Patagonia

The airport in Trelew...the whole airport.

17 mile hike to Fitz-Roy/Land Before Time pt. 5

Super windy

Trekking on the glacier

Collecting clean glacier water

Mom, ready for hardcore whale watching

School's out

This week there was no school Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so Tuesday was my last day. My last few days at the school were very laid back and I mostly just enjoyed being with the kids. Its sad to have to say goodbye and I miss them already. The feeling of being part of a community in foreign country, with people I had never met prior, is both unique and unexpectedly comforting. It's reassuring to know that good people like them exist and share the same world as me.


In the background is the main entrance of the school. Behind that is the sugarcane factory where most of the children's fathers work. I met the owner the other day. He came to the school to check things out because he donates money regularly for upkeep:


My surprise going away party:


The woman in the middle is the English teacher I worked with, Vielka, she's really beautiful.

Manty Ants

Last weekend we went to another touristy town called Manuel Antonia. We relaxed most of the time and on Sunday Becky, Phil, and I walked around the National Park.


We went to an open house for some new condos in Manuel Antonio. If anyone is interested, this is the view from the balconies.


A herd of cows added another fifteen minutes to our six hour trip:

Centro Duirno

I went to an elderly day center last week because there was no school. It was a lot of fun. Everyone there is a character. the man in the picture above is 102 and still participates in the daily aerobics (which are done to instrumental reggae versions of The Sound of Silence). The woman he's standing with has the nickname Gossip Queen. I played a rousing UNO and was beaten by a cheater who was not remotely slick with any of his moves. We also had an intense game of Bingo that did not end in tears but throwing beans at one another instead. It was a fun day and definitely very relaxing compared to school.

The man below is named Santiago but we just call him The Don.

Pictures

More picture from Escuela:

Jah Live

We took a gruesome 6 hour drive out to the carribean coast last weekend to a town called Puerto Viejo. Puerto Viejo is completely rasta-ed out. Everything is covered in red, yellow, and green and I was asked 15 times if I wanted to be given dred-locks. Our room at the hostel was empty with the exception of two stained beds, a pipe sticking out of the wall as a shower, and some sort of red powder on the floor that mysteriously stained everything. None of that really mattered to us though because the beachfront was right in our backyard. The water was really nice and aside from some awful food experiences I won't go into, we had a good time.

There were two pigs hanging out on the beach with us...probably Phil's dinner.

Waterfall

For last weeks day trip we went to the La Fortuna waterfall. It's the one the zip-lining went over. We all just sat on the rocks in the water next to it. The leaves looked really cool because they were moving in waves along with the wind from the water. I've seen a lot of waterfalls, in Israel and such, but this one was the most beautiful and impressive.

Talented Tuesdays

Becky and I made everyone in the house participate in talent show the second week. We thought it would be a good bonding experience, and we were also just bored. Everyone here makes fun of our Chicago accents, especially when we say words like talented.

Here is a picture of the the kids in the house. They made masks and crawled in a circle for 10 minutes singing a Disney song:

One of my good friends here is leaving this weekend so we're having a costume party at the local Pizza hut.

Escuela

Becky came with me to school and took a picture of me teaching

This past week at school has been fun but also very difficult. Like I said before, the kids don't have a lot of context for the text and vocabulary that's taught, so after class it's usually forgotten. I decided that giving them a basic grammar lesson would help with their comprehension of the readings. English is my favorite subject but I always hated Grammar and I don't have a strong knowledge of all the rules. Planning the lesson with my teacher turned out to be really frustrating. I had to teach her what I wanted to teach the students, and explain the activities I had in mind. Grammar is difficult enough as it is and the rules don't always make sense. Given the differences between English and Spanish some of the concepts are almost impossible for the kids to grasp. Class ended up going pretty well but I'm working on more ideas for next week.

Doing review of lessons is also something that the teacher doesn't do very much of. I think she's starting to understand how important it is and I'm in the process of making simple tests for all the grades. Today I had white pineapple.

Last Friday was the celebration of a holiday here called The Day of the Cultures. The holiday is pretty much a day to give recognition to all the different nationalities that make up Costa Rica. Here they have Nicaraguans, Italian Nicaraguans, Germans, Blacks, Chinese, Canadians, Americans etc. On The Day of the Cultures the kids learn about what each group has brought to Costa Rica and the importance of respecting one another. The kids got dressed up and performed dances they had been practicing all week. Once again, they were adorable and I had a lot of fun.

P.S. I finally brought my camera to school so I'm putting up a lot of pictures.