superbowl and classes

Superbowl Sunday:

A lot of the PCVs around Costa Rica got together this weekend to celebrate the super bowl. It was more like an excuse to get together, with the pretense of football. It was the first time that my training class had to meet a lot of the other PCVs from other training classes. It was good to meet them, it was inspiring to know that other people have been through what we are going through.
We started the day with a flag football tournament in the big city park in San Jose. It felt like being in college, again. Siting on a lawn and watching my friends play football. Even though I had two impressive seasons of IM flag football back at UNC, I sat this one out and caught up with my friends. The 2nd year of flag football, I was captain, mainly because no one else wanted to organize it. I think we lost every game, and scored 1...possibly 2...touchdowns all season. My inability to play also kept me on the side lines.
For the actual game, we rented out the vip section in hooters. Thats right. there is a hooters in San Jose. There is a vip section. And I went there, with about 50 other peace corps volunteers. It was my first time in a hooters, and hopefully my last. But it was one of the only venues in san jose that could fit all of us and had tvs with american channels. and, the wings aren´t that bad.

The First Day of Class:

Yesterday was the first day of class in Costa Rica. The first day of school, not many of the kids show up, or at least a little over half do show up. Some of the teachers don´t have their schedules, and it´s just a general mess. I was asking some of the kids if they were excited about going to school for the first day and quite a few of them said they weren´t going because nothing ever happens the first day. A lot weren´t going to go until day 3 or 4. The parents were totally on board with this, because, as they said, nothing happens the first day.

So, the first day of class, I went to one of my schools in the morning, but the English teacher wasn´t there. Each teacher gets ´named´each year to a school, and the morning English teacher hadn´t been named yet. ´She´ll be here tomorrow,´ they said. So I drank some coffee with the teachers, and went home and came back to teach with the afternoon teacher. Luckily, the afternoon teacher had been named, and class went as planned. But, since a lot of the kids were not there, we just reviewed some of last years material. Which was helpful for the kids who were there, at least.