An Interesting First Week

I survived the first week of school. After all the build-up, the first day was pretty low-key. It was only 3 hours long and I only taught the first grade for 30 minutes. Since English instruction doesn´t officially start until first grade, they pretty much can´t speak a word of it but they are soooo cute! The rest of the day I spent decorating my little corner of the comedor (cafeteria). Hopefully I´ll have pictures of my ¨room¨ and my classes next week. The second day was only slightly longer, but I taught all of the grades except first. My biggest class only has 8 kids and they are all so sweet. I´m greeted every morning with ¨Good morning Teacher¨ and a kiss on the cheek. The directora (principal) Dineth and the cleaning lady Yami made me feel so welcome. I´m really excited to spend the year with them and all the adorable kiddos!

That being said, the rest of the week outside of school was rough. Tuesday night I was on a walk with Albertina and some neighbors when I started to feel sick. Everyone was very concerned after I ended up vomiting in a ditch on the side of the road and brought me saltines, club soda etc. Feeling slightly better and sitting in the roadside restaurant, I learned the cause of my illness according to the ladies. They had seen me take off my sweatshirt about five minutes before I had gotten sick and that was the cause of my illness. (Ticos have some pretty warped ideas about health. For them, every illness can be equated to going from hot to cold too quickly. You are not supposed to walk barefoot on the cold tile floor, open the refridgerator less than an hour after ironing etc.) I tried to convince them that it was probably something I ate or a virus but they wouldn´t hear of it. When I told them I was dizzy, Albertina told me how her sister had been very dizzy and she ended up having eye cancer and losing an eye. How comforting! By this point, my Spanish was failing me and I stopped trying to tell them that I did not get sick from taking my sweatshirt off or eye cancer. I think they only started to believe me when I was sick the rest of the night. I stayed home from school on Wednesday but started to feel better quickly. I felt well enough to go on another walk. When I got back, I found my 6 year old host sister hysterically crying on the couch. Apparently, she had hurt her leg while playing outside. By the way she was screaming, I was sure it was broken. Ana, the 5 year old cousin, was doing some sympathy sobbing, so it was my job to calm her down. It was heartbreaking! Since no one in the family owns a car, it took about an hour and a half to find a friend with a car to take us to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, Dani wasn´t crying anymore, which I thought was strange. We were immediately brought back to see the doctor, who determined she just had a pulled muscle. Daniela had not been freaking out because of her leg, just because she had to go to the hospital!
On Thursday, the excitement continued. The women in the family were looking through a garbage bag full of old clothes and divying them up. Most of the clothes were dirty or ripped, but they said those would make good rags. Then, the absolute largest rat I have ever seen in my life ran out of one of the bags. We all screamed and ran to the house. I was afraid they would still keep the clothes that had been with this disgusting, probably diseased rat. Luckily, they threw those clothes away and made everyone scrub their hands. (I guess Ticos aren´t misguided about everything health related!)
Less than an hour later, there was a phone call letting us know that Albertina´s uncle had died. He had been sick with cancer for awhile and it was not unexpected. Daniela swore that I had met him, but I have probably met a hundred people since I´ve been in San Ramon and it´s really hard to keep them all straight! She said I had coffee with him one of my first days here and I had somewhat of an idea of who he was. I was told that the family would be praying at the church in Turrialba the next day and I should meet them there after school. When I arrived at the church, I saw the family pulling the coffin out of a station wagon that doubled as a hurse and I realized that this was the actual funeral. I momentarily freaked out because I was wearing jeans, but then I noticed that 75% of the people in the church were too. I guess funerals aren´t formal affairs in Costa Rica. Then I noticed the man that I thought was the uncle who had died, sitting two pews behind me in the church...whoops! After the service, I was wondering how everyone would get to the cemetary as almost no one has a car. Easy, we all walked behind the hurse with our umbrellas in the pouring rain up the side of the mountain to the cemetary. We took up the entire street in the busy downtown area but the cars and taxis didn´t seem to mind at all. After the burial, we went to Albertina´s sister´s house for cafecito. When we finally caught the bus back to San Ramon, the road had collapsed a little in one place from all the rain. The bus let us all off to walk over this area, then picked us up again farther up the hill. I´m told this is a common occurence.
So that was my week. I´m hoping next week is a little less action packed!