brother-in-law is the president of one of these men's teams, and he has recently learned that he is terminally ill with a tumor.  He has been the president of the team for the past twenty years and has an immensely strong bond with the sports and his players.  While this man has his family supporting him, the soccer community in Curridabat has also reached out to help in any way possible.  This past Sunday, his team's game against the rival Pococi squad was dedicated in his honor.  As this sick, struggling man slowly maneuvered his way out to the middle of the soccer field, assisted by his daughters and wearing house slippers, the two teams and the referees gathered in solidarity to present a plaque, banner, and good wishes to Freddy.  The machismo cultural norm that men should never really hug other men was temporarily lifted by the bond created between these men through their mutual love for soccer as they gave heartfelt hugs to their team's beloved president.


Soccer isn't just a sport here in Costa Rica; it's a uniting mechanism on every level.

             

                    

If Only Americans Worked With "Ahorita" In Mind

VWP: ahorita (n.)—right now.  This is the traditional meaning of “ahora.” However, in Costa Rica it appears to have picked up the opposite meaning.  If someone says “Me voy ahorita,” it doesn’t mean “I’m leaving now,” instead it means “Yeah, I’ll leave sometime soon…or maybe tomorrow.” 

Before my alarm clock goes off at 6:45 am, I hear a series of other sounds in the early morning.  4:00 am is when my host brother’s crazy dog (chained up to a dog house) begins to bark ferociously.  This new mom of four perritas is extremely overprotective and therefore the being-chained-to-an-immovable-object concept does not work out well for those attempting to sleep.  Around 4:10 am I hear my host mom’s voice rings out “Cállate! Cállate!”  In this way, she is using the sass of the Spanish language to literally command the dog to shut up.  At 5:00 am the howler monkeys in the forest begin to create their menacing and eerily deep “hoo-hoo-hah-hah” sound (turns out, Hollywood wasn’t too far off in their A-list movie monkey sounds).  Then at 6:00 am my host brother begins to talk loudly with his construction co-workers and friends in the front yard, discussing their plans for the workday.  So, by the time 6:45 am rolls around, it feels odd to be woken up by some electronic, non-animal, non-human noise.  At that point, it’s easy to roll out of bed, throw on some athletic looking clothes and make my way to the outdoor patio kitchen for some morning chow.  I have become an expert in Costa Rican breakfast making, which is no easy task when breakfast resembles lunch and dinner in terms of hardiness and size.  It’s never a surprise when I see gallo pinto (the dish of fried rice and beans that appears to be eaten with everything) stirring around in the pot, sometimes accompanied by a fried egg or an onion, pepper, and garlic-topped piece of meat.  Next on the plate is what some would call a tortilla, but I call it what it is: fried dough.  Seeing a fried theme here yet?  Regardless of it’s fried status (or maybe because of it), it’s delicious and usually topped with a local fruit jam.  Fruit is usually put out on a plate in the middle of the table, ranging from pineapple (not from a can!) to melon and more exotic native fruit.  With this kind of feast for breakfast, it makes you wonder why cereal, yoghurt, and oatmeal even pretend like they belong in the breakfast food category. 

At 9 am Rosa, my host mom, begins saying “vamos a empezar ahorita” or “we’re going to start right now.”  In reality, we don’t start our work in the organic farm until 9:30, hence the VWP side note.  Our work in the farm tends to be relaxed, but also very productive.  In her backyard farm, we accomplish a myriad of chores in the course of two hours: feed the pigs and hens, retrieve the eggs from the hens, use the hen manure as fertilize for nearby trees, plant pineapple, cilantro, yucca, beans, and corn, soften soil for planting, and check up on the health of older plants, like the Panamanian chili plant (which apparently can burn your tongue off) and some papaya trees. All of this Rosa upkeeps herself, and every plant has been put into the ground, taken care of, and maintained by this one woman.  With this kind of network of food and plants in her backyard, Rosa cuts down immensely on her grocery bill since she never has to buy fruits, vegetables, or eggs.  At 11:30 we break for lunch making and freshening up time before we have to leave for El Yue at 1 pm.  We need this much time to make lunch because Costa Ricans would never dream of eating a cold PB&J sandwich or a salad with cranberries and carrot sticks for lunch.  Forget that! Costa Ricans demand hot food for every meal of the day, with maybe a once a week exception for cereal at breakfast.  Usually lunch looks like half of breakfast, almost always with rice and beans, and in addition there’s some kind of meat, maybe a cabbage salad, and always a fresco (a cold fruit drink of sorts).  I can’t say whether this is just unique to Rosa’s family, but they’re big fans of yard-to-street whooping.  Her kitchen and table is situated on an open patio within clear view of the gravel road, so if she sees one of her ten siblings walk by or a neighbor pedaling by on a bike, she yells “Oy!” like I’d heard three years ago at a South Africa v. Australia rugby game.  The patio is probably 75 feet from the road, and sometimes even with this much distance between the two speakers, they never raise their voices much louder than a normal American’s voice on a plane…and yet they hear everything.  However, with the “Oy”-ing also comes the imitations of her grandchildren.  Four-year-old Nani and five-year-old Ryan, who live on the same plot of land, will yell at the top of their small (but very full of air) lungs “Oyyyyyyy!!!!” to any car, bike, human, or dog they see going down the road. 

After lunch we make our way to El Yue, which is about a 25 minute walk from the house, and you can be assured that at 1 pm in the afternoon, we’re both a sweaty mess by the time we reach our destination.  However, sometimes we get lucky and one of Rosa’s sons will offer to drive us or one of her friends will pull over on the road and offer us a quick drive (this is an obvious violation of the ICADS rule “never get in a car with a person who is not associated with ICADS,” and yet it’s so much better than walking the whole way).  I head to El Yue to teach English classes to kids in the form of an after school program.  Literally on the first day I was handed 15 kids and told “teach them English.”  That was the sum total of guidance and structure from the organization.  From 1:15 to 2:30 pm I teach my first English class, never being quite sure who will show up.  Sometimes I’ll have a new kid who I’ve never seen before, sometimes I’ll only have one kid in the class, or other times I’ll have 8 kids all at once.  We never sit in a proper classroom, just usually around a table under a patio where you can feel a nice breeze and also earn some funky tan lines from tennis shoes.  There’s a huge variety in the knowledge these kids have when it comes to English (some know how to say “My name is ____” and know the word for “butterfly” and others appear to never have spoken a word of English).   One thing is sure though: it’s definitely easier to teach these kids basic vocabulary, like animals, colors, and numbers, rather than attempting to get a grammatical concept through to them.  I am grateful though that all the kids have a good level of enthusiasm during class, and never hesitate to shout out “hello, teacher!” if they see me at a local soccer game or at the beach.

However, even for a native English speaker and for someone who wants to be a teacher, teaching local Costa Rican kids how to speak English is no easy task, especially with a lack of guidance and structure from the organization.  The big question is simply: where do I begin?  Do I start with “My name is Katie” or with “I am, you are, she/he is” or with vocabulary like “boy, girl, mom, dad?”  Should I speak only in English or a mix of Spanish and English so they can at least partially understand me?  Additionally, it’s hard to figure out what is confusing for native Spanish speakers when it comes to learning English.  For instance, “you” looks very similar to “yo,” which is the pronoun for 1^st person (me).  Could that get more confusing?  Thanks a bunch, language gods.            

While I found teaching ESL classes difficult, I also found it rewarding to just expose these kids to a subject that is becoming more and more useful and necessary in the world.  I enjoyed my time working at El Yue, but I will be returning to San Jose next week to begin a different internship at a public school in San Jose to get a better insight into the Costa Rican education system.    

The Caribbean Vibe

VWP: rice and beans (phrase)--this is not a mistake that it's in English, this is an Afro-Caribbean dish with rice, beans, and sweet milk.    

With my bus to Sixaola leaving at 10 am from a central San Jose bus station, I figured I’d have a chance to sleep in on Saturday.  However, my tica mom had other ideas: she insisted I be at the bus station at least 2 hours early to ensure I got a ticket for my bus, which when I reminisce on it, was probably a good idea.  Arriving at the bus station at 7:45 am after a teary goodbye session with my tico parents (they once again repeated “we’re so sad you’re abandoning us” and I once again said “I’ll be back in just a few weeks!”), I bought my ticket to Sixaola, the Costa Rican town in the Limon province that borders Panama and tried to be suave as I maneuvered my chunky suitcase (it comes up to my mid-arm and is wider than a comfy armchair), backpack, and extra beach bag.  Sitting down with my load, I had the opportunity to notice exactly what it must be like for a local tico to see a gringo.  In front of me was another gringa buying her bus ticket.  She had two big backpacks on, one saddled on her front like a baby holder and the other one on her back threatened to flip her over backwards with its extreme bulges, and her Nike shorts, University of Missouri t-shirt and floppy bun-on-the-top-of-my-head look just shouted “HEY GUYS IM A GRINGA!” However, this only provoked me to consider using her as a suitcase-watcher if I should have to use the bathroom and leave my suitcases behind for a minute.  Don’t worry mom, I decided not to trust anyone at the bus station and just had to deal with having all three bags in the tiny bathroom stall with me.  Finding my seat on the bus was a struggle; I was looking for Asiento 37 but all the numbers above the seats had been conveniently wiped off.  Luckily, Gringa was there to help me out, shouting in English, “What seat are you looking for?” Apparently I also was obviously gringa-looking, however, I just wanted to point out that I guess I’m getting tan enough to not be called a yucca potato--notoriously white and pasty--unlike when Gus was in Costa Rica.  Turns out, my seat was right next to this American girl, and I didn’t realize in the moment how nice it would be to talk with someone in my home language for a few hours.  A recent grad from University of Missouri and recently certified in teaching English as a second language, my Texan seat partner ended up being a good and chatty bus companion for the four hour bus ride. 

So here’s the thing about Costa Rican buses: they don’t tell you when the stops are, how to recognize your stop, how to indicate that you need to get off the moving bus, or anything else that may make your travel easier.  When getting on the bus I had told the bus driver (who was wearing a Cuba hat that made him look kind of like Castro) that I was going to Pali at Hone Creek.  What are the chances he would remember that during a four-hour bus ride?  I didn’t worry about this bus-stop issue until after the regulation bus break at a snack place with bathrooms, when most people buy an empanada with cheese or beans or pick up a bag of plantain chips.  But, once we started on the second half of our trip, I realized that I was going to need to eventually get off this bus before Sixaola, because I definitely didn’t want to work my way back all the way from the Panama border.  I tried to remember my conversation with my internship coordinator in San Jose: she had said something about a big yellow building, or did she say something about seeing the beach?  Maybe she was talking about a big highway?  For someone who spent three years in high school memorizing 10 minute long acting monologues, my memory failed immensely in this very key moment.  Suddenly the bus stopped on the side of the road across the street from…a sloth sanctuary.  Murmuring among the other bus passengers started and I was beyond confused as to whether this was my stop or not.  The Castro-look-alike bus driver appeared to be staring at me in his rear view mirror.  Or was that just my paranoia and nerves kicking in?  I felt like I stared back at him with a ridiculous face of confusion for about five minutes straight, and then the bus started back up again.  Well, whether that was my stop or not, I didn’t get off.  Cursing under my breath, I nervously imagined a scenario where I finally get off the bus and I’m at the Panama border without enough money to take a taxi back to Hone Creek, so I just end up going to Panama City (this didn’t happen in real life).  Luckily, I noticed the “Pali” at Hone Creek (which turns out to be the name of a convenience store) and asked the bus driver to open up the bottom of the bus so I could retrieve my chunky suitcase.  When I told him where it was under the bus he assumed I was crazy and said it couldn’t be on the street side of the bus.  He’d have to dodge cars while opening up the bus since he had forgotten to put my suitcase on the sidewalk side way back in San Jose.  Once he realized I was right, he kept saying “you never told me you were getting off at Hone Creek”—please see earlier sentence in the story to prove that he was completely lying at this point.  My memory of meeting my new host mother, Rosa, is somewhat overshadowed by the bus driver complaining to her “she never told me that she was getting off here,” but even so, I can remember Rosa giving me a wide smile, a traditional Costa Rican cheek peck, and a soft “I’m Rosa, and I’ll be your host mom.”  I remember reading in the host family write-up that Rosa was supposedly 51 years old and a widow.  This lady that was standing in front of me appeared to be about 40 years old and had a man with her who could have been her husband…I wondered whether Rosa’s friend Rosa had come to pick me up (in the write up, it also pointed out that Rosa Emilia, my mom, runs her business with her friend, Rosa Maria).  But no, it turns out that my host mom has just kept up her youthful appearance very well, and this man was one of her two sons, and a young boy in the back seat was her grandson. 

My bedroom

Pulling up to a purple house on a large lot with palm trees, plants, and flowers, it hit me for the first time that this wasn’t just a weekend trip, I wasn’t going back to ICADS for classes, and I had said goodbye to my San Jose family and house.  I’m living in a room that’s adjacent to the main house, with its own sink, refrigerator, and bedroom.  I feel like I should be a bit more descriptive with my room so as to portray its true self: the fridge isn’t plugged in, the big dip in my mattress causes me to question its previous owner, the windows are permanently open to allow for a nice beach breeze, and my walls are decorated with cards sent from my mom and grandma from the U.S.  It’s a modest but homey room, and it definitely portrays the laid-back feel of the Caribbean coast.  Another thing about the open windows:  my host mom is a widow who lives alone, but on the same plot of land lives one of her sons with his family.  His sons are four and five and love to move my curtains to the side and spy on me through the bare windowpanes.  With no true windows, it was also easy to hear the grandson telling my host mom “La muchacha todavia esta durmiendo” (the girl still is sleeping) this morning at 8:30 am.  Her son’s family members aren’t the only ones around, which is easy to understand since my host mom is one of eleven kids.  Brothers regularly pop in for lunch, or her cousins will come over for coffee, or her other son and his kid will eat dinner with us.  Neighbors come over for fruit, and other community members stop by to say hi.  Might say I’m living in the house on the block for a few months!  

The view from my kitchen table

Life here in Hone Creek (an English name due to the Afro-Caribbean influence here) is much different than San Jose.  In my mom’s backyard are guanabana, apple, cacao, orange, lemon, and mora trees.  Whenever she wants a few oranges to eat, she just goes to the backyard with a tall tree branch and knocks a few down from the tree.  I’ve never seen such an inventive woman: her trashcan is constructed out of used plastic bottles, her flower pots are coke-can tabs strung together, and she dries out cacao seeds to make her own chocolate (I must be a taste tester for her!).  She also started up her own business in 2001, called El Yue, an organic farm and community center to protect the environment and secure family wellbeing.  She told me the story behind the business’ birth:  she and a few women in the community noticed the abuse of the local land and the instability of family security.  They planned to get a few loans and open up El Yue.  Soon after the first few meetings, some women’s husbands began to threaten them, citing that a business was a man’s job and that if they continued to scheme this business, they’d hit them.  After that, only my host mom and her friend Rosa were willing to continue on with the business idea.  I admire my host mom immensely for her bravery and commitment to her ideas and wants for her own community.   

Along with the fact that this village houses some of the strongest women I've ever come into contact with, there are some other special features to this community.  Some things are so different from my other house in Costa Rica: I found a hand-sized frog in the shower this morning, my four-year-old host grandson plays casually with a machete, and the kitchen here is outside on the patio.  I enjoy the change of scenery, and I know it’ll push me to become even more adjustable to whatever surprises are thrown my way in my last two months in Costa Rica.