Yesterday and Friday I fortunately had more luck and was actually able to hold classes with the police officers. I’m finding the classes to be both thoroughly enjoyable and challenging. My police “students” are great in that they really want to learn, which makes my job much easier. They are good at asking questions, and I’m glad that most of the time I can answer them without any trouble. Its pretty fun some of the stuff that comes up in class. For example, the difference between the words “kiss” and “keys” as they have similar pronunciation brought some laughs. During the same class when talking about possession, the class’s favorite example was “Kisa’s kisses” (which I have to admit is some pretty fun alliteration). Sometimes I feel that I am confusing the class more than I am helping them, especially the last class when trying to explain the difference between pronouns, direct object pronouns, and indirect pronouns. I was confusing myself at times, so who knows what they were thinking. Nonetheless, they are listening and practicing English which can’t hurt. I’m also learning so much during the classes. For example, there is a suspicion/ fable here that when a woman drops something, it is because her boyfriend/loved one is thinking of another woman. Thus, every time I drop my marker or eraser (which does happen often) they all tease me, as they know about my boyfriend Austin back home. They also tell me that even though I have a boyfriend back home, I can have a “tico” boyfriend here while I’m in Costa Rica. I’m glad that we can joke and have some fun during class, and my Spanish is strong enough to be able to communicate with them efficiently during the class.
Yesterday I spent the morning eating a wonderful papaya and having some toast and coffee with my Evi. I then helped her do some Saturday cleaning and laundry (which I certainly owed her after doing my laundry a couple times already). In the afternoon, she and I went for a little run at the track and I taught her some abdominal exercises and stretches. Later in the day we had to make a run to a nearby small store for some raid candles because the mosquitoes in our house were bothering us so much. Alone I think I killed 6 in one hour. Ugh. I’m also now using the internet at the police station office which being only 2 minutes from my class compared to the 25 minutes from the internet in town is very convenient and means I can talk to some folks back home more often.
Today I went on a pretty long morning run. During my run I encountered another runner who decided to join me for a while. We were running up the main road up toward the volcano which is a pretty busy road, but a little less crowded on Sundays. Although at first I didn’t know what to think about this guy, I soon learned that he is just another crazy long distance runner. He has been running since 1985 and has done 10 marathons, 21 half marathons, and lots of 10K’s. He also told me about an upcoming trip of his to Kentucky to go to a bluegrass festival. It was nice to have a running partner; however, running up a large hill near a volcano and chatting is very difficult to do when speaking English, and as I found, even more difficult when having to think yet more to translate things in Spanish! Also had my faithful rice and beans lunch with my officers today, and later today might be meeting up with some Americans at one of the local hostels that is owned by an American to watch the Super bowl.
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