it´s the final countdown.

We are a mere 7 days from my return to america. But who´s counting. School is going relatively well. I had a great amount of success today by teaching my 4th graders a song about fast food restaurants. Completely unrelated to community (which is what we are studying) but they´re just little kids, they deserve to have fun more than anyone. I also had a crier in 1st grade because i snapped at her (Abigail), but she got over it. She cries all the time.
My host mom was mildly upset when i told her i had to leave 3 days early for vacations but it´s not really my fault. I explained my situation as best as i could (and lied where necessary) so i think that it´s alright. In all fairness, i do need to get home before the holiday because my phone and my computer are both out of commission and getting home on a three day weekend does me no good.
I have been reading up a storm in the last week. (My computer crashed and so I haven´t had much else to do.) As such, I read the follwing:
Harry Potter and the Sorcers Stone (Even more brilliant now that the series is over.)
Water For Elephants (Which exceeded all of my expectations and made me want to research the circus during the glory days and take a trip to the ringling brothers museum)
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (One of the best plays i have ever read.)
Everyone Worth Knowing (Chick-Lit, but thoroughly entertaining chick lit nonetheless.)

I am still working on Emma, but am struggling through it because I want to maim each and every one of the self important characters in the book. Great story, too much detail. But let´s be honest, I´m no literary crtitic and for good reason. I can´t wait to pick up some more things at home. Let me know if you read anything glorious lately. I was challenged to a 50 book-year and I am hoping that I am up to the task. TICO´s are amazed by how much I read and my host dad keeps asking me why it´s good to read. (Part of me dies on the inside every time he does this.)
I am going to try for a beach weekend, so keep your fingers crossed for me that all of my exams go well and that i get a vacation before my vacation.


I know how you feel
No secrets to reveal
Nobody knows me at all
Very Late at night
and in the morning light
Nobody knows me at all
The Weepies- nobody knows me at all (great song, not nearly as sad as it sounds)

Tales of a former social chair

I have had something of an Epiphany. The reason that I am so unhappy here, the reason that I hate Costa Rica is because, for the first time in my life, no one likes me. I realize that there isn’t a wide variety of people for me to be friends with as is, but still, going from the Social Chair of USC to the “Ticher” in El Vergel was not a healthy switch.
Everyone tolerates me, but no one goes out of his way to say, “hello”. This coupled with the fact that I have such limited connection to the world I left has led to a case of minor depression. I should have gone to Chile, worked in a City so that I could have had people to talk to and a phone to talk on. So far my only symptoms have been general gloominess and an increased need for naps. I am seriously unsatisfied with the year thus far. My students are ungrateful and greedy, which I cannot understand since they don’t have anything to be greedy over. I do know that they stole the jump ropes that I bought.
Class is starting to improve. My first graders still throw tantrum’s every day, but I have gotten better at keeping them from walking out of class. We are doing a section on animals right now and they are having a lot of fun. I am thinking I can probably keep it going for a couple more weeks. We did farm and domestic animals last week. We all made masks and several of them found reasons to cry over their having to use the “big” scissors. This coming week we are covering animals that live in Costa Rica. Should be fun. 2nd through 5th grades are making houses out of cardboard boxes. Several students couldn’t find any boxes, despite my giving them 3 weeks of warning about it. Others have been skipping class just because they don’t feel like making houses. It’s a little bit frustrating, but the good projects are worth all of the other trouble.
My 6th graders are still brilliant but Lazy. Now every time they ask me if they can watch movies/leave early/play Uno, I take away five minutes of their Friday Free-Time. Their vocabularies are improving as is their grammar, but they, for the most part, refuse to speak. The problem with teaching as a volunteer, is that it’s incredibly hard to care when no one else does. My lack of motivation is stunning and my “energy” has hit rock bottom.
On the upside, I have done a ton of worksheets this weekend for next week’s lectures. I never work this far ahead. I also cleaned out my bedroom and classroom. I’ve started taking bike rides and walks with my 6th grader Christian. He is one of my smarter students and says, “Oh Teacher” about 47 times a day. I make him speak English on our rides, so at least he’s getting practice.
I struggle more and more every day not to hold my placement against my bosses. I really don’t know what they were thinking putting me here. Granted, I don’t know that there is another particular site that would have fit me more, but this is just absurd. At least I’m going home soon. I will get the re-charge that I need for the last 5 months. So, that’s my life. I hate Costa Rica. I am excited to come home. See you in T-minus 18 days. Thanks for all of the emails.
If any of you would like to send me a care package/birthday card but are wary because of the mail in Costa Rica, you can send it to my house in Santa Barbara.

761 Hot Springs Rd
Santa Barbara, CA
93108

PS. Shout out to Katie Perkins: I watched My Boys on TV this morning. Sheer genius. Thank god for satellite television.

It's always sunny in Costa Rica. Except for when it rains every day.

I found The Office and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on TV today. It was pretty fabulous. I caught up on a little Season 4 of Jim Halpert excellence and it lifted my spirits. My fourth graders and I took a field trip today to find cardboard boxes. They were all supposed to bring them for school, but only 2 of them remembered. As it turned out, we could only find 2 more and I have 7 fourth graders, but we did our best to make it work. They got really excited about building model homes, I showed them how to make carpet using colored paper and it went very well. More of the same with 3rd grade, but only 2 girls came to class and one of them was an hour late. Seriously. An HOUR late. To an 80 minute class, I would have marked her absent, but she did come solely for English, so I felt bad. Lunch was delicious, I got something that mildly resembled ground beef. Then I had kindergarten and we had a trash pick up. They were all reluctant until I made it a game and I told them all the whoever could pick up the most trash in one minute would win. It was wildly successful. Cynthia, the kinder teacher was seemingly impressed with my trickery.
The majority of my day was spent on the couch watching TV, which I haven’t done in a while and which I thoroughly enjoyed. I also spent about an hour at the bus stop waiting for a bus that just never came. There were a series of landslides north of me last week as a result of the hurricane. As such, bus schedules for the whole country have been altered and almost all of the buses running to and from San Jose from my site have been cancelled. Just when I was getting a hang of things on the Pan American Highway. I booked my ticket home. Whoo hoo! I will be home in Los Angeles/Santa Barbara for the 4th of July. Yay! I don’t go back until the 19th. So I will be having some serious glory days in Southern California. Hopefully, I will get to stop in Santa Fe for a couple of Days. My to do list is extremely long, but I am looking forward to actually having something to do. More importantly, I can’t wait to speak non-stop English for 2 weeks. Oh the glory.
In other news, we got a new kitten and a new puppy at my house. The kitten doesn’t have a name yet, but the puppy is named Pluto. I think he is more of a Bruno or at least a Brutus, but it wasn’t my decision to make. They are both pretty scrappy, but very sweet. Watching them play together is kind of a blast. My friends Mikki and Jenn came into Palmar for my birthday and we had dinner and watched movies and swam in the pool. We gossiped about why we dislike Costa Rica and why we love our crazy students. It wasn’t terribly exciting, but I was glad to have the company and I had a really good time. I biked to and from Palmar on Saturday/Sunday. The ride is considerably more difficult with a 40 pound back pack and a bike pedal that keeps falling off. I got the pedal fixed and I sucked up the weight of my backpack for the necessary celebrations.
The rains have eased somewhat and it was sunny for the majority of the day today. It rained in the afternoon, but that’s to be expected. It seems impossible that I have been here for 5 months, but at the same time, it seems like a lifetime. To quote Ron Burgundy, I have been “on a rollercoaster of emotion” these last few days, but I think that going home in July will provide me with an excellent recharge. It’s been really lonely at my site as of late and I hate that I still don’t have friends, but I am doing my best to work through the bad days and celebrate the good ones. I am missing my 5-year high school reunion this weekend. I can’t decide if I am glad to miss it or sort of upset. I mean, nothing has happened to the majority of the people in the SBHS class of ’03 yet so I don’t know. It would be kind of nice to brag. “You are working in Newport, oh that’s great. Yeah I’m actually living in Costa Rica as an English Teacher for the year, but it’s not actually that exciting.” Yeah, that’d show ‘em who’s boss.
I’m starting to look into jobs for next year. Here, there and everywhere. I find myself torn between wanting to continue to work in non-profit or to go out and somehow make a ton of money so that I can pay someone else to do good deeds for me. Right now, I really like the looks of Operation Smile, Heifer International and UNICEF. We’ll see shall we? Also, I am apparently taking the Foreign Service exam while I am home. Let’s see how that pans out shall we?
Thanks for all of the wonderful birthday wishes. Can’t wait to see you.