TEFL Love!

 

Erin with Iani and Hannah

TEFL Love!

 As much as we loved the white water rafting, monkeys, waterfalls, beaches, ziplines (I could go on) etc., the real reason we went to Costa Rica was to get certified to be English teachers in the TEFL program at Máximo Nivel Language Institute in San Pedro, San José, Costa Rica. 

December 2011 Maximo TEFL Grads!

Super Mario!

Our classroom, aka Tico home :)

The program was great, it was short but intense, hard work but worth it.  We were teaching actual English learners by our first Friday in class, and got to teach every day during our last week in class.  Our teacher, Iani, was from Namibia and has all sorts teaching (and life) wisdom to share!  Iani's assistant teacher, Hannah (from the US) was also wonderful to have around as she had gone through the TEFL program at Maximo herself so she was very helpful all along the way.  It was also great to have Mario working at Maximo, he was from Costa Rica and could help us whenever we had questions about practically anything we needed help with, from the best place to grab a beer to what store to go to to buy blankets! (It was much colder than we anticipated!)

Megan, Misty and Me!

TEFLers out at Mundo Loco

 The people we met there were great and it was a great start to our adventure.  One of my favorite parts of class was the warm up each time we started class.  Just as were are urged to do in our own classes, we started each session with a warm-up question.  Over the four week course we learned a lot about our classmates through these questions like the weirdest things everyone had eaten, favorite foods/books/movies, everyone's "happy" songs, everyone's best jokes, dream travel destinations, if they were dog or cat (and book or movie) people and more.  

Josie, Megan and Erin

Our course was also very educational, one of the weeks was spent on grammar review and I learned how well I don't know the rules of English grammar! Something to work on ;)  By the end of the program we were definitely sad to be leaving so soon and knew we would miss the friends we had made there (TEFL LOVE!).  We were lucky to get prepared for our adventure in such a great program with amazing people!

Our last weekend out in CR

 

We did manage to find some time during our class to have some fun in San Pedro!

 Our favorite bar was called Mundo Loco which was conveniently located between our apartment and the school.   But we also frequented the bars on the Calle which is essentially one long street of bars.  

Fuzzy pic, but it's Twister at El Pueblo

Monster Pizza!

There's also a pizza restaurant there called Monster Pizza where you can buy a slice of pizza as big as your head.  

We also got to go to a place called El Pueblo which we wished we could have gone back to more.  It's pretty much a little town of bars with little pizza restaurants and shops dispersed in between! You could walk around it at night and before you were out of earshot of the music from one bar you could already hear music from the next.  The buildings all coordinated too, with cool blue tiles and ornate signs, and little cobble stone "streets" going all around.  So great!  

 We also went out to dance on the Calle, where Xcape was our dance bar of choice :)

Original Heidelberg

Though we didn't have time to travel again until our last weekend in Costa Rica we really enjoyed exploring the city.  Once we figured out the bus system (with some help from Mario!) we liked going to downtown San Jose when we had some free time. We were amazed at the amount of people walking around there, and in the main plaza of downtown tons of people would just sit and hang out.  On benches, walls, the ground, wherever!  

Do owls still say hoot hoot in Spanish?

Tico Zozobra

We ended up going to the museum in downtown on a whim, and spent the better part of the afternoon wandering around the exhibits on the wonders of Costa Rica, from the new Costa Rican Felines exhibit (complete with interactive matching game that we dominated!)  to the ancient metal figurines, some of which reminded me of Zozobra from Fiestas in New Mexico.  See Picture.  I'm also happy to say that there were even a couple owls in these treasured ancient artifacts.  Oh those wonderful wise animals. There was even an installation of 100s of paper cranes at the museum (Probably my favorite part, but unfortunately the picture was not so successful with the no flash rule). 

 

Probably the most memorable thing we did downtown was going to the "Festival de la Luz" or the Festival of Lights.  The biggest part of the festival is the parade that goes all through downtown with huge lit up floats.  When we heard about the parade we were warned about the confetti people throw during the parade, "just don't walk around with your mouth open" we heard. We definitely underestimated the amount of confetti at this parade.  

First of all, vendors sell bags of confetti, which is basically tiny hole punches of mostly white paper, everywhere around downtown.  If you don't know what it is you may get the impression that cocaine is legal there and sold on the streets in mass quantities.  Clear plastic bags of all different sizes filled with white stuff were on every corner (although after about an hour the ground was so covered with confetti you could just reach down and scoop some up).  The other thing about it is people throw confetti everywhere.  Even in your face.  Right in your face as you walk by.  I think they also want to make sure the "gringos" get the full effect of the festival and confetti-ed us extra :)  
By the time we left downtown we were covered in confetti.  And luckily I wore my super confetti clinging sweater and got to take most of the tiny white dots home with me!  Lets just say our apartment was festive for the rest of our time in Costa Rica, all decorated with left over paper dots. 

Santa's Sleigh!

There's also some pretty awesome graffiti on the streets of San Jose, here's a couple of my favorites!

ps that cup is the "to go" cup the bar gave us when they closed at 2am, so we could take our vodka (bottle) and cranberry to go

 

And a couple more lovely randoms:
 

Wonderous Winter Cupcakes at Maximo, they were adorable!  Erin got the melty snowman :)

Needless to say, come our last week, we were sad to be heading home so quickly, 5 weeks in Costa Rica is definitely not enough!  So we decided to have one more adventure before we left and headed to the Caribbean coast on our last weekend to visit the Sloth Sanctuary!  

A Little Sloth Knowledge

We only had one day to spend on the trip, and wanted to be back for our TEFL graduation party that night, so we got up veerrryy early to catch our bus at 6 am, and made our way to Cauhita, CR. This place was awesome.  Before coming to Costa Rica one of the things I was most excited to see were the sloths.  I think they are so great with their laid back lifestyle and their ever smiling faces :D  And When I got the chance to see some sloths up close and personal, including BABY sloths, I was all over it!  So after our long bus ride we made our way to the sanctuary by way of a man and his taxi/van who tried very hard to convince us to ditch the sloths and go on his Oh so Amazing, Best Tour Ever, Three in One Tour complete with CHOCOLATE and Indigenous Traditions!!!  He tried hard.  He was very enthusiastic.  But alas, we stayed true to the sloths and kept on our way.  And I'm so glad we did!  These little creatures are some of the most adorable things I've ever seen!  Their faces just make me want to smile!  I'll just put some pictures here and you can see for yourself.  Just try to stop your heart from melting!

So Sweet

Cuddlers

Big Yawn!

This little guy was rescued after being electrocuted by a power pole and only has one arm, he sure is a trooper!

The babies!

This is Bindi, she will forever have my heart!

I just adore her!

Queen Buttercup! The first sloth at the Sanctuary :)

: )

After our sloth visiting we got to take a canoe ride through the jungle.  It was peaceful and serene, except for a slight scare when we floated under a tree limb with three bats just inches from our faces, but we ended up seeing a wild sloth along the river also!

Further down the river.....

Bats!  Note there was no zoom needed for this picture!

Another Sloth

View from the Canoe

           It was a lovely way to end our time there.

Afterword we ate at a yummy restaurant that had some of the best little tiny stubby fries I've ever eaten.  It also had a huge Bob Marley tapestry and an awesome mural painted on the wall that was like a map of the whole town.

When we finished lunch we realized we were really close to the beach so we walked down despite the drizzly weather.  It got significantly more drizzly as we neared the beach and when we got there there were some pretty massive waves!  So we didn't stay long but Erin was ecstatic to be able to see the beach and ocean one more time before we left Costa Rica.

This is the Caribbean side so we got to visit both sides of Costa Rica on our trip here!

After a very long bus ride home (apparently they take a different route on the way back and we came back into San Jose a completely different way than we left it, which actually worked out because we recognized our area and stopped the bus to get off just a few blocks from our house rather than having to take a taxi back from the bus station!) we finally made it to the party at Maximo just a tad bit late, got our certificates and danced the night away!  Our last day in CR we spent packing and just walking around our neighborhood.

that's our door up there behind that gate

and behind this gate!

Our lovey razor wired home :)

cupcake restaurant!  yummy paninis too

Erin loved these flowers that we passed on our walk to Maximo each day

Maximo!

The travel office at Maximo, minus Ricardo who was so wonderfully helpful!

The courtyard at Maximo

TEFL room :D

Our practical teaching room!  (Don't worry I dressed better to teach)

Welcome to room #8

The front desk

snack bar

we ran into Mario on our walk!

one of the yummy sodas nearby

Mundo!

Pizza hut's motorcycle deliveries

shoulda coulda woulda...

walking home

 Our last night in San Pedro we decided to FINALLY go to El Pomodoro, the Italian restaurant right across the street from Maximo.  We had heard it was very good and that downstairs in the basement there was an awesome Irish bar!

I really can't believe we held off until our last day but we heard it was a little pricey so we figured we'd save it for celebration!  When we got there we were sad to see that the bar below was closed :(  We were so sad as we had been looking forward to the Irish bar our entire time there and couldn't believe we'd missed it!  But decided to go to dinner anyway.  Which was very yummy!  I am delighted to say, however, that when we finished dinner and went outside the bar was open!  

I guess being a bar that it just wasn't open yet when we arrived at about 6pm :)  So down we went (down in the underground!  mega points if you can name THAT movie!).  And it was awesome.  A cozy little bar that was wonderfully decorated and fully stocked.  We enjoyed our time there!  Dad, you'll be proud to know that your daughters managed to find an Irish bar in Costa Rica and have a whiskey (or 2) in your honor!

It was a magnificent send off and a perfect end to our trip!

The next day we were so sad to be going home (although excited to see everyone and that it was almost Christmas) but we will never forget our Fantabulous time in Costa Rica!  Viva la Pura Vida! 

Adiós Costa Rica!