We Wish You a Merry Christmas

After two months of intermittent training I was finally ready to bury my Christmas Chorus. I had just come back from a week of training in San Jose, graduation was in 3 days and I was sure not only that my students had forgotten the song, but also that the principal, who had never been too interested, had forgotten about the Chorus' existence. I was surprised when I walked into her office that morning and was informed that my choir was the only thing anyone had prepared for graduation, that we were performing in three days, and that I needed to call everyone immediately and have a practice in an hour and a half.
Such was my brusque welcome to the little discussed dark side of the 'pura vida' atmosphere: the sudden virulent panic that sets in before anything important happens. I threw myself in with gusto, making this week of school parties and graduations the busiest week of school I've had in months. One night I spent four hours inflating balloons, I helped my host mother clean the school kitchen, and we practiced. Different groups of students showed up every day, and I was not told a definite time for the graduation until the day before.
It was raining hard the day of the ceremony, and I was surprised that when I got to school a swarm of ready chorus members surrounded me as I pulled off my rain clothes. I started to get more and more nervous as the time came for my students to perform. As the ceremony wore on parents started grumbling in the back, the song was the last thing on the schedule. When the time came I sprang up with my songsters, organized them quickly, turned on the music, and they started singing.



I could not be more proud of them.

Merry Christmas, Everyone.

News from Nowhere

Whenever I arrive at my most distant school after a long bike ride I like to go to the little store nearby for a cup of coffee to re-energize me before class starts. While I was gingerly sipping the from the steaming cup, one of my student's grandfather approached me cautiously and asked permission to ask me a question. He pressed a coin into my palm and asked me what country it was from. I studied the engraved animal on the front and the writing on the back and told him about a magical place where pizza flows like water and video-arcades make children into the very zombies they are so desperately killing. The coin was from Chucky Cheese.



A little while ago our neighbor broke the glass part of the coffee machine again. This time it wasn't her two year old crawling over the top of the sofa, it was the 12 year-old smashing it down on the counter after filling his thermos for the afternoon shift of his construction job. The neighbor promised to pay for it, but it would take her a few months to save up the money. In the interval we introduced a new form of making coffee, not the traditional way of pouring it through a hanging filter (because boiling the water means spending money on gas, or taking the effort of lighting the wood stove), instead we first poured the water into a pot that fit under the coffee maker. Next we transferred the water to an aluminum pitcher, so that we could pour it into the coffee machine without spilling. Then the normal coffee process took place. Once all the coffee was in the pot, we poured it back into the pitcher to transfer it into the thermos so that it wouldn't get cold. Once it got 'stale' (after 3 hours) the process would start anew. In October I spent the majority of my time outside of school making coffee.



My host uncle was trying to become a real estate agent. He somehow made a connection with a lawyer in San Jose who wanted to buy land for a hotel, and desperately trying to get him interested in buying a plot of land above my neighborhood. "In order to seal the deal I just need to send him some pictures, especially of the ocean view" he complained. I agreed to help him send the pictures he took with his cellphone, but the quality was too low for the lawyer. Since I was already involved I soon found myself riding my bike up past the creek with my camera to take pictures that the lawyer could actually use. The owner, a very sweet man whose family hosted Peace Corps volunteers in the 1970s, walked me all around the property. He took me to see some surreal insects that have only been documented inside the National Park, and we walked around to where his friend had placed some butterflies in chrysalis. We happened to be there when several of them were hatching out and spreading their wings. Then, on the way back we ran into a group of Squirrel Monkeys (the cutest monkeys). I had no idea that so much of what I had most loved about Corcovado was only about 20 minutes from my house. The lawyer was unimpressed. It turned out he was looking for property in an entirely different part of the country. More fool him.

A-a-azul, A-a-azul!

A new craze has swept Costa Rica in the unlikely colors of blue and orange. Few and far between are the schools where breathless chants of 'A-a-azuul' and 'naran-ja, naran-ja' do not fill the air as rival bands of students act out the feats they saw the night before on TV. The source of this color-borne enmity is a weeknight (two hours a night, Monday-Friday) television program called Combate that is currently outperforming the nightly news and various novelas and gameshows on both of Costa Rica's major stations. The show features two teams of contestants who gather points every night in various contests of fitness and agility. The two teams are (you guessed it) orange and blue and have six members each, three men and three women. The contestants are fit, attractive, and dressed in spandex which alone is probably responsible for its popularity. Each team has its own song, its own dance, and its own captain, and every two weeks one person is voted off one team only to be replaced the very next day by a new recruit.

One contest they do almost every night is called 'cilindros' and the contestants have to move above a pool across large cylinders that spin and frequently send people splashing into the water. The contest that is most frequently acted out a school is 'resistencia' where four contestants interlock their bodies and have to remain suspended on each other's laps with only their legs touching the ground as chairs are removed, and stay for at least 3 minutes. I was quite thrilled when a group of 5th graders (including my host niece) beat the sixth graders at one of my schools before that particular contest was banned.

In my host family my host niece immediately picked the blue team, while my host sister and the indigenous students picked orange. My host parents were loath to take sides in the beginning, but the blue team has won them over as well. The entire country is polarized, the kindergarten teacher at school recently lined up all her students and had them do the Blue team's dance, until several of the little kids rebelled and ran across the schoolyard to do the orange dance. Every night my host niece gets excited, asking me every couple of minutes what time it is, so that she can change the channel to Combate before my host father turns the news on. I have found that knowing the names of the contestants on Combate has given me a lot more credibility with my students, and armed me with a constant topic of conversation at recess, which has been instrumental in establish rapport and keeping class going as the school year collapses around us.

What makes the show interesting for me is how openly and artlessly it addresses itself as a reality-tv show. When the captain of the Orange team was growing too belligerent they switched the team's captains, thereby shaking many people's loyalty. A large number of people had joined the blue team precisely because the orange team's captain was so unpleasant. Now they found themselves having to support the person they hated, or admit to themselves that in reality, it was simply a pointless television show. Very few audiences are put through such a traumatic breaking of the fourth wall, and I am proud to say that most of Costa Rica had little trouble keeping their disbelief suspended. The two announcers enter into conversations with the manager at least twice an episode and the manager seems to make important decisions on the spur of the moment. The most memorable night was when the hated captain overstepped his contract and threatened to quit. He was told immediately that threatening to quit meant immediate dismissal, and was escorted offstage within seconds. The show's directors then appointed a new captain (the best friend and roommate of the other team's captain) and so it goes.

Leaving Fingerprints

When I woke up on Thursday morning I already knew there would not be school. I had been warned that very little happened in Costa Rican schools from October to December (the end of the school year) but I was completely unprepared for showing up on Tuesday and finding out that it was a half day, and that we had the entire rest of the week off. To combat the sudden and frequent lack of school, the principal has begun to organize a group of students who come together on some of the days off and do things to help the school. The group is called 'Dejando Huella' which is correctly translated as 'Leaving a Footprint' but I like much better as 'Leaving Fingerprints'. One day they cleaned up the schoolyard, another day they designed a logo for the school, and on this particular day I was coming in to organize a group of students to sing Christmas Carols at graduation. The principal came up to me outside of the classroom and told me to make a list of all the students who had come, and then whittle it down to those who did best at English and would not act out. After about an hour of sitting in the meeting working on the list I had failed at my task. As I told the principal, if I limited it to the students who were both good at English and didn't misbehave I would have no boys in the chorus, so we decided to present the idea to the whole group, and then hope that the number of participants did not drop below 8. Before I could present the idea of the chorus though, the students were sent out on their project for the day.*

That day the students had come to walk door-to-door to raise money for a school garden. When I found out that one group of students would have to walk with the physical therapy teacher all the way back to my neighborhood (about 6km there and back) I volunteered to accompany them. I was supposed to make sure that the students each took turns asking for money at the houses, and that they stuck within the parameters of the basic script. Also, I was supposed to save them from peril, and from early on the fearsome visage of a massive dog haunted my mind. Luckily, the first large dog we encountered was a labrador I knew. While the kids cowered behind me I strode up purposefully talking in a "good doggie, thats a goodboy, youaresuchagooddog!" sort of voice. Chester (the dog) immediately waddled forward happily and let me pat him while the kids went through their spiel. The delicate balance I had established between man and nature nearly collapsed however when the jittery children decided to sprint back to the street past the dog. Chester was confused, but some sweet words from my end convinced him not to chase the kids. This experience early on had the unfortunate effect of making the kids believe that I wasn't absolutely terrified of dogs, so at several other houses I was suddenly left alone facing large dogs while my pupils scurried past me to safety. Since I am in the Peace Corps, and am supposed to model good behavior, I thought it would be bad to simply throw rocks (the Costa Rican response to most dogs), but also bad to just run away. This left me frequently in a wobbly kneed stance trying to convince the dogs that I was their friend using the voice mentioned above. The dogs were rarely convinced. They were confused though, and generally seemed to shake their heads in wonder and trot away. The physical therapy teacher, for each of these encounters, and for most of the walk, stayed back dawdling and generally being unhelpful.

Aside from dogs, the other major problem we had was mud. It is the rainy season in Costa Rica (otherwise known as October) and most of the streets are covered in several inches of muck. In another miraculous victory over nature, not a single flip-flop was broken, and not a single shoe lost, although not a soul escaped without very muddy feet. By the time we got near my house they had already lost one (empty) change box in a large mudpuddle, so I walked in and brought out mine, with about 6 months of collected change in it (I have periodically rooted through it and pulled out all the 500 colon coins for bus fare). Being wise panhandlers they promptly emptied out all the change from my see-through jar into the remaining box so that it would seem like they were having a rough time and get more pity.

I did have some moral qualms about the whole process, especially because I live in the poorest neighborhood of my town, and going door-to-door at times felt like shaming people who have next to nothing into giving money to an abstract cause they had no interest in. This came up only once in conversation amongst the students though, and they quickly convinced themselves that it did not matter. On the way back to the school we stopped and I bought everyone popsicles, which proved to be an excellent decision, because it relieved thirst and made it so that not even the two little third grade boys complained. They had enough energy left to race me the last 100 meters to the school.

When we got back and counted the money our group brought back I was staggered to see that it came up to 29,000 colones (about $60). In total, all the groups raised about $160. I was still not sure what we had raised so much money to do, and the students were not too clear about it either. When I asked, the principal told me that the money was to pay for concrete and cinderblocks for the garden. Concrete and cinderblocks do not quite sound like a recipe for a garden, but then again in Costa Rica it is impossible to keep any spot of land free of plants, so brick and concrete are probably just as good as soil, and fit better into Costa Rican aesthetics. The Costa Rican 1,000 colon bill ($2) had a concrete building on the back. The bill was gorgeous, the building less so. Now they have changed it for a deer and a tree (the national animal and tree) which is a little less revealing about the culture.

*There will be more about the chorus if it actually happens, the first practice will be on Tuesday, another inexplicable day off from school.

They call it Setember over here*

In Costa Rican schools the month of September combines Independence Day, Civics Week, Children's Day, and testing for the end of the second trimester. When I learned that the already short school day would be chopped in half to accommodate dance, theater, choir, and drum practice, as well as tamale making for fundraisers, I despaired that teaching would become impossible. This fear became reality as Children's Day turned out to be a day set aside for eating ice cream, taquitos, and letting children blow whistles and run amok around the school. The teachers had embarked on halfhearted attempts to organize a soccer tournament, but after four subsequent referees were found lacking in either skill or impartiality (my tenure fell victim to the first complaint) the results were annulled and games of tag, hide-and-go-seek, and ring-around-the-rosy ('el barco se hunde' in Spanish) became the norm until lunchtime, when the children were sent home amidst heavy sighs of relief.

Children's Day capped off Civic Week, which took the form of daily school assemblies (the afternoon ones in the blazing sun, or pouring rain) each one focusing on a different part of Costa Rican Patriotism. I was fascinated by everything, from the reasons why a country so rich in birds would choose an unremarkable brown robin as its National Bird (why not a Scarlet Macaw? or a gorgeous Hummingbird? - Answer: its plainness belies its beautiful song), to the history of the 'Escudo' of Costa Rica and its rules of use (one of the first is an odd picture of a man's right chest and arm, without the rest of the body). I think I was the only person who was not bored out of his mind, even the teachers (all gathered under the shade, leaning out only to shush the cooked and miserable students every couple of seconds) were hardly able to stifle their yawns. One of the teachers was so ashamed by the lack of enthusiasm she pointed out that I sang the words of the Costa Rican national anthem, while almost everyone else remained silent. This caused a lot of eye-rolling, but also galvanized the students into a slightly less lackluster performance.

Then came September 15th, which is Independence Day for Costa Rica and most of Central America as well. The story as it is told in Costa Rica is that a brave woman on the night of September 14th, 1821 gathered a group of citizens together in the main square of the capital of Guatemala (then the capital of Central America) to pressure the leaders to declare

independence. They all carried lanterns lit from a single torch, and once the declaration was signed a series of messengers ran with the torch throughout Central America proclaiming Independence, and lighting 'freedom lanterns' in all the houses of the former colony. Costa Rica commemorates that event by having students carry torches throughout the country on the 14th of September, so that at 6 PM that day people gather together at the schools to sing the National Anthem(s) and reenact 'La Noche de los Faroles' (the night of the lanterns).

At a meeting in one of my schools I was voted 'most likely to be able to run a mile' and so became the teacher in charge of shepherding the torch to the school. I knew not what to expect as we walked through the drizzling rain to the bridge where we would meet the torch as it progressed along the entire length of the Peninsula, but I was prepared for the hour and a half of waiting in the rain. The kids and I sang Costa Rican patriotic songs, and I taught them the first few lines of 'America the Beautiful' and 'This Land is Your Land'. Quite suddenly sirens interrupted the pattering of raindrops and a group of bicyclists wearing White, Blue and Red (NOT Red, White, and Blue, as has been pointed out to me on many occasions) screamed by ahead of a small motorcade. First came the District Supervisor's pick-up truck, then a police car, then a small group of students with the torch, and then an ambulance, a bus full of high schoolers who were too tired to continue running, and the large pack of students who took turns running and riding the bus. The torchbearer stopped, handed the torch to a sixth grader who we had chosen to carry it first, and then we were off!

I kept the torch rotating between the different grades, and made sure the order was always boy, girl, boy, girl. Running alongside the sputtering torch through the drizzle was very pleasant, and as we approached the school the sun leapt out and shone on a small crowd of parents that had gathered to watch the arrival of the torch. A small 4th grade girl had the honor of carrying the torch into the school and lighting a larger flame, and everyone gathered round and sang the national anthem. Then the High Schoolers took the torch and set off down the road while the torchbearers from my school and I sped home on our bikes to prepare for the 'Noche de los Faroles' later than evening.

Every child in Costa Rica has to bring a farol (lantern) to the 'Noche de los Faroles', it counts as half of their civics grade every year. Most of them are houses with velum paper over the windows to make the light blue or red. My host niece began planning hers two weeks before, and the final product, although finished hastily hours before the ceremony, followed the plan and turned out well. My host sister made Joan a little farol of his own, to carry at the ceremony.

The sunset that day was graced with a gorgeous double rainbow, with all the colors gradually fading to the vivid pink of tropical pacific sunsets. As the emerging stars pricked the sky to dark blue parents started lighting their children's faroles. The variety was impressive, from Ox-carts to two-story houses, to antique cast iron stormcandles. Unfortunately the eternal curse of nighttime school activities befell this ceremony: as soon as the lights went out control was completely lost. The grand entrance was marred by several teachers each organizing the students differently, and the complicated processions that had been sketchily practiced over the previous weeks fell apart when confronted with groups of parents milling around the makeshift parade ground. All that aside, the beauty of the bobbing lanterns at dusk was always the focus point of the ceremony, and no amount of confusion and frustration could truly ruin such an occasion.

The next day was Independence Day, and I was astonished that everything went off without a problem. We sang the 'Salute to the Flag' and then the 'National Anthem' and then 'Hymn to September 15th' and then the 'Hymn to Juan Santamaría' and then 'Hymn to the Battle of Santa Rosa', those last apparently two just to amp up the level of nationalism at the event, since we had already celebrated those days. All of the songs are beautiful, and the lyrics are quite moving, but they are played far too frequently, and the medley goes on for about 7 minutes too long. The dances were my favorite part of the ceremony, it made me so proud to see my students performing complicated movements, and swishing their long dresses around. I had gone to the first practice to set up the music for the teacher, and seeing how much they improved in such a short time was thrilling. The poetry was adorable, especially when the kindergartner's goggled at the audience and tripped through their lines, even then some of them seemed like trained actors compared to the third grader's stammering stage fright. The ceremony ended with another round of patriotic songs, and everyone went off home.

The most surprising part of all the ceremonies was how little most participants seemed to actually feel patriotic. The songs were sung half-heartedly, less than half of the parents managed to stop their conversations during the national anthem, even fewer knew the words to any of the patriotic songs. In a country with as many things to be proud of as Costa Rica (gorgeous wildlife, a strong democracy, no armed forces, the strongest economy in Central America, a strong system of national parks, etc.) it is odd that displays of patriotism should seem so antiquated and feel so forced. Watching the empty pageantry of another country's nationalism made me realize again how proud I am to be an American.

*Another reason is that we don't usually change the spelling of months - Costa Rica's Royal Academy of Spanish recently pushed through the spelling 'Setiembre' for 'Septiembre'.

Corcovado: soap no, refried beans yes

Waking up at three in the morning seemed a blessed relief after spending several hours delicately avoiding tossing and turning while jackknifed into a poorly-hung hammock. This was especially true because Kristen and I then stumbled out to the street to begin the long taxi-ride out to Karate to start our trek into one of the most bio-diverse and secluded primary forest reserves in the world.

We were heading to Corcovado National Park, home of tapirs and peccaries, jaguars and mountain lions, tinamous and sparrows, coatis and raccoons, monkeys and armadillos, agouti and squirrels, alligators and rattlesnakes, osprey, pelicans, and harpy eagles. There are more, but the combination between the exotic and the normal (for a Californian) is rather startling at first. We rarely imagine our tawny mountain lion sharing a range with the majestic jaguar, much less slowly replacing it, yet precisely here North America and South America combine and intermix, and 2.5 Million years after their first meeting the intercontinental species swap is still taking place in southern Costa Rica.

After a several hours in the taxi we emerged at an airstrip on a rather desolate looking stretch of rocky beach. The misty rain that came rippling across the ocean was rather different from the steamy sunrise we feel in our part of the Peninsula, but for the long stretch of beach walking ahead of us it would hard to imagine better weather. As we climbed into the jungle the sun emerged and shone upon our first exotic animal, a poison dart frog! Since then I have seen them at my bus stop and around my schools, but the first viewing is always a wonderful experience. As we trekked through the thickening trees the humidity and heat turned our shirts into sweltering swamps, weighing easily 10 pounds. It was around this time that I realized my water bottle had turned over inside my backpack and slowly emptied out all of the water into my belongings. This was unfortunate for several reasons: first, I was left without water, and second, everything I had brought and not sealed was wet. These both were ultimately minor inconveniences. After several returns to the beach we hit a long stretch of sun and sand, and halfway along water sprung from the cliffs. We were told it was the last water until the Station we would stay at, so I was lucky enough to fill up again and not suffer much thirst.

We had been hiking rather fast, and as we got close to the station we discovered why. We had arrived at a river, not one of the many streams we had already successfully passed but a growing estuary just upstream from the river mouth. The ford was at least 300 feet across and the water quite murky. Our guide told us that every second that passed the water level was rising, so Kristen and I immediately pulled our shoes off, hiked up our pants, and got ready to hoist our bags over our heads, when I asked if there were Crocodiles or Alligators. The guide remained silent as if he hadn't heard us, so Kristen and I started in. I was warily eying the opposite bank and the water all around us, but the more I stubbed my toe on rocks the more I forgot to be scared of aquatic reptiles. Soon we had all crossed successfully, the water only slightly above our waists at the deepest. Once we had all gathered at the other side our guide drew me aside and said simply 'Yes.'

Once we arrived at the station we found that the camping took place on a wood floor elevated about 7 feet off the ground under a roof and connected to the station itself. It was a lot better than I had expected. The station itself was situated at the end of a grassy airstrip with a large well tended lawn, and immediately towering tropical trees jungle jutted up on all sides.

That night we hiked out to another estuary to search for Tapirs, we sat on the riverbank and entertained ourselves by staring at eddies and whirls, playing with hermit crabs, watching various hawks and egrets, and hoping in vain that a large Tapir would come strolling out of the trees and pose on the bank. As the sun sunk into the storm clouds out over the Pacific we began to walk back along the beach. Suddenly, our guide dropped into a crouch behind a log, and began scuttling forward making signs for us to follow quietly. This was very hard to accomplish, and by the time everyone had started to quiet down and look around the tapir had darted back into the forest. Our guide plunged after it, and soon we stumbled upon a mother and baby tapir feeding in a gully. Tapirs are large, with incredibly thick skin, sort of a mix between a rhino and a pig, with a long movable snout that is a little like a short elephant's trunk. The baby was about two years old, and had a massive head. Both tapirs were unconcerned by our presence, aside from a slow moving grazing and occasionally tilting their snouts in our direction and snuffling it was as though we were not there. We got back and ate our hearts out, then turned in.

I woke up early and started off into the forest along a short path we had taken the day before. As I walked forward off the airstrip the trees gradually closed in around me and I was fully alone, engulfed in my surroundings, and set adrift in my appreciation of the natural world. The 'jungle' here is not thick with underbrush requiring a machete to move forward. It is not truly jungle either, but rather 'primary moist forest', and the best comparison (it is in fact incredibly similar) is a broilingly hot and humid version of the coastal redwoods in Northern California. in every direction but up open space abounds, interrupted by the occasional bush, small tree, or dangling vine. The forest floor is dappled with leaves and mud, but not swamped by either. The main difference is the ubiquitous presence of monkeys and large parrots, who move with anything but silence and care through the canopy. Forests are often described as Cathedrals, and I can find no better metaphor for the instant respect and reverence that standing in the forest produces. The trees rise mind-boggling heights, their bases buttressed by thick, winding, roots that are taller than people, the sunlight filters down through a thick kaleidoscope of stained leaves and the howler monkeys and tinamous create an eerie, beautifully harmonized choir of gargoyles that explodes through the early morning air. It was magnificent and supremely beautiful.

That afternoon we took a longer hike through the rainforest, and I became pretty good at spotting monkeys (the trick is to wait until you hear a branch hit the ground, then look up). Spider monkey babies, for the record, are adorable. And the fearless leaps their mother's take with little ones hanging on to their backs made me gasp more than once. Howler Monkeys are pretty ugly, but manage to convey a sense of wisdom in their piercing gaze. Sloths are devilishly hard to spot (although my Aunt was very good at it when she came to visit), and wear an expression of perpetual confusion. The cutest animal by far however, was the tamandua, a type of anteater that we saw climbing around in a tree during the hike out. The soles of it's feet are bright pink, and it combed the tree thoroughly, just as frequently upside-down as right-side-up. Watching it stretch its long claws to clasp a new branch was beautiful, if the moment when it suddenly unbalanced and swung forward was startling.

The next morning (my birthday) we started out early and met with a herd of small red brocket deer grazing on the lawn as the newly risen sun lit the delicate mist rising from the grass. As we continued bleary-eyed down the airstrip an iron-flanked and rather un-bellowing he-Tapir clanked and battered across the grass towards us. Pausing momentarily when he heard us, he continued trudging into high grass and the forest, soon lost to view except for the waving tufts of grass billowing in his wake. I thought, Happy Birthday Barton! and kept walking.

Wedding

Towards the end of April I was asked to participate in a wedding in my host family, one of my host nieces was getting married to her longtime boyfriend, and my host aunt wanted me to escort my host niece (the sister of the bride) down the aisle because "no one else in the family is large enough, and you have a sports coat (esmoquín)." I agreed, pleased to be included as a member of the family, even as a last recourse. Then nothing was mentioned for a month and a half, and the weekend before the wedding I was told that I'd better not have anything planned because I was needed for the ceremony. I was a little taken aback, but as I am never busy it was not a problem.
It took place in a small concrete church that had been beautifully decorated with bamboo and flower arrangements. During the wedding practice we practiced the entrance for an hour or so, and left the exit as a work in progress, which made me pretty nervous. I had little to worry about though, because the pastor did his utmost to ruin the occasion.
I have failed to mention that this niece is 14, several months pregnant, and the groom is 24. The pastor's sermon was about having sex out of wedlock, replete with biblical quotations and a fair amount of personal opinion. My host father, a former pastor, had a startled look on his face when it started, but most of the congregation and families assembled seemed unfazed. Perhaps they are used to ignoring sermons. The bride and groom had smiles painted on, but they were decidedly uncomfortable, and when the end finally came they jumped up a little too quickly, and could hardly wait for all the bridesmaids and groomsmen to clumsily stumble forward and make an arch.
Lunch was served, the church slowly emptied and a handful of relatives (I count myself in their number) along with the bride and groom stayed behind to clean up. When we got home we had wine, ate the wedding cake, and watched soccer on tv. They spent their honeymoon night in the empty room attached to our house where they had lived for two months. Not quite a dream wedding, but I hope that in the pictures you can see that it was a very beautiful occasion. Ultimately it is the spirit of the families involved that make or break an occasion, and the wedding was truly blessed by the people who came to celebrate a joyous union between two people who love one another.

Tamales

Except for my host mother, the most interesting people at my closest school are Genie and Betty. Genie (pronounced Jenny) is the 2nd and 4th grade teacher. She is strict but kind. Betty is the 1st and 5th grade teacher. She is lively and gruff. So, when Genie and Betty invited my host mom and I to come make tamales with them at the janitor's house I could hardly refuse. Betty, who lives 5 hours away, rents a room nearby and goes home every weekend, pulled into the front yard honking repeatedly. When she recognized that we had not ben goaded into moving fast enough she stuck her head out the window and yelled hoarsely 'Vamos, vamos!' We ran to the car through the drizzle (they call it 'pelo de gato' here, literally 'cat's hair') and before we closed the door were bucking down the muddy gravel road towards the street.
"When we arrived they hadn't even killed the pig yet." was the way my host mother described the event to everyone when they asked. It was still squealing and snuffling even while we peeled, chopped, and set to boil the potatoes, carrots, and chiles. By the time the potatoes were fully cooked the chicharrones (pig skin, with fat and, all too frequently, hair) had been fried. I was very surprised by all of this, not least by the fact that I was witness to the pig's demise, and that it was surprisingly simple. I was cleaning off banana leaves in the cooking shed right next to the sty, steeling myself for horrible shrieks and gurgles, but they simply brained the animal with the flat of an axe head, then killed it while unconscious. No sound other than a hollow thunk. The rest seemed little different from what normally happens to chickens at my house on a larger scale. The most terrifying part was that about four of my 1st grade students lived where the pig was killed and were running and jumping about with knives, clearly very excited to be part of cooking for their teachers.
Tamales, like coffee, are one of those things that make me very proud of human ingenuity. The entire process seems very convoluted, involving a lot of aimless chopping, slow stirring, banana leaf cleaning, and very little that looked like the final product. Once the pig fat had been brought over in several pots, we started making the masa (corn dough). When the masa had cooked down to a nice consistency I thought we were ready to start pouring it into the banana leaves, but my host mother just laughed and produced cheese-cloth (really a big of mosquito net folded over itself) to we wring the corn filled-liquid out of the fairly solid mass, making nice dry balls of cornmeal. Of course, we saved the liquid and just threw the cornmeal away, which baffled me. We then cooked the liquid for another hour, by that time the only light in the shed was glowing from the flames massaging the blackened sides of the giant pot where the liquid masa was bubbling and popping.
My host mother crouched low over the seething masa with her back to me, stirring with a giant wooden ladle while singing under her breath, her face turned slowly to gaze at something across the yard and she looked for all the world like a witch straight out of the Dark Ages. In some ways she was working magic. She had molded powder, pig, and water into a liquid that would dry into a moist cake when boiled. In that moment I began to mourn the de-mystification of the kitchen. Now no longer a place of secret spells and potions passed in a codex through the generations of families, but a room of stale whiteness, where the same motions are performed without mystery, frequently without joy. Ever since that night, on the few chances I have had to cook I have been careful to cultivate a sense of wonder and amazement, and to feel quite lucky that through my (real and host) family I have been intimately connected to a body of knowledge that has become vastly under appreciated by modernity.

If your familiy´s tried ´em, you know you´ve satisfied ´em

Most weeknights I shuffle myself off to bed a few minutes after 8 o´clock, once I have determined that nothing worthwhile will be on tv. The fact that Costa Rican programming is unexceptional fits in nicely with my 5 AM or earlier wake-up time almost every morning. Weekends are a different matter altogether, most importantly because there is a greater possibility of my host father and I staying up late to watch soccer. I really lucked out in this family because neither my host dad nor I are very discerning. We will delight in any game played at or above the level of the Costa Rican league - essentially everything that is likely to be televised. The problem is that my mother goes to bed almost instantly, although sometimes this is a blessing because she wakes up at 4 to cook breakfast and lunch for my host Uncle.
On non-soccer nights, when Costa Rica´s stations bring out the best they have to offer (´La Pension´ a sitcom about a boarding house in San Jose, ´Nace una Estrella,,´their American Idol, or ´Bailando por un Sueño´their dance program) we stay up together as an extended family and either comment on the action or try to talk over the television. Everyone in my family seems to possess the ability to scream a conversation without considering for a moment lowering the volume or moving to another room. Usually the person trying to watch television has been surreptitiously raising the volume, until the entire house is yelling at ear-splitting levels. I always try to avoid the problem by surrending the remote the moment I sit near it, or capturing it and lowering the volume, but before long the same situation has repeated itself.
The real reason I stay up late is to drink Powdered Milk, which is really quite good. I have found that warm milk right before bedtime is one of the few things that counteract the effects of the incredible volume of coffee I consume throughout the day, and frequently a warm glass of milk will allow me to doze through the bellowed conversations in the living room. In this climate milk goes bad fast, and my host family lived here for years efore they had a refrigerator, so powdered milk is a very common food item, and my host mother has, through years of experience, perfected a mix of sugar and milk powder that has come to completely replace dessert in my diet. Much to my surprise, I have come to prefer warm powdered milk to heated fresh milk, and since the government gives powdered milk to single mothers, and Joan and Yendry spend most of their time at our house, we have a pretty constant demand (and supply) of my favorite nighttime treat.
What Powdered Milk lacks in richness is easily made up for by the texture when it is warmed. Normal milk (unless watched carefully, and that is impossible while the television is on) develops a thick film that can come close to chocking the unweary gulper. The milk we buy here is fresh, and though we separate out the fat, it remains lumpy, a problem solved in Powdered Milk simply by stirring more heartily. This brings me to the chocolate. We make it with unsweetened cocoa powder, sugar, and powdered milk, and it is the best I have had outside of Spain.
On a rainy night few things are better than falling onto your pillow with the warmth in your belly almost making you forget the water dripping on your face.

Without a computer

I have found that since losing my computer, my life here has only changed in positive ways. I spend much more time with my family (albeit watching tv), but I feel even closer to them now than before. The time I spend every day reading has also been greatly augmented, and now that the library is up and running I have access to quite a few good books, and a ton of not-so-good books. Teaching at school has become more enjoyable, if less predictable now that a quarter of the school year is behind us. The students have settled down in most classes, but some of the teachers have stopped showing up regularly. For instance, Fifth grade has not had more than five days of school in the last three weeks.
I am writing several more extensive posts that I hope to be able to put up within a week or so. I am also getting really excited about my parents and aunt and uncle coming down to visit me soon!

The Case of the Vanishing Money

My career as the school detective began while I was simply teaching my normal English class. It was First Grade, and the students had just eaten lunch. They were sleepy. Scrapping my plan for a singing competition we began to draw parts of the face and color them in. While I was walking around the room adding eyelashes and trying to figure out how to draw a nose, one girl stealthily slipped out of her seat and crept up to me. We'll call her Charlene, she said nothing, but began tugging at my arm. I asked what the problem was, and she motioned me to move closer. Expecting a petition to drink water or go to the bathroom, I was a little confused by the secrecy. I bent at the waist and lowered my ears to her level, and she cupped her hand and whispered "someone stole all of my ice cream money". Then she scurried back to her seat. I had no idea what to do, so I carried on with the lesson, wondering behind which of these innocent little faces lurked the cold heart of a villain.
I already had my suspicions, a student who I'll call Ramon had been acting fishy all day. While the rest of the class could barely muster the energy to keep their heads up he had been bouncing off the walls. Every time I turned my back he was crawling on the floor to avoid detection, throwing marbles, or trying to grab colored pencils out the hands of the kids sitting behind him. This particular child is a huge discipline problem because whenever notes are sent home his mother complains that he is an angel, and that the teacher must be wrong. That kind of parental shield amounts to the children being entirely uncontrollable, since the only disciplinary measure available is a 'boleta' or note home. When home is unresponsive that is bad enough, but when a boleta can start the process of getting the teacher who writes it sent to a different district, it is a serious issue.
As the children began to emerge from their food comas we started singing 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and having competitions between the students in groups of three. First for pronunciation, then for speed. By the fifth round I was dripping with sweat. Meanwhile I had still not decided on a course of action, I had nearly decided not to act. It seemed far more probably that Charlene had simply lost the money. Then, when I was about to close the case forever a witness came forward. One of Charlene's friends (a first grader who had been held back for two years) came forward and said that Ramon had been digging through her backpack in the exact pocket where she had put the money. Now my steel-trap mind whirred into motion. The information was not trustworthy, nor was it enough to sufficiently suspect anyone, but it meant that I had to take the crime seriously. I began to formulate a plan, and so, just when the bell rang I had moved to the back of the room, and was able to slam the iron door shut with a satisfying clang.
A horde of students watched mouths agape as the delighted screams of 'Recess' were swallowed by surprise and silence. Everyone sat down again when I announced sternly that theft had been committed, and that there would be no recess until someone stepped forward and confessed. As I finished speaking I stared directly at Ramon, and he looked away quickly. Seconds ticked by as everyone sat silently, looking around for the culprit. Then, slowly, Ramon got up from his chair and shuffled forward. He whispered his guilt, I opened the gate and everyone ran to recess. His story was quite simple. He had heard Charlene talk about how she was going to buy an icecream cone from the cafeteria with her allowance, so when everyone left for the first 20 minute break, he took the money, ran to the corner store and bought all the candy the money would buy. He ate the goods on the spot, and came to back to school on quite the sugar high. That explained his greater than average excitability, and also fit with the witnesses story. It was good enough for the principal, who sentenced him to a soft reprimand and sent him off to play soccer with all the other students. There were a few holes in the story, since he claimed he had stolen 1,000 colones, and Charlene claimed she only brought 400, and I still don't know if she ever got money back.

Drums, the National Holiday, and the Ambassador

At school this week, the drum corps emerged from hiding and begun to make recess far more exciting, if slightly less bearable. The kids are preparing for the 15th of September, Costa Rica's Independence Day, and they will be playing the drums and presumably leading a march around the school. So far however, they seem to have no grasp of rhythm or timing beyond the first couple of beats. Even the self-appointed leader breaks out of beat frequently disrupting the six other drummers, who begin to bang merrily away at their own pace the second the leader gets confused.
Meanwhile, we recently celebrated the holiday for Costa Rica's national hero: Juan Santamaria. This story is possibly apocryphal, but nonetheless commemorates a day in the 1850's when Costa Rican armies marched preemptively into Nicaragua to remove the leader of a rogue regime, William Walker. Walker was a filibuster, a man who believed in Manifest Destiny and set out to claim Central America as a State. This was both to increase his personal glory, and to add another state south of the Mason Dixon line. Costa Rica's hero in this battle bravely climbed to the top of a thatch-roofed armory and set it on fire, dying in the subsequent explosion. This is reenacted at High Schools across the country every year with a bonfire, and it is the occasion for speeches and the singing of patriotic songs at elementary schools. I got to participate in one of my school's celebrations, and was in the awkward position of pleasantly nodding about a speech on American Imperialism, and how all the modern William Walkers should be driven out of Costa Rica too. The speaker then turned to me and said "present company excluded."
That very same day Kristen and I received a visit from the Ambassador. She had come to the Peninsula as part of her duties, and wanted to see the TEFL program in action. We had the meeting at one of Kristen's schools, where the students performed 'We are the World' in English and they had prepared a room with coffee and sandwiches. It was a nice meeting, and she had several excellent ideas that we are going to try to put into practice (like working with Costa Rica's English Language newspaper). The most exciting part of the meeting for me was that due to unfortunate decisions made in seating, I became the Ambassador's impromptu translator. It kept me pretty far from the meeting, because most of the conversation was between the Ambassador and Kristen's principal, but I am very proud of having had that experience.

Joan & Yendry

My life in my host family has been dominated by two things lately. The first one is Joan (pronounced like Joan Miró, not like Joan of Arc), who is my host sister's two-year old baby. The second is Yendry (pronounced like Jenny, but with a d-r), who is my neighbor's two-year old baby. My host sister is three days older than me, and she recently moved back to Osa with her husband/boyfriend (who is not the father of the baby). They now live in her brother's (my host brother's) house two doors down, but they were living in our house for about three weeks. During that time I became 'Tato' and we played a lot of hide-and-go-seek and had many arguments over whether random things around the house were his or not. 'Mio' is his favorite and most common phrase, usually he compulsively grabs and object, examines it, and yells 'mio!' while walking quickly away with it.
Both Joan and Yendry enjoy being lifted up high, and they adore bicycles and vehicles of all kinds. They both have little kid bikes, which they carry around with them, or attempt to sit on and asked to be pushed around. They demand coffee whenever someone is drinking it, they are constantly begging for water, and they love sweet breads. Joan's most common facial expression is confusion, but my host dad constantly says that 'looks like a leader', and to tell the truth he is very smart. He is speaking intelligible words now, and the other day he pointed to my bike and said "Bici Tato" then he pointed to my host sister's bike and said "Bici mami" and then to Yendry's little bike and said "Bici mio". Not perfect, but he is beginning to understand ownership as a concept that other people can participate in.
Yendry is not yet speaking as clearly or as much, but she is getting quite good at mimicking her mother. She yells for her brother in a loud squawk which brings him running from the vacant 'soccer' field a few houses down (where the barbed wire fence pops about three balls a week). She also puts one hand on her hips and says 'vea' which her mother uses to mean 'see' as in "See, we're gonna get 'em, see..." in a passable imitation of a female Cagney.
I am in an unofficial guardian capacity, mainly as the one who runs down to the soccer field when it starts raining and carries them home, but recently both of them have started to run up and hug me around the ankles whenever I get home from work, which is the best reward I could ask for.

Clowning Around

Many weeks ago, before the end of February, one of my schools was treated to a thrilling spectacle. A Television personality, from Costa Rica's Channel 13 came down to one of my schools, perhaps my favorite, and put on a performance for the children. He was good, and his slapstick routines were impressive, his stories had nice morals and he performed an exceptional 'Little Red Riding Hood', the best part was that when he left he stayed in character and just disappeared. Everyone in the room enjoyed it, even the stodgy old teacher (with a heart of gold). That school is probably my favorite because I go there Thursday and Friday, it is around 14 kilometers away, so I take the bus although some day I hope to start going by bike. It has around 80 students, and the town is really small. What I most love about it is the shady school-yard, and the sewage ditch that the soccer balls always fall into. The students take off their shoes and jump into the murky, ankle-deep water, bring the ball up and promptly have to dive in again.
In other, and perhaps more exciting news, we have discovered a Chinese Restaurant in Puerto Jimenez, and it serves egg-rolls! Kristen is my Peace Corps buddy in Osa, and she loves egg-rolls (Tacos Chinos in Costa Rican spanish), so this find radically changed how much we enjoy Puerto Jimenez, and has cut down on our ice cream journeys.
Also, our Library Project is off to a good start! The people over at the Iguana Lodge built a library in Puerto Jimenez, but it has been closed for months because their long-time employee quit, and the new-hire only lasted a few weeks. We went out to the hotel (were treated to a fantastic lunch) and began negotiations to find and train some new employees and get some keys so that we could begin to organize the library. It is currently separated into languages, and after that alphabetically by author's first name. This will be a lot of work, but hopefully we can use it as a resource to start reading programs in our schools, and to get some English books into the classroom. We may begin asking for book donations soon, but not until we're sure we can get this running!

Note: these pictures are of a family trip to Matapalo a few weeks ago, and have nothing to do with the content of this blog.

Out of Site, Out of Mind

To take a slight detour from the rigidly chronological structure this blog has taken so far, I will explain a bit about why I haven't written in a long time. The main reason is that between the constant presence of visitors at my host family, teaching in school, as well as starting up four new community classes (bringing the total up to six) I have had precious little time to sit down and think about what I've been doing. Another factor is how much fun my weekends have been, and since Sunday is my only full day off, trips out to Matapalo, bike rides down to Puerto Jimenez, or even simply to the beach in my site have occupied most of my free time.
Lately there has been a different reason: IST. In-Service Training proved quite valuable to me. I was slapped in the face with the knowledge that I need to cut back how much I am working, we learned new teaching techniques and activities so that I can present the same information in radically different ways, and most importantly all of TICO 21 was able to be together. Unfortunately I spent all of my free time with other PCVs and was unable to write more.
Thats enough of a mea culpa, the most thrilling part of IST was that I finally figured out which soccer team to support in Costa Rica! I'm going to have to keep it a secret from my host family because I am neither a fan of 'La Liga' (Red and Black) or 'Saprissa' (Purple and White), the two powerhouse teams in Costa Rica; instead I have been converted into a fan of 'Brujas' (Hot Pink), a team which won the league two years ago, but a Bernie Madoff type financial scandal caused a player strike after pay was withheld for weeks. The team is struggling to stay afloat, its stadium is the 'Cuty' Monge in Desamparados (a city literally named Helpless) and the team name means 'Witches'. This is closest Costa Rican mainstream culture has gotten to the absurd, and I love it.
We went to the 'Liga' Stadium in Alajuela, saw 4 goals, and watched Brujas lose 4-1(we missed the first goal). From the outside the stadium was indistinguishable from a sweat-shop, or an empty lot sided by sheets of rusting corrugated metal. Inside, however, it was well maintained and the red and black decor gave me more respect for La Liga. My friend Ken and I were wearing pink button-up shirts and slacks, and received some verbal abuse from the crowd, but being the only Brujas fans we were cowed into silence. It was an exciting game though, because at least one of the goals was spectacular, and the Brujas goal was entirely unexpected. The two images that stick in my mind were La Liga's #14 walking around the entire stadium shaking hands through the fence, and the Ultras mesmerizingly twirling red and black umbrellas.
Also while we were in San Jose they opened the new 'Estadio Nacional' and played both China and Argentina to a draw! The stadium was just down the street from the hotel, so every night we were treated to a lackluster fireworks display, and thronging crowds of people from all over the country.

Here is my IST Limerick:
While in San José for some IST,
We stayed at the Corobici,
While in sessions for TEFL,
We all became fretful,
At least breakfast and lunches were free!

This picture is of one of my dwindling community classes, the one below is of a lesson in the Elementary School.

Tres... Dos... Uno... Reto!

These past few weeks I have been captivated by 'El Gran Reto Centroamericano de Baile!' This is a a Central American dance competiton along the lines of Dancing for the Stars. They take the two finalists from each national version of 'Bailando por un Sueño' and then they dance every Sunday for six weeks, and the group with the highest score wins. So far Costa Rica had been winning every competition, but now the Salvadoran and Honduran judges seem to be purposefully scoring them low to give their own country's teams a chance. I think what I most like about the 'Reto' is that it is one of the few ways that Central American mass media gets to show how much Central America has in common.
In part, this is fun to watch because its nice to sit together with the whole family and all talk about the same thing, in part its fun to watch because of the incredibly pageantry, and in part its amazing to watch because of the absurdity of the whole thing. The winners also receive a $25,000 prize. The prize confuses me a little, because by all rights the participants should be content with increasing their national pride, and not need a little bribe (especially since both Costa Rican participants are fairly wealthy TV personalities/announcers). So far only two teams have said they would donate their money to charity (the other teams say they will go to Hawaii, or buy a new house, or buy more clothes).
Tonight we are watching the teams perform Samba and Tango in Honduras, and it has so far been pretty exciting. Especially because for once the Honduran judge didn't give his team a nine or a ten, he gave them a seven! Samba is enjoyable because of the Carnival costumes. Tango is fun because no one can dance it convincingly, and because the music is fun to listen to.
This seems like an odd place to add that now we have two indigenous High School students living with us, because from here they can catch a bus to the school, instead of having to hike down from the mountains three to four hours every school-day. They are quiet, but very nice, and I liked them straight off because they were sweet to my(?) dog from the moment they arrived, unlike most Costa Ricans who are either merely tolerant, or violent towards dogs (my host uncle tries to kick every dog he sees, and I stopped him with a glare from doing the same to 'Malta'). The indigenous kids watch the 'Reto' with us too, and that brings everyone together as well.
Whenever the neighbor's two year-old realizes that we are watching people dance she spins around in circles in front of the TV giggling until she falls over. She just nailed a very convincing splits.
Uh-oh! Here comes Costa Rica, "Tres... Dos... Uno.. RETO!"

Rain Like Thunder

I started class last week, and its been absolutely exhausting. On Monday I rode my bike to a small unidocente school, which means the school has one teacher for 1st through 6th grade, and in this case, another for kindergarten. When I pulled up on my bicycle (after the harrowing bridge crossing) the school was full of cows. A few frightened students and I stood at the end of the driveway, until I decided to walk my bike by the cows (and a rather large and terrifying bull) and nothing happened. It wasn't until a father came to drop his kid off and began throwing rocks and dirt clods at the cows that they started trotting away. Apparently the neighboring farms put their animals to graze there on weekends because its cheap pasture. I've been on a bus in traffic for fifteen minutes waiting for someone to clear those same cows from the road. Class was even more exciting than that though, especially because it was my first time teaching in a school! The teacher started class with a prayer and the national anthem, and then turned the class over to me. We talked about greetings and basic conversation, and that is basically what I've gone over with all of my classes.
In every class so far I have made a point of asking each student's name individually. Since I will be working with over 200 students across five days, I probably will not learn their names for a long time, but that has become one of my personal goals. On tuesday and wednesday I went to what I consider 'my' school. Its the one my host mother works at, and the one that is in my town, and the biggest one. Most importantly, its the only school where the children see me outside of class. Yesterday, on my way to the beach at least ten different kids said either "hola profe" or "hello teacher", which brightened my day considerably. At this school three grades come in the morning, and three grades come in the afternoon, so my longest day lasts from 7 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon.
At my other school (a substantial bus ride away), the classes are organized so that in the morning fifth and sixth are in one room, and third and fourth are in the other room. First and second come in the afternoon and are each in a different room. I found out that one of the teachers is either the most interesting person in Osa, or the best liar for miles around. He told me that the school was built by American troops in 1964, and aside from being a teacher he is a notary and a lawyer, and his office is across the street. At one point while I was teaching sixth grade, he was teaching fifth, and he interrupted class to meet with a client. He also told me that he studied Medicine in Armenia while it was part of the Soviet Union, but had to stop when the university was destroyed in an earthquake. When he came back to Costa Rica he studied Law and Education at the same time, and now he is a few years from retirement as a teacher, but he'll stay a lawyer. His dream is to argue a case in Rome, 'the birthplace of law'.
As I was writing this a rain-storm swept through my neighborhood. I was sitting on the porch (the coolest place in the house) and slowly as the sky darkened I began to hear a low, dull, roar. Like a truck engine miles away. It grew steadily louder, until I heard waves were crashing just behind the line of trees across the road. Then the leaves start shaking, and a roar like thunder breaks out from behind the field. The rocks on the road in front of the house start jumping, and all of a sudden the thick plodding of rain on a metal roof fills the house, and no one can hear anything until the storm passes. Least of all my host father trying to watch his soccer game.

Bicycle!

A few days ago I took the ferry across the bay and bought a bike! This has produced a massive change in my lifestyle here, and with school ramping up I no longer have to fear taking the (expensive) bus six kilometers to one of my schools.
One of the most exciting (if least productive) changes is that I can head to the beach at practically any time, and its a pretty short distance. Distance is measured in time in Costa Rica, and I never bring my watch so I'm not sure exactly how long, but I can do a pleasurable beach trip that includes swimming in a little over an hour. I've also found a nice route that takes me a pretty good distance from home, but provides excellent birding opportunities as well as stunning vistas of the hills that jut up from the fields.
The trip to get the bike was pretty exciting, it included taking boats across the gulf. The boat ride back was overcrowded and rough, and the flew into the air on every wave, and then the bottom slapped the surface of the water, while spray flew in through the open front windows. Ultimately it was worth it though, because I saw a sea turtle from the pier, and sea turtles are adorable. Upon landing we began hefting unassembled bicycles in boxes across Puerto Jimenez, and onto the overcrowded 4:30 bus. I should note that this bus, and most buses on Osa (2 of the 3) are unmodified US School Buses. They are frequently crowded, and that usually makes seated people in front start yelling at people in the back to make more room so that the bus can start going, even though the people in back are packed in like sardines. Today it was even worse, because aside from the normal bags of animal feed (and the strangely ever present weed-whacker) there were two bike boxes. Right about when we got to my friend's site the police stopped the bus, and said that there were too many people on it. I am still sure what this was supposed to accomplish, because they did not offer to shuttle us home in the police car, merely informed us that the bus was too full and could not continue. After a few minutes of argument the bus driver probably swore he would not do it again, and we could get under way. During that time my friend and I tried to get the bike off the bus, and found that we had to use the emergency exit hatch on the back, since there was a solid wall of people between us and the back door. The Police captain helped us lower the bike, and my friend leaped down and ran to pay the bus driver before the mutinous passengers forced him to drive away. Forty-five minutes later when the bus got to my stop it was no less crowded, and I found to my chagrin that no one was willing to help me lift and hold the box for the few seconds between jumping out of the hatch, and lowering the bike off the bus. This resulted in confusion when the precariously balanced box began falling back into the other passengers before I could turn around and grab it. I still feel pretty bad about this, but no one was injured or even remotely crushed, and I managed to pay the driver before one of my neighbors even managed to push her way off the bus, so I didn't even hold anyone up. I hope.
I wear a helmet every time I get on my bike, as per Peace Corps regulation, and yesterday one of my English students borrowed a bike from my house and with the help of her friends began to learn how to ride. She kept riding by to show how fast she learned, but I was most pleased to see that aside from being an excellent bike rider, she was also wearing a helmet.

English Class

A trickle of sweat glides down my back as I turn away from the chalk board. As I slowly sound out 'rest-er-ont' I am silently chastising myself for hanging the board up in the sunlight weeks ago. Today the heat is getting to almost everyone. The cadre of adult students who come early to snag seats on the floor under the slight shade of the waist-high wall are too hot to be talking and giggling, and for once the kids sitting on the benches are not following my every move with rapt attention. 'Ok, pasamos al siguiente.' Content with their pronunciation, my caffeine infused hands shake as they write 'Hotel' up on the board. Its a short word, so none of the letters collapse into poor chalksmanship. As they write the word into their notebooks I say it twice. Then when everyone is again paying attention I say 'Ho... Ho... HO... Tellll... Telll...Ho-tellll'. As a chorus of Ho's greets my ears I fail to stifle a chuckle.
Pronunciation is very fun for me to teach, and everyone seems to enjoy it. Whether it consists of the students holding a finger in front their mouths, and "blowing out the candle" while pronouncing p (in hoss-Pitt-uhl), or learning the difference between the s in 'police' and the s in 'is' (demonstrated by having everyone touch their throats for the pronunciation of both), it is wonderful to hear pronunciation improving so rapidly, and it is fascinating to break down words into the way that they are said, instead of the way they are spelled.
So far the course has been meandering through basic phrases and questions that would be most common from tourists (greetings, time, buying and selling, directions, etc.). Also, we've been struggling through numbers. Altogether it was probably much to early to spring numbers on them, but with a little review in each class and few more lessons later on, I hope to have them down before long. The currency of Costa Rica (500 colones (literally 'Columbuses' is roughly one dollar) make large numbers imperative, so I am not content with just doing 1-20. Unfortunately the word 'Thousand' is a pronunciation minefield, since the th the ou and the voiced s are sounds that do not naturally occur in Spanish, and much less so close together.
Overall, I feel as though we have made a good start, and hopefully the class will continue showing up once school starts (February 10th).

Poultry in Stasis

[Warning: Graphic description of preparing chickens below]
I may have failed to mention that my new host father raises chickens. I have gotten used to the smell, and I no longer think they are the ugliest creatures imaginable, but I am only now starting to become involved in the process of preparing them. I fetch water, or tend the wood stove, but a few days ago I got to help 'peel' them. It was the day before New Year's Eve, and he had sold fifteen chickens to people (and restaurants) in anticipation of a feast to welcome in the new year.
The first step in this process is to kill the chickens. This is done further away from the house (across the ditch where all the sewage flows) and the chickens are placed upside down into a vise. They don't tend to protest, until after the head is cut cleanly off. Then the body starts jerking every which way, and if the wings were not secured it would be very difficult to keep hold of the bird. After a while it stops moving, and blood stops gushing. The aftermath was pretty gruesome, fifteen decapitated chicken corpses twitching in a rusty wheelbarrow with a few large dollops of blood splattered around. Next the chickens are hoisted one by one out of the wheelbarrow by their scaly feet and dropped unceremoniously into a giant pot of hot water. The water cannot be boiling, because then the chicken would get cooked, but it can't get too cold either or else the feathers would still be unpluckable, so my host father tends to the flames while my host mother and the neighbor put on aprons and stand behind a long wooden table near the chicken enclosures. This entire process, I should add, takes place in full view of the other 300 chickens that await a similar fate.
After about thirty seconds in the hot water the chicken is pulled out (again by the feet) and brought to the table. Then my host mother and the neighbor begin peeling handfuls of feathers off the soggy birds. This is where I came in (after fetching random implements and beverages). Pulling the feathers off a warm, wet, dead chicken is not terribly difficult, what is difficult is pulling all the feathers off. The back and belly are easily de-feathered, the wingtips required knives or pliers. But turning the chicken back over one is surprised to find hundreds of little feathers, almost like hairs, springing up from what was previously a fully plucked chicken. I saved the neck for last, touching bloody feathers was almost too much.
Next I got to watch my neighbor clean one chicken, but then my host mother sent me inside to make more coffee. The most surprising thing I learned about chickens is that their feet are soft and fleshy, not sheathed in hard yellow scales. The smell was overpowering, a mix between wet dogs and mold, and it was hard to get the stench off my hands, even with veterinarian's alcohol. The grilled chicken we had for dinner was excellent.
[Addendum] Today two chicks had to be killed because they were diseased, and aside from never growing into chickens would infect all the others. After they wandered around out of the pen for a while the puppies took and interest in them, chewed on their wings, and played tug-of-war with them. To 'put them out of their misery' my host mom picked up a long 2x4, flipped one chick on its back, and dropped one end of the board on its head. I was completely unprepared for this, although I was able to watch the second time, and it was pretty awful.