Today on the way to the orphanage I took the wrong bus. Hilarity ensued. My extraordinarily bad Spanish and excellent gesturing skills came into play, "Como Terramall?" I asked pointing around randomly (Terramall is the landmark I was trying to get to). This eventually got me to my destination - two buses and a hike later.
Aside: one amazing feature of the San Jose area is that, aside from the inner city, there are basically no street names or numbers. The greater San Jose area is home to over a million people. To get around you just have to know where you are going. The address of my volunteer and language center is "from the old higuerón (tree) 100 meters south and 50 meters east".
The buses, which are numerous and economical (between 33 to 44 cents [185 - 250 Colones]) are marked with their final destination and then little placards of their minor stops like "UCR" (U of Costa Rica), "Mall San Pedro", "Plaza Del Sol", "Outlet Mall" (almost all of the minor stops are malls).
Classes for the academic school year begin on Tuesday so it's quasi-crunch time for preparing material. I'm going to be teaching 8th grade math to two students with a patchy education history in math and four students in my typing class (because there are four computers). This morning I figured out what sections from the math text book needed to be duplicated in addition to the tests that we'd need (those duplicates will hopefully be ready for me Friday). I finished setting up the four computers for typing class. Mavis Beacon kicks it old skool and still teaches typing if you're curious.
Today the woman who cuts the kid's hair was there giving most of the boys their buzz cuts on the porch. I lined up to get rid of my hot sticky miskept poof of hair. While waiting I talked with Grandma - the mother of the woman who runs the orphanage (Mom). She told me about her 50th birthday party in Hawaii with a round trip ticket for $50 and lobster dinners for $12 way back when. She told me that Valentine's Day marked the Xth anniversary of her becoming a widow - prior to that it was nearly 50 years of blissful marriage. She was happy that one of the children, KV, was celebrating his 9th birthday that day and it would help take her mind off of it. Then it was my turn to get my hair cut - the barber buzzed it off in about 10 minutes.
After lunch I convinced the girls who have the ping pong net to set it up for us to play. I was then totally whooped by a 15 year old girl. One of the other volunteers suggested we play a ping pong variant where people run around the table and hit the ball as gently as possible the put down the paddle for the next person. Those who miss eventually leave the circle. It was a pretty big hit with the kids. They need new games to play - I'm going to try to teach them some new games while I'm here and also how to juggle (there has been some interest in this).
Around 2pm the physical therapist came and I've been waiting for this for a week.
There's a boy - KV - who has Cerebral Palsy and has leg deformation / walking disability as a result. He cannot straighten out his legs all the way. When he walks with assistance (a person or a walker), his knees point in towards each other but his feet point out. It is difficult to watch. He likes to sit back on feet with the toes pointing out - this does not help his recovery. Nor does his crawling around, which has made his knees knobby over time. Whenever I see him crawl I make him use his walker - or at least I try. He's a fast crawler and a bit stubborn. He's a very sweet kid - he was in the Costa Rican Orphan system before being adopted by El Faro (the Lighthouse Orphanage). When he was in the institutional home, they would lock him away from the other children because they thought he was retarded (based on his physical attributes) and just sit him in front of a TV. As far as I can tell, he is of perfectly fine intelligence. His physical development is unusual - he's so skinny in addition to his leg deformation. His appetite is so slight, during lunch we have to withhold his beverage until he eats, because he's perfectly happy to drink it and not eat.
Anyways - the physical therapist came. I had been waiting to speak to her because the prior week I had spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the "strapping system" they had purchased at considerable expense for KV that they were not currently using. After throughly reading the instructions and watching the video I realized I couldn't really do the setup without her help. Today we worked out a solution to put the strapping system on to help pull his upper legs out a bit so his knees were not so close together and was not set up in a bathroom inhibiting way (important). She showed me exercises to do with him which I am going to start tomorrow.
By the time we were done with the PT related stuff it was time for me to go to my Spanish class at the volunteer / language center, which is another bus ride away. I have never been so motivated to learn Spanish in my life. I took Spanish in grade school but have not used it much in recent times - before I left for Costa Rica I had the embarrassing realization that I couldn't use any verbs outside of canned phrases. I'm in a group class with 2-3 other people and I feel like it's working well. Having class then practicing with my host family and the kids has made retention much better.
After class I returned to my host family's house. Some days I run home and it's up hill the entire way. It's a nice way to get the blood moving after the sedentary 2 hour lesson. I have no way of telling the distance, but I timed myself at about 18 minutes so I think it's about 2 miles. Today I bought some things on my way home, including something for KV's birthday, so I took the bus.
I ate dinner by myself - I am not sure when or where my host family eats, but it's not with me. Part of my arrangement is three legitimate Costa Rican meals a day from my host mom. The Costa Rican diet is fairly limited - at least half of daily nutrition comes from rice and beans. The food is mostly unflavored - very natural and light. It has become a bit monotoneus in the last two weeks - I'm trying to get at least one non-Costa Rican meal every weekend.
Things have been going well. I think I am in good position to do some meaningful work here. I will be trying to post more.
