Sunday Stuff:

 

It’s 8 a.m.

 

I’ve already walked 7692 steps and eaten breakfast. (A BLT plus one egg, and two cups of coffee, which I drank earlier this morning while walking on the back patio.)

 

All is in readiness for the interview at 10 a.m. with Estefany, the third year English student who will be the first of two interviewers this week (today and tomorrow). I’m very much looking forward to both of them. Monday’s interviewer will be Ashley. I won’t divulge their last names unless they allow me to.

 

I more or less dreamed about the interviews last night

 

As to whether I was truly asleep, or just on the verge of it, I imagined a range of subjects.

 

But of course I won’t be choosing the questions asked, so I have no idea in which direction they will go.

 

I do know that I want to ask permission of both ladies to take selfies with them so I can post them here and on Facebook, with their permission. Have no idea if they’ll say yes or no, so I’m not counting on anything, but I hope the answers are both yes.  It’s fun to put faces to names, and images to posts!

 

I’ve been writing in longhand some stream of consciousness stuff, but none of it it worth archiving here. I’m doing it mostly to keep my penmanship in good shape.

 

I’ve also gone through some of my handwritten Spanish notes to stay on top of what I’ve learned so far. I did that last night before going to sleep.  When I do that, I tend to dream more in Spanish, which is a good thing! Getting that stuff lodged firmly in my subconscious is the goal.

 

It’s another lovely day, which goes without saying here!

 

 

Costa Rica is breathtakingly beautiful. We’re in the beginning of the rainy season now, so everything is blooming, growing and painting the landscape with vibrant colors. Birds and butterflies are abundant.

 

Not many insects are out this morning, unlike yesterday, when they were dying everywhere I looked.  Many of the insect species don’t seem to live very long here.  They appear one day and are gone or dead/dying a day or two later. I think it’s just their life cycles.  We haven’t sprayed here in weeks.

 

I rarely see insects indoors

 

Charli always spots them before I do, as soon as they find their way in under a doorframe or somewhere.  I get out my bug catcher, catch ’em, and put them back outside, far away from the apartment.  They’re mostly beetles that we spot in here. I haven’t seen hardly any spiders. I saw scads more in Tacoma than I’ve ever seen here…

 

UPDATE 

 

The first interview, with Estefany Alpizar (a selfie photo with her and her boyfriend Cristopher Mora will follow when my webmsaster figures out why an app keeps refusing to allow me to insert photos), has  just ended and it was 100% pure joy.

 

This young woman, just 22 years old, has become a kindergarten teacher and will change the world for the better, one inquisitive mind at a time.  Although people tried to talk her out of the profession because it doesn’t pay very well, she stuck to her guns because she knew that teaching would/will remain her passion. I told her I loved her for that because among my heroes in life are the teachers who were absolutely crucial to  my education and career path. A teacher who loves teaching will leave a legacy that few others will ever match.

 

She plans to remain in Costa Rica and teach in both English and Spanish. How cool is that?  It’s required these days, she says, but she decided to learn English long before she was required to.

 

Estefany is in Mauricio’s third year class (without having attended the earlier two years) because she has been learning English for years, so Mao tested her and found her ready to jump in with his third year students. Other than being a little too shy to speak up loudly during the interview (so I had to ask her to repeat questions, because my hearing isn’t very good, even though her English pronunciation and sentence structures are sound), she nailed the interview.  I was super impressed with her skill as an ESL speaker.

 

She asked me at least thirty questions in 55 minutes, maybe more, deftly sidestepping prewritten questions that she realized weren’t germane as soon as she heard I have always been single and never had children. Among the questions she asked were how many countries I’ve visited, which state I came from, how long I’ve been here, have I ever touched a wild animal, what I think about Trump and the current Costa Rican government, which places I’ve visited here in Costa Rica, why and when I chose Costa Rica to retire to, and more. It was a pretty wide-ranging interview.  I can’t remember many more of the questions, but I had answers for them all. (Favorite singers, bands when I was young; favorite CR foods, etc.)

 

We had such a great time that I asked her to save my info in WhatsApp and stay in touch. Perhaps we’ll get back together for a picnic or some other kind of outing later on.  That would be a lot of fun. I took two selfies with Estefany and Cristopher, but they look so much alike that I saved the one I consider the “best” of the two. I sent her copies of both of them.