Blog 7: How I am feeling the second week 5/30/13

This blog is about how I have been feeling lately. The first half of this trip was extremely exciting and new. I loved Heredia, my tico family, CPI, my Spanish teacher, the elementary schools, and all the fun things we did during the week and on the weekends. This week my mood has kind of shifted gears when I got my new family, CPI, and new Spanish teacher. I am feeling frustrated because the CPI school here in Mt. Verde is not letting us get on the internet because there are so many people at the school trying to connect with the wi fi and my home stay also does not have wi fi. I know I came to Costa Rica to immerse myself in the culture and gain an experience of a lifetime, which does not mean I always needs internet, but I just am frustrated that I have to go searching for places with wi fi to talk to my family and to do my homework. I also am tired and getting worn down from all the things we have to do each day, especially from the four hours of Spanish we have during the week. By the time I am done with Spanish class I am just so drained and then I come back to my tico family’s house and try to communicate with them in Spanish, which is even more exhausting.

As a future teacher I have realized that my ELL students may not seem like they are working as hard or as much sometimes because they are just tired and have to work even harder than the other students. I realized that they will be constantly trying to talk in English and after awhile it is hard to do that because it is not as easy as talking in their native language. I know that my students will always want to do their best and always try hard, but some days it might be harder for them to reach their full potential, which means I need to work with them and be understanding. I feel like this is the most meaningful thing that I learned this trip. I learned that learning another language is very difficult because learning the language is one thing, but applying it is even harder. It takes lots of effort and is not as easy as speaking my native language, which is what I would like to do most of the time, but luckily I only have to do this for three weeks unlike my future students because they have to do it all the time.

Even though I have felt this way the last two days, I woke up this morning feeling back to my normal self and that makes me very happy. Today I was excited for the day and the rest of the trip. The thing I realized was that I will get internet sometimes and that will be good enough because I am here to experience all of Costa Rica and I only get this chance once so I can’t let it pass me by.