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.
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!
