Thursday 11/13/08

The mornings are beginning to become somewhat of a routine (it’s strange what a wonderful thing familiarity can be) and we left the house as usual around 6:45 to get to school by 7. This morning I went to the morning English classes with Adolfo, who teaches English to the 4th through 6th graders. Many of the kids in these classes (including my youngest brother) have been begging me to come to their classes instead of the 1st through 3rd grade classes with Junior. So this morning, I went spent the morning teaching simple sentence structures with “to do” and “to be”. There was a longer than usual gap between the morning and afternoon school session and so all the teachers ate lunch together in the “comedor” (small “cafeteria” like room). We spent the midday laughing about the upcoming teacher Secret Santa gift exchange. The teachers were creating their lists of what they would and would not like to receive as gifts. Their lists had everything from Victoria Secret to Pringles and I was the official “list reader” since I could probably pronounce the brands. I went back to my normal 1st through 3rd grade classes for the afternoon session and reviewed nature and animals. The kids got really competitive with a game I created to make the review more fun. Ironically, one of my 2nd grade classes did better than one of my 3rd grade classes in terms of memorizing the names of the different natural resources and animals. It was a beautifully sunny yet ridiculously hot and humid day. As hot and humid as it was, I simply enjoyed the fact that I was in the intense sunshine in the middle of November (knowing that back home it’d be about that time of the year in which I’m wearing the pea coat and a few layers underneath and still freezing. It’ll be a rough change in climate when I come home in December). I came home and began reading the book that I went all the way to San Jose to retrieve yesterday. Around 5, Maria, Jose Manuel and I headed to Puerto Viejo to run some errands. One of our errands was a failed attempt to find chocolate chips. Andres, my middle brother, wants to make chocolate chip cookies for a school project since they are a treat I’ve mentioned I know how to make. Unfortunately, chocolate chips are no where to be found here in La Virgen nor in Puerto Viejo (the barely bigger town 15 km away). We had a nice dinner together and spent the rest of the evening (literally hours!) sharing stories of bad accidents (e.g. broken bones, scars and stitches and anything and everything that entailed a good story that made the tummy a little queezy). Andres (middle brother) had the best stories to tell including four different incidences of broken bones. The night ended with the sweet words from my family telling me how much I’ve become part of the family. For my parents, Licho and Maria, I’m the daughter they never had (or rather they lost due to a stillborn baby girl). For the boys, I’m the “cool older sister” they claim “they’ve always wanted”. Although I truly love and feel loved by my family in San Jose, the way love is expressed and lived out in the “campo” (countryside of Costa Rica) is much much different and in my opinion much more profound. It was simply one of those nights I will truly never forget.