Soy un Profesor de Ciencias
Survived my first week of teaching! Or perhaps I should say the students survived the first week of my teaching. It occurred to me at one point during the week how impressive it is for these students to be both learning English and learning in English! Somehow, I hadn’t really considered that before. I can’t imagine trying to learn science in a second language at 10 or 11 years old!
There have been some challenges but I have one student who gives me a hug every time she sees me, one whose primary goal is to make her teachers like her, and another who wants to be a microbiologist, studying 5thgrade science as if her future depended on it. I have a boy who giggles and laughs enough to exasperate any teacher but then proclaims he is too happy to stop and who can be frustrated with that? Another student helps a friend who is a bit further behind in English to understand the material we are covering.
Identidad Nacional
Over the weekend I toured Teatro Nacional and Museo Nacional. I actually took my camera along hoping to get some pictures only to discover the battery was still nestled in its charging station at home. Phone photos certainly don’t do justice to the theater! I have been interested in visiting the National Theater for a while and have been scoping out the schedule for a couple of months. It turns out Dracula is playing during the month of March and after my tour of the theater I definitely want to try and see it! The theater is beautiful and the tour guide shares a lot of interesting details you wouldn’t get just by attending a show. For example, the floor raises to form a ballroom floor! There is a large screw in the basement (think carousel or sugar cane press) that must be turned 191 times to lift the floor! The next time the floor will be raised will be for the presidential inauguration in May. It was raised for the last presidential inauguration and once for President Obama. Not only does the floor raise but the chandelier lowers for ballroom use as well. Much of the material for the theater was imported including marble and other details. The chandelier, however, was “hecho en Costa Rica”. The theater prices are the same for everyone, including extranjeros. When the “new” theater was built the goal was to be inclusive of all people, not just the elite, and the tradition continues. Pictured is the president's seat, which is in the middle of the theater, visible to all.
I have actually seen a lot of poor reviews for the national museum but I thought it was very nice! Some reviews stated the jade museum was actually a better museum but having now been to both I disagree. The extranjero price for the National Museum is cheaper and there is far more to see, including a section on the pre-Columbian period which has similar items to the Jade Museum, only fewer in number. The tour begins with a walk through a lovely butterfly atrium and then takes you into the dungeons of the former barracks. From there you can walk up to a couple of different exhibits. One is a walk-through timeline of Costa Rica’s history, another is the Pre-Colombian exhibit. The last is, I believe, an area with rotating exhibits but at this moment it is a very well done and informative exhibit on Cocos Island. I have many pictures from the museum but for amusement's sake:
I will post more pictures from these ventures on Friday! And hopefully I can get some better picture when I return to see Dracula.
Otra Cosas
- I was asking the ticket sales attendant at Teatro Nacional about the process for buying tickets for plays. He informed the plays were in Spanish but that I could go see the symphony.
- Some ladies in the bus line took offense at me getting back in the front of the line, where I had been waiting for FORTY minutes because the bus was late. I had taken a few seconds to check the bus behind as one of my fellow long-waiting companions had departed in that direction. I may not speak Spanish well but context helps make the most of understanding the words I know. Dirty looks and gestures, for example. I considered using aforementioned limited Spanish to answer their question of where I had come from but I decided to… let it gggooooo, let it gggoooooo. #personalgrowth
Sorry for the length on this one! Until next time…
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