Jordan's New Job

The title of this post sounds like the the title of a children's book. Anyway, I have a job now and am currently sitting in my oficina, which I share with the other person who does my job. I'd take a picture but it's kind of dark and not very organized or pretty yet. I now teach two English classes to local residents and co-coordinate this program. I don't know yet which levels I'll teach, but it will probably be advanced and maybe beginner. I haven't met the other teacher/ coordinator yet. I'm a little nervous because English is a pretty hard language to learn with so many millions of exceptions to every strange rule. But there are good resources here for teaching and the Spanish teacher is awesome and helpful. In fact, I am in one of her classes (level 3 of 4) and she's a good teacher. She's so open and fun that people just want to talk. I hope I can be like that with my students. At least I'll be able to speak English to them. But I'm really glad that I work in a place where I have to speak Spanish with most of my coworkers. It will help me immensely. Already I know that my Spanish skills have improved leaps and bounds just from practice. I took Spanish in school from 7th grade to my first year in college, but it was all very bookish and regimented, plus I was really shy and never spoke in any of my classes, so I didn't get much practice speaking. Now I am much less shy and understand the need for spoken practice so I talk more in class. I like being corrected now, whereas when I was young I hated it. I wouldn't give an answer unless I was sure of it because I didn't want to look stupid. Maybe because all my teachers used to tell me how smart I was and if only I would put in some effort I could get all A's. Anyway, I've gotten over mysef. I don't mind being wrong now...or at least less than right. I'm still a librarian, which means I know everything, but I've lost a lot of my camp counselor self so I don't have to be super confident about everything. Anyway, learning Spanish is fun. I've always loved languages. They're like codes to be figured out.

We got our first care package yesterday from the one and only, the super amazing, our very own professional puppeteer, Emmy Bean. Thanks Emmy for sending us all those things that we neglected to bring because we just didn't know any better. For example, I was unable to bring a fiddle with me so I didn't bring any fiddle music. How was I to know that someone would very generously lend me a fiddle within my first week of being here? So Emmy send me a popular book of fiddle tunes so that I can get a contradance band going so that we can have live music for contradances. It just isn't as fun without live music. So, all you fiddler or dancer friends of mine, can you please tell me which are your favorite dance tunes, especially if they are in The Portland Collection volume 1? I do know of a great web site that posts a lot of tunes so you should tell me even if they aren't in the book. There are people in the area who want to get together with Annie and me to play bluegrass also. Gosh I need to practice more. I even have potential students if I want them.

Back to packages, if anyone else wants to send us a care package there are always things we need that are difficult or impossible to obtain here. Let me know and I will send you a list. Things like tumeric, though Emmy did just send us a bunch, and my favorite soap. We're going to experiement with making our own laundry detergent out of Borax, washing soda, and a bar of soap. It's really really cheap and easy to make. I'll let you know how it goes and if it goes well, maybe all you back to the earthers will want to do it too. Emmy's package only took 12 days to get here. And some folks here told me that even though it's a box, the prepaid all you can eat box (I forget what it's really called, but you stuff whatever you want in it up to 20 lbs and it costs the same) will get here without going through customs. So, all you people who are collecting books or want to send me enchilada sauce because we haven't figured out how to make it yet, let's give the postal service three cheers! Well maybe only two because it still costs around $30 for postage.

I'd like to reinforce that we have a spare bed in our house and plenty of floor space and a big soccer field in which to camp if that is your preference. There is even a small bamboo grove that has a little clearing inside of it that I think we might treat as our home away from home during the dry season. Magical. There is a language school here that does intensive courses if you are so inclined. There is the cloud forest. Beaches and volcanos are near enough and accessible by bus. We'd love to have visitors.

And if anyone has taught English to non-native speakers please send me advice. My classes start on the 29th.