First Day of Class

Monday, 26 November

For breakfast, Mileidy cut up fresh fruit and provided cereal. I told her that I do not like milk in my cereal and she gave me a ‘really’ look. She asked if I like toast and I said yes thinking that she would give it to me tomorrow, but instead she made it right away.

A group of us met up around 7:30 to walk to school. We were supposed to be at school by 8, but we did not get going until at least 8:30 when they loaded us into buses and we went up the hill to el aerio (or something like that). This place has a real c-130 type of cargo plane with part of the restaurant inside the plane and the rest around the plane. The place was on the top of a hill and overlooked the pacific – it was very beautiful and a shame that I did not have my camera. At the restaurant, we played the name game to get to know everyone and then we were given fruit and rolls. This was the first sighting of monkeys.

The class has 17 students, mostly from the US, with a few from Canada, one from England and one from Australia. There are 5 staff members – 2 are our main instructors, 1 is from an indeginous village that will teach us his language (Burucan) so we can see what it is like to learn a new language, and the other 2 are the director and admin.

Back in class, we got our first lesson in how to teach to a group that does not know your language. Basically, you use pictures for the keywords, teacher repetition and student participation. This seemed fine until after lunch when Omar gave the same lesson by teaching us his Burucan language in Burucan. When this happened almost all of us were lost, confused and frustrated at the technique for we were only being taught 3 words out of 6 sentences and it would have been nice to know what we were saying.

We got split into groups to present our own dialogue to the class tomorrow. Big surprise, I ended being the odd man out so I am going solo for this project since there is an odd number of students. My keywords are Arenal, hot springs and weekend (I will try to post the pictures that I created later).

Learned that the school has wi-fi. Yeah! Katie and I tried an internet cafe next to the beach today. I had high hopes for it supported skype, but alas, the connection kept dropping. I do not plan on going back to that one. Afterwards, I came home and studied my lesson for tomorrow. Trying to get enough of it in my head without having a script so I can play it by ear.

At dinner we met another student that is now staying with us – Bill. He is taking a 5 day immersion class at school in Manuel Antonio Another great dinner of veggie soup and rice. After dinner we went to the s2000 (supper market) to look for food for lunch (since we are on our own). Afterwards we met up with Cheryl and Beth and took a walk around parts of town.