rain

So, yes, I´m living in the cloud forest, and yes I expected rain. I´m even doing pretty well with it all things considered. When it rains all night on our metal roof + bad dreams and not sleeping well + a slight lack of planning (though everything worked out just fine) all conspire together, it makes a slightly grumpy and definitely sleepy morning. And as of right now, it means I really desperately want to go home early and fall into bed. But, I´ve put the 5th tuning peg back into my banjo so I have been playing again which makes me happy. And the students are all still relatively happy. And I´ve input all of the grades I needed to put in for the first week and the beginning of this week. Well, maybe not quite all, but I have made significant progress and I´ll do some more after I´ve written this entry.

Today I was hanging out in a different classroom and watched the monkeys go swinging through the trees while she taught about text-self-world connections. Made me happy to know that there are other teachers who are thinking about these things and teaching them as well. Then it made me even happier to know that I was working on a team with just such a person. I´ve got a bunch of planning to do, and geologic time is blowing up the brains of my poor 5-6th graders. Thursday we´re going to start trying to put it on an actual timeline, instead of just talking about relative dates. They do pretty well with relative dates, which is reassuring. And they´re willing to make guesses which is great. We´ve been playing with slinkies and jumpropes in 7-8 science because waves are more fun when you can see them. And who doesn´t love playing with a slinky?

peanut, peanut butter (and jelly)

This morning I went to a neighbor's house, one of the original founders of Monteverde, and bought some peanuts, peanut butter, and dried bananas (no jelly). There are a lot of ways to get food very close to its source here. She grinds the peanut butter herself, though the peanuts come from a grower in Nicaragua. There is a cheese factory in town that buys milk from a lot of the local ranchers. And there is this guy who is a 2nd generation Monteverde founder who has a cow and goat farm and sells milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and kefir. Cheaper than the cheese factory (which is kind of touristy) and supporting a local local business. I also heard about a guy who grows and sells greens in the center of town. Gotta go try him out too. There is a guy who comes to the school on Mondays selling chickens and chicken parts and a guy who comes less frequently who sells fresh fish. I can't bring myself to eat the pig parts from the cheese factory because I walk by them every day and they make this horrible squealing noise because they are never allowed out of their pens. Pigs are really smart and I can only eat meat if I think it's had a decent life, which these pigs certainly don't. Anyway, yeah for local food and farmers. And yeah for my neighbor who made me get out of bed early to get those peanuts.

There are cows in the field about 30 feet from my door. They are not the cute Jersey cows I love, but they aren't the really freaky looking ones with humps and horns that are so bony and give you this look like, "I know I look ridiculous. I'd rather you not mention it." And yesterday I saw Capuchin monkeys in the trees next to the house. It was a whole band moving through and it's fascinating to watch them jump confidently from branch to branch, tree to tree. A morpho butterfly just flew by. They are the really vibrant blue ones that are so pretty.

masaje

jordan is officially my favorite boyfriend for today. she got me a massage scheduled for today, deep tissue, hour and a half, and now I will be detoxing for a little while and hopefully remembering to slow down for at least a day. that's the hope anyway. i also love the local yoga studio where i got my massage because they offer teachers special prices. what's not to love about a yoga studio that knows how to spread the love around?
additionally, my 7/8 class is officially amazing. they're cute and sweet and funny and willing to play any game i've thrown at them so far. i know it probably won't last forever, but right now, they're my heart's delight. plus, the rules they have for our class include "chew slowly" which i'm letting them have as a fourth rule when i normally try to keep it to three. the framing question was: what do you need to learn well? they decided that not only did they need their senses, they also needed creativity, freedom/free-time, food, you get the picture. so chew slowly came from the connection between food, senses and freeness. it was really just so good i had to keep it. that's all for tonight.

first day of school!

The good news is that on the first day of school I made both of my classes laugh within the first five minutes of being in the room. While that's good for breaking the ice, I am rather aware that with the 7/8 group it set a rather goofy precedent and they're already a goofy group. The good news is that we're going to get along fabulously. The 5/6 class has 5 new kids out of 13, so they're going to have some identity/group stuff happening for a while and I hope that the girls aren't as cliquish as they appeared on the first day. I'm playing lots of games with them, and so is one of the other 5/6 teachers, so that'll help the situation too.
Everything I planned for the first day lasted the right amount of time. I'm wondering about tomorrow and I only made up one science lesson on the spot. I had other plans in my book, but then I changed my mind and made them prove gravity was constant instead. It was a good intro to scientific method and since that's a good place to start for science class, we'll keep going with that. Plus, I got to drop an algebra text book at least ten times (it was the heavy teacher's edition of one we don't even use) and the noise drew the attention of one of the other teachers, but not to tell us to be quiet. Everyone sing with me now, I think I'm gonna like it here. (bonus if you can sing along with jordan in the background - she's doing the instrumental parts so you'll fit right in).
I got to leave before 4pm and I even took a big nap when I got home. Teaching barefoot isn't going to be the right choice, so I'll have to score some new slip on shoes for my classroom since outdoor shoes aren't allowed. Now, the rain in Costa Rica falls mainly on my domain, so I suppose I should stop being attached to the internet through the phone line since the thunder is audible..

who knew?

So, two of the teachers at MFS like to do English Country Dancing. Now, I fully admit that my main exposure to English has been watching Jane Austin movies and wondering why I would ever want to twirl around in a circle by myself and pretend to be graceful. These things being true, the two teachers at MFS also have created a dance on the third Saturday that, though performed to canned music, is perhaps one of the more joyful experiences that I've had dancing. Now, granted, that was in part due to the fact that we were laughing so much when we got things a little bit (or a lot bit) wrong, but it was an absolute joy to pretend to be graceful for a couple of hours. And when we were waltzing at the end, there was a bit of a stair to play with and somehow there was goofy dancing happening. I don't know why... I still do prefer the contra to the country, but I guess while I wait for myself and jor to get our acts together and organize a contra, I'll just have to wait. And honestly, once we do get a dance organized, I'll probably have to wait some more because I refuse to dance to canned music and therefore will probably have to be in the band. Good thing I've been practicing..
The fifth string peg on my banjo fell out, but I've got some advice in order to get my banjo back into working condition and will soon attempt surgery. I guess this means I've been doing my practicing like a good girl so it wanted a break. That means I've actually been spending time with the guitar for the past two nights and I'm always amazed at what my muscle memory holds that my verbal memory has long since mislaid the words for.
The biggest animal sighting of the last couple of days was our very own scorpion in our very own place where we keep the sheets and blankets. We needed to get a sheet out to pin to the ceiling so the little animals (antish? termitish? who knows...) that were pooping on us all night long would instead be pooping in a diaper and we could rest easy. jor opened the cupboard (the door swings down and it's at about 5') and there was a little friend. She may have yelled, or squeaked, or just demanded my immediate attention. I can't recall. But then there was a search for an appropriate capturing device and glasses with which to see said scorpion. Needless to say, I was too slow and it snuck away while I was trying to get all of the things. We pulled out some of the sheets with the trusty, ever handy, broom, but to no avail. Oh well. I've started being more cautious with my clothes and sheets, but I still forget to check my shoes every single morning.

Fridge Magnets

I told Hannah I would post the link to the site that has all of the photos she took during the talent show and which now live as magnetic poetry on our refrigerator. Some of the other new teachers were over here for dinner a few days ago and were very impressed. They can tell how much y'all love us. Thanks. We keep you in our sight at all times. Anyone who isn't on the fridge can feel free to send us prints to put in our rotating frames of friends. 4x6 please. Address below:

Escuela de los Amigos
300 metros al sur de la fabrica de queso
5655 Monteverde, Puntarenas
Costa Rica

So, the link to photos is http://www.doktorwise.com/jorannfarewell/Site/JorAnnFarewell.html

Living in a Cloud

I didn't realize how cool it would be to live in a cloud forest and that sometimes I would actually be inside of clouds. It's different than in New England, where fog smells different than non-foggy air. It doesn't smell like it's going to rain. In fact, it doesn't actually smell different at all. Nor does it feel wet, even though I know it's moisture. But it sure is pretty. It moves very fast and I can see curves and thin parts and dense parts. I guess it's most like the steam that comes from a hot shower, but it isn't warm. It swirls and rises and falls and comes and goes. Sometimes, when we are at an overlook, we can see that we're actually above some clouds. It isn't fog. It's clouds. That's so cool. I think I remember being told that we are at around 1500 meters, which is supposedly the height at which some people begin to feel the effects of altitude. I have some pretty icky childhood memories of the first days of ski trips in Colorado and Montana and being nauseous and throwing up while everyone else is having a good time. But after a few days I always felt better. So my first days here had a little nausea and fatigue, which was maybe a combo of missing you all, realizing that we actually left, and altitude. We miss you, but now you have the opportunity to learn what it's like in a cloud forest, and we'll eventually come home.

Armadillo Love Shack

More adventures in wildlife last night. We’ve had our share of oversize creepy crawlies but as of yet, no interesting mammals or rodents...until last night. At 4 am I woke up and heard lots of banging around, like something was in the house knocking into chairs and stuff. After listening for a few minutes to determine whether it was in the house or on the roof I woke Annie up and said, “I think there’s something in the house.” She listened and said, “What do you want me to do about it?” So I put on my slippers (no one wants to step on anything gross or get bitten on the toes at night, right?), turned on the light, and grabbed the broom. I cautiously entered the non-bedroom room and flipped on the lights. These are the times you appreciate electricity, let me tell you. A flame’s light only goes so far. I scanned the room and saw nothing, plus the noise had stopped. I entered the bathroom, broom first, and found nothing in there so I went back to bed. Convinced that the animal was not in the bedroom and wanting to keep it that way, I shut the bedroom door. I couldn’t figure out how it would have gotten in and was wondering if there were any holes in the floor or in cupboards that we didn’t know about. (Once when we lived in Hinesburg, VT there was a big hole behind the cabinet under the sink and there was a day when a very large rodent paid a visit, scrambling around in there). It got quiet enough for me to go back to sleep until 5:15 when I woke up convinced that Annie was digging around in the suitcases under my side of the bed. I said very emphatically, “What are you doing?!” and she says from in the bed on her side, “Huh?” It was then that I realized it was the animal again, except this time in the bedroom, right under the bed, pushing around the suitcases. We both stood up on the bed and pulled the blankets up so we could see if it came out. I turned on the light again, standing on the nightstand to get to the switch. I went into the other room to get the broom and a flashlight to shine under the bed. I saw nothing, so Annie pulled the suitcases out with the broom handle. Nothing. There was nothing under the bed, but it was still making the crashing noises. What a relief to realize it was under the house, not in the house, whatever it was. We made a lot of noise to see if it would go away and were about to go back to sleep when I looked out the window and saw an armadillo running in the grass. It ran back under the house and then ran back out with another armadillo. It turns out we’re hosting an armadillo love shack!

Taratulas and Giant Cockroaches!

Well, things are exciting in Emily House (that’s the name of where we live). A few days ago there was a giant bug in the house that I first thought to be a grasshopper. Upon closer inspection, Annie convinced me it was a giant cockroach. Today, Annie was outside reading in the grass and found a furry spider on her pants leg (good reason to always wear pants) and we suspect it was a tarantula. Imagine her saying “get it off, get it off,” making me do it, then telling me, “Now it’s on you.” She was less than descriptive about where, so I was looking all over, finally finding it on my right shoulder, five inches from my neck. Eek! There is also a giant wasp buzzing in a window trying to get out. Everything is bigger here. After consulting with some neighbors who’ve been here forever, the roach really was a three inch long grasshopper chilling on a kitchen chair. The tarantula, we aren’t so sure about. It wasn’t big like the ones we’ve seen in cages and movies, but it sure was furry and brown. Baby tarantula? Our inherent fear or discomfort around insects and things with many legs is strange and strong. We saw two green parrots at the house yesterday. Did you know they mate for life? There was also a glimpse of a blackish squirrel type animal jumping from tree to tree. No monkeys yet. We’ll keep you posted.

Yesterday, at the crack of dawn...well, not really...dawn is at 5:30 and we didn’t go until 6:30...we went to the farmers’ market. Oh joy of joys! We spent $10 and came home with two bags full of fruits and veggies, all grown right here. Well, some of them are from down the mountain a little, but that’s still pretty close. One grower even uses organic practices, so we bought whatever we could from him. Some of the more exotic purchases include whole pineapples and star fruit. You can even get lychees here. They grow in this really pretty red prickly outer skin. The mangoes weren’t ripe so we didn’t buy any.
Last night we had some of the other new teachers over for dinner. Annie made really yummy sweet pepper soup, which costs a bazillion dollars to make in the US, but only pittance here. And she made yummy bread. The others brought empanadas, which we learned to make at our Costa Rican cooking class, and banana bread cake. Then we learned to play Euchre, a game a bit like bridge and spades played a lot in the Midwest. The people who work at this school really are pretty awesome.

So, we had a cooking lesson that was really helpful, especially in terms of using what’s available and without some of the conveniences we know at home. I can now make really good beans, handmade tortillas, empanadas, picadillo (which is mostly this really yummy vegetable called chayote), and plantains. I already knew how to fry cheese, but our teachers told us to use higher heat than I did before. I could totally get used to eating rice and beans every day.

We’ve been meeting a lot of people, some of them the original settlers, some of their descendants, some long-time residents who came and stayed, some tourists, some native Costaricenses (that’s how you say Costa Ricans in Spanish. A person from the US is estadounidence. And around here it is very bad form to use the word America to mean the US. To Ticos, America means both the North and South American continents. And Central America isn’t really its own continent; it just describes a geographical or political region. Here’s another interesting tidbit: geographically, Panama is part of Central America, but politically, it is part of South America.

I started work in the Monteverde Institute library yesterday. I talked a lot with the library coordinator who’s been there since the beginning, about the vision and goals of the place, then we got down to priority number one: weeding. When a library consists entirely of donations, you’re bound to get some stuff you don’t want. And we want to get the collection cataloged and into a searchable catalog so people know what is there. But it’s a big waste of time to catalog things you plan to get rid of, so first comes the weeding. We also are thinking about rearranging the materials in such a way that they are easy to find by students in particular courses. The Institute runs courses on a few environmental biology topics, eco-tourism, gender studies, and public health. Their second priority is to serve local researchers conducting studies in the area. And lastly, they want to serve the local community. The Quaker school has a pleasure reading library open to the public so we feel confident maintaining the Institute as a strictly research library. But I really need to help them get some funds. That place is very pretty, but the resources are very old and very patchy. Maybe I’ll even find an organization that wants to pay me to work in the library, since the Institute can’t. Anyone with ideas should leave me comments. This job will be a lot more fun with some money to spend on resources, so think about those funding sources too.

Not much...

Full days lately. The biggest event of yesterday, visiting the clinic for my ear infection, was oddly reassuring. There are two things I learned: I can understand medicalese in two different languages about equally and the emergency room in Costa Rica (at least yesterday) is about the same speed as the ones I've been to in the states, with less waiting time in the examining room. I have been very nervous about speaking Spanish and have been taking the easy way out as much as possible. Today we spent the entire day with the whole staff doing group building stuff and having a shorter meeting for worship. It was meeting for business day, so we just left before they got started. It is good to have meeting once again so prevalent in my life. Also, one of the elders in the community spoke about her experience going to Hiroshima 23 years after we dropped the A-bomb. I had been contemplating a song that Reeve taught at camp (Friends, only love can bring peace, so let us love with all our hearts and all our minds til peace is won, and peace is won) for most of meeting up until that point and hadn't yet gotten around to figuring out what day it is today. It was good to be reminded by someone with experience. Then the Fred Small song about Cranes over Hiroshima was trying to go through my head, but I've only got the chorus left at this point. I don't have anything enlightening to say on the subject, just that it throws me for a loop every August 6th. It's good to be thrown. What am I doing to make sure it doesn't happen again, though? That's still up in the air. I guess the more people who know how to actually resolve their conflicts there are in the world, the less likely it is to happen again, but I can teach and teach and it doesn't change the rampant wars.The computer just crashed so I lost a bunch about what I've been up to at school - cleaning the science closet and workshopping about getting to know and trust each other and arting about it as well. I think I wrote some more about how school starts on the 19th, but I have time this Sunday, maybe Friday afternoon, and all day Thursday and Friday of next week plus the weekend so even though we've got a lot of workshop stuff happening, I should be okay. I want more team time, and we've only got time with our subject area groups, but I guess I'll just have to find a way to fit that in with the folks on my team. It's also a little tricky because three of us are 5-8 and one is 7-12 (the only one who overlaps) and she and I have to find significant time to talk about how we're going to do math because we're co-teaching the 7/8 class. It'll be good, but it's really hard to find that time. You'll be glad to know my ears seem to be clearing up (somewhat on their own before I went to the clinic, at least pressure wise) and even though antibiotics might be evil, it's still nice to think they can fix my problem (so long as I'm only thinking short term, I guess). Yup. It'll be good to be able to hear again, and talk without significant reverb. That's one reason I really haven't been talking, aside from the fact that most everything at school is in Spanish because there are fewer people (me) who don't know Spanish than there are non-native English speakers. They seem to know more than they let on, but they don't speak in English any more than I speak in Spanish. I'm getting more comfortable, but I have no doubt it's going to take a lot of time.