Getting settled

Day by day here, and the heat and humidity are slowly getting more manageable. The first week I was barely able to have a discussion about teaching schedules because I just couldn’t concentrate on the words, and now I just feel a bit more laziness and lethargy than normal. I’ll be volunteer teaching the first five weeks or so and auditing the SIT TESOL Certification course for beginning teachers. I shadow trained this course in Chicago, and I’ll be actually training on one starting in July. I’ll be going to about half the sessions (the ones in the morning), which will further familiarize me with the material and hopefully help to make me both a better teacher and a little more experienced teacher. Also, I find some of this material is so like Goenkaji’s discourses on the ten day Vipassana courses… the words appear very simple, but it can take quite sometime to really grasp some of the underlying meanings. Every time we hear it we are a different person yet again, and can take more away from the points, and understand things from different angles. Teaching in a way that removes the teacher from the center of attention is the same kind of thing as letting go of that ego—it is so central to our thinking and conditioning that (for me at least) it takes a lot of work to get one’s mind around this subtle truth. Oh, here's a view of what I see as I step outside my room...


The town here is about 500 people and every door is open when one walks through town. There’s not much to do so people spend a lot of time sitting on their porches or going to their neighbor’s porch. The director here, Mary, is married to a local guy in town and that’s why this whole English center is here (Her husband Wilbur’s brother owns the only shop of any kind in town, really a kind of long booth where locals gather to share gossip and play pinball soccer). She takes in volunteers for six months and in return gives them room and board. Any town person who wants to attend an English class can do so for only 500 collones (or $10) per term. If they can’t afford this, then they are able to give back in some other way, such as volunteering to do other things at the center or performing some service in town. One student comes here once a week and cleans the grounds. Another gives cheese from his farm. There are also these SIT TESOL Certification courses running quite a bit. Here are some photos of my student Oscar, who is cutting the coconuts and getting the juice ready for lunch!

I’m set up in my room now and it’s workable. Usually no more than a few hours of sleep at any time due to the heat or bugs. The nice thing is the meditation is finally coming along. It’s so hard sitting at first in a place that doesn’t have a history of it, I find. It’s the hard work of clearing a new path in the jungle. Luckily the chanting tapes I have always help me mightily. But I’ll be moving to another quarter likely for the next course, so will have to get that one going as well. Sometimes I finish a sit and come out to see some cows or goats wandering around, lost, aimless, with a cursing herder charging in rubber boots to collect his misguided animal. A walk through town gives a true cacophony of dog cheers. There are always someone’s chickens wandering through our school and even puppies find their way here at times. Yesterday we had to chase some cows away with a stick in hand before they trampled the plants.

On Thursday there was a big party sending off the two teachers that Terry and I are replacing, who had been here for six months. They both spoke Spanish fluently and we barely speak it at all, so it is a new challenge for all. I’m studying out of my book every day but when I tried to talk to Wilbur’s brother Poi this evening at his store, I realized I had little to say but to tell him where I lived or to pass me one of about a dozen nouns I now know (both of which seemed rather odd and didn’t really leave much in the way of furthering the conversation). Luckily when I don’t know a word I can say the French and it is often close enough.

Anyway, there was this big party Thursday, and I met a lot of the locals. A lot of the young guys were glad to have another male in town and were trying to recruit me to tag along for weekend trips to the discotheque in the nearest town. After the party I got into the back of a pickup with a dozen of them, and the whole town followed to the famous “La Pachuga’s.” One student, Manuel, has set up this enormous kind of Tiki-hut outside his house and wired a karaoke system. So we sung Spanish and English songs, and I watched the natural rhythm as many of the Costa Ricans danced together. A bunch of the men were excited to find I was into soccer and invited me to come to their home to watch World Cup on satellite, but alas they must have forgot as the days still come and pass with only the NY Times and BBC to help me keep track… Costa Rica’s out anyway, and everyone here is pretty upset at the team… “they are so stupid” one guy said. Reminds me of my Saudi students at CU, who liked just about any team better than Saudi Arabia!

On Sunday the course participants arrived on site and on Monday we started workshops. So now the small center is a little more active, more energy and people around. It is just so nice being in such a small town, with nothing else around. Tropical fruit from the trees on the site is served every day as is juice, and good simple food as well. Blackberry juice today, along with some other fruit I’d never seen nor heard of. The only complaint really is the bugs. They are incredible. I get numerous bites every day (and night) and then have to wait to see what kind, the duration, the effect, the size, etc. Will it itch or hurt? Will there be a little blood or a big bump? Will it last a few hours or days? It’s the worst for a Vipassana meditator, because you get like a single mosquito in your room causing you dukkha an entire night with that no-kill clause… Just a few minutes ago we found this beetle about the size of a human hand. Last week in the middle of the road I saw an iguana the size of a small dinosaur!


Ok, that’s it for now! (oh, my room and sitting spot in this picture...)