March 31-April 6: Squid Game PE & Japanese Fest

This definitely felt like a breakthrough week at both of my schools, or centros educativos. At the escuela, physical education classes officially started this week. This is a project that I’m particularly excited about. The elementary school didn’t have any formal PE classes prior and lacks recreational opportunities for students. Throughout my diagnostic process, students and teachers alike mentioned how much they wanted PE at the school. I feel like creating recreational opportunities for students is a big reason why my community requested a Peace Corps volunteer in the first place. The Netflix show “Squid Game” is incredibly popular amongst Costa Rican students, so my initial classes this week for fourth graders were themed around the show. We played red light, green light alongside a memory game called “glass bridge” or “rainbow bridge”. As simple as that may sound, they were so excited to run around and compete that things were a bit chaotic. Overall, the classes were definitely a success and were a good learning experience for me as a teacher.


At the colegio, I operated in much more of a tutor role than a teacher. I met with each one of my groups for the Servicio Comunal Estudiantil program, which I wrote about in the latest sidebar blog. This has been an interesting experience thus far, because I want to guide and support these students in their projects, but I also want them to use their own agency and leadership in completing them. Thus, so far, I have recommended some steps they take to get their projects off the ground and have given them short “homework” assignments like research, so that they don’t fall too far behind on their hours.



Outside of school, I spent the vast majority of my time in my community but ventured into the city on a couple of occasions. On Saturday, I joined a few other Peace Corps volunteers in downtown San Jose and attended a Japanese Festival hosted by the Embassy of Japan in Costa Rica. I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon, but later tonight, I’ll make the trip to Alajuela via San Jose to cheer on my favorite Costa Rican soccer team, Alajuelense, or Liga, at their home stadium. I’ve seen Liga play at other stadiums in San Jose before, but this will be my first time at Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto. It’s a bit of a haul to Alajuela from my site, so this is something that’s lingered on my bucket list for awhile and I’m really looking forward to finally going. 

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