August 4-August 10: Classes Everywhere from Hogwarts to Panama

This was another fun, interesting week at the centros educativos. At the colegio, as I’ve referenced before, students study a specific specialty ranging from accounting to tourism to telecommunications. However, the educational process in technical high schools kind of works like our college journey - the first few years are dedicated primarily to “gen ed” courses before students begin to specialize. In the case of my colegio, students spend grades 7-12 there and choose a specialty during the end of their 9th grade year. This week, students in 9th grade went to a fería to learn about all of the different specialties offered before they choose one. Each specialty subject had a different fun themed room as teachers attempted to convince students to select their speciality. For example, the English department turned a couple of rooms into Hogwarts. Since this was pretty different from anything I had during my high school experience, I really enjoyed hopping from room to room and hearing the pitches from different specialty sections. 

At the escuela, I had quite a bit of work, but also a lot of fun. I continued my life skills sessions on conflict resolution and my PE classes revolving around relay races. The conflict resolution workshops seem to be working pretty well; however, I could tell that my students didn’t really have the energy or the interest to spend an entire PE class running various relays. So, as often is the case in Peace Corps, I had to make an adjustment on the fly. I still wanted to drive home the idea of team work, which is why I’d decided on relays, so I ended up kind of improvising a version of zombie tag that forced students to work together. That ended up being way more popular amongst students than the relays I had planned, so it’s just a reminder in my service to be ready to go with the flow at all times. I also held another “Amigos sin Fronteras” club meeting with the librarian. This week, students “traveled” to Panama, where they explored the Panama Canal on Google Earth and played an online quiz deciding whether a certain characteristic belonged to Costa Rica, Panama, or to both countries. I’m hoping to travel to Panama in a few months, so it was particularly fun to plan this session in preparation. 

Over the weekend, I went into San Jose on a couple of occasions. On Saturday, I met up with a fellow volunteer in my cohort who was in town. By happenstance, several other volunteers from a cohort a year before us were staying at the same hostel as him as they prepare to close their service. We all grabbed dinner at a nearby food hall. It was great to catch up with some friends and meet a couple other volunteers for the first time. On Sunday morning, I ventured back into Chepe to join my running club for a jog in Parque La Sabana. This was definitely a busy and chaotic week, but a productive and fulfilling one too.