thank you, promodoro

this little corner has been my home this week. it's the end of the trimester at school so i have been making exams and grading projects in all of my spare time. exams are one of my least favorite parts about teaching. in my opinion exams have too much information for students to really understand what they are studying. and at my school we are required to tell students exactly which topics are going to be on the exam so they know exactly what to study for. sounds a little counterproductive to me but what can i do.

 i am grateful to nicole for her post last week on productivity. she introduced me to the pomodoro technique which is working for 25 minutes and then taking a 5 minute break. i downloaded one of the apps from an article she linked to called promodoro and i have been hooked all week! it basically just times your intervals for you and gives you a little message when your work time is up and it is time  for a break and vice versa. of course this can also be done with a regular timers but for some reason when i use the app i am in the zone! and thank goodness for that because when i feel productive i am one happy girl.

how do you manage your time to get all your work done??

worst field trip ever part 2

part 2 of this story isn't as shocking as the first part, just a little disappointing. like i said yesterday, the purpose of our field trip was to go to a beach famous for having thousands and thousands of sea turtles come and lay their eggs. the beach is called playa ostional in guanacaste. i had never been to guanacaste before so i was really excited to get the chance to do so but even more excited to see so many sea turtles.

we went to the beach around 9pm at night, after a six hour bus ride and a few unhappy hours at our hotel. we started to watch a movie about the thousands of sea turtles we were meant to see and our guides get a call that we should rush to the beach because there are sea turtles coming! we run to the beach and follow our guides who are the only ones with red lights and who can see anything (turtles get disoriented with white lights).

all of a sudden the whole group stops. and everyone starts crouching down to see the lone turtle on the beach. the one turtle we will see the whole trip. i will admit it was pretty cool seeing this turtle dig her little whole and start laying her eggs...until it started to downpour.

now i usually try not to be a debbie downer but after everything that had happened already that day i was super bummed that we only saw one turtle! the pictures from the beach are from the next morning when we took our chances again, still without any luck.

needless to say i was extremely grateful when we all made it home safely friday night!

worst field trip ever

 on thursday and friday of last week i went on a field trip with my students to see the sea turtles laying their eggs and potentially seeing some baby turtles hatch out! these pictures are from the hotel where i stayed with 47 of my students and three coworkers. it looks great right? beautiful view, lovely pool, and tons of wildlife around us!

there were six of these little villas, each with room for five people. wait, six villas for 5 people? that's only 30 people...

thanks to the company that planned our field trip we ended up at a hotel with a capacity of 30 people and our party was 50+!! what did the hotel say, you ask? we have some extra mattresses that we were going to put on the floors. you were going to?? as someone who has a degree in hospitality management, this situation was horrifying. besides the fact that they willingly booked us with more than 20 people over occupancy, they didn't have anything ready. our extra mattresses were no where to be seen, some of the regular beds didn't even have mattresses to begin with, the bathrooms were dirty, no hand soap to be found, and less than an hour after we arrived we had numerous angry parents calling us up.

what a way to start our class field trip.

stay tuned for part 2 ;)

i did it

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i did it, you guys. i completed my to-do list from this week! and let me tell you, this was the longest to-do list i have ever had. in my life. and now that it's done .. i am on vacation.

i fly this afternoon and by dinner time i will be on the ground in NJ. hallelujah!

i am so excited to spend some time with my friends and especially my family. but most importantly i am so looking forward to watching my brother get married!

the festivities from this week will only happen once so be prepared for some posts with an overload of pictures :)

new teacher no more

friday was my first end of the year teacher party. i still can't believe that i am coming to the end of my first year of teaching. sometimes i think it's a joke and that i'm not actually a legit teacher .. like last year when i worked 12 hours a week as a language assistant speaking about 5 english words a class....but then i remember i still have final exams to grade and final grades to calculate and i remember that oh yeah i am a real teacher.

so friday was our school's christmas celebration. i attended mass in the morning (yes, mass) and then watched a darling little performance from the youngin's.

the teachers then all hopped on a really nice chartered bus for an hour up to poas, costa rica where one of the volcanoes is located. we got off at the restaurant fredo fresas. i think it is always interesting to see your co-workers outside of the work environment, especially the ones that you don't usually work with. maybe it was the fact that we are all excited for the school year to be over and maybe it was the fact that some people had some drinks but i would say we were by far the loudest group around. our waiter then made a joke to try about taking away points from our grade if we weren't quiet. good one .... not.

after lunch we took a little stroll through the hummingbird garden where all the hummingbirds magically escaped my camera lens and then headed back home.

so this happened

MVI 9891 from Britta on Vimeo.

this happened on friday right after a really lovely christmas and holiday presentation. the performance was a mix of the nutcracker and the polar express that was really well done. and then all of a sudden the kiddies jumped into this dance for the finale. it was pretty cute.

only a few weeks left

my weekend mostly consisted of me and this little guy and my computer. with just 1.5 weeks left of classes and then 1.5 weeks of exams and then another week or so of teacher stuff, my school year is coming to an end! so this weekend i spent my time making lesson plans and quizzes and grading final projects. and now i'm left to make final exams and figure out final grades!

i'm hoping this week i can really get motivated to just finish everything so that next weekend i don't have to worry about it all. and then i can spend even more time with my little man doing this: 

happy monday!

a fake post

how can you not just instantly fall in love with this little guy?? he melts my heart.

i don't really have a post for today .. and i may not have one for tomorrow. the end of the school year is kiiind of already killing me over here! it feels like we just had exams and now i am getting ready for another round. just 8 more weeks until finals and then i'm done with my first year of teaching.

i hope everyone is having a lovely week :)

all work and no play

as a first year teacher, i feel like i am constantly taking a ton of work to do at home. no. i am constantly taking a ton of work to do at home because otherwise it won't get done.

when i was in college i learned how to really study and get my work done. i spent hours upon hours in the library at school, and i actually really enjoyed it. my roommate would joke with me that i was always with my boyfriend...the library.

but i have this thing, where if i know i have some work to get done, i feel like i can't enjoy myself. even if i know i am not going to get that work done today, i tell myself well today you can't go out to eat because you didn't finish your work. crazy? maybe.

but because of this thing, i often find myself telling paris that i'm just going to stay home and do my work while he goes out. bummer!

so in order to prepare for that feeling this weekend i spent a little extra time during the week to get as much as i could done. i still didn't finish (end of the trimester blues). but this weekend i told myself, no. no you will not stay home while everyone else is out enjoying their weekend.

so i did it. saturday i spent the whole afternoon at the pool with paris and his cousins and sisters and then the whole evening watching movies and eating pizza before we went out for the night. take that, you boring teacher work!

hopefully i will be able to keep it up and work like a mad lady during the week to finally be able to enjoy my weekends without worrying about what i haven't finished.

back to the grind

some of my students on the day before vacation

its hard to go back to work after three weeks of vacation.

some of you may be wondering .. why the heck did you have three weeks off from work?

here in costa rica the school vacations go something like this, july is like "winter vacation" like how in the united stated we have a few weeks off for christmas but here the schedule is kind of the opposite. we have three weeks off in july and then two months off in december and january. so there you have it!

today was our first day back and boy do i have a headache right now.

maybe it was being away from school for a while, or maybe i literally just forgot how frustrating my students are sometimes but today was hard!

this weekend i started to get a little nervous about going back to school because i thought, i had kind of put everything school related away for this vacation and i feel like i may have actually forgotten everything i knew! and worse .. what if my students have forgotten everything we had gone over. well all was not lost but they sure were rowdy today.

thank god we have wednesday off (don't hate!) for a costa rican holiday so that this week will be a nice transition. oh and a new teacher started today .. who is young .. and from the u.s.! yay for having a friend! ;)

tgif

i am so happy to see friday today. this week has been extremely long and very busy for me.

last week marked the end of the trimester so this week meant i had to finish grading all of the geography projects and language arts exams from both of my classes.

and then i had to calculate the final trimester grades.

so needless to say that kept me a little bit occupied this week.

yesterday at school were the school olympics. when i first heard there were going to be olympics at school this year i was pretty excited because when i was a camp counselor, the olympics were the absolute best part of summer.

i'm just going to say that my school's olympics were a little bit sub-par compared to what i was used to haha. however, the students had a great time and that is all that matters.

up there are some of the decorations that my eighth graders spent a loooong time making. pretty cute right?

and speaking of being a camp counselor, if there are any of you out there who know what i mean when i say you were a summer camp counselor and you basically grew up going to summer camp, i think you will appreciate this little article i found the other day. 

as soon as i read it i was reminded of myself and my parents a few years ago and how we had some very similar conversations.

its always interesting to look back a few years and think about where you thought your life would be, and where it is now. for example i never in a million years thought i would be an english teacher in costa rica, but here i am. if only i had had a time machine i probably would have been able to convince my parents that one more summer as a camp counselor probably would not have hurt my resume!

a tuesday

so yesterday i walked into the middle school building and one of my students said, "be careful, teacher" and pointed to the floor.

and on the floor i saw about 50 bugs. but not just any bugs. these huge brown bugs with the bodies of wasps and even bigger wings. and when i say huge i mean huge. the bodies alone were about the size of my thumb.

it seemed like they had been sprayed or something because the majority of them were just laying there while some were unsuccessfully trying to crawl away.

i would have taken a picture but when i tried one of my students picked one up and started bring it really close to me....

i had the he-be-ge-bes the rest of the day.

so after school and after zumba (yeah, second time this week!), i decided to make this for dinner

sorry for the blurry picture!

just a plain chicken breast, sauteed in a little garlic, some avocado, tomato, sweet corn, and a little bit of lemon juice. extremely delicious, even boyfriend liked it.

a little friday surprise

my new classroom!

we were finally able to move to our new classrooms in the new building at school! this is the first year the school has "colegio" aka middle/high school and they built a building for those classrooms. since this year there is only 7th and 8th grade (my classes!) we were able to use two classrooms in the original building until the construction was finished. one was the old music room and the other was the principal's old office (that class only has 9 students so it was pretty small). but now we have beautiful new classrooms with really nice tile floors, lots of windows, and more space! these pictures don't do them justice, since we were only there for about 30 minutes. but once we get all the details finished and organized i'll put some better pictures.

hope everyone has a nice weekend!

a little inspiration

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i'm feeling a little defeated tonight.

tomorrow is my first day back to work after last week's vacation. i had a week off from work for holy week. and yes i spent most of it with my parents. and yes we went to the beach for a few days.

 so yes i had a great vacation.

but tonight i am feeling a little bit like a failure? okay failure is harsh. whatever the word would be for someone who had really high expectations but didnt quite reach them...

i had plans for myself this week. 

finish ALL my lessons plans and maybe even next week's too...

grade ALL three tests between my two classes and ALL the geography projects...

buy and organize new binders with dividers for each category of worksheet i use...

make up and print out all vocabulary lists for the rest of the trimester...

now lets see what did i actually accomplish from that list?? buy new binders and dividers in the HOPES of getting organized ... but i didnt actually organize them...

everything else was only partially finished or not at all started

what the heck?!

i feel like i'm in high school again not being able to get my work done

and the worst part is .. i have worked an insane amount of hours this week! for the amount of time i spent glued to my computer trying to get all of this finished, i'm amazed i didnt finish everything for the whole school year!

but trying to look on the bright side ... i did get everything done i will need for tomorrow. and i ALMOST finished a lot of this things on my list

i guess this just comes with the territory of being a new teacher. for me, everything has to be done from scratch this year while for most of the other teachers, they have last year's material to work with.

and i'll just have to keep in mind that i may not be there yet, but i'm closer than i was yesterday.

confessions of a procrastinator

...............................................................

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.

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!

hi everyone, my name is britta and this is my blog...

OH HEY...i thought maybe i would introduce myself again since you prooooobably forgot who i am because i have been blog MIA for the past two weeks. but i'm gonna do my best to find as much time to update as i can!

sooooooooooooooooo the biggest news as of late has to do with that picture right up there! yes everyone, those 12 little check marks signify that i am officially allowed to work here in costa rica! i'm legal! after my failed attempt two weeks ago i was even more frustrated because i just felt like all my effort over the past 4 months was shut down when the man at migración told me the three things i was still missing.... ugh. but this morning i marched right up to the same officer (okay so i waited almost 2 hours and by chance had the same officer) and demanded he accepted my documents! (well i politely asked him how he was and the proceeded to listen to him talk about how much he likes florida). but who cares right?! he took my mounds of paperwork and gave me this one piece of paper and told me, "this will allow you to stay here in costa rica." HALLELUJAH.

obviously more things have happened in the past two weeks, for example I STARTED WORKING. but more to come on that tomorrow (i promise i'm gonna try really hard for tomorrow!)

;)

workin' girl

 

i was going to do a "weekend pt 2" post yesterday but i was too busy with getting work done and now i don't think it would be appropriate on tuesday to talk about last weekend because i'm already looking forward to this weekend. however i will say that i got very sunburned on left shoulder and it still really hurts!

work so far this week has been interesting. between yesterday and today i met almost all of my students' parents and a lot of my students too. most of the parents were extremely nice and thought it was great that they have a native english speaker teaching their students english (phew).

i'm a little bit nervous because by the end of the week i have to have next week's lesson plans done including a diagnostic test for both grade levels and i havent even received all of the textbooks yet! i'm hoping that since next week will be a short week, i'll be able to get by with things like class rules, ice breaker games, and the diagnostic test, before i have to start using lessons from the books.

also, now that i've started working and am not always around the house i've had to really try to remember what i said in this post about cleaning the house little by little each day because what a mess it has so quickly become! today's challenge: the bathroom. wish me luck ;)

workin' girl

i have a classroom! well, i don't actually have my own classroom, i will be moving back and forth between two classrooms but... it feels like i have a classroom!

i started work yesterday (which already feels like a week ago) and i couldnt be more excited. the past two days have just been a bunch of teacher meetings (how important am i, right?), decorating classrooms, and getting to know my new co-workers! it has been really nice so far, even though a little overwhelming. next week starts teacher-parent interviews and thank goodness the english teachers do not have to conduct the whole interview! we just have to introduce ourselves and give the parents their children's textbooks.

getting all of the information that i have gotten in the past few days has definitely made my head spin a little bit. i already have due dates! thank goodness for the two different planners, the 5 different colored pens i bought today, and my very girly paper clips that i think i will be able to keep myself quite organized.

and then after next week ... the students come. i am half looking forward to it and half dreading it although i have a feeling after the first two weeks i will have a good handle on things (fingers crossed anyway).

first day jitters!

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tomorrow is my first official day of work! i have been waiting for this moment for six long months and if you know me, that is way too long of a time to not be working. it has been an interesting couple of months to say least, not working, not studying, and trying to keep myself occupied in a foreign country with limited resources. however, i did it! and now i will have something to keep me occupied every day and i will FINALLY be getting a pay check. can't beat that!

anyway, it's been a little bit of a stressful process getting my permission to work here in costa rica. scratch that .. it has been and extremely stressful process especially as of late. i recently found this lovely blog called The Freedom Experiment and was especially drawn to this blog post entitled 55 ways to take care of yoruself when you're busy busy busy."

now, i know i'm not busy busy busy yet but i probably will be pretty soon. and moreover, when i read this post i took it as more of a way to relax yourself when you've got a lot going on and feel a little more stressed than usually (yes, that's me!). so i'm not going to post all 55 but i am going to post a few of my favorites. here you go!


Listen to your favorite music
Calm music will help you calm down and upbeat music will help you up your game. Pick music that won’t distract you (like music without lyrics or in a foreign language). Your favourite music will boost your mood and keep you happy, no matter how tired you are.

Break your self-care habits into smaller tasks and do one each day
No need to look like you’re constantly running after your life, even if you are! Just break up your routine into smaller, and more achievable chunks. Shave your legs one day, paint your nails the next day, wash your hair the day after, etc. This approach also works with keeping your house tidy – just do one little chore every day and you’ll stay on top of everything more easily. 

Keep a planner and schedule no-appointments time
To make your life less chaotic, it’s a good practice to keep a planner. Make sure you write down every single appointment, to save yourself from unwanted surprises and missed meetings. Just remember to schedule time for yourself. Honor your appointment with yourself just as much as you would keep an appointment with anyone else. Just make sure you schedule time with yourself first – anyone else needs to come in second in your life.

Make sure you keep in touch with your friends
Just a few text messages, tweets or the occasional coffee will make sure your friendships don’t suffer. You will feel much better when you focus on something else entirely, and it will prevent you form becoming a workaholic hermit. You don’t have to keep in touch with everybody, most people will understand that you’re having a busy period. Just make sure you stay in touch with the people that make you happy and inspired.

Resist the urge to be productive all the time
You can’t be equally productive every single waking moment, so you might as well schedule some off time right away. Be nice to yourself and don’t expect to accomplish as much in the late evening as you do in the morning.

and there you have it :)