February

Okay, so I haven’t been so good about keeping this up to date, but not much has really been going on. I am putting up some good pictures, though, and I hope you all enjoy them :-)

February has been lots of fun…the girls are back in school now (last week was the first week of classes), so I’m at the daycare less. I find myself missing the kids a lot more than I expected!! They are just so sweet and cute. Every time I walk in to the daycare, Moises shouts, “Keyyiiiiiiii!” and runs and gives me a huge hug, which just always makes my day a little. A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting down playing with some of the kids, and…well, if I’m not careful, I turn into a jungle gym when I sit down at the daycare. So anyway, I have about 4 kids trying to sit on my lap and then one kid climbing on my back choking me a little, and then I finally got him to stop that. Buuuut, then he decided to grab onto my hair and jump and use all of his weight to try to pull me down. Needless to say, it was unpleasant. My eyes started watering since he was yanking on my hair, and I told him, “Davis, eso no me gusta!!!” (Davis, I don’t like that!). So I am sitting there holding my head in pain, and for some reason most of the kids that were on my lap went away after that (I think I must have scared them a little when I screamed in pain, haha), but Dorian was still there just looking at me with these big worried eyes…and then he just leaned over and gave me a little kiss on the cheek. It was SO SWEET. I love the little moments like that that make working at the daycare worth it :-)

Another daycare story: The other day Moises was asking me for a toy, and I always make it a point to say, “Como se dice?” (What do you say?), so that the kids learn to say please and thank you. So I said that, and Moises said, “Por favor!” (please!), and I said, “y?” (and?), and he gave me this adorable look like he knew there was something he should know how to say but he couldn’t think of it...hahaha it was sooo cute.

Anyway, school started up finally, and I’m starting to make friends again with the teachers there, so I’m pretty excited about that. I don’t feel quite so losery now, which I appreciate, haha. I am already starting to do more with the girls in the afternoons, and I have a lot of ideas for the next few months. We have already started with a pen pal activity that we are doing with my old classes that I student taught at Stivers. I had the girl write rough drafts of their letters on Wednesday, and I went over them to check for major grammatical errors. On Monday, we are going to make the final copies, and I’m bringing some fun paper and markers for the girls to use to make them pretty. They are really excited about this, although many of them thought that it was going to be some sort of dating service based on their rough drafts, haha. A few of them sound like they are trying to pick up their pen pal a little bit.

We are also going to do a Living Stations of the Cross…which I’m attempting to direct…by myself. So that will be interesting. I’m excited about it, but also very, very nervous. We are going to have the “performance” be the Friday before Holy Week, and they will perform it for all the nuns, teachers, and the rest of the school. Eeek, it’s kind of a big deal, and I hope I don’t screw it up. If anyone has any advice/ideas for me to help with that, that would be AWESOME.
I’m also giving extra optional English classes in the afternoons (I already give a mandatory one in the mornings), and I’m kind of nervous about that, because I don’t know how I’m going to make it different than the classes in the morning. We’ll see how it goes, hopefully the girls will be okay with it being more like games.

Then, my last idea is to start a youth groupish thing with the girls who want to in the afternoons. I’m going to try to make it like Teen Talk that we had in high school….it was so much fun for me, and I think the girls will really like it. At least I hope so.

So that’s work. It’s going well…just got done making a power point for English class tomorrow :-)
Kinzie and I have decided that we want to travel more, so we have gone to the bird zoo in Alajuela which is about two hours away, and then to Playas del Coco in Guanacaste, which is about 5 hours away. They were both sooo much fun. I hate birds, so I was wayyy out of my comfort zone there, but there were also other animals there, and I really enjoyed myself. Then the beach in Guanacaste was beautiful and lots of fun, and Kinzie and I bonded quite a bit :-)

For Lent, our house decided to do something all together, in addition to what we are doing individually…so we decided to have a weekly date with someone else in the house so that we can get to know each other even better individually. I’m excited about that, and Kinzie and I went Roller Skating on Thursday…soooo fun. It was really a blast…and I kind of didn’t remember how to do it at first, but then it came right back to me. I didn’t even fall down!! So proud.

Anyway, for any TEC people who may be reading, I hope that TEC 108 was awesome, and I wish I could have been there for the Hoot this weekend! I was praying for you guys!! :-)

Hooray! Pictures!

OH! So on Friday, I got 2 packages…one from my college roommate, Allison and one from another college roommate, Erin (PS, it’s really weird that I have to say “college” roommate now). Allison sent me a nice card and a book called, “The History of Farting.” Hahahhahahaha. I love farts. Erin sent me Dove milk chocolates (MY FAVORITE!!), and a card that made a fart joke. Hahahhahahah, they know me so well!!

Ah, to go back to the days at the Skate N Place....sadly, there was no limbo or Backstreet Boys played.

Beautiful Playas del Coco.

Haha a shady place to meet sunny people...I liked that.


Kinzie and I on the bus....this picture sooooo very perfectly captures how we felt on the way back from Playas del Coco. It was SO HOT, and we were so sweaty. And the woman in front of me shut her window because it was too windy. I almost punched her. Hahahhaa, but what a good picture.

This is the view at one of our rest stops. Really? So beautiful.

Kinzie and me all kinds of burnt in Playas del Coco.

Kinzie and Melvin, our friend that we made in Playas del Coco. He showed us a beach that basically no tourists know about, so it was much less crowded and much prettier than the main beach.

Another view at a different rest stop.

Diego, me, Eric. So cute.

DORIANNNNN. So sweet.

Look at how beautiful that smile is.

This swan tried to attack me at the bird zoo!

Peacock! So cool. It vibrated too.

I thought this was really cool. "Your construction is our destruction."

Kinzie walking down a cool path at the bird zoo.

Ostrich!

Monkeys. That's a cute baby one!

Moises. So sweet.

Yorleny. What a sweetheart.

Eric!!! He's my favorite new kid.

Eric again....he's just so cute.

Oops.

Yeah…it’s been a while since I’ve updated this…for those of you who actually read it, I’m sorry! I haven’t even had much going on…I guess that was the problem. I didn’t have much to talk about! I’ve just been working at the daycare full time which is exhausting but very rewarding, and I’ve been sick for about a week now…I finally went to the doctor on Thursday and it turns out I have a sinus infection, and maybe had pink eye? I don’t know, the visit was in Spanish, so I understood moooost of it….that’s good, right? Anyway, I’ve got some eye drops that I have to use for a few more days and some different pills that I also have to take for a few more days. I feel much better already :-)

Since I’ve been sick and unable to work for a lot of this week, I decided to spend a lot of the time when I wasn’t sleeping applying for jobs. I’m applying everywhere, and so far just teaching jobs. We’ll see where I end up next year! Very overwhelming to think about….I think I’ll just enjoy my time in Costa Rica instead.

So, another reason why I haven’t had much to write about is because my only Costa Rican friend left me to go to school in Boston (booooo Charlie, come back!), so now I have no friends besides my housemates. :-( Haha, pretty sad, but true. Don’t get me wrong, I love my housemates, but we do spend all our time together and some of them have other friends so they aren’t always here to hang out with. As it turns out, I don’t know how to make friends outside of a school setting. Right before Christmas, I think I was making friends with some co-workers, but they are at the school, which hasn’t been in session. So I’m hopeful that after school starts I’ll be able to make friends a little easier! We’ll see, though. One good thing about this whole no friends thing is that I have had a lot of time to myself, and at first, I went a little crazy and was super bored, but then I started being productive and using the time to reflect on my time here, what else I want to get out of it, etc. It’s actually been very refreshing, and I’m getting to know myself a lot better. That sounds weird and nerdy, but it’s true, haha. I really want to start keeping in touch better with people, and I’ve failed pretty miserably at that so far, so if you guys want to help me out and shoot me an email (kelli.finch@gmail.com), I would LOVE it. :-)

So here are some pictures of what I’ve been up to in the last few weeks! Enjoy :-)

My favorite co-worker, Gloria with Moises. She is the cook...sweetest woman EVER!

Moises (porque si!)

Amanda had a birthday party and a clown. Most of the children were terrified of the clown at first, which was kind of funny. Look how excited they are!

Eric! My favorite new kid. He's super sweet and always walks up to me puckering his lips (his way of asking for a kiss...so cute!). Haha.

Milagro. She's new, and she is very cute, but she is causing proooooblems! She likes to steal toys and then show no emotion when the other kid cries about it. Her expression is almost always exactly the same, and I saw her smile for the first time the other day when I was dancing with her and twirling her around. She has a beautiful smile...just have to figure out how to get her to show it more.

Noemi. She also likes to steal toys and then pretend that she had them first. But she is suuuuper cute and sweet the rest of the time.

Carlitos! He loves to shout "VEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VEA VEA VEA VEA VEA MUCHACHA VEAAAAAAAA!" (looooook!!!) at me at the most inopportune times. Haha, but he is very cute.

My walk to the bus stop in the morning.

Pretty sky!

Pretty sunset :-)

I know I put pictures of Dorian up a lot, but he is just so cute. I tried to get a picture of him smiling, but my camera did not want to do it well.

I went to a mass last Saturday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Casa Maria (where I work) at the Cathedral of San Jose...I couldn't get very good pictures because I couldn't use the flash, but it's very pretty.

More of the cathedral.

I guess it's really common here to do a "Rezo del nino" (prayer for Baby Jesus? more or less) when you take down your nativity scenes after Christmas. It's generally a gathering of family and close friends and you pray a rosary for Baby Jesus and have some food and whatnot afterward. Um, at least I think that's the point of it.... Anyway, we went to Yami's house (Liz's boss) to celebrate, and she had about 80 people over!! It was crazy, and very cool. We sang Silent Night in Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian, and English. It was a rather extravagant affair :-)

Fancy catered lunch at Yami's after the rosary.

Pretty sunset.