Hello from San Jose!
Today was a very busy day. My roommates and I were up at 5 to get ready for the day. We had breakfast at 6 (rice and beans, plus a roll), and were out of the hotel by 6:30.
Our first stop was the Escuela de Sordos de Cartago, an all-deaf school near San Jose. There are twenty-one students, and while the majority of the teachers are hearing, they sign Lesco relatively well. After getting a small tour of the school and meeting the students, we were allowed to socialize with the students and try to communicate using Lesco. I had a hilarious interaction with two seven years old girls. They were telling me a story about one boy. Apparently, he was expelled from the school for kissing another student and continuously taking off his pants. (or that was the gist that I got from her rapid-fire Lesco)
The staff was very kind, and Ana, the cook, made us a second breakfast. It was an egg, rice and beans burrito, served with passionfruit juice. It was delicious!
On the bus ride to the second school, we saw some very beautiful graffiti. They looked legitimately like artwork, and I made sure to take several pictures.
The second school we went to was called Escuela Educacion Especial Fernado Centeno Guell. This is a school that has three sections - one for the deaf, one for the blind, and one for the disabled. However, there is currently a teacher's strike going on in Costa Rica and as a result only two teachers were in. They were kind enough to let us visit their classrooms and interact with their students. One of the classrooms was a mixture of fifth graders and one sixth grader. In Costa Rica, students have the option of ending their education after the sixth grade, but the sixth grader said that she wanted to go to high school. As a result, this fall she will be starting at one of the local high schools. She hopes for an interpreter, but with seventeen thousand deaf people and only ten interpreters nationwide (four of them in San Jose), there isn't much chance of that happening.
The second group was a small class of second grade boys. They were hilarious. They were at lunch and had so much energy. We have one student in our class who is tall and broad. One of the boys looked up at him and pointed out that he was fat, and then ran off. Soon after, they were comparing their bellies with our professor's.
Afer returning to the hotel, we enjoyed an extremely scrumptious lunch hosted by the hotel staff. We had juice from a cas fruit, which is in the Guava family. The fruit is typically very bitter, but when juiced and pureed, a lot of sugar is added which makes it delicious. My group had about four to six pitchers of the stuff, which impressed the hotel staff! They say that normally tourists don't want to even try the juice. We also had a salad, and then a rice, egg, chicken, and beans plate. For dessert we had chocolate mousse.
After lunch, we toured the Universidad de Costa Rica, the local university in San Jose. We met a man who is somehow involved with a Lesco certification program at the university. He talked about the certifications and such that a student would expect to get in the program. He staunchly believes that only the deaf should teach Lesco. After the talk, we got a tour from our guide, Rhyan. Rhyan will be with us the entire trip, and he is a local so it was fantastic getting a chance to hang out with him and learn more about San Jose. We were planning to stay on campus until 5, but got caught in an unexpected and heavy downpour, so we escaped to the hotel.
After a brief break, we had a delicious dinner! We had asparagus soup, bass, local vegetables and rice, and a delicious caramel ice cream sundae for dessert. After dinner, a group of us went to the hotel bar and had a few drinks before settling in for the night.
Good night, everyone!
Today was a very busy day. My roommates and I were up at 5 to get ready for the day. We had breakfast at 6 (rice and beans, plus a roll), and were out of the hotel by 6:30.
Our first stop was the Escuela de Sordos de Cartago, an all-deaf school near San Jose. There are twenty-one students, and while the majority of the teachers are hearing, they sign Lesco relatively well. After getting a small tour of the school and meeting the students, we were allowed to socialize with the students and try to communicate using Lesco. I had a hilarious interaction with two seven years old girls. They were telling me a story about one boy. Apparently, he was expelled from the school for kissing another student and continuously taking off his pants. (or that was the gist that I got from her rapid-fire Lesco)
The staff was very kind, and Ana, the cook, made us a second breakfast. It was an egg, rice and beans burrito, served with passionfruit juice. It was delicious!
On the bus ride to the second school, we saw some very beautiful graffiti. They looked legitimately like artwork, and I made sure to take several pictures.
The second school we went to was called Escuela Educacion Especial Fernado Centeno Guell. This is a school that has three sections - one for the deaf, one for the blind, and one for the disabled. However, there is currently a teacher's strike going on in Costa Rica and as a result only two teachers were in. They were kind enough to let us visit their classrooms and interact with their students. One of the classrooms was a mixture of fifth graders and one sixth grader. In Costa Rica, students have the option of ending their education after the sixth grade, but the sixth grader said that she wanted to go to high school. As a result, this fall she will be starting at one of the local high schools. She hopes for an interpreter, but with seventeen thousand deaf people and only ten interpreters nationwide (four of them in San Jose), there isn't much chance of that happening.
The second group was a small class of second grade boys. They were hilarious. They were at lunch and had so much energy. We have one student in our class who is tall and broad. One of the boys looked up at him and pointed out that he was fat, and then ran off. Soon after, they were comparing their bellies with our professor's.
Afer returning to the hotel, we enjoyed an extremely scrumptious lunch hosted by the hotel staff. We had juice from a cas fruit, which is in the Guava family. The fruit is typically very bitter, but when juiced and pureed, a lot of sugar is added which makes it delicious. My group had about four to six pitchers of the stuff, which impressed the hotel staff! They say that normally tourists don't want to even try the juice. We also had a salad, and then a rice, egg, chicken, and beans plate. For dessert we had chocolate mousse.
After lunch, we toured the Universidad de Costa Rica, the local university in San Jose. We met a man who is somehow involved with a Lesco certification program at the university. He talked about the certifications and such that a student would expect to get in the program. He staunchly believes that only the deaf should teach Lesco. After the talk, we got a tour from our guide, Rhyan. Rhyan will be with us the entire trip, and he is a local so it was fantastic getting a chance to hang out with him and learn more about San Jose. We were planning to stay on campus until 5, but got caught in an unexpected and heavy downpour, so we escaped to the hotel.
After a brief break, we had a delicious dinner! We had asparagus soup, bass, local vegetables and rice, and a delicious caramel ice cream sundae for dessert. After dinner, a group of us went to the hotel bar and had a few drinks before settling in for the night.
Good night, everyone!
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