Horse, Bus, Bus, Horse

How many of you leave work in the mid-afternoon and mount your horse to meet the bus carrying your child home from school?

And how many kids get up in the morning, ride their horse 20 minutes to reach the school bus stop, ride the bus to school, and then reverse the process in the afternoon? The pictures above show one of our students getting off the bus in the afternoon and riding home on her horse with her Dad.

There is also a picture of the aforementioned opposum.

Infidelity, Opposum and the Clinic

May 26, 2009

Lots of Weather

We are having lots of weather these days. It rains for several hours every day, usually on and off, and there have been many violent thunderstorms. Notice the mist in the first picture with this post. One day last week, we thought someone had dropped a bomb when a huge clap of thunder hit the school. It stopped me cold, and scared the bejeebers out of the kids. Today, I spent half and hour watching lightning bolts light up the sky like fireworks. Strangely, none were aimed at the earth; rather, all bolts ran parallel to the ground.

I took over the sixth grade today while their teacher was on a field trip with the fifth grade. We got a lot done in the morning and had a good time in the afternoon. I later realized this was essentially their last day of school since they have a class trip for the next two days and then they graduate on Friday.

Infidelity

One day, the Spanish teacher here told us that most Costa Rican men are known for cheating on their wives. It is just expected, she said.

Conversation between a preschooler and his teacher:
P: I want to be just like my Dad when I grow up.
T: That’s nice- what is it that you especially like about your Dad?
P: He has 85 girlfriends.
T: Oh, goodness. I hope you are NOT like your father in that way. It is not right for a man to have so many girlfriends, especially when he has a wife. It really isn’t fair to your mother.
P: It’s okay, because she is his favorite.

Traditional Transportation

Another conversation between a teacher and a student who lives extremely far from the school:
T: So, how do you get to school?
S: I ride my horse 20 minutes to the bus stop, then take the bus.

Dogs

I have heard this conversation several times now:
Person 1: Is that your dog over there?
Person 2: Sort of.
Dogs sort of belong to everyone here. Case in point- Baxter followed her owners to school again today and, when they took the bus home, she was left behind. I saw her at 4:30 sitting next to one of her owners’ backpacks which also had been left behind. I grabbed the backpack and coaxed her to follow me. She stayed with me partway down the school hill, then disappeared. Now, Kaz and her owner have gone on a Baxter-finding mission. It is dark and raining. I hope they find her.

May 25, 2009

Opposum

The fourth graders found an animal in one of the “traps” on campus today. Unfortunately, they had not un-set the traps for the weekend, and the animal had been trapped in a bucket for awhile. Dolly and I went to investigate and found an opossum in the bucket. It looked dead, so Dolly took a couple of sticks and fished it out. In doing so, the opossum moved and opened its mouth. Well, duh, we said, it’s an opossum- it’s probably playing dead. However, s/he looked pretty slow, so we put it back in the bucket and brought it back to our office to attempt to revive it. Dolly gave up part of her chicken lunch, and I sacrificed a piece of carrot bread I’d just bought from some kids. We also fashioned a water “bowl” from a plastic cup and lowered it down into the bucket. The opossum didn’t seem interested in any of it. After a few hours, Dolly took the animal back into the woods and left it there. Regrettably, we don’t expect s/he survived.

May 24, 2009

We joined the school staff and families end-of-year trip to Samara for the weekend. Samara is a town on the Pacific Ocean with a lovely bay surrounded by coconut trees. At least an hour of the 3+ hour drive was on unpaved mountain roads, which are unavoidable no matter which direction you take out of Monteverde.

May 21, 2009

The Emergency Clinic

It still surprises me that no one has an address here. All addresses are given as directions from landmarks. I had to take Alvaro to the emergency clinic yesterday, and the business card of the clinic has its address as, “Across from the Cerro Plano School.” And, of course, the intake forms at the clinic do not ask for the patient's address. Just a name, age, and nationality will do.

So, the kids had rigged up several intersecting ropes attached to trees and had a burlap sack with straw tied on somehow so they could hang onto the sack and “fly” when the others pulled the ropes in a certain coordinated way. Unfortunately, Alvaro had his hand on the rope when three big guys jerked the rope from the other direction. Alvaro’s wrist was ripped back and he said he thought his fingers were going to rip off. His wrist and hand swelled up, he could not move his fingers, and he was in tremendous pain. He went to Dolly, not because she is the school nurse or anything (the school secretary sort of doubles as the school nurse), but probably because he has a good relationship with Dolly and because he knows she gets things done. We both felt he needed to go to the clinic, so I took him.

The doctor, Johnnie Wong (see photo), who speaks fluent Spanish and passable English, was wearing what most doctors wear to work- a T-shirt and jeans. He gave Alvaro a shot of pain killers, thoroughly examined him, and eventually strapped a piece of wood to his hand and arm to stabilize them. He prescribed some pain killers and told Alvaro to get an xray today if the pain did not subside. Postscript: the pain did not subside and Alvaro had to hire a driver to take him the two hours to the nearest xray machine. Turns outs, he broke a couple of bones in his hand, so he came back with a nice cast.

Dunk the Director

Yes, that is Kaz throwing the football at the target to Dunk the Director. He missed, but the next guy hit it square on.

Collage, George, Waterfall

Kaz and Deb at one of the waterfalls in the area.
Kaz with George at the School Fair last Saturday.
Kaz making collages.

Visit from a Monkey

May 17, 2009
At 4:00am, I heard the sliding doors of our house moving and then some rustling in the kitchen. I assumed Kaz had opened the doors to get cool air and was having a snack. Kind of a weird thing for him to do at 4:00am, but whatever, I thought. After awhile, I got out of bed to see what was going on. The sliding doors were open about four inches, but no one was around and nothing seemed amiss. I closed the doors and went back to bed. When I awoke later, I noticed that an animal had eaten parts of a loaf of bread and knocked onto the floor a package of cookies. I asked around all day to see what explanations people had for this, then concluded that a monkey must have visited- opened the doors, eaten the bread, and run off when I came out of my room. Only in Monteverde!

Kaz has gotten into making collages using recycled materials, and even sold one for about $4. He also reads, goes to the waterfall, and visits friends in his spare time. This morning, he went with friends to a local hotel that has a pool. He is having a great time here, has really grown up a lot, and has told me repeatedly that he does not want to leave.

This afternoon, we went walking with our friend George. George had a double hip replacement recently and needs to exercise daily. His main form of exercise is walking and he cannot walk alone because if he falls, he cannot get up on his own. Lord knows, it is easy to fall around here with all the rocky roads and uneven trails. Our walk from George’s house took us past loaded blackberry and raspberry patches, and we returned with bags full of berries. George convinced us to stay for dinner, and we were joined by two “couch surfers” staying with him, his neighbor Jesse (6th grade teacher at the school) and Jesse’s wife, baby, and 11 year-old son. We all had a wonderful time. What an interesting, diverse group of people- the sort of group you might find only in Monteverde. Kaz was doubly thrilled because he was able to call friends in the U.S. free of charge from George’s computer, and was able to borrow six DVDs from George’s collection of over 400 movies.

The pictures below are old- from April when Kamila and Michael were still here and Dave was visiting. Kamila and Michael made us some excellent meals; one is shown, and the picture of all of us was taken in our "new" house by putting the camera on top of the refrigerator and setting the self-timer to take the picture for us.

All in a Day's Work

Planting and watering a tree, painting a trail sign, and preschoolers playing duck, duck, goose with fifth graders.

Only in Monteverde

Only at the Cloud Forest School would a Spanish class have only two students and be held in a tree. The teacher, Lilliam, usually stays on the ground, but the kids just love to be in the tree outside their classroom. All classrooms have easy access to the outside and the kids are accustomed to studying outdoors. I just had to take a picture of this class.


And only at the Cloud Forest School would I be allowed to "teach" woodworking in the equivalent of a carport outside my office. I love this picture because of the way the table Daniel is working on in the foreground frames the other three kids who are working in the background.



And only in Monteverde would a lizard look so much like a snake. We saw tons of these near the Arenal volcano. Stunning critters.

Random Thoughts and Pictures

May 3, 2009
Everyone has been talking about how they awaken at 5:00 these days. It gets light so early and is as bright as noon by 6:00 am. Of course, we are also falling asleep in our chairs by 9:00pm. And the rains are slowly returning. Today, it rained like crazy from 1:00-4:00. The rainy season doesn’t usually begin until mid-May, but the locals say the weather here has been strange for a long time now.
I’ve decided there is nothing as beautiful as a toucan flying across a valley. I saw one yesterday while on a hike with Dolly. It was just spectacular, and I realized I had never seen one fly in its natural environment before. In fact, I think every toucan I’ve ever seen, and maybe even every picture of a toucan I’ve ever seen, shows the bird motionless, sitting on a limb somewhere. We were in the same area after dark, and saw a spider that looked like a see-through, neon green alien, an impressive orange and black tarantula, a huge leaf-cutter ants’ nest, an agouti, a pisote, a bat, some click beetles with glow-in-the-dark “headlight” eyes, etc.
The other day, I heard a woman yelling to her daughter, “Venga!” Then, our landlady was yelling to her dog, “Venga!” trying to get her to come away from the cliff at the far end of the yard. For a second, I thought all the children and dogs in Monteverde had been named Venga, then I remembered it means, “Come (here)!”
Last Friday, I taught Civics to sixth graders. The kids started out testing me a whole lot. I stayed very calm, laughed at them, and kept pleading with them to talk one at a time so I could hear. One student made a comment in Spanish about why I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear everything he said, so I just replied, “I can’t hear because I am OLD!” They of course thought that was funny and it sort of broke the ice.
Eventually, they could see I was going to keep waiting until they could be quiet and listen to me and each other. They calmed down, and we were able to make collages showing examples of all the values the book wanted us to learn. We talked about rules and values such as community-mindedness, environmental-mindedness, and personal responsibility.
Then, we had some fun. I asked the kids what rules they would like to see in their community. Among other things, they said they would like to have the right to drink when they are 6 and drive when they are 8. Eventually, we stopped being silly and got around to considering what the roads might actually be like with drinking, driving 8 year-olds out there!

Kaz Pics

Some pictures of Kaz ziplining, climbing a waterfall and hanging out with his wonderful friends. The most American-looking boy, redheaded Jonathan, was born and raised here and has never been outside Costa Rica.

Kaz has lost a lot of weight since we arrived and grown a little taller, so all his pants drag on the ground and are falling apart. His sneakers and socks are completely worn through from all the tough walking, and his shirts are torn and filthy beyond relief from all the tree and waterfall climbing and general messing around in the woods. He lost both jackets he brought. I don't believe we will be bringing very many of his clothes home in June.

Isaac's Departure

Just a few final pictures of Isaac's departure. One shows a group hug the kids gave him right before he left campus, one shows the crowd of students who gathered to see him off, and the posed photo shows all the kids who marched off campus the next afternoon to take cake to Isaac's house and say one last tearful goodbye. (Everyone looks fine in the picture, but there were a lot of tears later.)

In the first two pictures, Isaac is wearing a red shirt. In all three, he is wearing his green cap. In the posed photo, you'll see Kaz front and center and Isaac's wife Tracy with braids (second row toward the right side).

The school community is still up in arms about Isaac's dismissal. It will be interesting to see how everything unfolds from here.