S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G Bees

Since April, my life has been taken over by conversation clubs and Spelling Bees.

Spelling Bees were first introduced last year by a small group of Peace Corps Volunteers and it was so successful that more regions of Costa Rica are participating!  This is the first year that my region is participating.  Last year, spelling bees were done in schools that only had volunteers, but this year we are encouraging more schools to participate.

In my region there are 24 schools participating and only four have volunteers currently working there in some capacity.  Since I work at the central office for my area, I am in charge of coordinating the different competitions as well as be an honored guest to as many competitions as I can.

While this is a huge (and sometimes frustrating) project, I have enjoyed seeing the students have success in spelling words in their second language.  That is correct, students are competing in a spelling bee in their second language.

I have seen students spell words correctly that they had not studied, students talk to me in English, and teachers present the whole competition in English.  This is the first time, that I have gotten to go to many of these schools and it is so cool to see how the teachers work and interact with their students.

This is a great project.

I will leave you with pictures from each spelling bee that I have been lucky enough to be a part of.

Telling them they all advanced to the next level

A friend, who is not participating, is helping him study for the bee 

Meeting the President

So a few weeks ago, President Obama was visiting Costa Rica for 22 hours to be part of a meeting with many of the Central American presidents.  He made time from his busy schedule to have a "meet and greet" with the Embassy workers and Peace Corps Volunteers/staff.

The Hubs and I promptly decided that we cannot let this opportunity pass us.  We rearranged our schedule and jumped on an early bus with another Volunteer the day he was to appear.  We got to our PC office and changed into our uniforms with our credentials.

Then we hopped in a van to take us to see the President!  The buses were unable to go directly to his hotel, safety reasons, so we walked and chatted about who is going to get a handshake, high five, or fist bump.

We had to wait a little bit once we were in the hotel because Air Force One had not landed yet.

We watched Air Force One land on a giant screen and him drive through the closed down streets of San Jose.

Then he was there!

The Ambassador of Costa Rica introducing him

Telling us what a great job we are doing

Once he got there, he gave a short thank you speech for the work the Embassy and Peace Corps Volunteers where doing.  It was nice to hear thank you from this great man.

Then he did a quick hand shaking, photo taking walk and ran to his next meeting.

Do you notice that there is an advantage to being tall?

The Hubs ended up getting a handshake.

After he ran to his meeting with the Costa Rican president we took pictures of course!

That's the Presidential Seal behind us

Almost all of surviving Tico 23

While his meeting was short, it was very neat to hear President Obama say, "thank you" and be that close to the current president of the US.  That will never happen again in my life time.