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.