Impatience!

I consider myself to be a very patient person. As a teacher, I am patient with my students. As a community member, I am patient with other people's ways of doing things. But when I've applied for a job I really want, I am NOT patient. I submitted my application online last night for a middle school librarian job and I'm expecting a response today. Totally unreasonable, yet I still want it. Partly, I want some job security going home, but partly it's just because I haven't gotten to do this work for a while and I'm itching to get back to it. I have loved my time in Costa Rica and have some great memories, but I want to go home. For a few weeks in May, I was feeling like maybe we shouldn't be leaving now. But now that rainy season has started again and I'm getting Massachusetts summer urges, I'm really happy about it. I was dreading our trip to Osa Peninsula also, mostly because we can't really afford it and because I didn't want to do a lot of sitting around when I'm so anxious to get home. So instead, we're going back to Granada, which I LOVED the first time. We'll have more time to do some day trips to volcanoes and kayak through the hundreds of little islands on the lake. And we'll get some last minute gifts for folks too. I occasionally need city time with ethnic food and shopping to offset the rest of my time which I spend rurally. So the city will be fun and we'll take a million pictures this time because we'll have Nicole's camera. Our last big hurrah with Nicole, who we will miss dreadfully.

I finished up my English classes last week. This is a photo of three of my five students and me in my office. I really enjoyed hanging out with them and talking. I got so much better at casual conversations because that was always the first hour of class. I finished with some of my music students when they performed for the open mic coffeehouse or the cabaret. Our cabaret performance pretty much sucked because we didn't practice. Oh well. The kids were awesome. But I still have a few lessons with kids who want to milk every last minute out of me. They are the more dedicated students who are fun anyway. If my work schedule isn't too grueling, I might try to squeeze in some music lessons in Montague because I've enjoyed it a lot. We also had our last contradance on Saturday, which went really well. There were a million kids there in the beginning, so we started with Zodiac. All you Farm & Wilderness folks know what I'm talking about. It was fun and intergenerational. I'm getting Toasty all ready to go home: health certificates, travel documents, ride to the airport, etc. Her plane ticket costs more than mine, but I know she'll be treated well.

I want to make it home before the rain starts, so I'm off. Rain starts early these days.