Day 2 of Classes

Tuesday, 27 November

Did not sleep well again last night due to some wacked-out dreams just like last night. I am not sure, but they may have been the same dreams. I am thinking that I am just stressed about what is going on and it is effecting my dreams. It may be due to the heat in the room, but I do not think so.

Breakfast today was granola, yogurt and fruit. I do not know if I am going to be able to eat this much every day. It started to rain during breakfast and Meilady had an extra umbrella that I could borrow. Turns out Katie was waiting for me at the corner with a cab, so I did not half to walk up the hill in the rain. The class started with the first warm-up by Dorothy and Judy where we had to organize ourselves by the city we live in. Point of this is to get us comfortable for the lesson, bring up review topics, and/or prepare students for the next lesson. I am presenting a warm-up on Friday with Katie and Angela and we have no idea what we are doing yet.

They split our class into two groups so that we could present our dialogue to our ‘students’. I went first in my group and did alright. The others did a great job and some of them were very good at expressing, communicating and leading the students. Definitely learned some new techniques from them. We then picked up with where left off from yesterday’s session with learning how to take the 6 lines of dialogue and make the 3 words variable so that we can teach them knew words without having to teach them all new sentences. For instance, we were talking about places to go and what to do there so: school, study, play; restaurant, eat, drink; etc. The other half of class that did not present this morning gets to present this technique tomorrow and since I was the odd man out, I get to present again. Yeah!

At lunch I tried to use the wi-fi to check email and write blog posts but the power went out so I was not able to do much. The rain seemed to have stopped sometime just before lunch.

After lunch was our second Borucan lesson using the same technique we learned in the morning session. This session was nowhere near as challenging as yesterdays and I think a lot of us were able to learn more today. We were also told that this weekend is a field trip to Boruca if enough people sign up. We will get to see how they weave their fabrics, paint, make masks out of wood, etc. We will then be told the history of the village and drink the local brew – some kind of corn drink that ‘will get you drunk fast’. We then will stay the night with a family and on Sunday go to a local waterfall and swim. I want to go and hopefully enough of the others to do.

Next was the independent time to create the presentations for the next day. For some reason I was going really slow for everyone finished and left by the time I was half way done. Maybe if I had a partner I could have finished when they did. Katie was nice enough to stick around and color in my drawings for me so I would not have to stay there too long. My main subject is sightseeing in Costa Rica and I have the following sets: arenal, hot springs, next weekend; monteverde, zip line, saturday, jaco, surfing, monday. Hopefully I will not go first tomorrow for I want to see how others present theirs first.

Katie signed up for the gym on the way down the hill and I would have except I did not have enough cash. So Katie stayed to workout and I left with Blythe who was just leaving the gym. When we got back I put my presentation together and practiced a few times. I then needed a mindless activity so I re-created my playlists on my laptop since it is a new machine and I have not created them here yet. I then went to the s2000 market (s dos mil) to get some fruit for lunch. Yesterday, Blythe bought stuff for sandwiches and she and I are going share the food and next time I will by the supplies.

Tonight was rice, beans, salad and basically what is equivalent to an omelette – it was good. Afterwards Blythe watched tv with the fam, Judy, Cheryl and Beth went to a local bar to get a margarita and I stayed in to finish my foreign language journal and put some blog posts together. Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to post them.

Here’s to a good night’s rest…