Things Falling into Place

Yikes. Lots to cover.

Friday night I went out with a group of people from the hostel to a bar called Mochila (backpack). It was reggae night, and the dreadlocks were plentiful. The bar had a great outdoor space, inside was decorated with a backpack and a number of flags from around the world. What separated this bar from the rest was that they serve beer in bongs (that look exactly like the ones you might smoke out of), ranging from 3 to 5 liters. I wanted to take a photo but was too embarrassed to pull out my camera in front of all the locals. Maybe another time…

I awoke on Saturday to come back out to Heredia to meet my new roommate Sarah about the apartment. She met me downtown Heredia and we hopped a cab to the place, having to drive around the giant market that takes over one of the main streets every Saturday (SO excited about this one), and paid a whopping $2 for the ride. The place is great, a good size, big closet, great view, gated, good neighborhood, $180/month, everything included. Pretty stellar… I’ll post photos on facebook, if you want to see them and are not on fb, email me and I’ll pass them along.

Sarah, my new roommate, is nice as they come. She is from Costa Rica but speaks English fluently since she studied in Wisconsin. She works for Priceline.com and teaches English through a company. Right now she is teaching a few people in management at the local bubblegum factory, which is pretty funny. Apparently they have her try new gum flavors out to get her feedback. Not a bad deal. She is a year younger than me, but I feel like I’m younger than her because I’m always asking her for help with everything haha.

Sunday morning Sarah and her girlfriend Laura picked me up from the hostel and took me to see my very first authentic game of futbol in Alajuela. There are 7 provinces in Costa Rica, and apparently each has its own soccer team. Alajuela was playing Heredia, and the stadium was packed. Thankfully the weather held out, and we got to watch the game from our $16 seats in the shade and separated from the superfans. Each team had their own superfan/section 8 type crew, and the visiting section was surrounded by policemen in riot gear. The Alajuela section was on the second level above the goal.

Now, I love soccer and have always wanted to watch a game surrounded by the barn-burners at Toyota Park, but you couldn’t pay me to join either one of those groups here in CR. The Alajuela fans looked like they were all about to fall of the balcony and a number of the Heredia fans were beaten by the police. I can promise that I will go to see another game while I am here, but I prefer to watch the game from where I’m not worried for my safety.

After the game the girls took me to lunch at a hotel restaurant in Alajuela. They spent the meal teaching me some hilarious Tica (Costa Rican) phrases. Highlights include: standing behind a tree (having no idea what is going on), fox (slut) and something about putting a fly on your cake or something. I forget now, but will report back whenever I learn it again.

I unpacked Sunday night and spent Monday running errands buying things I needed – a pillow, hangers, shampoo, etc. Nothing too exciting. Monday night I got to skype with my family after they finished having dinner for my brother Chris’ birthday. Sadly, the internet isn’t set up on my computer yet, so they couldn’t see me, but I got to see all of them J. Lily (my beautiful niece) tried to feed me cake. It’s like she was reading my mind. Okay, she was just giving it to herself in the computer screen, but still.

Tuesday morning I got up and went to the Instituto Politecnico de Costa Rica to interview for a position teaching English there and was offered a job on the spot. I started today: I had “training” this afternoon for a few hours and then was thrown right into a class from 6-9:30pm. It went surprisingly well. Not great, but then, I have never actually taught in English before, lol. I have a Wed/Fri night class that is full of slightly disgruntled students who were given the shaft last quarter and had four different teachers for no reason. Admin was a bit worried about the students, but they seemed to warm up to me fairly well. We talked a lot about basketball, amazingly enough. I think it may have been because of the (Chicago) bull sticker on my water bottle.

I will see those students again on Friday, and then I will have another class of adults (I believe) on Saturday mornings. I’ll also have office hours on Wednesdays, which is pretty hilarious to me. I’m apparently a legit teacher at a university. It’s a pretty crazy feeling. I’m excited/optimistic/grateful and intimidated/nervous/scared all at the same time.

About the school: Politecnico is the only (2 year) junior college in CR, and it has a beautiful, small campus in Heredia on the border of San Jose. I’ll post photos on fb and will email those who want. The school was started about 18 months ago, and is growing rapidly. I got to meet some of the staff I’ll be working with, all friendly people who seem like they’ll be a lot of help in the weeks to come.

Classes run 3-4 hours long, and occasionally Politecnico gets called to teach for some of the local high schools (!) who have AP English classes. The deal is I will work for them for the next three months, at which point they will evaluate and decide whether or not to keep me on staff. If I meet their expectations, they will then offer me a year-long contract. If I choose, I can shorten my contract to something like 6 months instead, but then they wouldn’t go through the expensive process of getting me my work visa.

Because the school receives some funding from the government, they have to prove that I am qualified to teach. Therefore, they will be evaluating my degrees from the US to determine what classes I am lacking for a TEFL certification. So, while I’m teaching in the next however long, I will also be taking classes to make up for my shortcomings, of which they will pay half. Basically, I have stumbled upon the best ESL teaching job in the country. Must be the luck of the Chirish! [That’s Chi-town Irish for you non-Chicago folk ;) ] Oh, and lunch is free for me every day.

Last night my roommate and I went grocery shopping and spent way too much money. Turns out we have very similar tastes – she loves pb&j and doesn’t like coconut too! I think this was meant to be, lol. While I sometimes find myself really homesick and overwhelmed at everything new going on around me, I am seriously counting my blessings at how well things are turning out for me right now. I miss you all SO much and can’t wait to see your faces again (I have a 2 week break for Christmas, btw – yay for school schedules!), but I believe that the wind is blowing me in the right direction… for right now at least.

My sincere apologies for this entry being so ridiculously long… I haven’t been able to access the internet from my computer in the apartment yet and the internet on Sarah’s computer goes in and out all the time because she gets the signal from the cafe down the street. Hopefully today or tomorrow we will get that taken care of and I will be able to respond to all those emails I haven’t yet responded to.

Love and miss you all. xoxoxo