I’m happy to say that I’ve completed my first full week of classes at the Tepeyac Christian School; it was a very long week, but I survived week number one. My schedule consists of teaching 42 classes each week: thirty English classes and twelve science classes. I usually teach four English classes and two or three science classes in the morning and then two English classes in the afternoon. This past week Alexandra, the other elementary English teacher, and I worked together on all of the classes, but for the rest of the year, each grade will be split up into two separate classes-intermediate and advanced. I will be working with the intermediate students (about ten kids in each class), so we’ll probably be taking a slower pace than the other class. I’m a little bit worried about the science curriculum because it is made for students who speak English as their first language, so I’m going to have to simplifying it quite a bit. Also science isn’t one of my favorite subjects, so I’m going to have to work hard at making the material interesting to my students. The school is hoping to someday become a bilingual school, so they are starting to offer other subjects in English, like science.
This past week, there has been a twenty-five person mission team from Canada doing construction at the new high school. The new high school is about 3 miles away from where I live, so I was able to go up and hang out with the group a couple times this week. The high school (or colegio, as it’s called here) is coming along well; they were hoping to open it up for this school year, but they weren’t able to because it’s not quite handicap-accessible. They’re hoping that maybe they can open it up next school year. It’s in a really good location with a great view of the mountains and of San Jose.
On Saturday, I got to experience my first amusement park in Costa Rica. I went to El Parque de Diversiones (Amusement Park) in San Jose with Theresa, the high school English teacher, her brother and Rachel, Joel, and Daniel, members of the mission team from Michigan. While we were there, the power went out in the whole park, so a few people in our group got stuck on one of the rides. It wasn’t off too long, though, so it wasn’t really a problem. Here are some pictures of us at the amusement park. It was a lot like World's of Fun, but it didn't have quite as many roller coasters.
This ride was called the Disko.
We saw this iguana at the amusement park. It had 5 security guards walking around and protecting it.
There were some giant carp getting fed in the paddle boat pond.
Getting strapped into La Torre, a ride similar to the Detonator.
I tried to upload a video of us free-falling, but it wouldn't work. Here's a picture of us at the top.
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