Sierra Mountain Times

 An Inside Look at the Costa Rican Culture

There comes a time in a person’s life when they decide that they need a change of scenery. For some, this means a trip to the hills or to the city for the weekend, while for others it means moving to another town or another state. For Tuolumne native Janelle Williams it meant moving out of the country. Last year, after signing up for WorldTeach, a non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides opportunities for individuals to contribute to international education by living and working as a volunteer teacher in developing countries, the 2000 Summerville High graduate was eager to experience a new scenery, a new culture, and a new language. 

Since its inception in 1986, WorldTeach has placed thousands of volunteer educators in communities throughout Asia, Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Pacific. On January 7th, 2009 Janelle found herself bound for Costa Rica to witness firsthand the challenges and rewards of education in a developing country. Janelle, 27, who received her degree in Human Development and Education from Davis in 2004 and her my multiple subject teaching credential from Sacramento State in 2006, would be immersed in this exotic foreign land – a land rich with history and natural beauty. While its distinctive microclimates feature beautiful beaches, active volcanoes, and rainforests filled with colorful wildlife, it’s most impressionable quality is the people themselves. With a population of four million squeezed into an area the size of West Virginia, Costa Ricans have found a way to get along. Known for their hospitality, the Costa Rican philosophy can be summed up in their popular catch phrase “pura vida,” (“pure life”). For nearly a year Janelle was a part of this ‘pure life’ culture and has recently returned to the states to tell us of her adventures while living and teaching overseas.

 

Sierra Mountain Times (SMT): “How did you get involved with WorldTeach?”

Janelle Williams (JW): “After graduating from Sacramento State I worked as the parent and child development director at Tubman House, which is a non profit organization for previously homeless pregnant or parenting youth. Then I started working part time at a school as a teacher tutor for the reading specialist. After doing that for awhile I decided I needed a change of scenery and decided to leave the country. Ideally I would’ve liked to have taught and gotten paid for it, but there were no jobs in the Spanish speaking countries, so I looked into volunteering. I found a program called WorldTeach through the International Development Department at Harvard, and I applied…and got in!”

SMT: “How much did the WorldTeach program cost?”

JW: “To go for a year, a volunteer must raise $5,000. But in exchange you get food for a year, housing for a year and you get the language and the cultural experience. It’s a great deal.”

SMT: “Why did you choose Costa Rica?”

JW: “I have always wanted to speak Spanish and I knew the best way to learn was to live in a Spanish speaking country. WorldTeach offered two Spanish speaking countries: Chile and Costa Rica, and I chose Costa Rica because it was closer to home and I have had family visit there and they had really good experiences.”

SMT: “How many volunteers from WorldTeach went with you to Costa Rica?”

JW: “We started out with 21 volunteers and three went home throughout the year. First the volunteers flew to Miami for a group meeting and then the team flew to San Jose, Costa Rica.”

SMT: “What were your initial thoughts after getting off the plane in Costa Rica?”

JW: “It was pure excitement! I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what was going on…but I loved every minute of it. I was just constantly stimulated. That first month we were constantly being fed information and were trying to speak and understand the language. It was exhausting, but super fun.” 

SMT: “What did you do during the first month?”

JW: “After taking care of fingerprinting and our visas in San Jose the team went to the town of Orosi where we spent a month doing orientation. Orosi is a small city located in the Valley of Cartago and is considered a middle class town. We took Spanish classes and TEFL training (Teach English as a Foreign Language) and we practiced teaching at the public school. Basically it was a crash course on Costa Rican culture and what to say and what not to say.”

SMT: “What else did you do while in Orosi?”

JW: “Every year each WT volunteer group does something different, and my group ended up volunteering for an organization called Un Techo Para mi Pais that was kind of like the Habitat for Humanity of Costa Rica. Normally those that volunteer with Un Techo Para mi Pais are Costa Rican, or “Tico”, university students, but our WT group added 18 “gringos” to the mix. For five days we worked on building houses for 26 homeless families in Bataan, Limon. I had the time of my life, but not everyone could bear the conditions. By the fifth day only three WT volunteers were left! One of the problems was because it was at the very beginning of our year when our Spanish skills weren’t developed and we weren’t very prepared. We had to take orders and understand these building terms that we weren’t learning in our classes. This was a whole different vocabulary set. Plus it rained for five days straight and because we were working in a poor area where the bathrooms were just holes in the ground, we could never be sure if what we were mucking around in was just mud. The 80 volunteers working on the build stayed at an elementary school that we would return to each day soaking wet and would have to hose the mud off each other and bathe ourselves the best we could using sinks and soap. We were wet most of the time and cold all of the time and some people got pneumonia. But I powered through, and I am glad I did because the three of us “gringos” that remained became really close with the tico volunteers and we still keep in touch.”

SMT: “After your training, where did you go?”

JW: “My site was in the town of Guarial. It’s not on the map. Most of our sites aren’t on the map because the point of the program is to work in rural areas where they don’t already have teachers. It took about five hours to get from San Jose to my site – three hours on a bus, an hour and a half on a ferry and a half hour by car.”

SMT: “What was the town of Guarial like?”

JW: “When you say town, here we think of Tuolumne as a small town, but compared to Guarial, it would be a big city. All it had was a convenient store, the school with a soccer field and a church. The town is near the beach and would be considered a low income area. But it’s interesting because you would have shacks with dirt floors and then three houses down would be a big mansion because one person happens to own the supermarket or something.”

SMT: “When did you start your teaching program?”

JW: “We were sent to our sites in the middle of February. We had a week to prepare and get our classroom ready before school started…and then chaos! I had done some substitute teaching while finishing my credential and was familiar with the school setting, but I had never had my own class.”

SMT: “How big was the school?”

JW: “There were 120 students, preschool through 6th grade, and seven teachers and a cook. The school in Guarial was established six years ago, but is still waiting on the Ministry of Public Education to build them an actual school facility. Right now the school meets in an old saloon. In fact the bar is still in there and the kids play bartender with the empty bottles at recess. It’s a big open area with four classrooms along one of the walls. I didn’t have my own classroom so I would have to go from one room to the other and bring all my supplies with me.”

SMT: “What did you teach?”

JW: “I was teaching all English. The reason the schools like having native-English speakers teaching is because the tico teachers struggle with the English accent. They teach students English, but with a Costa Rican accent. It was optional to teach preschool and kindergarten, but I felt so overwhelmed with the other 100 kids that I just focused on them.” 

SMT: “What was a typical teaching day like?”

JW: “It was interesting how the school worked because half of the kids would come in the morning from 7 to 11:30 a.m. and the other half would come from 12:10 to 5 p.m. So first, third and fifth grade would come at one time and second, fourth and sixth grad would come during the other shift. So each teacher at school had two grades they were responsible for teaching. I taught 40 minutes to each group. Usually I would go in by 9 a.m. and be done by 2 p.m. or so. I would teach four hours each day, but most of the time I would stick around and help out with activities. There were no windows in the building and it was extremely hot! Fans were blowing all the time and if the electricity would go out sometimes we would cancel school or move the chairs outside. Kids would be sitting there with sweat dripping off them…not a good environment for learning.”

SMT: “How did you get along with the students?”

JW: “It’s like any other school. You have the ones that love you and the ones who hate you, because it’s hard for some of them to learn English. And a lot of them see English as playtime because of the techniques we use to teach it. There are a lot of games and things to try to memorize it and they don’t take it that seriously. I think dealing with the parents was the hardest part for me because they would wait until the very end. I would send notes home all quarter asking for their support and only when it came to the final grade would want to talk to me. After teaching in the states and then going over there, the level of discipline was hard to adjust to because they are so much more free form in Costa Rica. I had to be creative in my discipline so they didn’t feel like they were at an army camp or something.” 

SMT: “Was it easy to communicate with the students?”

JW: “Ideally we weren’t supposed to speak Spanish at all in our classrooms, but I did a lot. Mine was one of the three biggest schools out of the entire program and I was placed there because I had teaching experience. My biggest class was 20 students and my smallest was seven. Other volunteers had schools with a total of 20 students for the whole school, so I was presented with a little different challenge then most of the others. I probably spoke more Spanish than I should’ve, but they learned.”

SMT: “Were you able to learn the language?”

JW: “I think I learned more from them than I taught them. I can speak the language pretty fluently now. In fact, I still dream in Spanish.”

SMT: “Where would you go during your free time?”

JW: “I don’t think I spent more than one weekend at my site a month. I was gone a lot. If I wanted to take a weekend trip that was longer than a four hour bus ride then I would stack up my Monday and teach 80 minutes to each class so I could have Friday off. On those days I would work straight through from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. As a volunteer we would get a $100 stipend a month, which goes a long way in Costa Rica. When I traveled it kind of depended on what was going on. The best trips were visiting other volunteers because you would always have food and a free place to stay. I visited most of the other volunteers near me, but the closest one to me was a five hour trip! I would also visit my director who lived in San Jose. She was my age and grew up in California so we had a lot in common. She’s lived in Costa Rica for three years now and I hung out with her a lot. I also spent a lot of time in the city of Puntarenas because the music teacher at my school, who was also my age, grew up there and her parents still lived there. Puntarenas is one of the bigger beach cities in Costa Rica and has a lot of places to shop and go dancing.” 

SMT: “Did you meet other people from California?”

JW: “Actually, I had a student in my fourth grade class whose mom was from Angels Camp! Yeah, she actually grew up in Columbia and then moved to Angels Camp and now lives in Costa Rica! It was crazy! She is in her mid 30s and has three kids and has a massage business. It was funny because her son was in my English class and was probably bored out of his mind, but I got to use him a lot for demonstrations.” 

SMT: “What would you like to do during your time off?” 

JW: “I loved to go dancing. When I did my credential program, I also got my supplementary authorization in PE, which required a dance class, so I had danced some Salsa before…but it’s not the same as dancing there. The dance clubs and bars stay open until 3 to 4 a.m., and some never really close. I learned a lot of different dances, mostly Salso, Cumbia, Bachata, Merengue, and Bolero. Every now and then our towns would have a big dance with a DJ and everything. I would try and visit other volunteers on the weekends that their town was having a dance.” 

SMT: “How did you travel about the country?” 

JW: “The bus system was the easiest mode of transportation for traveling, but around town I would ride a bike. I also got my license, but it was more for a souvenir – not that many people have cars over there.” 

SMT: “How was living with your host family?” 

JW: “It was interesting. I was the fourth volunteer they had stay with them. I sensed that they sort of used their hosting a volunteer as a way to make them better than the other people in the community – to make them feel special. They took great care of me, but I didn’t feel too welcome. I eventually moved host families. One of my coworker’s neighbors had an extra room… which was like a 20 minute bike ride from school, but it was worth it. I think I had the best connection with my first host family in Orosi. I still keep in touch with them. If I go back I will visit them more likely than my other host family in Guadial.” 

SMT: “What was the living situation like?” 

JW: “The requirement for a host family is that the volunteer has their own room with a locking door…and they can’t have a dirt floor. That’s the only requirement. I had that at both families. They had the basics. We didn’t have hot water, but we had running water. The host family would receive money for us staying with them, so they would also provide the food.” 

SMT: “What type of food did you usually eat?” 

JW: “Rice and beans accompanies every meal and for lower income families, sometimes that is all they eat. I really got into seafood while I was there. I didn’t like it much before, but so many people fished and fresh seafood was really good.” 

SMT: “Overall, how would you describe Costa Rica?” 

JW: “I don’t think there is an overall. It’s so diverse! At the beaches it’s hot and humid like the South…and in the mountains it’s colder and rains. It only has two seasons – a wet season and a dry season. Supposedly it rains six months out of the year and is dry the rest. Plus it depends on where you are. You can get across the country in one day and go through three or four different climates. But it was very green with bright flowers.” 

SMT: “What kind of wildlife would you see?” 

JW: “Butterflies, iguanas, geckos and monkeys. Around the beaches and in the hotter climates, you would see monkeys like you would see squirrels over here. They were everywhere. During our third week in Costa Rica my friend and I had our first encounter with monkeys that I will never forget. We were walking through a national park that had white sand and black sand beaches when we saw a monkey. We started taking pictures and then it went for our bag we had left on the ground. When we tried to get the bag it showed its teeth, so we let it take everything out and go through everything. Then he left. But soon we were being followed by a several others. It was kind of scary and we got out of there. Mosquitoes were also common all year. The first two months I got bit a lot, but then they didn’t bother me at all. I would get a random bite here and there, but other volunteers would be covered with bites. They seemed to affect people differently. I tried sleeping with the mosquito net but it was hot and annoying and wasn’t worth it.” 

SMT: “Any highlights?” 

JW: “I don’t think I could pick one. Every experience you walk away with something different. But I saw and did a lot. One of the cooler things was seeing an active volcano glowing at night from La Fortuna. The first time I went there from my site it took me ten hours because I had to coordinate bus schedules. I also went on a river rafting trip during the summer, which was a lot of fun. I have kind of done that here, but I guess because I was on a river in Costa Rica it made it that much better. It was a two day trip on a class lll and lV river. The best part was when a huge storm came in with thunder and lightning and as soon as we dropped into this massive rapid there was a huge clap of thunder with lightning. It was nature’s fury all at once! It was beautiful. However, that trip was the start of a mono epidemic. It was the first time our group came together since orientation…and somebody had mono. Because we all camped together and shared dishes together, we all got it. But it was nothing compared to what I got later.”

SMT: “What did you get later?” 

JW: “Sometime in late October I started feeling sick. At first I thought it was just my body reacting differently to the Costa Rican food, but it kept going for like three week’s and then started affecting my ability to be awake and energetic. So I went to the hospital and they couldn’t figure it out. They finally hospitalized me for eight days and did every test they could. They discovered I had a Tropical Sprue in my intestines. It doesn’t sound that bad, but it doesn’t feel good. Tropical Sprue is a malabsorbtion disease and doctors don’t really know what causes it, but they think it is from a bacterial, viral, amoebal, or parasitic infection. So they advised me not to eat dairy or wheat for at least a year!” 

SMT: “Were you able to come home at all?” 

JW: “We had a one week break in April and a three week break in July and various three to four day weekends. We could’ve come home as often as we wanted as long as we weren’t missing school, but I didn’t have the money. So I stayed in Costa Rica until the summer break. That was interesting because after being home that long I got used to it. I was halfway through the year and this time around I knew what to expect and I didn’t really want to go back. I was used to the comforts of home and knew what I had to go back to. When I got back to Costa Rica it took me about two weeks to get back into the swing of things and be happy and content again.” 

SMT: “Did you get any visits from your family?” 

JW: “Yes, my parents came out the week after Thanksgiving. It was fun. I was their tour guide and would translate for them. I wish I could have enjoyed it more, but I was still pretty sick.” 

SMT: “Were you able to finish teaching?” 

JW: “When my parents left I had two more weeks of teaching to do before the end of the school year. But I couldn’t make it back for that…which broke my heart. My director called and said, ‘there is nothing you can do because you are sick, but can I have your permission to change everybody’s grade to passing.’ I was like, ‘What?’ I spent the whole year working and you’re just going to pass them all? I figured that most of the trouble kids who would sit in the class and do nothing would get theirs in the end. But they never did. That’s just the way life is there. I found out that it is very common. I talked to other volunteers and their directors pulled the same stuff. They just want to pass them and move them on and move them out. It’s a little discouraging. I wish I could’ve ended the experience on a positive note like I started. But I was sick and broken down from the experience, and I was ready to leave. I returned home on December 21st.” 

SMT: “How does it feel to be back?” 

JW: “During our end of service meeting, we had this huge lecture on reverse culture shock and how to readjust to your community. I knew in my head what to expect, but living it is very different. The hardest part is that I don’t know anyone who can identify with the readjustment phase…and the language part. Even though I was there for a year and I got to the point where I was thinking in Spanish, it was still challenging to speak in Spanish everyday and have my mind stimulated in that way. Then you get here and I don’t have to think about speaking in English…it just comes out. So I am definitely missing the language and my family and friends there, but the routine is what is getting me the most. I just feel like I am floating. I don’t really belong anywhere yet because I don’t have a job or a routine or a network…but I am working on it.” 

SMT: “What are your plans next? Do you still want to teach?”

JW: “Well the way jobs are right now, I think I will just go for what I can get, but I would definitely like to incorporate Spanish into whatever career I end up with. If I stay in teaching I would want it to be bilingual and working with ESL kids. International Education has definitely got me interested, especially after seeing how the Costa Rican public school system works and how it doesn’t.” 

SMT: “What did you take away from your experience?” 

JW: “I think overall something I will not forget about the Costa Rican culture is how warm and hospitable they are. It’s very different than here where you never show up at someone’s house unannounced, and if you do they are a little perturbed and don’t want to stop doing what they are doing to talk to you. But in Costa Rica that’s just they way it is. You are expected to show up at someone’s house and they stop everything and look at you in the eye during a conversation and are interested in what you have to say. It’s different. And because of that everything is at a slower pace there as well. You have plans, but plans always change because somebody is in town or somebody’s visiting…it’s just accepted.” 

SMT: “Did your experience change you?” 

JW: “I don’t think anybody could go through something like that and not change. I definitely put my life in perspective with the things that we have and what we appreciate. There are people in Costa Rica who don’t have anything, but are still willing to give. I saw it the most where we were building the houses for families. They didn’t have a home, but they would bring out their last piece of bread with butter on it to give you, or make you a cup of coffee. Even the kids would give. One family had three little boys and on the last day of building their house they came out with plastic toys, a marble and a string and gave everyone a gift. They have nothing to begin with and I remember them so happy and loving. The people in our society are so consumerist and need more stuff to be happy. But over there they are so happy and they have nothing. It was a very different experience. And of course there are pieces of it that you don’t want to take home, but there are pieces you definitely do. In fact, this little string on my wrist is from that week to remind me of sleeping on a cement floor in the rain so I won’t forget that some people have to live that way for life…not just for five days.” 

Fo rmoreinformationabout WorldTeach visitw www.worldteach.org .