15 again

One of the odder aspects of this year has been that I am navigating being an adult in the real world for the first time, while at the same time feeling 15 at times

I feel 23 when I am standing in front of 25 6th graders for 80 minutes teaching about technological advances and their impacts on society... in English. Teaching science in English to Costa Rican elementary students is something I struggle with daily and I can not imagine trying to do it even a couple of years ago. I am living in a foreign country for a year with a more limited support system than I had in my study abroad program (not a criticism of WorldTeach, which does a lot to help me.) While I'm a volunteer, I am a full teacher in the sense that I do all the lesson planning and tests for my sections of science in English.

At the same time at times my life is like being 15 again in so many ways. Teaching in August makes me feel like I'm working at a summer camp, except more serious and without the songs. I eat the food I am served both at the school and at home.  I am reluctant to just grab food from the kitchen, not knowing what is needed for dinner that night.

I have amusing arguments with my host mom about who should do my laundry. One of the first things I did when I arrived in February was ask how to use the washing machine. Yesterday I started doing my laundry, but then my host mom told me to leave it and she would finish it. I tried to convince her I could finish it myself, but she was having none of it.  I was not going to argue about using her washing machine, but yeah, not being allowed to do my own laundry is not what I'm used to at 23.

Other things which make me feel 15: I walk or take the bus everywhere I go. I have limited spending money, even less than I did in college, because I can't have a part time job (which I probably would in the US, given the free time I have). I only have the stipend, which while not nothing does not go that far. Some of the emotional ups and downs have also reminded me of being 15, though of course the specific causes (culture shock and anxiety over my lack of teaching experience vs. normal adolescence) are different.

I do intend to do a better job of trying to figure out making food. That will help me if I feel I can get myself lunch without needing to wait for someone to serve me. I just don't want to do what my host sister did, when she made chicken in salsa with chicken the host mom was saving for chicken in rice. I can barely cook with ingredients I'm used to in the US, never mind here in a foreign language without recipes. Still, making rice and beans is not that hard.

(the title is a reference to the Zac Effron movie, which was pretty amusing to watch dubbed into Spanish with my 13 year old host brother)

Writing

Admitting to being an aspiring author is an odd thing, at least it is for me. For some I am sure it feels quite natural, people who have been writing since a young age. I am not one of them. I never took a creative writing course in college nor did I write much fiction in college. I for a while now been a some day person about writing fiction. Some day I'll write a book. Some day I'll sit down and write. 

Now I am trying to do more than say "some day", since some day can so easily become never.

Admitting on this blog that a dream of mine (however low the chances are) is to become a published author makes me wince inside. I am not sure why exactly I feel self-conscious about saying this. Maybe worried about appearing as a wannabe writer, but why that's bad I'm not clear on. Every published author spent some time as an unpublished writer. Most from what I've read spent  ten years working on their writing until they sold their first novel.

I do not plan on living at my parents writing forever and not looking for a job (don't worry Mom and Dad). I make a conscious effort here to make sure not to spend time I should be prepping for teaching writing. I am here to teach first, everything else second. While I am not perfect, I do my best. Still, I have plenty of free time, especially if I use my time wisely, to write here. No stranger than knitting, watching tv, reading a book or any of the other things people do in their free time.

Well, this is me telling the world (or at least the 5 people who read my blog) that I do intend on making an effort to someday be a published author. Right now my aim is to write a 1,000 words (at least) every day. For the past month (except my week at the beach) I have done a pretty good job. I have only missed a couple of days.

By tonight I will have finished 20,000 words. Not too bad. For now I am a writer, in time maybe I will become an author.

Quick story

I don't have time for a longer blog post since the internet at the school was not working today. I'm now trying to figure out how to teach a lesson about the history of electricity production in Costa Rica. Thankfully the ICE (the Costa Rican state-owned energy company) has a helpful description of its efforts. I will have to decide how to deal with the irony of it as I remember losing the power in all of Manuel Antonio during the final of the World Cup.

Quick story:  Yesterday, I was unsure of whether to be offended or take it as a compliment when two fifth grade girls came up to me and put a picture from a magazine up next to my face and said, "Mire, la misma cara!" (Look, the same face).  I had no idea what they were talking about as I was reading my email and did not see who it was.

As they turned and walked away, I asked them who was in the magazine picture. One of them turned her head and said, "Es Robert Pattinson!"

Teaching

I realized that I have not actually written about teaching in a while.  I mention it off-handedly like at the end of my previous post, but for the most part that is about all.  There are a couple of reasons for this, but this blog does not need to be me meta-analyzing why I post what I post.

This week marks the start of the second half of the second trimester.  What that means in non-confusing talk is that I am spending this week grading the tests from my 5th and 6th graders.  I am also going to be ramping up my teaching to my 2nd and 3rd graders since the next test in science for them will be in English.  The opposite is true for my 5th and 6th graders, who will be focusing somewhat more on science in Spanish.


I am still feeling like I am in over my head at times.  I do feel like I am a much better teacher now than I was even 3 months ago.  Obviously that is good.  I hope to continue to improve and not level out, since there are definitely many areas in which I could improve my teaching.

The next few months will also be taken up with me attempting to find some direction on what my next step(s) should be.  I will be applying to jobs from here though I am unsure of how I would do a phone interview.  Over skype?  Maybe I'll just time it so any phone interviews would be after I am home in early December.

The one goal I had which I do not feel I will be able to achieve was to figure out whether I want to be a teacher or not while here in Costa Rica.  I was talking to the director of World Teach, the program I am volunteering through, and she commented on how many volunteers come here because they think they might want to be teachers.  The problem with that is teaching here is so different from teaching in the US that it is not comparable.  Just having textbooks would make things so much different for me and for the students.  Not that I know of textbooks aimed at teaching science in English as a foreign language, but it would be nice if such textbooks existed and I had some

In more interesting and exciting news, Season 4 of the Guild has started up again!  

Back to Teaching

The reason why I have not updated my blog in 2 weeks is because I spent the last week in Manuel Antonio/ Quepos at the beach.  I did have internet access there, but not enough to devote time to writing a blog post. Manuel Antonio is in the southern part of Costa Rica on the Pacific side.

Manuel Antonio has the beaches and the national park.  I actually stayed in Quepos, which is a town over the hill from Manuel Antonio.  Quepos is a cool little town with an interesting mix of plantation workers taking time off from work, expats, and tourists all mingling.  While not aesthetically the nicest place, it had great little cafes and interesting places to find. 

My time at the beach was a lot of fun.  I did a bunch of generic tourist things like wandering around the national park and lying on the beach.  The weather did not cooperate for the second half of the week so I spent less time on the beach than I had planned.  That was not that big a deal because I was more than happy to stay in and read the books I had bought at the used book store I found in Quepos.

I went white-water rafting for the second time in a month which I enjoyed immensely.  The river was running really high since they had had a lot of rain in the days before I went.  This meant that the guide was actually somewhat unsure of how some of the different parts would run which made parts a little hairier than they might have been otherwise. 

For example, La Boca del Diablo (the Devil's Mouth) ended up being really tame because of how high the water was.  On the flip side, just below la boca del diablo, the guide directed the boat directly into a large hole, unintentionally.  Luckily only the guide was tossed from the boat, but it was still pretty intense.

I also watched the final of the World Cup from a bar in Manuel Antonio.  The bar had one tiny television, but it was the only place I could find where I could sit down to watch the game.  I'm used to watching sports on a tiny television from college, so it was fine.  The entire game was really exciting, with plenty of chances and lots of yellow cards. (Nigel de Jong definitely should've gotten a red card). 

In the 131st minute, seconds before the end of the game, the power went out in all of Manuel Antonio.  The entire town ran outside of wherever they were watching to try to find somewhere else to see the end of the game.  The power came back on a few minutes later with the Spanish players celebrating in the middle of the field, so I didn't miss anything important.

Now I am back to teaching, which is proving tough.  I need to sit down and focus on what I need to be teaching.  Well, there are only a couple of weeks left in July, soon it will be August.  I will be back in the US in December, before too long.

Quince Dias!

First day of vacation today in La Fortuna.  The vacation is called Quince Dias, which is how Costa Ricans say two weeks most of the time.  Hence, the vacation is for two weeks.  The first week I will be spending relaxing and hanging out in La Fortuna, while I will be off to Manuel Antonio and the Pacific Ocean for the second week.

This also marks the halfway mark on my time here in Costa Rica.  More specifically, it marks the halfway time of my teaching here, since I'm past halfway if I include orientation.  Still, its crazy to think that I'm halfway done with the school year.  At times it seems like this has been the longest 6 months of my life, but at the same time I know before too long it will be December and I will be back in the US.

I will be excited to be back in the US, though the recent jobs report makes me less than excited about job searching.  I was really hoping the economy would be adding jobs, not simply moving sideways.  Still, there's hope that in 6 months things are looking better. A second dip would be depressing on a number of levels.

Soccer

         Today I will be going to play soccer with a few of the teachers at the school.  I have been doing this for the past month once a week and its been great fun.  While its just a bunch of guys playing soccer, its still a higher level of soccer than I've played in years.  I need to work on making quicker decisions.  Too many times I end up staring at the other players, trying to figure out what I should be doing.
         I will hopefully play better tonight, though I've been failing to run over the past week.  I will have to work on conserving my energy, something I am not used to doing.  I'm used to ultimate frisbee, where there are unlimited subs and the goal is to go out and run as hard as you can.  Yes, you learn to take a breather in the stack, but generally you just run the entire time (or at least thats how I played).  Needless to say, this is not an intelligent way to play soccer.
      Well, if I end up sore tomorrow, I will be able to soak it off at the hot springs.  The school has organized a trip to the hot springs tomorrow night, which should be fun.  I have not been yet, so I'm excited to go see how they are. 
      Two more days until vacation!