Last Day of School and Tie-Dye!!!

11th grade/graduating class

Today was the last day of school. Not as big a deal here as in the states, half the high school kids didn't even come to school today. Their exams were last week so this week was so this week was mostly just cleaning classrooms, organizing things, and playing games. Three of the high school classrooms got painted, one of which was Anna's room (it is now blue, not yellow). Today was a half day for everyone and families were invited. There was an assembly and some of the younger classes sang songs and stuff. It was so cute.
In the afternoon the high school kids planned games for the younger classes to do (duck-duck-goose, capture the flag etc.). I, in all of my infinate wisdom, agreed to do one last tie-dye session in an attempt to get rid of the last of the dye. To catch up the rest of you, I started doing tie-dye with the students as a fundraiser during the Miniferria. I did two after school sessions, and an activity with one of the 1st/2nd grade classes. I think I had the most fun with the 1st/2nd graders. The teacher, Jean, had been talking about it for a couple days and the kids had already seen some of the other kids wearing them around. They loved it! I had such a great time and all the kids' shirts turned out wonderful. So yesterday I announced to all the escuela that if they wanted to make one, or another one, they could do it tomorrow afternoon. I was just trying to give the kids one last chance, plus there was a parent who came and really wanted to learn how to do them. Suddenly I had about 20 kids holding shirts, wanting to make one. Parents were watching, facinated. Both the parents and the kids were super excited to get a bright unique shirt. I had tought that only about 10 or 15 kids would want to do shirts. But I must have helped about 25 or 30 kids fold their shirts, many did two. We probably dyed 50 shirts just today! We finally ran out of yellow, which also meant no orange or green (probably why we ran out of it first). It was crazy! I was the person who knew how to do all the folding, so I pretty much folded all the shirts, and then let the kids go nuts with the dye. If I had been watching things might have lasted a little longer and there would have been less of a mess left for me to clean. The point: the kids had a great time! I stopped charging for the dye (I just wanted to get rid of it instead of throwing it away), so they only had to pay for a shirt if they didn't bring one. I glad we ordered too many t-shirts for one of the other fundraisers, it made it really easy for the kids to make a shirt.
In some of the pictures above you can see some of the kids wearing a tie-dye shirt already. They had so much fun, they wanted another one (or two)!!

After the insanity ended I cleaned up all the dye and went to my last official school function. There was a lunch at one of the restaurants called De Lucia's that was for all the school staff. Since I was still there, I was invited. The food was good and the company even better. Each one of the teachers who was leaving was called up to the front and one of the other teachers said something about him or her. Three of the teachers were leaving, plus Deb and I, the only interns left. Anna called me up and said some really nice things about me. I even said a quick something, thanking everyone for making this experince the best one I've ever had in my life. The following pictures are me with some of the most important people from the CEC.

Dolly (environmental ed.), me and Deb (Dolly's Intern)

The director's newest child. She was so cute and smily!

Jean (1st/2nd grade teacher) and me

Christina and I, secretary in the office. She knows everything, has three kids at the school and I made her about three tie-dye shirts.

Anna (my mentor) and Bethany (could be queen of the world!) Probably my two closest friends at the CEC.

Liliam (spanish as a second language teacher) and Milton (env. ed and grounds keeper)
(Liliam told me that the kids call me the rainbow girl...a dream come true!)

Director, Scott, his wife and their baby!

This experince has been fantastic. I have two more days here in Monteverde and I'm still not sure what I'm going to during those days. Sunday morning I am getting picked up at 8 am to go to San Jose, directly to the airport. My flight leaves at 2:45, in theory. I still can't belive that I leave in two days, and will be back home in three. I can't wait to be home, but I can't belive that I have to leave behind the life I've made here. I will be back to visit, no question about that, but I don't think I could ever live so far from my family on the long term.

I love you all! Thank you for all your help and support, I can't say it enough!

I'm officially graduated, I've had the most amazing 5 months of my life, made some fantastic friends, and I get to see my parents in three days. Life couldn't be any better than this.

Hugs!
K

Frijoles, grass cutting, walking sticks and PUPPIES!!

Today, my last Sunday in Monteverde I woke up at a decent hour (aka, not sleeping until 1:00) and was able to do several things that, if I were in Oregon, might seem mundane, but here it was fun!

When you have a traditional Costa Rican meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner) there will be rice and beans on your plate, no doubt about it. My host mom cooks bean about twice a week which can be quite a process. First: you buy the bag of beans. Next you pour out all the beans onto a table and go though them to remove all the bad beans and rocks. Then you rinse the beans, then put them into a pressure cooker with water (about 5 fingers above the level of the beans) plus garlic, cilantro and a little bit of onion. Put lid on cooker, cook about 45 min, or more. Serve with just about everything!

While my host family and I were just chatting, but host brother pulled out the machete and a stick and went to cut the grass. Here lawn mowers are very rare and in most cases people just use a weed whacker (takes longer but gets closer to the ground). However when you work for a living and don’t own a tour company or hotel, a machete and a stick are what you get. Andres suggested that I try…of course Marlenne wanted to see me try too. Oye. They make it look easy, but believe me it isn’t. You’re bent over, cutting with the machete with one hand, the other hand sweeps the cut grass away with the stick. Makes my back hurt just thinking about it.

As I was sitting on my bed with my windows open, I looked to the plant that is right outside my window and saw bright green walking sticks! I have been here for 5 months, and so have the walking sticks most likely, and I only just noticed them. There was one big one and at least three small ones. Reminded me of the time my brother had walking sticks as pets. They reproduced and we ended up with baby walking sticks in the strangest places for a while.

Now the most exciting events of the day! The little dog that lives at my house, Winnie, had gotten very fat. I didn’t think anything of it until my host sister mentioned that she is probably pregnant. Then, thinking back to when she was in heat and her strange behavior over the past few weeks I realized she was right. I didn’t think she would have the puppies before I left though. Today her behavior was even stranger: sleeping all day, barking (much more than usual) at passing dogs or people, and having to go out to the bathroom a million times. Then at about 6:15 pm Marlenne calls me. “Venga, venga!” (come here, come here!). Winnie was having her puppies! Soon my host sister and her friend here running though the door! About an hour later there were three puppies. Winnie is a white French poodle inspired dog. One is all black, one is black with white feet and one that is probably brown with white feet. An hour later Marlenne called “Vea! Venga, venga. Otro perrito!” (Come look! Come here, come here! Another puppy!). Sure enough, another puppy. It is black with white feet and a little brown, I think. Long night for a dog. I had guessed four, but I have no idea if she can fall asleep now or if things will pick up again but four puppies seems about right for how big she was.

Pretty good day for a Sunday, especially when I didn’t even leave the house.

fyi: no more puppies as of Monday morning.

Hugs!
K