Rollercoaster of a week...

First of all, let me say that I need to toughen up when it comes to the homeless animals here. The homeless dogs are one thing, most of them actually seem to be pretty content with their free lives roaming the streets. However, the things I saw last week were incredibely hard for me to take. Many of you will read this and think that I am crazy, and yet others (you know who you are) have just as big of a heart for helpless creatures.

My morning walk to the bus last Tuesday started with seeing a woman stop in her car on the side of the road and dump something (I was too far away at the time to see) out of a plastic bag into the grass, get in her car and drive away. When I got closer, I discovered that it was, in fact, a 4-5 week old little black and white kitten meowing and shaking in the grass. As I stood there trying to figure out what I could possibly do to help this poor creature, it saw me and proceeded to follow and meow at me half way to my bus stop. There were many reasons why I wasn't able to do something to help it, but to make a long story short, there was nothing I could do for the little guy. I was helpless, incredibely frustrated, and heartbroken. After school, he was gone and I haven't seen him around since, so I can only hope something good happened.

As I waited for my bus last Wednesday morning, there was a dog that came running down the road with a chain still attached to his collar. He was wide-eyed and shaking and clearly had no idea how to deal with staying out of the way of cars. He disappeared down the road and I thought I had seen the last of him. Two days later, chain still attached, I see him still wandering and looking terrified. But this time he was in a physical state like nothing I have ever seen before. I refuse to put the image of what I saw into your heads, so I will not go into detail, but that picture will be with me for a very long time. And, as with the kitten, I was helpless and unable to do anything. Both of these occurences involved a lot of tears. I'm not sure why someone with such a bleeding heart for animals is the one who has to see these things, but I am wary now when I am out walking of what I am going to see next.

As for school, things are good, but not great. My teacher is very nice as I have said before, but she is struggling with giving up responsibility of her classroom. Therefore, I have done a lot of observing, some helping the students in class during various bookwork activities, and taught a few lessons. I would like to have it be the other way around: a lot of teaching lessons and less observation. It has been a difficult getting to know the students due to this, and I am still working on learning names, which seems like a never-ending and daunting process,  but I am determined to know each of their names before I leave! As for the classroom experiences, I am taking it a day at a time and hope to be teaching at least 3 or 4 lessons a day soon and taking over more responsibilities.

I taught a few lessons to my eighth graders last week which overall went smoothly. It was actually pretty great to be able to take over the class, if only for a few hours! We did a genetics activity about dominant and recessive alleles based on various physical traits, such as curly hair and dimples. The students had fun and they were excited to have me up there teaching.

Today is Dia de la Independenica for Costa Rica. Meghan and I went to our school last night so she could watch her little kids sing songs and do a torch light parade. Today, we went into San Pedro so I could see my older kids do their thing in the parade. There were colorful dances, drum lines and xylophones, flag processions, and ton of adorable little CR children in traditional clothing watching on the side of the street. The junior high/high schoolers have been practicing their dances and music all around campus since I got here in August, so it was awesome to be able to see the final show! My camera died almost right when we got there, but Meghan got some good pictures, so I will post them here when I get them! Here they are...I tried to upload of video of them dancing, but our internet is just too slow.

In our red white and blue for Tuesday night's festivities!

Colorful and fun dances

Awesome drumline

So darn cute!

More fun dancing

Pretty skirts

It was freakin' hot out there

Here comes my students...yay St. Clare!

So aside from my weekend in Puerto Viejo (which I will write about and put up pictures soon), that has been my week! It was nice to not have school today and be able to enjoy the sunny weather before it started to rain! I'm off to take a nap--there truly is nothing better than taking a nap when it's raining out--and then off to spin.

Love and hugs to you all!