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!

Cortes Waterfall

I was talking with a guest in our restaurant at the school and he had a picture of a beautiful waterfalls on his computer. When I asked him where it was, he told me 21.2 kilometers from the school. ( obviously a military man in his former life). I could not believe it. I have been living here for six months and still don’t know about these things? The tourist infrastructure is non-existent. When I wrote the department of tourism a while back and asked them if they wanted me to officially blog for them, I did not even get an answer. That was after spending about an hour trying to get an e mail address. A headline in the Tico Times says:” Costa Rica, the new Florida.” I don’t think so. What people like about Florida so much is that it has all the amenities of Canada but not the potholes!

Anyway, back to the story.I drove south for exactly 21.2 kilometers and turned right as he said. There was simply a dirt road, no signs, no sounds, no flashing lights a la California. I drove exactly 500 meters up the road as he instructed, turned right as he told me and then a left another 300 meters up the road and got out of my car and followed a path to Shangra-la. Wouldn’t you think it would be prudent of the tourist authority to at least put up a few signs? What are they thinking? How about a little hut selling water at least? I certainly can’t figure it out. It was a great little spot as you can see from the pictures and no-one knows about this site!!!

Talking about potholes… Look at this. I was driving through Liberia with my Nissan Pathfinder, thank God, and fell into this pothole with the whole front of the car! If I had been driving a small rented car I would probably still be down this open sewer or in someone’s toilet. There was no sign, no cover , no nothing. As if on cue, about 10 guys came out from somewhere and literally lifted the car back on the road. I don’t know if they were expecting a tip but I was so thankful I got out I simply drove away after a few high fives! They also dig up and fix the potholes in the road all the time, especially when I am trying to get to school, but they do such a poor job of it that they are back the next week filling the same potholes. There must be some conspiracy to do it poorly.

School has been extremely busy for some reason. I thought after all the planning I would now be in retirement but parents keep asking questions, kids still are being kids and teachers need their constant reminders. As well, it keeps me off the streets, or in this case, out of the water! Have a nice week if you are reading this.

Finally- Hot Springs!

I finally found the Agua Calientes I was looking for last August when I first arrived and now I understand why it was full of Ticos. It would be absolutely impossible to find if I did not understand and could speak Spanish.(ok, a little Spanish). I remember in my first week-end in Costa Rica. I got into the car and headed south from Liberia to Bagaces. I started to follow some signs for some hot springs but remember getting so wound around and lost it was impossible to find. I did find some little mud hole, mind you, and I was so turned off by it I never attempted to travel again to any hot springs, except for the fabulous hot springs I found in Arenal by the name of Baldi which happened to be right on the main road which was the only reason I found it. Today, I did get wound around like the other time, with the road obviously going nowhere, or somewhere I guess, but nowhere I was interested in going, but this time I could ask and actually understand the answer and in no time flat I was at "Thermal Mania."

Since my area, and I guess all of Costa Rica, is essentially surrounded by volcanoes, or better put, in the midst of volcanoes, there has to be hot springs everywhere. The geothermal activity in these areas is fantastic. There are these huge pipes coming from somewhere in the volcano, I presume, spewing forth steam, which is then turned into electricity in the generating plants. I would love to know how much energy is created by the volcanoes and if Costa Rica depends on any outside source for power? They even had wind mills in the area I was in today.

The actual hot springs were great. This time, it only cost $10 for the day and I had access to about 6 pools of varying degrees of heat, a water slide, swim up bar and so on. Not quite as posh as Baldi, but very serviceable and well appointed. There is even cabins on site with their own thermal waters, even though I did not get a chance to look inside. However, I do know where I am going to take my next visitors ( or to put it another way) my first visitor. We will go to this area around Miravelles and choose one of the big three hot springs in the area to relax in.

Although my school only has 80 kids, it has enough after school activities to keep a school of a 1000 kids happy. I played soccer on Thursday, baseball on Friday and tried to stay away from Club Explosion so I did not lose an eye. Kids were blowing up things all over the place. Next week I am going to try my hand at the swim club and hopefully camera club. I keep taking pictures of flowers, especially the bird of paradise, but would love to be able to take some pictures of birds. Not sure if I have the patience!

The Road Less Traveled

Excuse me for not writing very much in the last month but without a computer and accoutrements, it was difficult. In addition, I was spending every waking hour planning for the school year which opened up last Monday. The boss and I have been spending our time writing the teacher and student manuals, talking about the strategic plan, timetabling, hiring teachers, organizing and reorganizing classes, buying materials, creating the evaluation software, preparing teaching workshops and so on. When you are the principal of a small school you have to do everything. In the past, I had no idea where the supplies came from. I just assumed they would be there!

Anyway, there is nothing more I can do. The ‘game’ is now in the hands of the teachers and I can sit back and watch it happen…sort of. The first day started off rather poorly mind you. We got a teacher all the way from Vietnam in 54 hours to start the school year with us and we could not even get him to school, a twenty minute bus ride! The bus went to get him, but since a teacher from last year was sick and they were on the same bus, the bus driver did not know what the new teacher looked liked. This is Costa Rica, of course, and people generally do not have phones so there I was at 8 am with two teachers missing. (school starts at 8 am.) Parents in Costa Rica infiltrate the school on the first day and take their kids to classes so there I was talking with parents and kids with no teacher to be found.

After I sorted out that problem, by personally getting the teacher, things started to go right and by Friday it actually appears as if things will go all right this year. Yesterday I even went with some students to el norte, just one hour from the school towards the border of Nicaragua. It was great. I travelled about thirty minutes north of Liberia, turned right on the first road and started driving east. After about fifteen minutes, the road, or anything resembling a road disappeared and I was travelling over potholes, huge rocks and through rivers, but did see great scenery which kept changing from pastoral farmland to hardwood trees, to ocean front vistas. I loved it as we made a circle from the east to the west and the whole thing probably took, in driving time, no more than two or three hours. Of course, no tourist ( of the legal kind) would ever travel these roads because the sexy spots in Costa Rica are the active volcanoes, the go go beaches like Coco or Jaco or even the other Hermosa but not where I went yesterday.

What I loved about it was the peacefulness of seeing cows grazing in the fields, real cowboys with real horses repairing fences and cutting crops and then seeing such change of scenery in minutes as we travelled from ‘Yafa” orange orchards for miles, it seemed, to volcanoes, beach vistas and old forest at Santa Rosa. There were lots of police checkpoints, probably stopping illegal immigration from Nicaragua but thankfully did not stop me because I did not have a passport with me which I think you are supposed to carry with you at all times. I am also sure they don’t do much of a job checking illegal immigrants either. After all, if they did, who would be working in Costa Rica?

Shopping in Costa Rica

I’m Back! Let me tell you how I acquired all of my new ‘stuff’. My boss knows a wholesale computer place in San Jose where we picked up my first computer. As you remember, it could sing and dance but had no internal microphone or web camera. I returned it and we were promised another one in a week. My boss made multiple phone calls and everything seemed to be in order. You see, the problem is not getting a computer, especially if you are willing to spend $200 more than you would in Canada, but rather getting an English keyboard. A Spanish keyboard would be absolutely impossible because keys are in different place and some commands are different. Anyway, we were assured that there was an English keyboard in stock and I was a happy camper.

The following week, yesterday, I believe, we went to San Jose to get my computer. At 9 am, even though we had been promised a computer days before, they told us to come back at three. At three sharp, we were sitting in the office waiting for the computer at the wholesalers and wouldn’t you know it. The computer was not there. After sitting staring at each other for 30 minutes, we decided to shake things up a bit and walk to the back room where they finally decided to get their act in gear and show us a computer, but as you can guess, it did not have the requisite microphones and so on. Fair enough, is this the only one you have I asked. Just then, another guy came by and said, in fact, here is another one. It had everything I wanted and then some, but guess what, it was too small for me but at that point, 4:30 I was willing to spend the money just to get out of there! My boss asked after about fifteen minutes of more useless chatter, are you sure there is not another one somewhere? Thirty minutes later she came back to tell us that low and behold, there was a model computer ( a Toshiba Satellite) that she would be willing to sell for $650. Hallelujah! I’ll take it, I said. She told us to come back in an hour when they would have Windows installed on it. Forget it, I told them, we will take it as is and just burn the software and I will install myself! Forty-five minutes later she returned to say they did not have any software and we could download from the Internet. ( wrong actually) but I agreed. At 5:30 I told the lady I would pay an extra $50 if she would just give me the computer within the next 15 minutes and I would pay immediately. She did not get the extra $50!!!!

You think that is bad? Let me tell you about the phone! We got a phone, not really a big deal, but not a small deal either. We went to an Office Depot type of place and you look at the phones but they will not let you take them to the cash register. You have to go to the cash register, wait in line for a bit till you are recognized and then they ask the guys to bring you the phone. That takes another fifteen minutes at least ( which is why there is always a line at the cash register!) Once you get it, you have to go over everything again and then, if you are lucky, they may let you buy it.

You think you are pretty smart, right, and that would be the end of the story, but how wrong you would be. Once you have a telephone, you then have to go to ICE, the national communications carrier to get a phone number. After waiting in line for three days in a row, we found out that there is about a three month waiting list to get a number. Luckily, they let me use my old number.

The story does not end. I bought the same camera as I bought in Toronto three years ago, a nifty little Cannon ( for about one third more than I paid three years ago) and walked out of the store on air…that is until I got home. It is kind of hard to take pictures without a chip to insert which they made no effort to sell me when I bought the new camera and if truth be told probably did not even know it needed one. We bought it in the same place as the phone?!??

Want to hear more? Didn’t think so. So, you want to visit Costa Rica?

Honestly, the moral of the story is that I should never never never lose anything again, especially not here. I do have to tell you though that when I go out to my beach in the morning the water is so clear you can see the sand at the bottom and all the fish in between, you never need a towel, the days are perfect at about 30 degrees and the stars are brighter at night then I have ever seen. As long as you do not ever have to buy anything, Costa Rica is great!

Life without a computer

Want to know what life is like without a computer? I am going to tell you, but please forgive me if I leave out question marks or make other grammatical mistakes. I simply cannot find an English keyboard around here and it is virtually impossible to get one in Costa Rica unless it is a special order. I returned the computer I bought last week because even though it could cook breakfast it did not have an internal microphone or video!

I remember when I taught at Thornlea,probably in the 70's and early 80's, Mike Lieberman gave us an hour lecture on what life was going to be like in the computer age. We sat sceptically then as he described e commerce, communication and telecommunication. Who knew how right he was going to be. Who could believe it? Thirty years later I can and do.

God knows who is using my computer now, but I hope some kid who didn't have one before. Maybe it will change his whole life as it has mine. It is hard to imagine not talking to people anywhere in the world whenever I want. What a pain.Even in Costa Rica, I use Skype to phone my boss because more often than not the cell phone does not work in my house anyway.

I also miss my girlfriend a great deal, but that is another issue. Rosetta Stone is no longer with me and I have to face this world without daily Spanish lessons. However, I am actually reading the paper everyday and trying to watch television in Spanish but that is very difficult because television here is exactly the same as it is in North America, because it is North American! As much as I would like to learn Spanish, I can't bring myself to watch these lousy programs.I am starting to watch American football because they are broadcast in Spanish, but quite frankly it is difficult to understand because of the specialized vocabulary.

Another interesting point, for me anyway, is that it is easier to read the equivalent of the Globe and Mail then the Sun, for example. I guess the Nacion is better written and there are more contextual clues than in the country 'rag' It is almost impossible for me to read and undersatnd apaper lik e the Inquirer. I would have thought it would be far easier but it is not.

Back to the computer. I guess I am used to instant communication with the world and without the comfort of that 'feeling' I am at a loss or at least feel like I am at a loss. When I had my computer and Internet connections, I really felt at 'home' wherever I was. When Sylvia and I were in South America, we use to call Daniel to ask where to eat dinner in Buenos Aires or Josh to say happy birthday. We were never out of touch with our children, the news, and anything else we wanted to be in touch with!

Needless to say, all of my workshops and materials were also on the computer which made my life easier. I have done so much professional development work over the past few years that all I have to do is press a few buttons and ala kazam, I have a workshop. Next week, I have a week of workshops and I will actually have to do quite a bit of work preparing them. I better publish this now because if I don't, who knows when I will have access to a computer again?

The run-a-way ferris wheel

I proved yesterday that you could get sick on a Ferris wheel. I went to a fiesta in Santa Cruz yesterday, about an hour from where I live. A fiesta in a two week party where Costa Ricans dance, drink and then dance and drink some more. If time, they might ride horses, jump in the ring with the bull or take their kids to the games area. The equipment in the games area is so old you would think they were antique and could be seen in a museum. How harmful, I said to myself, would it be to go on this kid’s Ferris wheel for a few turns of the circle? Well I found out. When I got off I had to find a piece of grass to lie down on for an hour or so. The guy put me in, cranked the wheel to get the Ferris wheel moving (probably after years of neglect) and then went to sleep, literally. I was yelling for him to stop, but he was way too far gone. I bet I was on that sucker for thirty minutes before he woke up and not only was I going in this circle, but the seat I was in kept swinging back and forth.

And if you think that is bad, you should see the rodeo ring. I would love to show you a picture, but difficult to do without a camera. There was a huge ring in the middle of the town that was obviously put up for this occasion, by the same guys who are doing the drinking and the dancing I suppose. There had to be a thousand people in the stands, hundreds more underneath and you could literally see the ring tilting to one side. I could not even get in if I wanted to because it was literally packed to the rafters. Where was the department of health and safety or are they only concerned with yellow fever?

Actually people did seem to be having a lot of fun . I saw a parade with weird clowns that looked medieval, hundreds of horses that probably came in from all over Nicoya, old cars ( which they probably actually use on a daily basis), and guys throwing some kind of candy into the crowd.

I am going into San Jose tomorrow to hopefully get a new passport, camera, phone and computer. My boss did buy me a computer and my only requirements were to have a built in microphone and camera This computer practically cooks dinner, but does not have the above so I am getting a new one tomorrow.

By the way, if there is anyone reading this that can and wants to teach middle school math and science and is available right now, please let me know.

The End of the Trip-sort of

I have been waiting to tell the last story of my South American adventure for a week, since I did not have my computer, but that is another story. I had to go home via Peru on my way to Costa Rica. The day I left, I got to the airport on time, actually in plenty of time, and the guy at the counter asked me if I had my yellow fever vaccination certificate. At that stage I switched from speaking Spanish to English and asked him if he could repeat what he just said. When he repeated it in English I just could not believe it. YELLOW FEVER? What is that? Some disease we talked about in public school? I also told him that I was a Canadian, had been to Costa Rica many times over the past few months and to let me handle the problem. He replied that I had to go to the medical office and get a vaccine. He told me that even if I was Canadian, travelling from Peru, Bolivia and so on the government of Costa Rica insisted on the certificate.

When I asked the doctor about this she said she would be pleased to give me the vaccine but I would then be in detention in Peru for ten days and not able to travel ( presumably because I could very well get yellow fever from the vaccination). I told her to hold off, went back to the desk and pleaded with the guy to let me on the plane and deal with the situation in Costa Rica. He then phoned his boss and without saying a word gave me my seat on the plane. I am not sure whether he discovered he was in error, or the airline decided to honour the ticket and let me worry about the consequences or what but I did not ask. I was afraid he might change his mind. When I got to Costa Rica, I did notice there was a big triangle on the screen and a warning that I might have something but the guy didn’t ask me any questions, didn’t say a word, and just let me through.

In the meantime, I might add, there was a woman in front of me in the line that was seriously sick, had to sit on her bags as we waited in line because she could hardly stand up and could barely make it to the ticket counter. She had no problem getting on the plane, apparently because she did not have yellow fever, I guess.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. On my way to the bus station to go up north, I had my usual suitcase and my briefcase, one of which I left in the taxi on my way to the bus. The one I left just happened to have my computer in it, my camera, my telephone ( which did not work or I would have immediately phoned the taxi), my passport and international driver’s license. Do you know what a pain in the neck it is to replace all of these things? I am finding out. And I thought being quarantined for ten days would have been a hassle!

Toronto the Good

Let me tell you how great Toronto is. The more I travel around the world, the better Toronto looks. The other day in Buenos Aires I was really shocked when the cab driver leaned over and locked Sylvia’s door. The same thing happened to me the week before in Lima where I was looking through my pictures in the front seat of the cab and the cabbie told me to put the camera away because we were going through a bad part of town. My landlady in Costa Rica always yells at me because I refuse to put the bar in place after I lock the glass patio doors. She insists I will lose this computer one day, even though the patio is literally ten feet off the ground and any thief would need a ladder to climb up to it.

I really can’t think of any place in Toronto I would be afraid to travel, night or day. I know Jane and Finch has a bad reputation but teaching at York I was in that area all the time without a problem. I can’t imagine any tourist book saying not to go to a particular area of Toronto because it was dangerous but here it happens all the time. Whenever I want to go to a particular museum or point of interest someone in South America is always telling me it is in a dangerous part of town or you have to pass through a dangerous part of town to get there. There is a cemetery in Lima, apparently, very similar to Recoleta and when I asked what the best time to visit was I was told that it was in an ‘ugly’ part of town. Which parts of Toronto are ugly? I know, I know, it is all ugly but is there one area uglier than most?

In Asia, I can’t remember being told all the time not to go to a particular area because it was dangerous. This was because I did not speak the languages very well or there aren’t any areas where you take your life in your hands or maybe I just forget, but certainly in South American I hear the phrase ‘peligroso’ or dangerous all of the time, no matter what country I am in.

Another great thing about Toronto is we are all treated equally. In Thailand, for example, there is a published price for ‘foreigners’ and a published price for natives. The discrimination is clear. No attempt at hiding it. In South and Central America try to negotiate for a cab ride or a new car. When you do it as a foreigner you get one price. Just try to get an indigenous friend to ask for the same service and you will see what a price difference there is. There seems to be an acceptance that if you are a foreigner you just owe them! On the other hand, being a foreigner is a double edged sword, especially in Asia with its’ colonial mentality. If you are old, white, and have grey hair, and continue to speak only English, you are treated like a god. If you are old, white and a woman, you are not quite a god, but certainly treated better than the native population. If you are white, you get points but if you are in any dark in any of the countries I have visited, you are treated ‘differently’ read second class. That is why Thai woman cover up in 90 degree heat. They do not want to get dark. That is the stigma of the underclass. The same is true in South America where it is also known to be hot.

Talking about women, I know Toronto women have a long way to go in terms of equity or even equality, but compared to the rest of the world, women are singing. In the countries I have visited women are just expected to serve their brothers, husbands and fathers yet do not even have the same burial rights. If you do not have boys, you will not even have anyone to pray for you in places like Vietnam. In Toronto, in my opinion, women can be accepted as womanly and yet still be respected in courts, business circles and places like education. South American woman and Asian women cannot make the same claim from my observation. We must be at least fifty years ahead in this regard.

Man, what am I thinking. I was just about to post without even mentioning the infrastructure where everything works, where you are infuriated if the plumber or electrician can't come the same day, where the roads are a pleasure to drive on, where the schools actually work and don't need security procedures that would put the airports to shame. Wow, unbelievable.And I won't even bother to talk about cleanliness or quality of food or merhandise or service.

Wow, Toronto the good doesn’t sound so bad from afar!