27 Months of La Pura Vida

July 25, 2015

Well "vacation" is officially over and I am suddenly going from doing absolutely nothing everyday to have something to do almost everyday but so is life here in Costa Rica.  This past week I officially began my community English classes and am offering 2 classes for the escuela kids, 2 classes for the colegio students and one classes for adults.  Each class has been about an hour each and designed so that every student is more or less forced to participate through a lot of activities and the ability to listen to other students make the same mistakes.  Each class was a little better than the previous as I learned a little more on how to best manage the students and the classroom.  For the most part though, the students were extremely motivated and very happy to have the opportunity to be learning English, especially the younger kids.  

This weeks lesson was the basic greetings and despedidas (goodbyes  I guess in English) as well as answering the question "How are you?".  The first class with the young kids was a bit of a disaster since I had planned the lesson around using a projector and a PowerPoint presentation so when I had to present without that, I got thrown off a little.  Also the class had kids ranging from 4-15 years old (still unsure why there are 15 year olds in the escuela) so some of the activities weren't very well suited for the older kids.  Another big problem was that the older kids were more vocal and the younger kids were a lot more timid.  During some of the activities, the older kids would "help" the younger kids with what to say by just saying it louder than the young kids.  And lastly, I think it was much harder to see if any of the really young kids actually did learn anything because they were so quiet and reluctant to talk.  

However, as I learned how to best utilize the activities and how to best keep the students motivated and participating, each class got a little better.  The only other challenge was the adult class.  Because of lack of communication (I suppose on my part), only 3 adults showed up to the right class (2 were in the colegio class and 2 in the escuela class...) so the activities took a lot less time, they received less practice and we ended after only a 35 minute class.  However, after talking with more adults in the community just through my normal day-to-day activities, I found that a number of adults were unaware that classes had started and when the classes were.  I had put flyers up in the pulperia, the church and the cooperativa but I guess the message still didn't get out to everyone in time.  However, in total I had 19 students in my first escuela class, 16 in my first colegio class, 3 adults, 5 in the second escuela class and 18 in my second colegio class (61 people total this week and expecting to grow!)

This past Wednesday was also the community Spelling Bee (and I was a judge!!), an annual event that was actually started here in Costa Rica 2 years ago (I think) by a Peace Corps Response volunteer.  This year, along with the traditional Spelling Bee portion, there was also an "Impromptu Speech" portion where students had to choose a topic among 2 options and then deliver a speech (in English) about that topic.  Each speech differed based on grade level but lengths ranged from about 10 seconds to maybe 30 seconds maximum, but it was a great opportunity to see the abilities of the students and see that there is a genuine need for more English help in the community.  The Spelling Bee was a traditional Spelling Bee in the sense that students had to spell an English word that I chose out of a bag.  The winner was, of course, a student named Henry who represented the school last year in the National Spelling Bee and is the same student that has taught himself English.  He is also the only student who actively sought my help to prepare for the spelling bee (and saved me from complete boredom over the vacation break).  Needless to say, he is an incredibly motivated kid that cannot wait to move onto university and study Languages, engineering or something to do with art (can't remember exactly right now).  In a way its a shame he will be leaving at the end of the year because there are some many programs and classes that would be perfect for a motivated, intelligent student like him.

Also, finally had a small small breakthrough with the Cooperativa.  By this I mean, we actually met for about 10 minutes the other day.  And by we, I mean me and two other members.  And when I say met, they asked me to "help" organize their financial information for the past 4 years.....at least they are starting to do something.  I had to do more research to make sure I know what the hell i'm doing with accounting, but will be meeting again with my counterpart tomorrow to hopefully just explain how to keep their books in order.  Fingers crossed that I will actually be able to doing something business oriented!

Lastly, possibly in the coming week, I will finally be starting my long awaited community computer classes.  The only problem is that I will be out of site for the majority of August between ID appointments in San Jose, a regional meeting, and a week and a half long training at the end of August.  I am a little hesitant to start now only to take almost a month break in less than three weeks but I have had a lot of community members pretty constantly asking when I will be starting.

So besides all the classes and (hopefully) some business activities with the Coop, life is finally coming together here.  I really honestly feel a whole lot more comfortable with holding conversations in Spanish, slowly beginning to actually understand when people are talking to me, and most importantly, feeling less bored!  On that note, we did really unfortunately lose our third volunteer this week due to his extreme isolation and loneliness in site.***  Each time its so tough because I always feel like the volunteer that's leaving is so much more suited for this work and so much more qualified.  And I think the scariest part is how easily that could be me.  But this is a commitment and one that I am here to complete and hopefully hopefully hopefully actually provide some positive change for at least one person here.  Step by step, day by day!

-Conor

***Update: Volunteer decided to stay but switch sites to a new location from the south of Limon to a site near Volcan Turrialba in the province of Cartago.