First we Work and then we Play: Practicum and the beach!

Dearest Costa Rachel Readers:

Buenos Dias! This entry will talk about two things: first, practicum here in Orosi (aka my first actual teaching experience in Costa Rica) and then also my group’s weekend vacation to Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean. Both experiences were super intense and ultimately very positive for me, and I’m excited to share them with you. :)

ANYWAY…. Last week was practicum, meaning that I got to teach elementary school students for 40 minutes a day, 5 days in a row. The 18 volunteers were divided up into groups of 3, with each group teaching a grade (my group taught 3rd grade Mon-Wed and then 5th Thurs-Fri). We taught 3 lessons in a row, with one person teaching each lesson and the other two observing and giving feedback.

Note: the Costa Rican school system hasn’t actually started for the year yet. Though practicum took place in the school, it was essentially a free English summer session for the students here—pretty cool!

… Practicum was important and great practice for all of us, and also pretty nerve-wracking! It entailed a lot of planning and practicing for students who we weren’t familiar with and we were also being observed by our team members and ultimately also by the director and assistant director from our program (they came in twice and gave us feedback, too.)… so, a lot of pressure, but it was also reassuring to see everyone else teaching and to discuss how the lessons went every day.

Here are two practicum pictures, first of me teaching:

...and then of me and my teammates with our third graders:

Anyway! On Friday we had the last day of practicum, then graduation for the students (so cute!), then went home and packed, and we all met up at OTIAC (the hostel where we had our Spanish lessons) to leave for the beach in Puerto Viejo. We piled into our two rented vans and headed out as the sun was setting. The drive was a good 5 hours and a lot of it was on curvy mountain roads or roads full of potholes, so it certainly wasn’t relaxing…

But then we arrived at the hostel on the beach, with the air full of reggae and the palm trees casting beautiful shadows all over, and Graceanne and I went down to the beach in the dark and sat and looked at the stars (more than I have EVER seen in my life, I think) and puppies circled around us in the sand and it was beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful!

I slept, woke up early, and went for a walk on the beach with Sara. That was awesome—everyone else was still asleep and the sun had just come up, so we got to see the beach when it was almost deserted, to see the first surfers out catching waves, and to take pictures and collect shells and coral from the sand. There was an abundance of pink coral all around, which I hadn’t known would be the case. Very cool.

We went back to the hostel, breakfasted, and then most of the group decided to walk down to another beach a good half-hour away to go watch a surfing competition. I don’t remember why, exactly, but Jeff and I got separated from everyone else. I think we’d hung back at the hostel for some reason, and then we went left instead of right, or something… but whatever the reason, he and I ended up walking without the rest of the group. We just verrrrry veeeeerrrryyy lazily walked down to the surf competition, walking and then stopping and then taking pictures and then walking and then swimming and then walking some more.

Here's a picture Jeff took of me that morning:

...It was a fantastic way to spend the morning, and exactly what I would have done had I been alone. It took us quite a while to get to the surf competition (I think it was pretty much lunch time by the time we rejoined the group), and we decided that we’d hang out with them only for a little bit before getting food. We swam for a while with the others and I played some guitar on the sand, but then the two of us left to go find us some vittles, this time taking Sara’s guitar with us.

Jeff and I walked down the street parallel to the beach for a good fifteen minutes before we saw a little roadside restaurant saying it had casado (that’s the rice/beans/meat/salad/plantains dish sold everywhere in Costa Rica)… went in and this beautiful waif of a woman from Luxembourg who worked there came over and sat with us at our table-on-the-floor (we sat on cushions!) and played guitar with us and talked in German and English. The food was alright, and I had my first patacones (twice-baked green plantains.) Yummmm yum yum. We walked back to the store, picked up money and ran into Drew, who had been doing a diving lesson in the morning and so hadn’t gone to the surfing competition. Drew decided to hang out with me and Jeff for a while instead of going directly to the others, which was awesome :)

The three of us walked down the edge of the water til we’d found a more secluded area and then sat and played music, wrote lyrics and poetry, talked some more, and just enjoyed the shade and sand and water, away from everyone else. My favorite moments and photos from the weekend are from that portion of the afternoon—it was beautiful and simple and easygoing.

Here's my favorite picture of me and Drew on the beach:

...anyway, Drew left us after a while and Jeff and I sat around musicing, scripturing, writing in the sand, and just doing absolutely nothing. It was great :) :)

That night, a bunch of us went out to dinner together at a tiny roadside restaurant with a woman who spoke the Caribbean dialect and looked and cooked like Aunt Jemima (I think that was Jeff’s description, not mine… but it fit.) Good food, albeit greasy and sweet. And I remember thinking—how cool it is that I’m here at the beach in Costa Rica with these awesome people, about to embark on our adventures alone but still connected like this. How fantastic!

After we were back from dinner, I took one of the hostel’s guitars upstairs to a little alcove to play and relax and think. The acoustic was amazing, as was the general vibration of the evenin: Jeff, Drew, me, David, and a few other people from the hostel, just sitting around and chilling with music.… then one of the hostel guys took the guitar and I lay on the bench for a few minutes while he played (he was very talented) before going downstairs to go to bed. I was SO tired, just completely exhausted, because I’d walked literally miles and miles that day and hadn’t slept well the night before. But it was a Good Feeling. The weekend was going well.

Sunday was: getting up, walking in the other direction down the beach with Jeff and taking more pictures, the sand was black instead of light brown, then it started raining like whoa and we took shelter under overhangs but then there were sketchy guys so we got a taxi back into town… a taxi who hit dogs and almost everything else :( … got back, went to lunch with a group of people, ate a ton of food as always, piled back into the vans to leave….

Then, after 2 hours or so of driving, our van broke down. In the mountains. In the rain. We ended up standing under the overhang of a roadside car repair place for an hour and a half before another van came, and we amused ourselves by playing guitar and also a game where we all stand in a circle and each has a ‘sign’ and we pass an invisible ‘ball’ between each other and the person in the middle has to guess who has the ball (if you know this game, you’ll be like OH YEAH THAT ONE and if you don’t know it, I’m betting that that description didn’t help :P)… ANYway, it was a fun experience, then we got into the new van (which had a TV for us that played an awful bootlegged Hugh Jackman movie in Spanish, muy entertaining).. .and Graceanne and I talked a bunch bunch bunch in Spanish (which I’d gotten to do with a bunch of strangers over the weekend, too… awesome!) and we got home and I showered and ate yummy gallo pinto and CRASHED into bed because I was so exhausted!!

ANYWAY, dearest readers: Thank you so much for reading and caring! Tomorrow is the last day of Orientation, and then Wednesday I leave for Boruca, where I’ll have a week free before school starts on the 8th. I’m so nervous and excited about what is to come, because this is the meat and potatoes of why I am here in this beautiful country. I’m here to serve and to teach and to help this community, and though I am scared, I know that one way or another, I will leave my mark. And that’s a pretty incredible thing!

I couldn’t be doing it without you all. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

<3 <3,
Raquelita (as the guys at the hostel in Puerto Viejo called me!)