Fun in the Sun

It's been a couple days... Sorry to those of you who have been checking everyday and anticipating a new blog!

I came home exhausted on Friday night and slept for a long time. I felt much better on Saturday.

We went to the feria again! I spent about $7 on a zucchini, a cucumber, lettuce, a carrot, cheese, and 2 potted plants. Awesome deals! Here's all of our loot after we washed it...

yum!!
Kim V. (5th grade teacher) waiting for us again... She's so patient when she is waiting for us to be ready to go ...

Then Tricia, Kim, and I headed into the city with our neighbor Diane, another teacher Kim V., and two new ILE students, Sunshine and Becky. Gringas in San Jose make quite the spectacle. We make a spectable when it's just one of us at a time, let alone 7 of us! We visited Mercado Central, Cafe Latino, Mercado Democracia, American Ropa (ha, a secondhand store from brand name stores in the U.S. -- they don't know that their "charitable donations" to foreign countries are being bought by Americans!), and Museo Nacional. Whew, quite the excursion! All that for a 175 colones bus fare one way... making it about 80 cents both ways. My kind of travel :)

Diane at Cafe Latino.

The gringas making a spectable...
ha, Tricia with a big fat woman statue. I think the story is that she will bring you good luck if you touch her. The statue, that is, not Tricia! :)
A cool window at Cafe Latino. :)

A small victory in speaking Spanish: I struck up a conversation with a vendor at Mercado Democracia, and Sunshine was looking at her purses. I was able to translate for Sunshine about the costs and colors of the purses. The vendor and I talked about how easily we forget words in the other language (she in English and I in Spanish), so we bonded over our forgetful minds.

Then, the supermarket again. I felt so much more comfortable asking questions about where to find items. Yay! Another victory...

Church is extremely humbling. My notes are a jumble of Spanish words that I hear and understand, but I can't make out the message yet. Oh well, that will come. For now I focus on what I do understand, no matter how little it is. I wrote 2 pages front and back of random Spanish words I understood. The pastor said "Perfectamente posible!" a lot, so I wrote that at least five times. ha.

Today after church we journeyed a whole 4 blocks to Kim's house. (It's so confusing with so many Kims. This Kim lives with a tico family and is the 5th grade teacher at Sojourn. She's in some of the photos from the trip to San Jose as well.) Her family was gone for the day and had told Kim to have some friends over. We ate lunch and then took advantage of their back yard and sat out in our swimsuits :). We also painted our toenails and had great conversation. Wonderful relaxation time for hard-working teachers, trust me!
the back view of the house.
Our beautiful toenails!

Oh, and Kim V. has a pet rooster in her back yard that was cockadoodling all afternoon. Strange but true.

check it out!

http://picasaweb.google.com/Tialrreilly/MKAndTeacherOrientationAugust2008

Check this link for photos from the meetings on Monday and Tuesday. Principal Reilly likes to take pictures of everything!!

First Official Day of Being a Teacher!

The gringas first day officially teaching in Costa Rica!! Kim (1st grade student teacher), Kate (4th grade all the way!!), and Tricia (Special Ed. and Kindergarten and Basketball Coach... that's the latest title anyway)

Alright, so this morning before the students arrived, I seriously was ready to puke. My mind was going a bajillion miles a second and I was absolutely sure that I wasn't ready for this huge responsibility.

Then the students arrived and I was totally in my element. I was directing the students on where to go and what to do and how to do it. I knew all their names within the first 5 minutes (I had a head start of meeting most of them in May!), except the twins, whom I kept mixing up all day. (I didn't know I had twins... Another teacher mentioned she thought they were cousins... Are they just pulling my leg?) We took a "classroom tour" with all the supplies and posters and then did a crazy five minute "student search" to mix up the new students with the old. We filled out this map of the world with where we're all from... I'll have to take a photo of that, because it's amazing. My class is from all over the U.S. and Latin America! I love it!

Then I drew a map on the whiteboard like a football play illustrating our class bathroom procedure. Ha, I should have taken a photo of that, but I already erased the board! The boys were so into that explanation... I find it absolutely necessary to make connections to their world... and football is the way to do it here in Costa Rica.

I came up with my fastest Spanish sentence yet this morning! I was taking all my students to their MEP and Spanish classes, and all of them go to different teachers for this time... It's a leveled curriculum, so each Spanish teacher has a level. Anyway, it was madness in the hall because all the kids are flustered, wondering which class they go into, and one teacher came out into the hallway and asked "Donde esta su estudiante Bayley? Si, ello es su?" and I said "Si, Bayley es en mi clase, pero no aqui hoy." What?? Where did I learn to think and speak so quickly?? I hardly had time to celebrate my victory, though, as 7 more of my students were like, "Miss Siscoe, which room do we go in?"

I'm excited about this school year. Genuinely excited.

early teacher training

I started training for the educational field very early on. "Wow, Dad, this is a pencil holder?"

classroom pics!!

Alright, so I am posting photos of the classroom even though it's not complete at all. This way you can see what my students are seeing when they come in tomorrow! :)


Here's the hallway entrance to my classroom.


The hallway has a garden! I would never have that in the States! My classroom door is open.

Through the gated doorway... I really want to use this door for students entering the room, but we can't find the key for the gate!


My messy desk :)
I took this photo around 4pm but I made changes already... but it gives you a good idea!

I had a whole conversation in Spanish today... or rather, I understood most of what Mrs. Lucy was saying to me... and I attempted Spanish :). I'm so excited that I am hearing and understanding words and phrases now! The custodian, Marie, will also talk to me... and she says "poco a poco!" to me a lot :). "Little by little," that's for sure.
Shout out to Aaron and Maria Wood... Thanks for these great organizer baskets from your leftover wedding favors :) They hold my paper clips and thumbtacks!
Another shout out to Melissa Smith for her amazing Faith and Life speech when she let us keep chunks of her painting! The piece that I claimed labels my clock well!
Another BIG thanks to Erin Blucker! Woohoo!! First piece of snail mail from the U.S.! :) It made it here in 8 days... My boss says it takes anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks, so we got lucky this time!
Introducing a student of mine, Carissa. She's lived most her life in Costa Rica, and it's amazing to hear her speak Spanish! She helped me paint curtains today and literally told me her life story, ha. She told me matter-of-factly that she likes jazz and salsa music.



Here's the curtains we painted... I'm not sure how well they work next to the painted windows... so I'll brainstorm what to do next.

a moment for thanks

Thank you all for your messages, your emails, your encouragement! It's so fun to come home in the evenings and find all these messages from back home! (You know who you are! :))

would anyone like to proofread this for me? :)

so... I just typed my for 4th grade "syllabus" (I'm not sure what else to call it! "Syllabus" sounds too grown up)... It's 6 pages long, if you can believe that. New students come to Sojourn all the time (I have 5 new students in my class tomorrow!!) and so it will be nice to be able to have my guidelines typed and ready for parents and students.



I did consider copying and pasting the whole document on my blog, but I wouldn't want to bore any of you. Let me know if you're interested, however. ha!

So I found out today that I won't be paid for these teaching endeavors for quite some time... but when I do receive my first paycheck, it will be wonderful. I want to thank those of you who have been so generous to support me and make this whole thing possible! God is providing and will continue to do so!

Sorry, I still haven't taken photos of the classroom. It's not how I want it yet... so I don't really want to take photos. But it would also be nice for you to be able to picture where I've already spent 23 hours this week, right?

Tomorrow I will only be testing my 5 new students. Thursday's the BIG DAY of KATE'S FIRST DAY OF CORRALING 15 STUDENTS...

I did have 27 4th graders in student teaching, so what's a mere 15?? (That's what I keep telling myself :))

Oh, and some photos from today. Here's the outside of our apartment... outside the gates and everything. Bright orange!! :) That will be a great story for someday. Our apartment door is right behind the tree in our front yard.

And here's our apartment again through the back gate of the school. Vivo muy cerca a mi trabajo! (I live very close to my job! :))
And here's the school in the morning. Beautiful warm sun and the mountains beyond the city limits. The clouds are already forming and promise rain from about 1pm for the rest of the day. If you want to exercise outside or run errands, morning is the best time!

Oh, and the language mix-up of the day. I was trying to write directions to our apartment in Spanish, and I wrote "gato enfrente" to describe the front gate. ha. I had a tico teacher proofread for me, and she said... "Um, Kate, 'gato' es 'cat' en ingles." Whoops. I'm definitely learning from my mistakes. Now I know that "gate" in Spanish is "proton" with an accent above the second 'o'. (I don't know how to make accents on this keyboard, can anyone help me with that?)

Wow, this is all incredibly humbling.