Kristi and I take on the Tenorio River Rapids!

Kristi, my EVOLC program coordinator, came to visit me on Thursday September 22 so she could observe one of my classes, check out my casa/family and just generally hang out!  I was super excited about her visit because Kristi is great, both at her job and as a person/friend :)  I was, however, super nervous for her to observe one of my classes.  Despite the fact that I've learned a lot about teaching in the past few months, I for sure still have a lot to learn and perfect.  I spent a long time before Kristi arrived thinking about my lesson, and by "thinking about my lesson" I really mean stressing about my lesson, even though she totally told me not to worry and that I'd do fine.  But really, I think anytime anyone is observed in the classroom, it's just meant to be one of the less successful teaching days....   

And that was definitely the case for me.  Everything in my "observed class" just felt "off" and instead of clarifying things for my students, I'm pretty sure I spent a good chunk of time just confusing them!  (I was doing/continuing a lesson on family and while it's a lot of fun, it's also really complicated.  I mean, try drawing a picture of your family tree, and you will quickly see how complicated it is!  They never turn out pretty and simple like the demo ones in the textbooks!  And then you start asking questions like "your mother's father is your _____?" or "your mother's brother's wife is your ____?" and just trust me, a bunch of those questions for ESL learners get confusing super fast!  And then you mix in "in laws"!  My poor students!).

Fortunately my students are AMAZING and they totally hung in there with me and they really did learn a thing or two even though it was painful.  I actually know that they learned some stuff because the following class kicked ass.  Without the stress of being "officially" observed I was a far more organized/effective teacher and my students were like totally amazing!  They shocked me with their knowledge of family!  Ironically I was being observed in that class too, but just by my friend Rebecca who has her TESOL certificate but hasn't ever taught before.  Since she wanted to see how an ESL class looked, I told her she could come hang out in my class for the night.   I don't know if it was because it was an "unofficial" observation, because I knew I had to make up for my crappy previous class, if I got "used" to being observed or a combo of all three that made the following class better!

But side stories aside, I survived my class observation, and Kristi reassured me that I wasn't the worst ESL teacher ever and also gave me lots of good little tips and ideas for how to improve, many of which I immediately started using.  Once that was all over, we went out to dinner and prepared to bring the FUN the next day during our river rafting trip!

Tenorio River Rapids
Kristi and I had to meet our ride to the rapids at like 7:45 on Friday morning and we ended up hanging out on the very busy intersection between the Pan-American Highway and the main road into Liberia (also the location of "the stoplight" which is funny because there are actually a handful of stoplights in Liberia but this is still referred to as the stoplight...) until we could locate our transportation.  As I think I mentioned in a previous post, Kristi is also a tall, blue-eyed blondie, so while we were chillin on the corner, we got waved at, stared down, and honked at like nonstop.  It was pretty funny.  Finally we located our ride, met the two other couples that would be going up with us, and hit the road.  Rio Tenorio is like an hour or so away from Liberia.

After hopping into the rafting company's truck we took like a twenty minute ride out to the river where we geared up, got our safety brief and hit the water!  Below is a smattering of pictures from our trip.  The pics pretty much speak for themselves but the highlight was definitely the 12-15 foot waterfall we went down...twice!  It was super duper fun!!!  What now class III-IV rapids?!

We are ready to raft!

Our awesome pro photographer Guillermo.  We can thank him for the high-quality photos and action shots!

Our guide, Gerardo!  Trust me, he was SUPER excited to have two blondies in his raft.  Okay, that's actually supposed to be sarcastic b/c he was totally like "how did I get stuck with these two!?" but he also loved us.  We learned a lot about Gerardo, like how he has a daughter named Emily and he's getting his third divorce.

 

Boo ya!

Let's do it again!

It was pretty easy for me to get in the "down" position, but my balance skills (or lack of balance skills) made it harder for me to get back up.  Gerardo kept telling me I should lay off the beers.  Yea right!

Kristi and I had SO much fun rafting!  It was really a wonderful trip!  Once the rafting part was over, we enjoyed a yummy lunch.  (I'll leave out my rant about the idiotic observations our fellow lunchers/rafters were making about "traditions" in Costa Rica, but let's just say there was a lot of mental eye rolling going on!)

Spectacular Catarata Side Trip
As we headed back to Liberia, Kristi and I tried to convince the driver to make a pit stop at the Llanos Del Cortez waterfall (catarata).  Sadly we couldn't get him on board, but we had much better luck convincing Luis to drive us there when we got back to Liberia.  Here are the pics from our little side adventure.  (I had been really wanting to go the the Cortez waterfall b/c I kept hearing from my students and other locals that it's one of the most beautiful waterfalls in CR, and they were not kidding!)

I know, I've never looked hotter ;) 

By the time we made it back home from our second excursion of the day, we were dirty, tired and hungry.  So we showered, ate dinner, vegged and went to bed.  Talk about a super fun, exhausting day.  The next morning, Kristi took the early bus back to San Jose and I went back to bed!