Posting an Update

Who can believe we are at the end of January???  I thought the days and months were supposed to drag on after the fun of the holiday season!

February means the Hubs and I have been living in Costa Rica for two years!  We moved February 22, 2012 (the Little Brother's birthday).  February also means that we official have 3 months left in our quaint little town.  With only 3 months left we can no longer take vacation (which is fine since we used all 48 days+ 2 leave without pay days).  It means we are finally following through with promises to visit friends' communities.  Finishing up projects, helping our counterparts prepare for the year without us (we have some major things happening in our school and area!), enjoying our 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the beach, fresh fruit, walking everywhere, and saying good bye.

But I want to save the official reflect and goodbye posts till a later date.  Today's post is to fill you in on what we have been doing in January.

January is still our summer vacation time in Costa Rica.  The Hubs and I had no real plans on how to spend it.  Many of our fellow volunteers held a camp called Jump Start. Jump Start is a month long intensive English camps for incoming 7th graders.  High schools in Costa Rica start with 7th grade.  While Costa Rica is striving to be bilingual, with a focus on English, many of our elementary schools do not have English classes.  This is because of funding, smaller schools do not have the funding to have anything but the regular teacher(s).  So Jump Start is to help offset the inequality of English in the 7th grade schools.  Since many schools feed into the same high school, there will be students who have had the full 6 years of English, no English, and somewhere in between.  The camps are currently led by Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) and supported by public school teachers.  The camp is free to all students who make their way to camp by foot, bike, or bus.  The students receive fun and engaging lessons on basic English, and they walk away for the experience with irreplaceable confidence and knowledge of the language.

Picture from a Jump Start last year

The Hubs and I decided to be more in a supportive role for these camps instead of hosting our own.  There is a camp with 40 students being hosted at the large high school across town by our geographically closest volunteer (she is about 15 minute bus ride away).  She is helped by a couple from the States (who willingly paid to come and volunteer in a camp AND live with a Tico family) as well as two Tico teachers.  The Hubs has been going to the camp when he can to relieve the PCV of teaching so she can accomplish any administrative tasks she is called to do.  We also visited another PCV, who lives and works about 1 1/2 hour bus ride away, to interview her little darlings.  Part of this project is to track the progress of these students.  So all little darlings are interviewed at the beginning of camp, again at the end, and possibly throughout the school year.

January is a busy month in Santa Cruz.  We have our annual fiestas which include fair rides, bull riding, vendors, concerts, loud music in general, greasy good food, and drinking.  We tried to go out everyday at some point.  Sadly, we did not cheer on the bull watch the bulling riding very much this year.  But we enjoyed seeing friends and volunteers while eating and laughing until our hearts were content.

Again from last year.  I need to get on this picture taking thing

We celebrated our favorite six year old's birthday.  Our neighbors'/landlords' son turned six this month.  We partied hard.  haha  He loves the payasos (see picture below), so we had a parade with them leading up to the party area.  We dressed as good Guanacasticos do and "helped" the kids get the candy from the piñata.

Those tall, masked things are payasos

CANDY!

That joyful boy in the middle is the birthday boy with his family and friends

Last week we spent time in the capitol for a spelling bee meeting with the regional English leaders and for the National Teaching English Conference.

Three years ago, the spelling bee was a dream and now we are preparing for an opportunity for a nation wide competition next year.  We are also readying everything to give the responsibility to the leaders and teachers soon, oh so soon.  What an opportunity to talk to the leaders and vice minister about a project our organization created!  Many leaders were excited to get this project started in their district.  My counterpart and I even got to share our experience of leading 24 schools in our first ever spelling bee last year!  

This is my second year to present at the NTEC Conference.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  Last year, the Hubs and I co-presented, but this year he decided he would rather volunteer with some of the behind the scenes things.  This year I had one presentation on classroom procedures and the other on classroom management.  I had a blast (and the Hubs even said I was goofy and funny-win)!  The teachers were responsive and full of ideas.  What a great experience all around. 

Now that we are saying "Adios!" to January, we are welcoming Febuary with the annual Super Bowl party.  Don't worry we will be streaming the game live on a computer to see the commercials.  Then we will help with a few Jump Start activities next week as they finish out their camps.  Beach trips are in order this month.  And our Close of Service (COS) conference to round out the ever short month.  

Here's to 2014!