...not quite in the home stretch

Since "Spring Break," or Semana Santa, is over, I could say that we're in the home stretch of the year. I won't. I'd like my home stretch to be a bit shorter than 7 weeks, and we've got a 4 day weekend coming up the first weekend of May, so I'm going to call that the home stretch. Now I just have a three week span separating me and the home stretch. Somehow that seems more hopeful to me.

I bet you're glad I cleared that up, aren't you? Anyway...

As I said, Semana Santa, or Holy Week, just finished. You knew that - Easter! In Latin America, schools are always off for the whole week, so our "spring break" moves around. (Next year, it's almost three weeks later - how's that for a home stretch? It's a huge week, especially among IST teachers, to travel.

There were three groups that went to Guatemala, 4 or 5 folks that went to the Carribbean coast, two groups that traveled down to Costa Rica, a handful that either went home or had loved ones come down here...and me. I didn't have anybody to travel with, due to the dearth of guys down here and the awkward logistics of a guy traveling with three or four girls. So I was going to travel by myself and love it, dangit! No one else to hold me up, no opposing opinions about timetable, ease of slipping into hostel during an inherently busy time, time to just read by myself and (hopefully) spend with God... I found a great deal on airfare to San Jose and prepared my full week in Costa Rica - other folks with similar deals only even managed to find Monday to Saturday itineraries! Score!

Traveling by oneself kinda sucks. Especially during the long hours of waiting between your bus and ferry in a rather uninteresting town. I had two decks of cards packed in the false hope that I'd find someone to play with. I did read all of The Kite Runner (much enjoyed) and read about 2/3 of the nonfiction Under the Banner of Heaven (an enlightening, yet disturbing view of Mormonism and Mormon Fundamentalism), but I still found myself with an unfortunate amount of down time.

How about a reference map?


The trip started off great - wonderful views of Nicaragua from the plane, breathtaking first glimpses of the natural beauty of Costa Rica, and being able to feel savvy when I passed up the 21-dollar taxis at the airport, walked to the main road outside, and caught a bus going basically the same place for the equivalent of ONE DOLLAR. It was Saturday afternoon, and by the time I hit the hay on Sunday, I needed to be in the semi-distant beach town of Santa Teresa (Near the town labeled "Montezuma"). I had to play things by ear - once in San Jose, there were 3-4 legs of trip to Santa Teresa - bus to Puntarenas, ferry from Puntarenas to Paquera (sorta southwest across the gulf from Puntarenas), and then one or two buses, depending on my luck. I made it to San Jose by around 4:45, and I knew buses to Puntarenas left hourly and took 2.5 hours. I thought the earlier I could get to my hostel on Sunday, the more time I could bum around the beach, as un-beach-bummy as I may be. The timing couldn't have been better - I got to the bus station and purchased my ticket with about 8 minutes to spare before the bus left, got a hotel room (sized 9 feet by 4 feet, seriously) for 10 bucks, had dinner, and crashed. It was VERY hot along the coast - inlands of Central American countries get much cooler with their elevation, and I wasn't in San Jose any more.

My plan to catch a 7 am ferry, freshly baked bread and OJ in tow, was thwarted by the fact that there WAS NO 7am ferry. Schedules changed for the holy week, and I was left twiddling my thumbs until the 9am ferry. By this point, I wasn't feeling so great. I began to feel like traveling was getting the best of me, and I felt stiff and weary. I napped and read on the hour-long ferry ride, felt even wearier as I disembarked, and caught a bus to the town of Cobáno. My bus continued to Montezuma, so I needed to transfer to head to Santa Teresa. The vessel for travel was continually getting to be lower quality, yet the fares continued to rise. After awaking at 5:20, I made it to S. Teresa around 1:00. Then I couldn't find my hostel. Famished (no lunch), I had to snag some food before I undertook my search in earnest. My weariness was only worsening, and the added strain of digestion seemed to make things even tougher. But I finally did find my hostel, about a 13 minute walk from any of the stuff of interest in the town. I immediately collapsed in my bed.

The plan was to spend half of Sunday and all of Monday in Santa Teresa, hit the beach a bit, read, sample the restaurants, and hopefully meet some people worth meeting before leaving early Tuesday for my next location. But I ended up alternating sleeping with reading and eating; that's about all I could manage. The folks sharing my room were nice, and I spent about an hour and a half on the beach with them, but by the time I'd been up and about enough to eat, I had to lay back down again. A pitiable existence.

On top of that, the bus I was planning on taking at 7:15am Tuesday never came. The man at the hostel said based on my travel plans, even leaving that early wouldn't ave been early enough. I think he was full of it, but I found myself spending ANOTHER achy, downtrodden day in Santa Teresa, popping ibuprofen and watching 3:10 to Yuma. The one upshot to this was that Kristin and her roommates, traveling separately, were arriving that evening, and so I spent a good deal of time with them once they showed up.

I finally got on my way again Wednesday morning, after spending 2.5 days at the beach town, yet only 1.5 hours on the beach. 6am bus, lots of picking up people, and what should have been a two hour drive took us to the boat launch with just enough time to board the 9am ferry. Once back in Puntarenas, my remaining leg was a bus to Monteverde, near the dot curiously marked "Ciudad" on the above map. I got to Puntarenas with nearly 3 hours to kill before my 1:15 bus. Booooooring. I found the bus marked Monteverde, but it didn't look ready to go anywhere at 1:10. Turns out it wasn't ready at 1:30, either. It didn't leave until 2:30. At this point, I had long finished The Kite Runner and was well into my other book. I got a lot of reading done on this day.

But oh, when the bus started and we got out of the Puntarenas area and into the mountains, I was breathtaken by the landscapes. Costa Rica is the most beautiful country I have been to. Even in the midst of dry season, the rolling, somewhat lumpy mountains are just such a singular sight, covered in places by rich forest. The temperature dropped, and although half the bus ride was on terrible gravel road, that bus ride ended up being the highlight of my trip. I was refreshed to arrive in Monteverde, in a beautiful hotel, with crisp wind and traces of rain in the air, eager to salvage what I could from my time up there, having lost a full day of time in that location. Little did I know that bad news was awaiting me...

Stay tuned for Part II of Aaron's misadventure in Costa Rica! It might not be as bland and step-by-step as this part!

...working with dangling modifiers

Dangling and misplaced modifers can be a really funny grammar topic to cover, because of the inherent humor of confusion. For those of you who don't know what I mean by dangling and misplaced modifiers, allow me to give you an example:

Sam screamed at the barking dog in his underwear.

The phrase "in his underwear" is the misplaced modifier here. Is Sam wearing underwear? Is the dog wearing Sam's underwear? Is the dog inside Sam's underwear AS Sam's wearing it? It's hilarious. You can have some real fun drawing misplaced and dangling modifiers in class to understand just how they can be misunderstood. "I saw the beautiful couch peeking through the window." Who's peeking? The couch? These sentences need to be rewritten to clarify their meanings.

We covered this this quarter in my class. It appeared on the exam my students took yesterday. Sam and his dog even appeared. Some kids figured out how to fix it: "Sam, in his underwear, screamed at the barking dog." Some kids just haven't gotten this concept yet: " Sam the barking dog in his underwear screamed." Some kids have been clueless all year, in more ways than just this: "San scraned at the dog en his undewer." (I teach 11th graders, remember.) One girl fixed it, made the meaning clear, but it wasn't the meaning I was expecting:

"Sam screamed because he has a barking dog in his underwear."

Full marks.

Edit: Another gem: the sentence to be corrected read, "William nearly earned 1000 lempiras when he sold his paintings." "Nearly earned" indicates that he came close to earning money, but he did not earn money. "Earned nearly" means he earned perhaps 990 lempiras, and is the correction I was looking for. This bright girl REALLY switched things up, but unfortunately didn't make the necessary correction:

"When William sold his pants, he nearly earned 100 lempiras."

...as a bubbling puddle of melted flesh and skin

It reached 97 degrees inside my classroom today. I finally took a thermometer so I could know EXACTLY how ungodly hot it is. Just knowing it's ungodly is not enough. I needed to know exactly. This is completely ridiculous. I was as warm as I care to be by the time I got on the bus in the morning. It was 80 degrees before 8 o'clock.

Not only is the heat unbearable, but it's fairly unreasonable to expect students to absorb lessons on allegories and dangling modifiers when they're more focused on avoiding heat stroke.

The rest of this week is all half days for quarter exams, and then there's one full week before Holy Week, which is a full week off. Once we return from Holy Week, our days will be shortened. we get out of school at 1:30, at which point today my room was only around 93 degrees. Beautiful.

I cannot function. It's simply too hot. This is awful.

...wishing forced happy birthdays

This post was first written and published in March (I believe) of 2010. I was pressured by administration to remove it in 2012.  5 years later, the underlying feelings still exist, and so I'm reuploading it since I have nothing to worry about from administrative pressures nor does anyone read this blog any more.  It remains one of my favorite posts I've written for this blog.
 
Doña Berta is International School's matriarch. She founded the school and is the superintendent. Today I received this e-mail from my principal (Doña Berta's daughter-in-law):

"Today is Doña Berta's birthday. Her email is ____________ if you want to send her a note."

O...K? I don't think I've explained the family-business, kiss-the-ring mentality that really pervades the atmosphere of this school, making me view this message as much more comical than my readers might. Allow me to clarify: IST IS indeed a family business. Doña Berta founded the school, her architect husband designed the buildings, and her children and in-laws populate the upper echelons of the school hierarchy. IST, while a private, Christian institution, is also a FOR-PROFIT school, at the same time as being one of the most expensive schools in the country, (I might add that teachers here make around 500 dollars a month). Admittedly, it's also one of the best schools in the country (a fact that frightens me so much about the quality of education in this country, but that is another post altogether), but the sheer amount of revenue coming in from tuition for the over 1000 students here simply must outweigh the amount paid to us teachers and the even lower-paid cleaning women and maintenance men. I have not seen Doña Berta's house, but I hear it is breathtaking.

Now, I know that teachers aren't renowned for the size of their paychecks, even more in a third-world country, and that as someone who created the institution, Doña Berta deserves to enjoy some dividends. But Doña Berta has not even been around the school since Christmas - she's spent almost the entire time in Miami. Again, there are familial things I know nothing of going on, but still, no superintendent would take two and a half months away from their post in any school system I'd met before this year. And yet there's this sense of reverence around Doña Berta which I don't understand. With focus on family-first staffing, making money rather than ensuring increasing quality of education (family members are not always the most qualified to develop curriculum or whatever else they do in their air-conditioned offices all day), I as a teacher feel very lost in the shuffle.

So I won't be sending any birthday greetings today.

...finally realizing an easy way to get photos up here

Sheesh. Took me long enough. Anything I load onto facebook has a URL I can link to. I'll have to share more pictures soon.

...making juice of lemon.

A quote from a one page paper:

"If life gives you lemon, make of them juice of lemon."

Right on.

...but I haven't been healthy.

On Tuesday afternoon, I was feeling kinda bad. It had been a hot day, and I had forgotten to pack my lunch, so I blamed my fatigue on those two factors and used my free last period to lie down in the air-conditioned teacher's lounge. I was planning on going to dinner, so when I got home I ate a little something to just get my strength back up and lay down again for 45 minutes before heading out. When I got to dinner, despite having had nothing but a bowl of cereal, 4 Oreos and half a canned peach all day, I couldn't eat more than 10 bites because my stomach started feeling rather lousier. After a bit of shopping, we got in a taxi to head home. I was dropped off from the taxi about 4 blocks from my house. I made it two before I had to set my bags down and vomit.

I hate vomiting. Doing it on the side of the road doesn't help any.

A nice man helped me carry my bags the remaining way home, and I managed to catch LOST on TV, but I went to bed immediately after that.

I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned, slowly coming to the realization that I wasn't going to get out of this without puking again. I just had to coax my body into it. Immediately upon finishing the second bout, the diarrhea began. (Did I mention this bathroom escapade was happening with no power, as well?) When I had another bout of diarrhea in the night, I knew I would not be at work the next day.

This was a fortunate timeline to have to miss school, as the 11th graders were going on a spiritual retreat this particular Wednesday. I was supposed to be one of the chaperones, but my absence would not nearly be missed on this day like on any other day. And I didn't have to worry about sub plans.

So I stayed home, lying low, watching TV, bumming the Internet. I was quite positive this would be a passing thing, and 'round the end of the school day I'd be able to get down to some much needed work. It didn't work like this. I continued to feel crappy, no pun intended, all day. And the following night.

By the time Thursday came around, I felt well enough to go to school, but I was thankful we still had about a class' worth of movie to watch, since I didn't feel up to actually running a full-blown class. I had more digestional problems throughout the day, and could do little more than lie down and watch a movie when I got home.

Friday was similar. I have never had such a bout of diarrhea before in my life. Finally on Friday I went to the school doctor and got a prescription, and some hydration salts to dissolve in my water. Painful gas felt like it was tearing up my insides.

Yesterday morning, my insides finally felt somewhat normal. The diarrhea persisted somewhat, but I felt okay. This was very fortunate, as I had been looking forward to a Valentine's dinner all week, and I was in a state to go and completely enjoy it.

As of this writing, I'm still not entirely through the woods. I feel much, much better, and I'm actually capable of doing work, but the prescription finally seems to be doing what my body could not by itself. I'm down a full roll of toilet paper, but I watched 4 movies in the last 3 days, and I'm actually feeling well, so God is good.