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.