Some Non-Professional Goals

I read a few books on CR to help me make the most of my time here. Here are a few of the things I'd like to do:

• Learn to surf. Hopefully my limited experience snowboarding, skim boarding, and wake boarding will be a good starting foundation (those of you who have seen my many face-plants I know are skeptical:).
• Volunteer with an NGO that helps fight child sex trafficking. This is a deplorable and growing industry due in part to more crack downs in Southeast Asia. An estimated 3,000 children are prostituted in San Jose.
• Go Green. Thanks largely to a class my sister Molly took this summer and her books (like Living Green by Greg Horn) I have learned so many steps that I am going to take to make better and smarter choices that will promote sustainability and environmental health.
• Visit four more Latin American countries. One of my life goals is to visit every country in Latin America. Belize, Panama, and Colombia are ones in proximity that I haven't visited yet. For the fourth one.... I'll surprise myself and see what opportunities arise.
• Join a church. I haven't really been part of a church since Iglesia Cristo Rey in Santiago and kind of Sanctuary Covenant in Minneapolis. This time I'll make it a priority.
• Take a course on tropical dendrology. Ideally the course would be in Spanish because I would like to gain some more language skills as well.

There are many places within Costa Rica that I plan to visit and many other adventure sports I would like to try. I'm open to ideas if you have any suggestions for me! I have a number of professional goals as well I'd like to accomplish at my new school. Those to come at a later post...

Overview

For the past two years I was a Teach For America corps member teaching 3rd grade at LeNoir Elementary (woot woot!) in Donna, Texas. This was an amazing experience – amazingly wonderful and amazingly challenging. I strongly considered staying a third year at my placement school. However, when some international teaching opportunities arose I decided the timing for this was right. So, with GREAT sadness, I bid farewell to my beloved students, co-workers, friends, domestic partner, and fellow TFAers in south Texas.

Continuing with my trend of moving progressively further south, for my next adventure I will be tearin' up Costa Rica. I'll be teaching 3rd grade at Country Day School in Escazu which has an American-based curriculum and a little over 1,000 students in k-12. The population break-down is about 1/3 North Americans, 1/3 Costa Rican nationals, and 1/3 from around 30 other countries.

In effort to help you keep tabs on me I’ve created this blog for my two years in Costa Rica. Please, puh-leeez keep in touch!!!!! My family (love you, muah!) and friendships are extraordinarily dear to me. So, let's not be strangers! Contact me through skype, email, gchat, phone, and snail mail. And there is always, eh hem, decently priced plane tickets. Did I mention that Costa Rica is a beautiful country?