ABC, easy as... uno, dos, tres?

This is day two of four of having to get up at 630 for work. I really cannot even say that I dislike getting up that early. In fact, besides the fact that I only get about two hours of daylight outside once I get off work, I really enjoy my job, and the 630 shift. The Bakery has been immensely popular and is in a very good location so I get to meet and get to know a lot of people. With traffic becoming more common every day, walking to work at 6 am down a dirt road, with only the sounds of monkeys rustling in the treetops is my favorite time of day.

At the beginning of last week I met a girl named Franki from South Africa who is here in Costa Rica doing a volunteer ESL program. I met her the same day that I asked my coworker's boyfriend if he knew of any volunteer help needed at the local school. I was just eating my lunch in the Bakery and Franki started talking to me about my job. How strange that things work out so easily sometimes. So I asked her if I could come with her to her class and see what it was all about, or help her out. I think I made a mistake in telling her about my last semester of experience teaching Spanish in an elementary school because she suggested I make my own lesson plan to take up about 45 minutes of class time! Well, I wasn't too sure about that because I had already decided that I was a better assistant than a teacher, but I figured a new country called for a new attempt. So, armed with the most basic outline: working with verbs, I got to thinking. I finally came up with the idea to play, "Mother, May I?" with the kids. Anyone who doesn't know what it is, someone is the "mother" standing at one end of the play space, the rest of the group has to move towards the mother as per her instructions. Anyone who forgets to ask permission, "Mother, May I?," has to go back to the beginning. I was so excited to have come up with a learning activity all on my own! Then I found out that I was going to be teaching adults, rather than children! We ended up playing the game anyway, though, and the class loved it! It was more rewarding than I could have anticipated to watch people learn from my instruction. When we started the game, some of the students didn't even know what the verbs meant that we were using, but by the time we were done, they were looking back at their notes, coming up with lots of different actions to use for the game. I was so excited to see everyone else excited by their new knowledge. It reminds me of my friend Ridley, who told me one time that she is awestruck by watching children learn new words. Thirty seconds before we played this game, someone didn't know the word for "steps" in English, and now they do! This happens to me all the time at work, too. I have learned so many new Spanish words for things in the kitchen, vegetables, pastries, and coffee. They're little things, I know, but it's so cool to be able to speak to someone entirely in Spanish about the ingredients of a salad!

I think my Spanish is definitely getting better since I've been down here, and I attribute that almost all to work. But really, one of the best experiences I've had so far has been helping Franki teach her class on a covered area of pavement while the lightbulb hanging above us sways in the evening thunderstorm. That was more real than any other Costa Rica I've seen.

Tonight Davey and I are going to a bar where our neighbors are going to be doing fire dancing for a reggae themed night. I'm so excited to see it! And in a few days we are taking off for a couple days in Monteverde, which is a huge jungle reserve across the bay from us. We're going with our friends Brady and Andrew and I can't wait to go hiking, and maybe even a canopy tour, in the mountains!

And I also found a toy store a few days ago so Davey and I got colored pencils, which keep us occupied for hours! They also sold jigsaw puzzles there, but they were almost twenty dollars! I got a kids activity book of word searches, one of the closest things I can get to crossword puzzles here! The word searches help me learn new words in Spanish, though, so it's educational. Something worrisome, though, one of the wordsearches was KKK themed. That's kind of strange.

Dave and I have pretty much adopted a dog. I don't know what we'll do when we get ready to leave here. I don't want to think about it, but I really would like to bring him back with us. He's black and white with no tail and he follows us around all the time. Dr. Doolittle (aka Davey) thinks that the dog was beaten by his previous owner because whenever we put down food for him, he hangs back until we walk away and leave it. He probably used to get beaten when he tried to go for any kind of food. He never begs, and never barks. He is really skinny, though, no matter how much we feed him, and I think he has some vision problems because we have to get really close to him for him to recognize us in the street. If he strays too far away from us, he can't seem to find us again. When he sees us, though, he gets so excited and does kind of a horse-like pawing. I love this dog so much! We named him Skeeter, after a cartoon character in Doug. I don't really know why, since they don't look alike, but it seems to fit him.

One more thing, today while I was at work, a woman who owns a group of rental houses here asked me, while I was ringing her up, what I went to school for, and if I would like to tutor her daughter in English. I said sure and she said, "We'll talk," before bustling out the door. I have no idea if I'm even up for the job! And she is Costa Rican, but speaks perfect English. Who wants to learn American English, anyway?!

I'm about to go enjoy the last few minutes of daylight. I miss you all!