November?!?!

Where has the time gone? I have already been in lovely Costa Rica for 3 months! Mi vida esta bien. (Life is good.) Mi espanol: poco a poco... School is good; kids are still sweet, for the most part! One of my favorite students (yes, all teachers have favorites just like all parents have favorites) told me the other day, "Ms. K, you're like a second mom to me. Besides her you're the only other girl I trust." (insert AWWWWWWWW here) The other day the students were writing down some steps for writing equations. While everyone is silently copying them down, this same student calls out, "Ms. K, are you my friend?" Ah 6th graders...

I was in my classroom the other day when another teacher comes in and tells me I have a package in the office! I rush over there and find a surprise from some of my lovely friends!!! I open it to find an array of purple products all perfect for Halloween! I was showing some students and I gave them some of the stickers. They kept saying things such as, "Wow, your friends are SO nice!" "I wish I had friends like that!" "Wow Ms. K, you have really great friends." It was darling...then we got on the subject of how much we miss Target! (Side note: my kids are totally right, my friends rock! For those of you 'friends' who have yet to send me a package, fear not, I won't defriend you until December. You still have 2 months! That goes for family members too!)

One of my fellow teachers swims on a team here. She was telling me all about it so Jen and I decided to check it out. We show up and ring the bell. The door is opened a teeny tiny crack and someone looks at us. "Ugh, we'd like to swim?" I say in my amazing Spanish. She proceeds to tell us it's closed. I try to tell her we want to swim on the team to try it out. She proceeds to tell me it's closed; come back tomorrow morning. My Spanish has run out so we say fine. Then I ask her to call us a taxi, "No puedo. Mucho gusto." (I can't; my pleasure/thank you) I looked at Jen and was like, "Did she just 'mucho gusto' us and then slam the door in our faces?!" We left in search of our own taxi. We did decide to return though and we were almost turned away again but this time I refused to stop talking to her. WE SUCCEEDED! We swam and I joined the team! An Olympian is also on this team; luckily she trains in the afternoons!

The weekend we went to Jaco to celebrate Guy Fawkes (look him up; I'm too lazy to type his background here.) A British family at CDS plans it and invites the teachers so I rounded up a group of 13 and we went! Our place was amazing; especially compared to the hostels we've stayed at every other time we travel. I never left the hotel! We had a great casita right on the beach overlooking the ocean. I played in two tournaments: darts and horseshoes. We also rented some surf boards. NOW, I don't know what happened between now and last month when I learned how to surf, but I came to the realization that I need more lessons! Granted we had much lighter and smaller boards but the scene went something like this: Paddle, paddle, paddle, stand....and, if I managed to stand successfully, go no where. I literally would just stay anchored on the water while the wave crashed to shore. I came to the conclusion that the ocean cannot lift my ass!

Lastly, I know my Spanish isn't that great but apparently my English is crap too (I know, shocking, right?!) The other day I was having my students solve a story problem and it was much easier to understand with a picture. So I was walking around and a group needed help. "Where's your 'picture?'" I asked. "Pitcher? My pitcher?" one of them ever so innocently responded while not so successfully trying to hold back her giggles. They were, and still are, so entertained by the fact I say "pitcher" instead of "picture." Every now and then one of them will ask, "Ms. K, where's your PITCHER?" Nothing like getting English lessons from an 11 year old who speaks it as a SECOND language! Until next time...