After getting back from Nicaragua, I had a few days to prepare for the upcoming course. Mary and I worked on it alone, and I actually had quite a bit more responsibility of leading the course as Mary left several times for 1-2 days for things like TESOL conferences and the always exciting visits to visa offices. I was a little nervous about leading the entire day of workshops, team meetings, observations, and feedback sessions on my own, but as it turned out it was just fantastic. I loved the change of being on my own and seeing more clearly into my own strengths and challenges as a Trainer, and working with the participants to serve their learning and make decisions in the moment that I thought would be the most effective based on what point they were at and what I thought they needed. It was also a fantastic group to work with... probably my favorite yet. After one trip to the hot springs they decided it should be a n
ormal occurrence after their papers got turned in (which left them free and happy after being stressed, and me free and happy and then stressed as I sat in the hot water thinking of all the work I had ahead of me in reading the papers!). I tried to initiate a couple in the Japanese art of soaking-- that is, to find the hottest pool and stay in long past the point that you can't talk any more and get out a hair's breath of passing out, then repeat until a good Pocari Sweat can be found. We also went “zip-lining” as a group, which basically means a kind of silly and overpriced tourist adventure where you attach yourself to a cable and slide from one tree to the next... felt kind of foolish going to such a tourist place, but was fun to do with our group nonetheless... you can see a photo hereof John Chamba from Ecuador screaming his way across the rain forest!
And as John and I also happened to be the only teetotalers in the group, here is one of my favorite photos of us enjoying the last night of practice teaching together, getting a little wacky by taking shots of Coca-Cola out of Costa Rican shot glasses...
Another neat thing that happened this visit in Costa Rica was a visit to a local farm. Sometimes it feels like El Invu is out in the middle of nowhere, but in so many ways I keep finding out how connected to the “cosmopolitan” world it really is... the German couple who own the handicrafts store, the scores of American Mennonite and Quaker families who left persecution to settle in Latin America, the local farmer whose brother works as a professor in Barcelona, the teenagers who work in adventure tourism or ornamental plant gardens that put them in regular touch with Westerners, and now this... a local ginger and yuca farm that is owned by a man in Brattleboro, Vermont (amazingly no connection to SIT) and run by a Canadian. Just as we connive to cancel a workshop session when the weather is just too hot and sticky and calling us for a river swim, we decided to postpone an entire morning to visit the farm. It was a fascinating place... in addition to the vast ginger and yuca fields, they have also started an initiative to transplant dozens of medicinal herbs from all around the world that are in danger of becoming extinct, either due to destruction of the land or misinformation about the actual properties of the plant. Just in case any of the herbs are in fact lost to their native lands, they can preserve a sampling of them and at another point can reintroduce the seeds to their homeland. Our guide explained that many of the old medicine men and shamans knew much about what the different herbs did, but as the younger generation was growing up, many of them rejected their own culture in search of the wide world of opportunities beyond, particularly in the alluring West. When they started to realize the interest that many Westerners had in their tribal lands, many of them went back home and tried to learn what the elders had always known. In many cases they had an abbreviated education and ended up kind of impersonating a wise man due to their native son status, even if their knowledge was wrong. This has led to their work here on the farm we visited to start cataloging what exactly these herbs and plants are and what they do, by testing through the scientific method and publishing the results, as well as by bringing in native shaman from all over Latin and South America and recording everything they can identify. I took a lot of pictures of the insects and plants and herbs, here is just one of a twisted twig that I think turned out quite well:
And then after that, we went to one of the most amazing homes I have ever seen, priced at I think $75,000 and built by some Americans at the end of a rocky dirt road. The living room defies any description: a large open air room overlooking a rushing and cascading stream down below. Here is a shot of me giving one participant, Laura, some refreshment...
And here is something pretty neat Laura showed me... she was always good for making me remember the splendid natural environment I was in when my sankharas happened to overwhelm me with course work and responsibility... she spotted a trail of leaf cutter ants. Here is a photo I took of some...And finally, here is our traditional end of course picture in front of the spiral:
After Costa Rica (Part I) I went back to the States and spent some time seeing family and doing work-related things in Colorado and California. Really I have put so much time into my job as Teacher Trainer that if I worked it out, I'd imagine most sweat shop laborers are making more than me. Luckily I like the work and find it will benefit me both personally as well as in professional aspects that will take me beyond the work I do on these courses. So I read a number of books related to Teacher Training and Reflective practice and put quite a bit of time organizing all of my work on the computer and modifying my lesson plans for the course. I made handouts and tried to integrate course theory with readings from the field and notes from my own experience of past workshops. I probably spent the most time trying to figure out how to deliver Shock Language and Cultural Learnings workshop based on the Burmese language and the fabric lungyi that the men wear.
I was also lucky to have a big family get-together in Central California where my grandparents celebrated their 65th Wedding Anniversary. These are some pictures of all of us as well as my grandmother with my uncle's dog...
After that I flew back to Costa Rica, via Texas, where I met with my SIT friends Wendy and Derek at their workplace UT-Arlington, just in time for the Funny Hats convention. After a couple days of swapping memories and catching up I sat a 10 day course at Dhamma Siri outside Dallas. Here are some pictures of both:
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