Ha, this weekend!

Hey everyone, what a weekend! 

I'll start with my week which wasn't all that exciting, work=work. I've been here for almost 6 weeks now and things are moving right along. My students are, um... psycho, but damn cool. I'm having fun, even though it's tough to get the biggest procrastinators ever to do their work/It's a pain in my ass trying to get them to do there homework. Well, I guess its all full circle and a never ending cycle. Now I know what my teachers had to go through with my punk ass as their student. But because I was a punk ass, I know how to play the game. The balance is good. We have fun but we get our stuff done. Even though only about half of all of my students past their science test I'm patient and working with them. (I gave questions straight from the test in the review the day before and many of them still missed the questions.) Come on guys, I give you the answers and you still can't get them right? So, I'm stressing studying to them more than ever; I'm teaching them study habits too because they've never learned them before, (study groups, flash cards, etc.). Remember how I caught one of my students cheating on his research paper? Well, they all know not cheat anymore because they do, they're screwed. One step at a time - let them learn the hard way and they won't do it again. It will also set an example for the other students to not do it as well. 

As of my schedule, I'm here at 7:15 every morning, I teach until 10:00, and then I have a break until 10:20. I then teach until 11:50 and then I have lunch from 11:50 to 12:35, and finally, I teach from 12:35 to 3:00. It's pretty repetitious, but that's how it is with any job. At least I get to create my own plan while doing it in Costa Rica. 

And I bought a car. More photos to come soon. 

It's a 1991 Subaru Legacy and it will be perfect for this place. I paid 100 million colones for it ($1,750 dollars) but I can legitimately say that I'm a millionaire - far from it.

Anyways, This weekend started off with Stef and I meeting a friend of hers for Chi Frijo. It's an awesome pork/bean/rice meal that is unreal. It was at a karaoke bar in local San Josecito which is about 5 miles from the house so we partied there Friday night and then just went home. 

Saturday, some buddies and I went to one of their farms they have in Cartago. They call it a farm but it's more of a (4 chicken, 3 Geese and a dog) piece of paradise were we had a fat BBQ right next to a nice pond with a fountain in the middle of it. It was awesome. (I brought my camera with me but I forgot the memory card with my computer. My bad. Anyways, we'll be going again soon so I'll make sure to bring it next time). I need to show photos, words can't describe this place. 

Saturday night= a friends birthday party. She lives in a house with a man made river in it. I mean, this house looks like it should belong to some big hot-shot in So-Cal with more money that he/she knows what to do with. Stef put it as "a statue in that house is worth more than four of our friends combined." Seriously, this place is insane. Anyways, there was about 40-50 people there and I've been getting to know a good amount of them. They're all having a blast with me learning Spanish and (yeah, I know how to have fun) so it's working out. 

Sidebar topic-The first time I went to Ana's house (the house that should be the C.E.O of some big time company con mucho dinero) I was waiting for the bathroom in the front entrance and her parents came home. This was about 10:00pm at night. I was standing there alone like a deer in headlights, "Hey I'm Gringo. You're probably wondering what the hell I'm doing in your house." The father was in suit and tie and the mother was nicely dressed and they don't speak english. I ended up talking to them in Spanish for about 5 minutes but damn, muy interestante.

Back to this weekend...

I left around 1:00am because that night I found out that a buddy of mine was going to be going to help with the earthquake and I wanted to go.  So we left and we had to be up at 5:30am to catch the bus there. Let's just say I'm not the best morning person in the world.... But we made it at 7:00am and we were ready to work. The plans were for our group to build two houses for the earthquake victims on a shared piece of land and we had the day to complete it. Now, the houses are 4 walls and a roof and that is it. Nothing more, no electrical, no plumbing, nothing. But we had to start with the foundation and I had a metal rod about 4 feet long and I had to bust through concrete that was there for some "only god knows" reason and it took me about 1 1/2 of just pounding away at this concrete. My hands later in the day would lock up on the hammer and I couldn't open them. My hands are still killing me. Anyways, there were about 6 or 7 people per house and we just went to town on them. We started about 7:30m and finished at about 5:00pm. 

Check out this website for photos of what happened to this area:

http://www.pixcetera.com/news/costa-rica-earthquake/44806

There's a lot of photos of some random race-car drivier which is pretty lame but the other photos are pretty unreal.

By the way, we made the nightly news. I was on T.V. in Costa Rica. Ha, my buddy was interviewed and I'm working in the background which was pretty cool. I just thought that was funny because there's two dozen ticos walking around and working on houses and then there's one gringo in the picture. Where's Waldo? 

5:30pm came and the family that was going to be able to move into the house was going to cut the ribbon (We strung balloons and rib on the front door). The mother began to cry and the kids were extremely happy. It was an amazing site to see and to experience. I can't believe that I am able to contribute like that. It's also amazing to see a family that has lost everything in an earthquake and practically have nothing, be so happy and joyful for a 4x4 house. In reality, it doesn't take much to be happy. The family was overwhelmingly grateful for our work and I was glad to help. (Yeah, I didn't have my camera too. I was gone the whole weekend so I never had the chance to get back to the house to get my card. I'm bummed but there will be more times to take photos.) I have a bunch but I still need more. 

Finally, getting home last night after helping out was a pain in our butts. Our driver never showed up and he was never going to show up. We were about an hour and a half from town and we had no ride. We finally were able to talk the people that set it up to drive us back to town when they were going back and they did. It actually was their responsibility to get us back but our outside source bailed out. We did have to wait an extra two and a half hours for them to clean everything up and close everything down (they had an assembly for themselves and it was the kind of speakers that would talk for way to long and go far over their Oscar award speech time) but we got home. What it came down to was me and my buddies complaining a bit that we had to wait an extra two hours for our ride to get us back on the road but when I put it into retrospect, I new that I had nothing to complain about. I have to wait two hours for a ride, when the gym next-door was full of people having to wait two months for a house. 

Later Mae's.