Saturday, January 27, 2007

hebrew day school

so i found this ad in the tico times (which is the english language newspaper for costa rica) for a teacher at an american school in rohmorser (this is the neighborhood i live in). so i e-mail my resume and later the same day the woman e-mails me back that yes, she is still looking for a teacher. so i call her, we play a little phone tag, and yesterday morning we actually spoke. she asked me if i could meet with her at 2pm that afternoon and i said yes.

it turns out that this is not just an american school, it's a hebrew school. in fact it's a school that one of the instructors in my TEFL course mentioned. but i haven't been scared off, it's not like i'm teaching in hebrew or about judaism - i'd be teaching language arts, math and science. plus the pay is supposed to be pretty good and i would only have to work monday through friday, 8am-3:30pm.

i was a little early just like she asked me to be - because she had another appointment a half an hour after mine. but i waited over 45 minutes for her to show up (15 minutes early, she showed up 30 minutes late).

then i actually started talking with her... she asked me about discipline and i said that i felt i could be strict when neccesary, that children need boundries (which was the right answer) but she went off on how sometimes you hear kids saying things they shouldn't and you might want to just pretend you didn't hear, but you have a responsibility to do something about it... and then she was on about the right and wrong way to do things: hold a pencil, write certain letters, etc. for about 5 minutes. oh yes, and then my favorite part - how teachers are supposed to look. traditional. the dress code is slightly different for the non-hebrew teachers (hebrew women are supposed to cover their collarbones, elbows and knees). shirts should be crewneck. elbows don't have to be covered - but the sleeve should go to nearly the elbow, no short sleeves. no pants. skirts and dresses only. and of course they must cover the knee (and she went off on how when she was growing up her mother always told her that they had to cover the knee even when you sit down, that was the real test). and you can wear open toed shoes, but only if you wear panty hose. because it's not right for teachers to be showing their painted toenails and whatnot. no visible tattoos (pretty standard). no more than one earring in each ear (because if you start letting more, then next it's nose rings and....)

so i was completely inappropriately dressed for this interview. i was wearing open toed shoes - and no panty hose (i don't even own any because i HATE them), capris, my yin-yang was sticking out, my shirt was too low cut (and really, it's not, it's just a v-neck, and cleavage is not really a problem i have), and i was wearing too many earrings.

despite all this she still seemed like she might want to hire me (she's pretty desparate - school starts on the first of february). but i don't want the job anymore. this woman is insane. and a complete control freak about the teacher image. and holding pencils. and really she hardly asked me a thing about myself. plus she's under the delusion that if she e-mailed my references on friday afternoon that they would get back to her by saturday evening. clearly she's delusional.

and obviously i'm not taking the job. i'm in town now to print out some more copies of my resume and drop them at a couple of language schools. but for now i remain under-employed.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

at one week in...

so i'm at a little over one week in right now, and i thought i should post a little update on how things are going.

so i am actually teaching a little bit right now. on tuesday last week (after i went into the school and they told me they didn't have any classes for me since the bimester already started) the director called and asked me if i wanted to take half of a monday/wednesday class because the current class had too many students. so i took it. i was a little freaked about teaching for 3 hours (though it's actually only 2 1/2 with the breaks) so i went in on tuesday night to watch someone's class. which was actually very reassuring. i got my books are started planning my first lesson.

then on wednesday morning the director called again - did i want to take a class on tuesday and thursdy nights? so i took that one too. so now i teach two classes - which meet twice a week - on monday through thursday nights. it's kind of fun. the students are nice. but there is tons TONS of paperwork... i have to fill out ongoing assesment sheets, grade writing assignments, schedule exams, sign this, and fill out that... it's a little much. and i'm still trying to get everything set up so that i can get paid (but not until february 15th - it's a 15th/30th kind of place)

in the meantime i'm not really doing a whole lot. partly because there's not a whole lot to do that i know how to find. i've been working on my tan - on our patio (and i use that word loosely - it's a room with no ceiling and 15 foot concret walls all around in the center of a block of buildings). and trying to figure everything out. i don't have to teach for the rest of this week, because there's some sort of conference thing that all the teachers (except me and colleen) are going to this week. so my big goal is to find some more hours at a different place. and to find a bar near our house. and maybe get a plant for our concrete bunker patio.

i am going to try to upload a couple of photos of our apartment maybe later this week.

Monday, January 15, 2007

palmares

so i'm back in costa rica. had a very long day of traveling on saturday... because i used my frequent flier miles to get here, i had the crappiest schedule. i flew out of boston at 9am heading for detroit. i had an hour and a half layover there. then i flew to atlanta. where i had a THREE and a half hour layover. then i was finally on my way to san jose at about 6:45pm. we arrived at about quarter to ten and i was SO PLEASED that when i got out to the luggage carousel, my bag was already making it's way around.

so i had already arranged for this transport service to pick me up at the airport (not only is it easy, but it's cheaper than a taxi) and take me to the hostel i thought i would be staying at. but i had an e-mail from my friend colleen earlier that week saying that she had found us an apartment. it was too late to change my destination (and i think they will only take you to hotels) so i went to the hostel and immediately asked the guy to call me a taxi. i gave colleens directions to the driver and he took me to my apartment. :)

we live in a small apartment building, there are maybe 6-8 other apartments. there's a big living room, a decent kitchen, a patio (which is in the center of the block, so has no view, but does get sun and maybe we'll put a plant or something out there), a bathroom with real hot water (not the costa rican favorite - the thing that heats the water as it comes out of the shower head), and our two bedrooms. pretty nice.

so we slept kind of late sunday, then went out for breakfast and some exploring. had my gallo pinto con heuvos, which was so good (and much better than my own attempt at home). did a little grocery shopping. then colleen called a friend from work about this festival type thing that was going on. so it turned out that we had to cut our exploring short and go home and get some stuff together to head out to san ramon to go to this festival.

so the festival is not far from san ramon, in a town called palmares. it's hard to explain... it's kind like a state fair, but not. i mean, there are some carnival rides, lots of greasy food, little shopping stalls, apparently there was a horse parade last week. but along with those things there are also a number of bars/discos/clubs built on the site. massive places, with multiple levels. i think during the days there are also concerts.

so we got there late afternoon. we wandered around, went on a couple of rides. i had some thing the name of which i can't remember, but it was a hot corn tortilla smeared with sour cream, very yummy. then we chose a bar with a reasonable cover charge and started dancing. there was also a stage inside. sometimes there were just dancers on the stage. there was also a guy who had his body painted like a leopard dancing around with a black light and a giant infaltable ball. and another guy painted silver and wearing wings with a disco ball and flames shooting out from his wrists. very strange stuff. but the dancing was fun. :)

so we stayed in san ramon with colleen's friend (steven, who also works at the same place she does) and got up early this morning to catch a bus back to san jose. needless to say i'm a little exhausted, i've had a pretty intense weekend. and now i'm trying to get my bearings... i'm still looking for a job. there was the possibility that i could get a job where colleen is working, but i arrived later than she had wanted and so they had to shuffle and assign the classes with the teachers they had. not a big deal. so i'll be job searching and learning to navigate the city this week.

anyhow. i'm here now. write me e-mails!

Sunday, January 07, 2007

the other beaches (more photos)

so here are a bunch of photos from the beaches we traveled through and to after the course ended. (when in theory i should have been looking for a job).

somehow this is the only picture i have of our house in quepos... i thought about taking some pictures when we first moved in, but never did. this is me the morning of our departure from quepos, still dressed from the night before, packing my bag and preparing to run to the bus station.

our first beach destination: montezuma. the building you can see (yes, the one right on the beach) is the hostel we stayed at. downstairs there was a restaurant and upstairs were the rooms. there was also a balcony area where we could sit and stare out at the ocean. before we found out that we could light fires on the beach.

this is the waterfall we hiked out to see in montezuma. hike is maybe too strong of a word... there was a short path and then we were pretty much walking along the edge of this river/stream and climbing all over the rocks. eventually we came to this waterfall - which was beautiful and spent some time there diving off the rocks into the pool and just kind of chilling.

here we all are, camped out on the beach in front of our fire one night. this was before we had the brilliant idea to dig out these little recliner shapes in the sand and cover them with the sarongs. we also had progressively bigger fires. as you do.

it may not look like much, but this was our super great snorkeling spot at playa ocotal. there was one beach (play ocotal) and another nearby beach (the name of which escapes me now) and between them was this rocky bit sort of jutting out into the ocean. there was this little sort of sheltered area where we got in. we saw a blowfish, some other crazy fish i don't know the names of, some stingrays... all very cool.

our last beach destination. since we didn't really spend that much time lying on the beach while we were at playa del coco (we were snorkeling and tooling around on the scooter), i spent a good deal of time in tamarindo trying to top off my tan. and here is one of the fabulous sunsets that finished off a day at the beach.

so very soon i'll be headed back to costa rica. though i'll be living in san jose and might not be able to get to the beach as often as last time, i'm still looking forward to it. i know everyone's been saying how mild the winter has been here in the northeast, but i've been freezing since i got back. in fact i'm shivering as i type. looking forward to more temperate climates. i may put up one more set of photos before i go... the couple days in the mountains and the volcano. but we'll see how the rest of my to do list goes...