Community Service Project

I am about to have my first class for the adults of the community as part of my community service project. Despite having almost four weeks of teaching under my belt and a lot of practice with teaching my host mom in Spanish, I’m still a little bit nervous. This will be my first time really getting to know some of the members of my community. I had so many plans to be as visible as possible before I arrived in Santa Marta, but once I actually got here I chickened out. I’m trying to make the most of my last three weeks, so I’m glad that I am now being forced to put myself out there. I’d hate to return to the States regretting hardly leaving my house for 10 weeks. 

Quince Días

Quince Días is a 15 day holiday in July beginning on July first and ending on the 15th. Since our summer marks their winter, Quince Días is their Christmas break. It is the WorldTeach policy that the first week of Quince Días is free for volunteers to travel about Costa Rica after a brief 2 days of Mid-Service (which includes more Charlas and lots of reflection on our time thus far). The second week is to be used (optionally) for implementation of a community service project, though the project can be started before or after that week.  In the past, these projects have ranged from such things as putting on plays in English, organizing soccer tournaments, teaching exercise classes, and teaching English classes to adults. I will be teaching adult English classes, but my project will not begin until next Tuesday because my director was convinced that no one would come during the vacation time.

But, now that my Quince Días are over, what do I have to say for myself?

Well, I spent the first week in Playa Guiones, a beautiful surfer town in Guanacaste. One of the other volunteers offered up a beach house owned by her uncle for others to stay in at a discounted price. Knowing I wanted to do nothing else but bum around at the beach the whole week (as opposed to bumming around in the mountains), I eagerly jumped on that idea. Through the various coming and going of all the other volunteers, there were probably about 17 of us in and out of the house all the time.

The house had every comfort that we loved and missed like air conditioning, an oven, hot water, a washer and dryer, a stove, large refrigerator (with a real freezer!), and soft pillows. It was nice to be able to cook what we wanted, sleep when we wanted, wake up when we wanted, and be independent in all the comforts that we were used to for a week.

 I think that Mid-Service (what we call the first week of Quince Días) comes at just the right time and also just the wrong time. It was just at the right time because it was nice to have a break from teaching and trying to be Costa Rican. But, I’ve been told that they* say that the first three weeks of language immersion are the hardest. My fear was that a week of constant English would ruin my Spanish improvement, but I actually found it to be quite the opposite. I think being removed from the stress of constant Spanish practice (I’d often wake up and find myself conjugating verbs in my head or practicing various parts of Spanish grammar) helped me to relax a little bit more and increase the ease of my Spanish speaking and understanding. I think the other problem was that spending a week the way I was used to really made me miss home. For the first time this week, I really began to feel homesickness and various frustrations over things I have been encountering here. It definitely made me see my entire experience thus far in a very different light and I definitely want to try to make more of the rest of the time I have left.

*If anyone would happen to know who “they” are, I would appreciate if someone could tell me. I’d like to see about the accuracy of those findings.

Still Learning

Last night I learned the names of all the fingers in Spanish because I am teaching my host mother and brother how to type. As I learn, I am also realizing how much Spanish I don’t know. I never think that I don’t know something until I’m speaking and have to pause and think, I have no idea how to say that. In this situation, I was trying to describe to my mom and little brother where to place their fingers when I realized that I didn’t know what they were called. They quickly filled me in, though:

Thumb: Pulgar

Index: Indice

Middle: Medio

Ring: Anolar

Pinky: Meñique

And then I taught them their names in English. I always try to make sure to trade them knowledge for knowledge.

Typing has been going splendidly. I will give them a line to type (usually nonsense since they only know one row of letters) and then have them type it while timing them using the timer on my ipod. I’ve been making it into a competition and trying to get them to do a certain number of characters in under a minute. The first time my host brother was able to do it he jumped up and ran around the house yelling, “¡Lo hice! ¡Lo hice!” which means, “I did it!!” which was very cute. Now it’s becoming a competition between the two of them to see who can do it faster.

Thus far, Grace (host mom) is winning.

La Lengua

Lengua means “tongue” in Spanish, and, just like in English, it is sometimes used as a synonym for the word “language.” I have found that the tongue definitely gets in the way when learning new languages. I have been teaching my host mom English in the afternoons (and my host brother has joined in, recently), and the biggest difficulty that we have is pronunciation. In my opinion, it is much easier to go from English to Spanish. In Spanish, any word that you encounter is pronounced exactly the way it is spelled (for the most part), while in English, a word could have any number of pronunciations. Especially if you are not a native English speaker the pronunciations could seem almost arbitrary (or even if you are a native).

All of the sounds made in the Spanish language are also made in English, which makes learning pronunciation pretty simple. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true.

Some English Sounds Not Found in Spanish

A as in ant or after

I as in fish or firm

Sh as in shore

Z as in zipper

V as in very

Aspirated H

Th as in the

Unrolled R (arriba vs far)

Words that end in (dental) consonants (D, T, etc.)

Consonant sounds that are not separated by vowels (as in children)

I think the most difficult think in the pronunciation are the last two. You can get away with pronouncing Sh as Ch or Z as S or V as F or B, but words ending in consonants are very difficult for people that I teach to say correctly, especially when in a combination where they are not separated by vowels. For example, they might pronounce the word “parents” as “pareh.” I think it is very difficult for them to close to the consonant and do so many different sounds at once.

Word endings are something I’ve been trying to work on with my host mom for quite some time. It’s also an experience for me as I’m learning so many new vocabulary words to try to describe the placement of the sound (no, it’s more in the back of your throat or your tongue goes between your front teeth and you blow, etc.). Additionally, I’m also getting a better handle on translation as I learn from my host mom the specific ways different words can be used. The entire family had an intense discussion about the difference between cuchillo (knife), puñal (knife), and cuchilla (knife), because to me the words were translated the same way. It’s very interesting to learn where they have synonyms where there are none in English.

Matemáticas

I now have an entire group of words related to mathematics stored in my Spanish arsenal. I was sitting outside on the porch playing a game on my iPod when my host mom poked her head out the door.

“Are you good with math?” She asked me. I thought back to this time last year when I was recovering from Prof Wang’s multivariate calculus class.

“Sí.”

We began with an exercise on identifying rational and irrational numbers. She has a math book that she is using to study for a test that she’s taking in October (it seems to be something similar to a GED test). It was very strange because I kept thinking, This really brings me back, but at the same time it was almost like learning it afresh as I read through the explanation in a language I almost understand. Once I had made sure that I remembered correctly, my next task was explaining it in language other than that used in the book. It was a little bit difficult because I had to go through all of the meanings of the different symbols (Ø empty set, and other things that Microsoft Word doesn’t have like, union, intersection, etc.) which I had never really taken the time to learn.

Once we climbed that hill, we moved on to equation comparison (<, >, =, etc.). I told my host mom about the mnemonic I used (and still use) to know which way to put the greater than and less than signs (the little one eats the big one, ie. 9<10). She seemed to enjoy that so  I also explained GEMA to her (Grouping symbols, exponents, etc.) which was more difficult because I didn’t know many of those words in Spanish and had to take a lot of time flipping back and forth through my dictionary and pointing at examples. I also taught her SOHCAHTOA (a way to remember sine, cosine, and tangent). I lucked out in this one because though all of the words are different in Spanish, they all start with the same letters (seno, coseno, tangente, opuesto, adyacente, hipotenusa), so the acronym held true.

While helping her made me very happy that I am done with math (maybe??), it was very useful to know all of those words in Spanish.

So, now I can explain to you how to show sets on a number line (and much more! ) using both Spanish and English!