Our Second Host Family & Spanish School

     Last night we arrived in Monteverde and it was raining fairly hard.  We all piled out of the bus and met our host families.  My new family is a very modest one.  Chillo is a few years older than me and his wife; Maria is a few years younger than me.  Brandon (be sure to accent the last syllable) is 12 years old.  Chillo gave me a firm handshake and we jumped in the car while Brandon rode a scooter home.  With the rain coming down and the dirt road becoming very muddy by the minute, I could tell Chillo was a little worried as he kept an eye on Brandon in the car mirrors.
     Maria met me as we came in and showed me my room.  This stay would be much different than my first tico family, but I could already sense that Maria was warm and genuine.  She turned out to be a wonderful communicator and we talked nightly.  She was very patient with me as I practiced my Spanish and we shared a great deal even when neither of us knew the right words to use in English for her, Spanish for me.  I feel confident that I could do very well in a game a charades after my stay with the Costa Rica families.  Here, I would not have my own bathroom and the family enjoyed the television very much.  I learned some new words watching the movie; X-Men as well as several cartoons with Brandon.

Maria's daily breakfast

     Every morning Maria served me a meal of fresh fruit and a cup of coffee.  Pineapple, banana, apple and papaya was the standard breakfast for my stay with them.  Each night we would have rice and beans along with chicken or pork.  The house was smaller than Wagoner's and Maria would ask me about the upcoming morning every evening so we could plan out how we would share the shower.  It was different from my first host family stay, but we managed just fine.
     After breakfast, I had a brisk walk up the road to the dentist clinic where the group met every morning to catch our bus.  Andres, our driver has been a joy to know and he and I shake hands, fist pump or high five every time I see him!
     Today, was our first day at our new CPI Spanish school.  This too proved to be different than the first week and our new teacher; Cynthia does not speak any English during class.  She also expects all of us to speak only in Spanish during class.  This proved to be a challenge, but in some ways it helped me learn more Spanish.  I especially appreciated how she kept her class on topic and moved forward with our language learning daily.
     As a teacher, I saw how easily it is for language learners to become frustrated and once again, I was very glad for our daily 20 minute break (recess).  I think all school administrators who favor reducing recess time for children should experience something like this so that they could regain the perspective of the students.  Sometimes the lessons were rough and I learned how important it is for the teacher to keep the assessment ongoing in order to guide her teaching.  There were times that I really didn't understand the lesson until I got home and  read about what we were doing in a different textbook that I brought with me.  It forced me to use my translation dictionary and the software on my iphone much more in order to clarify what Cynthia was teaching us.
     This school is much busier than the one in Heredia as we have a large group of middle school children here.  There are so many people here with laptops and smartphones that we are having trouble getting on the school's wifi.  I think it would really help if everyone would disable their smartphone's wifi setting when they aren't needing to use the internet.  Today, we had another cooking lesson and everyone enjoyed making tortillas and preparing the vegetables.