Monteverde

Since this was my last week-end for a while in Costa Rica and since we just got two new interns from OISE, I decided to visit Monteverde where the rain forest is. Naturally, when we got up this morning to go Zip lining, it was raining. In fact, the managers strongly suggested our three teachers buy raincoats for $8 each so they would not be miserable. They dutifully bought the rain coats as suggested, which guaranteed the sun would be out within minutes!

St Elena and Monteverde are not that far from Guanacaste but admittedly the roads are terrible, although I imagined worth based on what everyone was telling me previously. We made the route rather easily, I thought, after a leisurely three hour ride. When we reached the hotel around 6 pm, I was shocked that the two 25 year olds wanted to take a “power” nap and the other teacher, 50 years old, also went to sleep for a while. We had decided to see what the local dance club was like and I was really looking forward to seeing what Costa Ricans did in the discos since they love to dance so much. I was quite surprised when I went to wake everyone up about 9 that they were still sleeping and were simply too tired to go out. What is wrong with this picture when a 60 something outlasts a 20 something and 50 year old? They also took the zip line today and since I already did this a few months ago I opted to walk the few kilometers through the cloud forest and walked the whole circuit. When we were done, I was ready to go to a different park and walk again but they were “too tired”

Technology, by the way, is wonderful. I asked one of the interns, who is constantly on her phone/web thing who won the baseball game. She texted her boyfriend in Toronto who duly reported that the Blue Jays lost 6 -0 but asked her why her sudden interest in baseball. He said, you were never interested in baseball in Toronto and now that you are in Costa Rica why the sudden interest?

The cloud forest, by the way, was really spectacular. I loved all of the ferns and vegetation growing on the trees and the constant rain and humidity makes this fascinating to walk through. There were 8 suspension bridges that were really neat to look across and down into the forest. Had anyone more energy we could have visited coffee plantations, a frog pond, orchid garden, butterfly gardens and so on but the energy level was simply not there.

We did visit the Quaker school and I was amazed that kids were playing soccer on a Sunday, volunteers were repairing the roof of the building and teachers were preparing lessons. I guess the trick is to have a committed group of volunteers who have similar belief systems. The guy heading up the “buy the rainforest” campaign was also there and he explained that in Costa Rica, when you have a property, if you find uninhabited land you can mark out your homestead. Actually, one or our teacher's from California did that during the 1960’s and has really been self-sufficient for the past number of years.

I head home on Wednesday and don't imagine I will see that many forests around Toronto, but hopefully will get to see anyone who actually reads this blog. See you soon.

The Ugly American

I am not going to tell you what Latin American country I am in in case this is picked up on some search engine and I would not want to embarrass anyone, but I will tell you that I now understand the expression the ugly American. I got an invitation from the American embassy to attend an opening of a joint United States /Latin American project. The invitation, by the way, came from the American Embassy, not from the Latin American joint venture. All of the principals spoke and said the usual, but what struck me like a bolt of lightning was the fact that the new American Ambassador spoke in English. Surely to God Obama could have found one campaign contributor who spoke Spanish! I found the fact that the Ambassador spoke in English condescending at best and insulting at worse. Even if she spoke Spanish, which she apparently did not, surely she could have put in some Spanish expressions.

The other issue was the poor job she did of speaking with a translator. I learned last year that when you speak with a translator, you give the whole idea first and then you stop and let the translator speak. She stopped, like I used to, after every phrase which could be two or three words. The translator has no hope when you do that other than botching up the translation.

Yesterday, by the way, I continued my road show and went to the town of Nicoya in the Nicoya peninsula, about two hours, mas o menos, from where I live. I went to a little restaurant for lunch and met the Chinese Costa Rican owner married to a German Costa Rican. When I asked the German when and why his family came here he told me that they had been living in Costa Rica for 80 years and control all of the cocoa export. I scared his wife when I asked” ni how ma” because she was embarrassed that she did not speak Chinese and moved away but how serendipitous that they were married to each other, the mixture of Chinese and Swiss living in Costa Rica and ending their family traditions because they did not have children.

I am coming home next week for the month of May to try and sell our school to Toronto high school kids. I think we have a great product since our school is on a 72 hectare farm and we tons of interesting outdoor interactive stuff. It would also benefit our 10 high school students to have some interaction with the outside world. We are getting two OISE students next week but hopefully I can generate a little more interaction than this!

Saved by the Nacion

Saved by the Nacion. I knew I had the national paper in my car for something! I went to a park off the beaten track today to see birds and hopefully alligators! Palo Verde is twenty eight kilometers down a beaten road that made you wish you never started but frankly I kept driving because I wanted to take a boat ride and see the alligators and birds. When I got there I turned off the car and went inside to pay the guy. Unfortunately, I found out that because of the dry season there was no water to take a boat on! When I turned my car back on five minutes later all I heard was the sickening click, click, click of the battery. Then I did not even hear that! What was I going to do? It was about noon, the temperature was about 40 degrees and the money collector did not even have a car, let alone cables. I asked him when the next car might show up and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, maybe a few days!!!

Thankfully it was Saturday and I had the Nacion, the national newspaper of Costa Rica and lucky for me it was the Saturday edition which is huge with all of the advertisements and so on. I opened the hood, pried off the clamps from the battery and used the Nacion to clean the clamps with a little water supplied by the guy. I saw that battery was obviously leaking so I wanted to make sure all of the connections were clean. After working on the car for about 30 minutes I finally got it started… or was that a mirage brought on by the waves of heat?

What actually happened was that by some miracle some reporters from the Nacion came by ( I knew the newspaper played a role here and they even had cables, some beautiful tools and off to work they went. Somehow, a mechanic even showed up as they were working, believe it or not, and they finally got the car started.

Rather than go into the park, I travelled back to Liberia and went to the nearest gasoline station, in fact the only gasoline station, to turn off the car to see if it would start again. The good news is that it did start and I give credit to where credit is due…The Nction. The bad news is that I had a flat tire! I just happened to be parked in front of the tire guy who kind of mentioned I should look at the tire which just happened to be flat).

What is absolutely amazing is that the Rosetta Stone program I am working on just happened to be on flat tires this week so I was fabulous. I could negotiate with him to fix the tire, sell me a second hand tire and look at the battery ( discargado) but guess what, he did not have a second hand tire so I am left with my bald tire. I may even go new this week but not sure how to say this since it was not in the program.

The week that was

I work in a small school and it seems every parent feels they should have a say in what we teach, how we do business, and even what our finances look like. I cannot imagine any other business where a client would actually have the nerve to ask to look at the books. Needless to say, this was another heavy week dealing with parents. Heck, the kids are great, as usual, but the parents can be a bit of a drag in a small school. Interestingly enough, I have been a principal in a school of a 1000 kids and had less interaction with parents. It seems that the smaller the school, the more the parents feel they are part owners.

It is also amazing just how tiring this can be, which shows how the emotions can control physical condition. To relax a bit, I drove up to Santa Rosa after our parent meeting which lasted all Saturday morning. Santa Rosa is the big historical spot in Costa Rica because it is where the famous 10 minute battle took place to beat Nicarauga and gain independence for this part of Guanacaste.If it is anything like the fiestas I have visited, it must have been quite a party.Walking down the Indian 'denundo' trail was actually quite relaxing as I saw the dried up river beds and trees literally growing out of rock.

Today I actually took my chair to the beach and read for a good part of the day. It was also very relaxing which should prepare me for next week, the week before I wing it home for Pesach. There are report cards, lots of meetings with parents ( as usual) and the the regular staffing issues. What a life in this paradise. Would I be happy sitting on the beach reading every day? Not sure, but it sure sounds enticing at this moment!

Rio Celeste

Shaul is leaving tomorrow and I hope he had a good time. As a colleague told me early on, the neat thing about Costa Rica is not the monuments or the cities, but the great natural wonders. Last night, Rob and Rena took us to Playa Flamingo where their friend, a master chef, served us in style in a great hotel right on the beach. Wouldn’t you know it that there was also a casino on site where Shaul and I spent some pleasant hours after dinner…not quite enough to pay for the dinner, but enough to take a good bite out of it. Frankly, most of the Americans who live here tend to gravitate down to the Nicoya Peninsula and live on Playa Flamingo which they seem to ‘ooh and aah’ over because of the white sand or Tamarindo. I personally love Playa Hermosa where I live where the water and sand are great, I think, and it is always empty!

It was also great to show a new teacher some of Costa Rica. Since he has been here, he has only seen Playa Coco where he lives and has no idea about the real show here. Today we took him to Rio Celeste in Park Tenorio. About an hour or two from the school there are about five volcanoes and any one of them is great to see because it is always cooler up high, it is actually amazingly green as you can see from the pictures of the jungle and I continually see great new things every week. For example, I loved the huge waterfall l and this is the dry season) and the blue water from the sulfur. As we were climbing our way down we could hear the great rush of the waterfall and when we actually saw it, it was like Shangri La. I can’t wait to go back next week-end with a gang of teachers to see the rest of it. We did not get to the mud baths or the agua caliente, unfortunately.

What I did learn about myself this week is that I seem to have way more energy than many of my colleagues. I don’t seem to get hungry or tired, which begs the questions of why I am so overweight, but that is another question. As we were trekking through Park Tenorio I realized I only have a few years left to do this sort of stuff. I was grabbing tree roots coming out of the side of the hill just to not get killed as the path down was muddy, steep and slippery. I did make it in one piece, but it was not easy. Once my knees are completely shot it will be impossible to do what I did today, so I feel that from here on in I better see it all. Once the legs go, I will only be seeing these things on television or in book.

The Tail of the Fish

I finally went fishing. I decided to take a day off school, or at least a morning and see what the big deal was about fishing. Shaul and I rented a boat and two sixteen year old captains and off we went, or so we thought. Before we headed out to open seas though, we had to stop to catch our bait. Shaul and I were handed the fancy rods and lures and the captain, like David in the Bible story, used a piece of string to reel in the fish. Didn’t Shaul and I feel stupid when he reeled in about five fish in ten minutes with a piece of string and Shaul and I got nothing with our fancy rods!
When we got to open water we were handed the rods and the bait and told that the fishing was not that good at this time of year. Now he tells us, after we forked over the $200? After about two hours of nothing, followed by more nothing, my rod caught on fire and I reeled in a twenty-five pound Jack, a fish in the yellow tail variety. What you have to do I learned, is let the fish run until it gets tired, then lower the rod and start to reel him in. After one more hour of tedium, we were actually coming in rather slowly and trolling, just in case we might catch something else. Suddenly, the rod bent over like an old man bending in the wind and the fight began. We pulled in a seventy-five pound rooster, but had to throw it back, the captains said since it was an endangered species. I think I must have worked at it for at least an hour, or so it seemed. I was amazed at how huge this fish was, but even more amazed to see the reverence the two boys who were our captains, showed to this fish. After taking out as much of the hooks and paraphernalia as they could, they stoked it gently a few times and one even bent over and kissed the fish, and then gently lowered it back in the water and watched it swim away. I really don’t know why the law says we have to throw it back, since I am quite confident it will be dead shortly anyway, from the exhaustion of fighting me or the gear stuck in its’ mouth. And they call this “sports fishing”
I have done a few different things from the norm this week since Shaul is visiting. I have won some money at two different casinos, eaten out in quite fancy restaurants every night and watched a huge forest fire near my house with the flames licking down the mountain like lava spewing out of a volcano. Needless to say, I was quite impressed. Everything around here is brown dry since we do not get a drop of rain for six months.
Now I am heading off to the school to feed supper to the staff. Thank God we caught something!

Tricks of the Trade

Having been a principal for the past few years, I am gradually learning a few tricks of the trade ( admittedly, I am a slow learner) and I still have a long way to go but let me share a few tidbits. I had some parents come in Wednesday that wanted their son to be skipped a grade. For a variety of reasons, this was a non-starter so let me tell you what I did. I have an extremely small office on the west of the school and in the afternoon the temperature has to be well over 40 degrees centigrade. Frankly, it is even too hot for me and I love the heat. Since, I was coaching soccer after school, I put on my shorts and a t shirt, scheduled the meeting for the middle of the afternoon and did not put on the air conditioner.It was great! The guy was pulling out his handkerchief and wiping his brow every second and the wife was using examples of her kids work to fan herself. I asked her if she was menopausal. After a few minutes, she went storming out of the room which was, of course, the plan. When the father came back later in the day and was willing to reason with us, I did turn on the air conditioning ( which he did appreciate by the way.)

Another important lesson they never teach you in principal school is that when you hang up the phone on a parent, you have to be talking. This is easy. Just start to say something and press click. Who would believe you would hang up on yourself?

More seriously, the toughest job of being a principal is to ensure that teachers, students and parents become problem solvers in their own right. It is frankly easy to solve most problems immediately since I have the knowledge and resources to do it. The staff, money and curriculum are at my disposal so all I have to do is open my mouth to make something happen, but then what have the stakeholders learned? The hardest part of being a principal, it seems to be, is not give the quick solutions. For example, a teacher complained last week of other teachers coming late and screwing up the schedule of the school. I could and should talk to the teachers in question and make sure this does not happen again, but what would be solved, other than a quick fix which would happen again the next week or the next month. I have to figure out a way to get the teachers in question talking with each other and finding a solution to their own challenges, which, in the case of my school is easy because it is so small. We could quickly rearrange the timetable, take time from another part of the program and so on. Or, on a less creative side, simply have them talk to each other so it does not happen again.

Or... We have a really cute little four year old that is tearing the school up. He has absolutely no control. The other day, since the swimming teacher was away, I foolishly volunteered to take the kinder class. Things were really going smoothly, I thought, until this kid decided to take his life in his own hands and started to swim all over the pool or his interpretation of swimming. I grabbed his arms in a not too gentle way and told him that he had to do what he was told. When he shook his head no, I let go of his arms. When he resurfaced for air, I asked him the same question in English and again he shook his head no. I let go of his arms again with the same results. The third time, he came up shaking yes. I doubt very much whether he understood a word I said in English, but he did get the message that I wanted Si's and not no's. If only I can import a swimming pool into my office. It might solve two problems!