First day on the job
Trip Start
Aug 08, 2008
1
5
42
Trip End
Oct 12, 2008
Puriscal,
Costa Rica
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
I managed to score a less-than-frigid shower last night, although the water still wasn't what one would call "warm." Tonight I'm dragging LaVerne "I steamed up my mirrors two nights in a row" Lewis to fiddle with the faucet for me.
Ally and I were supposed to have our first day at the Colegio Tecnico today (in the English department, not the Special Needs department, as it turns out) but the students were going to be taking exams all day today and for much of the next week, so we went over to the nursing home with Sarah, Anna, Lydia, and Caitlyn
The Old Folks' Home
. It was markedly different from the assisted living facility where my grandmother lives. For one thing, all the buildings were very open, like all buildings around here; there were lots of windows with no glass, doorways with no doors, and rooms with absent or partial walls. So, although the place wasn't quite as clean, there was plenty of ventilation, and plenty of fresh flowers growing in the courtyard to counter the faint smell of formaldehyde and stale urine.The old folks weren't the same, either. While most of them had few, if any, teeth, and some were blind, only one was in a wheelchair, most didn't even use canes, and there wasn't an oxygen tank in sight. Of course, we were working with the healthiest and most active among them, but I wondered if some of the debilitating ailments I've seen among elderly people in the States would simply kill people here.
Some of them were pretty feisty. Abel is blind and has difficulty walking, but he can sing and play the guitar, and knows several songs by heart. Manuel lisps and whistles when he speaks, so I have no idea what he's saying, but he seemed to enjoy seeing the postcards I brought of Boston and the pictures of John and I hang gliding last summer. "Watch out," Anna warned me when I sat next to him, "he's a kisser." Jose wanted us to help him cheat at bingo; he'd point to the numbers he needed and whisper "escoge!" (choose!) with a conspiratorial wink
Orientation
. And all the more able-bodied men enjoyed showing off when we played with them, tossing them beach balls and having them toss them back to us, or setting up old soda bottles and having them throw the beach balls to knock them down (senior bowling, I guess). This could be a dangerous assignment for anyone who had recently undergone rhinoplasty.I'll probably be back for an hour in the mornings every day for the next week, while the students finish exams, before heading over to the school. I'm looking forward to my primary assignment, but I have to admit I had fun today.
For our Spanish lesson today, Xinia gave Alyssa and me a summary of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in Spanish for us to read aloud, restate in our own (Spanish) words, and discuss as it relates to us. I was force-fed this stuff all four years of high school, so it didn't take me long to figure out what "ser proactiva" and "empiece con un fin en mente" meant. When prompted, I confessed that habit number seven was the most difficult for me: "afile la sierra" (sharpen the sword). Whenever I try to explain myself in Spanish, I have to oversimplify because my Spanish language skills aren't up to par with my analytical skills. But as I muddled through an explanation that I always feel like there's something more I could be doing, and therefore something more I should be doing, I realized it really was that simple
Tricia in front of the old church
. When I've been tooling around on the guitar here in my ample free time, I silently curse myself for not having practiced harder when my folks were paying for lessons, or in the intervening years when my guitar has sat in its case, untouched, for months on end. When one of the other volunteers asks me how to say something in Spanish and I don't know, I kick myself for doing such a poor job maintaining my vocabulary. When a book I'm reading makes reference to another book I've been meaning to read, I feel bad that I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm still annoyed with myself for having to ask my parents for money to help finance this trip, because the downturn in the economy ruined my plans to work 60 hours a week and pay for it all myself. (I did work 60 hours a week for six months, but managed to make less than I'd made working 30 hours a week the previous six months.) I really need to stop doing that.
After Spanish class, we had a yoga/stretching class on the patio. My last (and only) experience with yoga was pretty horrific, but I decided to give it another shot. I didn't exactly enjoy myself this time, but it was a far cry from the medieval torture I endured at that studio in Boston five years ago. I probably needed a good stretch, anyway.
Some of the girls went out for ice cream and more sweet bread, and I tagged along. At the heladeria, I met a German exchange student named Stephanie. She had been here six weeks and was anxious that her Spanish wasn't progressing as quickly as she'd hoped. I reassured her, though I had no way of knowing this for sure, that by the end of the year she'd be fluent. I hope I run into her again.
Perhaps it's because everything is still so new, but the days seem incredibly long. I just checked the clock and it's only eight-twenty; I'm almost ready to hit the sack. I don't think I went to bed this early when I was a baby, even though I was surely taking in at least as much new information every day. I must be getting old, then.
Comments
regrets
Mi Hija Querida,
Don't beat yourself up so much. You're not even 25, and if this experience teaches you to live more fully, you'll be WAY ahead of the game!