Coronado de Osa

HEY everyone!! I'm standing on a street in San Isidro waiting for my host sister to finish up at the bank right now, so I'll try to type fast enough to fit in everything I have to say...

Wow! After my last post, my host sister, her two year old son, and my host mom all came to pick me up. It was raining pretty hard, though, so we stayed at one of their relative's houses in Alajuela, not too far from San Jose. In the morning we stopped by a market to get fresh fruits and vegetables and then made the long drive out to Coronado de Osa.

Coronado de Osa isn't really a town. It isn't big enough. I'm not the only one who thinks this - even the national government hasn't created a post office there yet, and my host family once laughed and corrected me: it is a village. It consists of a pulpería, a bar, two restaurants, a clothes store, which my host mom owns, and a school, where I work. But it's all located right on the main road that runs down the Pacific coast.

I work at the kindergarden and nutritional center in Coronado de Osa. It is a one-room schoolhouse where I have about 25 students, all age 5, in the mornings from 7 to 10:30. Across the street is a bigger building with about 4 or 5 classrooms where the older children go, but the only kitchen is in the kindergarden so between 10:30 and 12 they all come across for lunch. Then, from 12 to 2, a group of about a dozen students ranging in age from about 7 to 10 come for a sort of after-school academic enrichment where they learn about nutrition and receive help with their homework. I assist the teacher, Jacqueline, who doesn't speak a word of English, and my Spanish has been so bad that we've been playing a lot of charades.

That's all I have time for now, more later!