Keeping on

Today I was sitting in my little room, happily working away at preparing for my second week of teaching when I heard my host mom coming from the front of the house. "Jennifer, venga. Venga, venga," she said passing by my door with a slightly mischievous smile on her face.

"Por que?" I asked as I followed her outside and through the junk-filled carport and around the corner to the front of the pulperia. There in the dust and sun stood my fellow volunteer Mikki-Jean with a confused look on her face.

"Mikki!"

"Jennifer!"

And for the first time in two weeks, I talked freely, without strain or thought, face-to-face to someone I know. Our host mothers beamed at us, likely relieved to know that we aren't complete idiots after all, that we can indeed communicate fluently.

Gloriously, Mikki finished my sentences, laughed at my jokes and conceded that she doesn't understand her family either.

I showed Mikki my room, bragging a little that I have my own shower and toilet. I introduced her to my host sisters and the family's pet parrot, Pablo, who lives in a small space at the corner of two walls in the living room. But that's all there was time for. In less than five minutes after she arrived, Mikki-Jean was back in her host family's pickup and gone in a cloud of dust toward the mountain.

And I was back to my lonely world of español.

Que triste.

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Today I decided to try out the food in el comedor at school. From what I'd seen so far, the food looked okay. After all, it's hard to mess up rice and beans. Right?

The cook handed me a plate, and I glanced over the various simmering pots -- rice, beans and something I didn't recognize.

"What is this," I asked in Spanish. Whatever was in the pot was yellow-greenish and cooked with a little tomato sauce and peppers and onions.

"Mondongo," the woman replied.

"Mondongo? What's mondongo?"

"It's meat. From a cow."

"This doesn't look like any meat I've ever seen before," I thought to myself as I hesitantly scooped up a few small pieces of the mystery lunch. I sat down at a table across from a couple of girls.

"What's this?" I asked, looking for a second opinion.

"Mondongo," one girl replied. "It's meat from a pig."

Hmm. Clearly, it was some strange section of animal, be it cow or pig. The texture was slick on one side and rough on the other, sort of like a strip of Velcro, only much thicker and with several layers, like a model of skin one might find in a science class. The rough side was made of lots of tiny little tentacle-like things.

"What part of the pig?" I ventured.

"Oh, teacher," the girl said with a shy chuckle as she gulped down a bite of mondongo. "Usted no quiere saber."

You don't want to know.

That was all I needed to hear. Rice and beans is sufficient for me, thank you very much.

Later I relayed this whole story to the other teachers, who informed me that mondongo is of the intestines. The intestines of what animal, cow or pig, I never determined, but does it really matter?

Intestinos.
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After the incident with the mondongo, I was too thoroughly grossed out to do much teaching. So, as I had promised them the day before, I took my sixth-graders to the soccer field (also the school's playground) to play an English game. When we got there, one girl, Reinal, nonchalantly said she was going to the pulperia to buy a snack. I calmly reminded her that we weren't at recreo, that this was English class and to get her butt back to the group. Now.

"This is English class," she mocked back. At least she was speaking English. Still, I was so instantly enraged that I chewed her up and down in English right in front of the whole class and told her to go back to the classroom to wait until the rest of us were finished playing the game. She had no idea what I had said (thank goodness), but according to the look on her face, she got my point.

The rest of us played, and the kids had fun, running and laughing and speaking English. There was a lot of chatter, but chatter doesn't really bother me because it's in Spanish and goes in one ear and out the other. Then suddenly everyone starting pointing to the fence line, and one boy ran off as fast as he could toward the other end of the plaza. I mentally weighed my options: go after one kid and leave 25 alone or stay with the 25 and let the one go. I chose to let the one go.

He came back soon enough -- carrying a five-foot-long dinosaur-like creature by the tail.

This wasn't a situation we went over at orientation -- what to do when a student catches a huge, living, scaly thing and is coming toward you with it.

"Put it down," I yelled instinctively when he got within earshot. And amazingly, he did.

After class, I apologized to the student I shamed. She smiled and shook my hand but I don't know if it was a sincere smile or just a smirk at my awful Spanish. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough. I hope it was a sincere smile; she´s bigger than me.

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Today we only had classes for half a day. Of course, no one bothered to tell me that, but whatever. No one bothered to tell me that we would be going to a neighboring town to meet with other teachers either. No one ever bothers to tell me anything. But, I always figure it out, so today I was waiting at the school when the truck arrived to carry us teachers up the mountain.

"En el cajon," the school's director instructed me with a motion of her hand towards the back of the pickup.

I climbed in, wondering just what this ride up the mountain would have in store. It wasn't so bad. I was a little dusty, windblown and sunburned thirty minutes later when we reached the tiny one-room school, but I was all in one piece. A couple of teachers whipped us up a quick lunch of arroz con pollo and a salad of cabbage, tomatoes and, oddly enough, canned corn.

Then some people talked in Spanish for the next three hours while I daydreamed in English. At one point, I noticed everyone was looking at me. I smiled and tried to look pleasant and interested. The main speaker said something directed at me, so I took a guess and said "Si," with a nod of my head. Everyone wrote something in their calendars, and I kept hearing the word "Ingles".

The teacher sitting next to me, who speaks a little English, explained that I had just signed myself up to teach a lesson of English to the teachers in April. That's when it occurred to me that it is very likely someone did tell me we weren't having school today; I just never understand what anyone is saying.

The meeting continued and I mentally planned my lesson for April while the other teachers talked on and on about god knows what. The rain hitting the tin roof of the school began to lull me to sleep. "Rain!?!?!" I thought suddenly, looking at the pickup truck parked in the road.

Rain.

All the way home, I huddled between the two male teachers who shared my plight. We clung to the bars on the back window of the truck and closed our eyes to the stinging drops. The men scowled miserably but I just laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed because I am a teacher in Costa Rica riding in the back of a pickup truck in the rain.

Pura vida!

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I made two knew friends this week, a chicken puppet I named Roxanna and a mini tape recorder with a microphone. My two new friends have helped turn my classes from 40 minutes of hitting and running and screaming and chatter to 40 minutes of actual English class.

Before when I would ask a student a question such as "What as your name," the response was disasterous. You can just imagine the exchange.

"What is your name?"

"What is your name?"

"No, what is your name?"

"What is your name?"

But with my friend Roxanna, I am able to demonstrate how to give the correct response. And with the promise of a kiss on the cheek from Roxanna, the students sit quietly and eagerly await their turns to say, "My name is ...." They want to say it over and over and over again, and I let them. For 40 minutes straight today, my second graders took turns saying "My name is...."

Yesterday, if I had asked a student to come to the front of the room to sing a solo in English, he or she would have run from the classroom. Today, with the help of a microphone and tape recorder, three students asked if they could sing solos in English in front of the class. I couldn't believe it, but I loved it.

I just hope I haven't used up all my tricks in the first two weeks.


And about my old friend Oscar. He is so bad.