Thursday, March 22

confessions of a procrastinator

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its ironic how many clever pictures up in google images when you type in "procrastination." so here i am writing this post .. procrastinating.

its funny how i can remember every sunday in highschool starting sophomore year that me and almost all of my classmates would be frantically IMing each other "have you started the paper yet??" and two hours later, "how many pages do you have done?" "...one paragraph..." and here i am coming up on two years after graduating college ... STILL PROCRASTINATING  on my schoolwork.

i have my annual plan due on monday, which is basically every lesson i am going to teach to both 7th and 8th grade for the whole year. i have known about this for months. and for months i have been telling myself okay i will start next week. and now i am 4 days before it is due with maybe 1/6 of it complete, asking myself .. why didnt i start sooner?

really, will i ever learn??? i guess i have the comfort in knowing that every single one of my assignment from highschool and college got done and handed in on time. but man, this is stressful because now its MY JOB on the line .. not my grade.

at least i know i'm not alone. today one of my mentor teachers who has been teaching for 20 years who is also a little bit overwhelmed with this told me, "Britta, when the going gets tough..the tough go shopping.." and she proceeds to pull out three new necklaces. i knew i chose her as my mentor for a reason.

okay back to work. wish me luck.

Sunday, March 18

compliments to the chef

this saturday we took a little trip to the store to buy some things for our new "kitchen" so that we could finally start to cook our own food. its been so long since i have cooked my own food that i was getting really anxious to do so. obviously its easier to have someone always cooking for you but when its not necessarily what you want to eat or the quality of food that you would like to be eating, its always nice to be able to make whatever you want.

 so we got a nice little pan, a pot, a nice wooden cutting board, some knives, and a few little other things. i'm worried that the pot may be a little small but my options were either really small, small, or really large. so i went with the small one after paris reminded me that we are only two people.

 then today we took a little trip to the grocery store pali which around these parts is in comparison to market basket in massachusetts. so we filled our cart with a bunch of stuff and now our fridge is so colorful because its actually semi full!

 so for dinner i attempted to make my signature dish that i had made probably 3 or 4 days a week in spain (when i wasnt eating pasta with pesto sauce). chicken, with veggies in this case peppers, zucchini, and some spinach which is p's new favorite.

 and i must say it turned out pretty good! it tasted a little different than i expected but paris was pleased with it. he even ate all of the veggies whereas he normally refuses to even eat the little pieces of carrots that are in the rice his mom makes. this week i'm going to try some breaded chicken cutlets with the left over chicken we bought today. although i have to work on getting the portions right because tonight we had just enough for two people. i'm looking forward to trying out more recipes and experimenting with different foods to see what yummyness i can come up with.

Monday, March 12

weekend part 2









yesterday to finish out our weekend we went to a country club pretty close to my school for the going away bbq of one of paris's cousins. he is going to live in colorado with his wife and little baby girl! so he had a really nice gathering at the country club he is a member at and a ton of his friends and their lady friends came. there was a lot of meat eating, sun bathing, and soccer playing. here are some pictures from the day.

happy monday. lets hope this week flies by.

Sunday, March 11

oh sushi, how i've missed thee





on friday night we finally had the pleasure of enjoying some sushi. since i've gotten here i have been on the lookout for a sushi place that isnt too expensive. the two places we've looked at for prices have had rolls for a minimum of about 8 dollars and with the amount of sushi i typically enjoy per sitting that would just break my very tiny bank account. so i kind of thought that sushi would only be something i enjoyed on my trips home to the US (hello, half price sushi in brookline, ma .. i have been dreaming about you). however, friday night may have just changed everything. we found this little sushi restaurant that is tucked behind a current fav of ours, tacobar, kind of in the woods. we got there and there was not a single person inside the restaurant except two people in the kitchen and one waiter. we decided to try it anyway because after perusing the prices i decided my bank account could handle it. after taking a closer look at the menu i was a little worried, being that i couldnt recognize the names of any of the fish because they were in spanish. the waiter could only translate "tuna" which was not written as atun in the menu, and "salmon" which he told me wouldnt actually be salmon but something similar ... okay? so we bit the bullet and just got a platter of 40 pieces and boy was it delish. the flavors and some of the textures were just a tiny bit different than i am used to but that is to be expected. oh, but the miso soup was proooobably the best i've ever had. needless to say i'm sure we will be going back.

more on the rest of the weekend tomorrow. hope everyone enjoyed theirs!

Friday, March 9

i wish....


i wish.....

- my students would study for their quizzes!
- homework was always handed in on time
- students listened to everything i say THE FIRST TIME
- i was allowed to wear jeans and my uniform shirt every day, not just fridays
- i was told more about school activities and not left to just guess
- my students were all like my eighth grade students
- my seventh graders weren't so rude
- i didn't have to be observed
- teachers were paid the big bucks!!

but like i said ... i wish!!

thats the one picture i have so far of one part of school...i always feel a little bit weird taking out my camera to take pictures at an elementary school. and i'm not usually around after all the kids leave. but one day i will take more!

Wednesday, March 7

KONY 2012


so once again i'm probably a little late on the band wagon, posting a video that most of my 10 followers have probably already seen. but that's okay because this time its for a good cause and i want to do my part by spreading the word.

in my junior year of high school (so about 6 years ago? yikes) we had to do a really big project for my english class on a a topic that we would "present to congress" in hopes to persuade them to agree with our point of view. my topic was child soldiers in uganda. this was SIX years ago.

i remember a lot of my research about cihld soldiers and invisible children and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). however its kind of shocking to me after watching this video that i do not remember the name Joseph Kony. even though it was a few years back i really cant remember his name sticking out in my head. i remember the LRA but i guess not their actual leader.

i'm really glad i saw this video today and i'm really glad that these children are getting a voice. its a terrible thing what happens to them and it absolutely should be stopped. some people may think that we have nothing to do with their countries and the african continent but hello, are we not all people? are we not all made of flesh, bones, and blood? exactly.

watch the video and do your part. spread the word and help out if you can!

Sunday, March 4

applebees



so on friday we went to applebee's for date night. now i know what you're thinking .. applebees? why? well here in costa rica, the applebees is actually really nice. it has an upstairs eating area that is outside with a roof on top and a really nice bar and lighting, etc. its normally pretty expensive (weird, right?) and usually the really rich people who drive fancy cars go there but they have this nifty deal for appetizers and dinner for two sooo we decided to go there!
we got boneless buffalo chicken wings (a staple for us), paris got a bacon cheeseburger, and i got chicken fajitas. and by the time we finished eating we nearly had to be rolled out of there. seriously we ate so much we just sat for an extra twenty five minutes just to digest a little bit. but it was worth it, the food at applebees costa rica is quite yummy!




also, paris bought one of the new iphones this week which he has been wanting for a pretty long time. and i hijacked it for a minute to make an instagram account so now i'm one of the cool kids too! here are just a few more snapshots of our weekend. one of the street when we went on a little walk to the store and one of isaac, just for good measure.

hope everyone had a great weekend!