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!