The Big Catch-Up: Part One

To my readers:

I apologize for my blatant negligence in writing for the past month and a half. So much has changed that I find my life barely recognizable. My passions have changed, the reasons for coming to Costa Rica are now completely different than the reasons that I am staying and am glad to be here. It would be completely impossible to sum up how I feel and why without many beers, many conversations, and writing a novel. The next series of posts are stories of things that have had the biggest effect on me in the last two months. They are the biggest reasons and best examples of why I am thrilled to be doing what I'm doing.

Here is the story of "J" so far.

When I walked into my very first class, there were three students. My TEFL instructor had told me that the level placement test wasn't exactly fool-proof and to expect some discrepancies between each individual learner, but I wasn't prepared at all for what was ahead of me. The class was a Pre-intermediate I class, which is roughly the equivalent of English 201. In this class, students should be somewhat comfortable stringing sentences together. Their vocabulary will be lacking greatly, but the general concept of syntax in English should be pretty solid. There aren't many tenses that they don't know by this point either. The first class was basically a get-to-know-each-other type of class. The students had never had class together so I used the time doing introductions and getting a feel for their abilities. There was one student, "J," who was clearly behind the other students. He was having trouble stringing together simple sentences to express that his favorite color is purple. The other two were getting frustrated with him by the end and I struggled keeping the class moving and interesting when I had to stop every now and then to teach something that is learned in the first week of learning a language.

The second day of class, J was the only one to show up. I worried that the other two were already fed up and dropped the class. (One actually did: her loss, this class rocks now.) Within five minutes it became blatantly obvious that what I had planned would be way over J's head and no actual learning would get done in the slightest. On the fly then, I set out to more thoroughly diagnose his language needs since we had two hours alone together. He knew nothing. For the first hour I taught him basic verbs and how to conjugate them in the present simple tense, e.g. I run / Bob runs. Then we set out to learn how to transform a verb, "to run" into a person, "runner" into the activity, "running." The second hour consisted of learning the past tense and the future tense, "I ran" and "I will run." Although I was completely bewildered, it was a fun class and J enjoyed it thoroughly. We were both standing up at the white board with markers and taking turns writing and fixing sentences. It reminded me of a scene from Stand and Deliver, where I was left thinking, "How can I teach this J?"

I gave him homework to write ten sentences each in the present, past, and future. After class I immediately went downstairs to talk to the administration and to see his diagnosis test. His test was abysmal. He got most everything wrong and on the writing portion had one sentence which was mindless babble riddled with errors. Written in the space which designates his level was "Basic." It was then crossed out and replaced with "Pre-intermediate I," which is two levels higher. I have no idea what crack-head did his diagnosis test, but I'm pretty sure a monkey could speak more English than J at this point. A monkey also wouldn't add a T to the end of every word either. The administration told me that his level was switched because he studied English for a month at Maximo before and it had been a long time since he had studied English. That makes as much sense as saying, "I spread the peanut-butter on may face because it's closer to my mouth than the bread." At this moment I sympathized with my parents who would tell me stories about how the teachers are on the front-lines and the generals pulling the strings in the administration are purposefully making themselves defter and defter everyday.

Class three rolled around and ten minutes in, the inept administration knocked on my door. I had asked that J be bumped down at least one level and today was the day of the change. J was with my favorite boss ever eager to get back into my class. Apparently he had felt like he learned a lot in my last class and refused to go down a level. He looked determined and I stupidly felt like the powerful new teacher who wore a cape instead of a tie and so I said, "Challenge accepted." To my surprise after the painstaking two hours with J, in which 95% of his sentences were incorrect on the board, his homework was 100% correct.

Since we are a language institution and people are allowed to fail without repercussions, I am supposed to teach to the top 50% of the class, pulling the lower 35% up and leaving behind the bottom 15% to drop out or repeat a level. So even though I wanted J to succeed, I couldn't cater to him, and the fast-paced curriculum wouldn't let me lest I not cover everything and have to fail the whole class, which was steadily growing in size. However, every once in a while, J was the only one in class on a certain day. In fact, he has only ever missed two classes which is extremely remarkable for a Tico. If ever this happened, I would ditch my lesson, run downstairs and grab a book from the level below and improvise a lesson based on what I noticed his language gaps were. One day it was modals, e.g. words like Would, Should, Could, Must, Have to, Can.  One day it was Like, Want, and Need. As time progressed the gap between he and the rest shortened, but I was still confident that he was in the wrong level.

The end of the first month rolled around and he scored a 68.4 on the quiz. A 70 is required to pass. He was bummed that he failed, but I made it sufficiently clear how impressed I was with his progress and how to me, that 68.4 was pleasant surprise. This strengthened his determination and the wait time between teaching and comprehension for any given topic for him began to decrease. During the next month he would absolutely floor me every now and then. When I taught the word "to hire" - which is inherently harder than most verbs since it requires the concept of needing a service done as well as the act of contracting someone to complete a task - J gave me this sentence: "I need to hire some peasants." I was laughing so hard that class could not continue for at least two minutes. In this last month he has not only caught up to the others, but surpassed a few. The class is now 6 people, and J is in the top 50%. Yesterday he was the first to get how the 'present perfect progressive' tense worked. If you haven't had any grammar in years, that tense goes like this: "I have been running in the park." It describes the past, present, and future simultaneously. I was floored. J is now watching Lord of the Rings in English. He has been watching the series for a week and brings me in lists of complicated words to teach him. All of this happened in two months.

Tomorrow he has another quiz. For some reason I'm very nervous about him passing. I want him to pass, but I'm nervous he's not quite ready. What's funny is that there are other students in the class who I should be even more worried about since J is now in the top 50%. If J passes this quiz I'm taking him for a beer after class.

Life as Bruce Wayne

Last night I stumbled across a glimpse of life outside of smoggy San Pedro. I was walking back to my apartment, and just two turns away I heard a bunch of yelling, cheering, and whistle blowing. When I looked over, I could just see a soccer game on the top of a hill. The field and teams have to belong to the colegio just two minutes away from my place. So I went over to see if I could get a good look and found myself able to walk right into the field and watch from the goal line of the red team. It appeared to be an actual game, they were playing harder than a scrimmage, but I saw only a handful of fans. With many people speaking Spanish very rapidly and yelling advice, it was very difficult to make out what anyone was saying. I could understand the coach of the blue team though, who was frustrated that his players wanted to practice thier footwork rather than pass the ball. It was a great get-away and mini distraction from my three lesson plans I need to make for Monday.

I've found breaks like this, and making time to hang out and get a beer with my TEFL friends have kept me sane. Earlier in the week I got a gig with Maximo Nivel, the school I'm currently attending to receive my EFL certification. It would be way too easy to hole myself up and just prepare for my classes. With so much time I could get my plans to the level they should be at once I graduate, but having to be in TEFL class 8 hours a day, and 6 hours of actual teaching for Maximo doesn't really permit. If Maximo was so desperate for a new teacher that they had to dip into the still-going TEFL class for me, they can't expect perfect lessons. Plus, if I'm planning to be in Costa Rica, or Latin America in general, for the next year, I'm going to make a concerted effort not to burn out from the week and a half that I'm both student and teacher. Yesterday I didn't do any actual work for the three lessons I have to teach tomorrow. I had four hours of orientation for Maximo, and then I spent the day hanging out with friends and resetting my brain from the hectic week. The 9 hours of sleep last night helped too.

So today I have three lesson plans to make. I've already made teaching and languages my life in Costa Rica. But I'm planning on doing this right, taking to heart Ken's advice: Don't let this stress you out, relax and just do it as you can - be Batman. So far this mentality has served me well in Costa Rica. Pura Vida, Solo Bueno. I will work harder than I've ever worked in my life, but I won't let this week and a half kill me. Who knows, the Super Bowl commercials tonight may give me some great ideas about how to teach the modals 'had better' and 'ought to.'

Ninjas!

Last Friday was our second teaching assignment. A group on basic-level English students was brought in (voluntarily) to act as guinea pigs for our 20 min. mini-lessons. This week was a vocabulary based lesson with new words centering around a theme. I thought to myself, what would English students want to learn about? The answer was quite obvious: Ninjas. So my lesson was all about ninjas and included new vocab words for them like Stealthy, to Spy, Assassin, and Disguise.

The current EFL techniques are very interesting and very exciting when done well. They're also very hard since I can only speak English in the classroom since it's supposed to be an immersion environment for the students. There are two main parts of teaching a new word: eliciting, or pulling, and CCQs, or concept check questions. Basically an English teacher cannot give the students anything, but must pull the language and concepts from the associations that already exist in the students' minds. It's like Rosetta Stone but much more active and faster.

My best piece of eliciting was for "disguise." First I pulled out a picture of the Muppet, Animal. I asked, "Who is this?" (Animal.) Then I grabbed a cut-out of a classic pair of glasses and big nose disguise, and asked, "Who is this?" At this point I got what every EFL teacher wants to hear: the epiphany "Ah!" Next, to drive the point home and get the students talking more, I held up the disguise and asked, "So what is this?" They answered, putting together the word written on the board with the concept, "That's a disguise." Then I ran the CCQs. These serve to fine tune the meaning of a new word with comparisons and such.


It was a very active lesson. To make sure they understood the word "Stealthy," I asked one student to show me stealthy and had him creep around the room stealthily. Apparently the two main goals for a language institution are, "Are the students talking?" and "Will they come back?" A professional EFL teacher must aim for 60-80% student talk time (vs. teacher talk time). We had to reach 50% student talk time is VERY lofty when they don't know the language and I do. I totally hit the mark!

Weekend Diagnosis: Rock Lobster

The first weekend of the TEFL course is supposed to be the easiest, after which the papers start rolling in, the lesson plans start building up, and the opportunities to travel diminish to zero. Hopefully this isn't true since I have plans of grandeur climbing a volcano. But this weekend was a long, homework-free weekend which the majority of the TEFL class used to travel to Manuel Antonio, one of Costa Rica's premier beaches.

Manuel Antonio is one of the best beaches I've ever seen. the sand was soft and gorgeous, the water was warm and calm with a relitively non-threatening current or undertow. The town of Manuel Antonio and Quepos, which it was a part of had a very interesting dynamic. Dispite being a fantastic beach and popular tourist destination with the Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio right next door, Quepos is definately not Cancun. It has a very thin tourist veil in front of it which can be easily seen through (if you're looking for it). The local community seemed very small and tight-knit in which every person had their own specific role. It was sort of a begrudging way of life for the locals and it bred varying degrees of animosity, shistyness, and language use. Basically it was like Kakariko Village in the Legend of Zelda. There are the shop owners who feed on baiting the visitors, there's the apathetic old man who yells out Mangu! without actually trying to sell his product, the hot bartendress, the shirtless town drunk whom everyone barely regards as a person, and even a village idiot. There were people whose sole job it was to lead around naive tourists to different places, and they received a commission from each place they brought business. Again, this leads to varying degrees of enabling, shistyness, and pressured sales pitches.

An experienced traveller knows to avoid these people. While it's fine and maybe handy for some timid tourists to use these makeshift-tour guides, it's cheaper and more fun to explore a new place on one's own. There was a TEFLer with us who did not privy to these things and brought two of these sucker-fish with us, and everywhere we went, they hung on tight. Emerson was a cool sucker-fish. He wasn't out to screw anyone over, just make some money and get on With things. Apparently he grew up on the streets since he was nine and had been sucker-fishing the tank of Manuel Antonio for the tourists some pint in childhood. Now he was a professional. He seemed to be ashamed of accepting the tips that the unwary TEFLer was offering since he was already receiving a commission. Solo bueno. Warner was the other sucker-fish, also the aforementioned village idiot, who not only worked as a sucker-fish, but who also shits on the glass that he just cleaned. As the night progressed I became increasingly wary of Warner and the situation in general. He became drunk and as the night started wearing to a close he became more and more adamant about hanging out more, drinking wine, and trying to get Jessie into bed. My buddy Shelly was very patient with him, explaining over and over again that we were turning in and that he should go away. Eventually I got tired of hearing his belligerent voice, that was a mix somewhere between a frog, Christopher Walken, and whatever anyone holds in their mind as a village idiot. I grabbed the group and made them walk away from him, warning him sternly, "Don't follow us [asshole]."

A little while in the night Warner got into a cab with Robert and I. We had just spent the last 10 minutes warding of the town drunk, even trade I guess. The cabbie took off toward our hostel as I was telling Warner to get out, so we were out of luck. The punk driver wouldn't turn on the meter and tried to overcharge us when we arrived at the hostel, banking on the fact that a tourist would just pay him. Because I'm not an idiot, and because I had had enough of being jerked around all night, I refused to pay the erroneous rate. What tipped me over the edge was that he slapped what money I was giving him out of my hand, trying to use violence to scare me into paying him more. Anywhere you are, 1st world or 3rd world, this is unacceptable. Without another word to him I told Robert to get out and left the cab myself. Before Warner, still trying to convince us to go to a club with him, could follow us out, I yelled at him in my best Christian Bale as Batman voice, "Stay in the cab!" Walking into the hostel I looked back at the cabbie who looked completely humbled, shocked that his tactics didn't work on an American.

The next night our touristy TEFL friend had planned a cookout on the beach for us. The plans were made through Emerson, and just because he's the village idiot of Quepos, Warner was to bring his whole family to the cookout uninvited. The cookout itself was fantastic. I don't typically eat seafood, but tuna and lobster caught on the same day and cooked on a grill, served with its antennae still attached was delicious! I also spent a good portion of the night hitting on a French woman who had been hired to play the djimbe for the cookout. She didn't know English and so we spoke Spanish, our common language. Some volunteers at Maximo Nivel, the institute I go to, joined us since they too were visiting Quepos and it turned into a fun night of drinking on the beach with a bonfire. We even invented a drinking game based on the village idiot, Warner. On the flipside, the worries of myself and a few good TEFL friends were realized. Remember: Manuel Antonio is not Cancun, a party of this magnitude thrown by and for tourists on a predominately local beach is virtually unseen. While we were eating on the beach, the locals were jealously and contemptuously looking in from the streets, occasionally flashing lights at us and even verbally harassing Shelly at one point. Luckily the night was not ruined, and an uncomfortable situation turned fun the more the night progressed.

One more quick story from the weekend: After the party on the beach, and a bar with dancing, the majority ran off to the main part of Quepos to go to a club. I was one of three who stayed behind to go bed and save energy for the next day. However, the hostel only gave us one key to each room and we were locked out. She who threw the party was in another room alone, but with more beds and refused to let us in. ... ... ... Tired as we were, there was only on solution: sleep on the beach. A couple hours into a restless, unguarded sleep, we were woken up by a couple other beach dwellers putting more wood on the fire we slept next to. We each regarded the other uneasily and they said to me either "se pare" or "separe." This was a situation in which I wish I were more fluent and had a better grasp on the function of language. "Se pare" means it's stopping, and "separe" means separate, or in this case, possibly get outta here. Since everyone was uneasy about the other it was impossible to distinguish whether they were friend or foe. Since we had a place to go, we boogied on out of there and back to the hostel were we supplemented our sleep as my weekend wore to a close.

So in summation, the weekend was great! Definitely worth the bad sunburn I got on my nose (SPF 45 my eye!). We had a lot of great times on the beach. I was body-surfing for probably half the time I was out there, probably the main culprit of my sunburn. The food was unbelievable, the partying was unlike any I've experienced, the mangoes were plentiful albeit largely uneaten. As a whole it was very Rock Lobster.

Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet, and Watch

Jan. 16th - Jan. 17th, 2012
My mind is fried from the most jam-packed two days I've ever had so please excuse any grammar or spelling issues the following post may have. And please kindly overlook the irony that a future English teacher doesn't care if these things are 100% correct right now... Thanks. Let me fill you in on why my brain feels like a bowling ball that was just rolled with so much spin that it knocked down a 7-10 split.

One day before I was to leave for Costa Rica I received an Email from Maximo Nivel, the school I'm attending here, with an update on my housing situation. Basically it said that I wouldn't be staying in the shared apartment that I had expected for the last few months, but rather in a traditional family homestay. Now, after my last homestay included a slight falling out after my host-mom accused me of having a threesome in her house with two beautiful fellow-travelers, I wasn't so keen on the idea of another homestay - even if there would be more beautiful fellow-travelers living there again. When I got to the airport, ready to ship out, my flight had been moved to the previous day, and a certain 3rd party booking site had failed to notify me despite their service claims. I don't want to be caddy so I won't divulge who it was, but I will tell you that you could probably still trust Orbitz, Hotels.com, Kayak, and really any of those sites that don't start with T and end with ravelocity. So I was put on a flight the following day... night. (11:55 pm). I landed after little sleep and was driven directly to school where I started class less than two hours later. Since then I've been an information-absorbing machine.

I won't tell you about class yet, except that today I was at school from 8:30 am until 9:00 pm, 7 of those hours being in-class time. It's a very intensive, quick paced class. I have a feeling my ability to explore and get to know Costa Rica is going to be dampened for the next month and will move very slow. So far I don't know terribly much more about this country except their accent isn't as different as I thought it would be and I've had absolutely no troubles using Spanish here - (even with the immigration officer who reluctantly let me in the country after at least 6 warnings not to get a job here... I blame my serial-killer passport photo.) The roads are frightening as all get out, and even though I've seen motorcycles zip in and out of traffic that would make L.A. blush, I've pretty much changed my mind about getting a little motorcycle to zip around on. There are intersections where 5 independent streets converge with no streetlight. It's a free-for-all.

In addition to these country exploring hinderances, my housing has changed again and I've spent a considerable time memorizing the route. My host-family turned out to be a unique situation and I am the sole person in an apartment above their house. There are three apartments up here in all, one with 4 people, one with 3, and one with just me! So all alone I had to brave the streets, figure out the route, and get lost in the neighborhood after dark for a half hour. There are no street signs or addresses in this city. Mail, I'm told, is virtually impossible. Finding my way home after the bus consisted of locating the Chicago bar, the toothpaste sign, the river sound in the trees, the yellow key, the big tree stump, a couple correct turns trusting my gut, and a fair amount of wrong turns.

But I'm very satisfied with my apartment despite not having hot water at all. (I took the coldest hooker-shower this morning and had to heat up water on the stove to shave.) It's spacious: I have my own living room, TV, bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen with a big, wrap-around window and a simply gorgeous view. Here are some photos of my place and the way to and from the bus stop.

To my anchors

I'm moving out of "The Drifter" where I've been living for the last 4 months. Bonnie and Kyle (who totally should be old-timey gangsters for Halloween next year) have plans to turn it into a gym complete with two comfy chairs and an exercise bike. There will probably be no more drifters up here anymore (of which I am the second) and it will just become a loft with an ironic title. Back to my old room at my parents' house (which now is a gym complete with a comfy chair) and I'll be packing up all my old things which I can't take with me. 


And off to drift anew. 


I'm moving to Costa Rica, the fourth country I'll have lived in, but this time it's not such a brief stint. This blog is for my anchors: those who keep me grounded in my thoughts, my dreams, my travels, my relationships, my life. It's for those who've raised me well, those who make sure I keep returning to Colorado from time to time, those who live in Chicago (not all the randos, you know who you are), the rest of the Wawasee crew, roommates whose last names start with V, other past roommates, the owners of the drifter, and those who read this list and thought: "Was I in there? I should have been in there?" - You were totally in there.


I can live in a basement room with a mural, various dorm rooms, an apartment, a tool shed, or a loft with an ironic name, but I can't live without all of you.
Love you all,


"The Drifter" Robb