Manuel Antonio Spanish School is a small building connected to a youth hostel. I could have chosen to stay at the hostel, which I considered, but now that I am here, I am glad I didn’t. I don’t really fit in with the young backpacking crowd any longer.
I am free to use the hostel’s pool, but I haven’t yet. The first few days, I went home and simply collapsed. Since then, I’ve been too busy sightseeing. In between it all, I have to do my homework. My evenings are spent trying to make small talk over dinner with Olga and William, my hosts. They are amazingly tolerant of my bad Spanish.
The school building is simple—concrete walls with a metal and thatch roof. There are open windows in the two available classrooms. No air conditioning, just fans blowing unweighted papers around the room.
Rebecca, the owner/receptionist—and the host family coordinator, and the marketing person, and the tour arranger—greets me cheerfully every morning. After 8 am and before noon, nobody is supposed to speak English. Rebecca, in all her kindness and her desire to see me show up at the right place at the right time, will explain something in English after I haven’t understood her Spanish explanation for the 10th time. She is my pal.
I feel a particular fondness for Rebecca. From Ireland, she studied to become a biologist and came here for an internship, a job, or both. Like many budding biologists, she grew tired of the isolation of fieldwork and the nonexistent pay and left the profession. She and Daniel, a Costa Rican, own the school together.
Taykira, my teacher, is Costa Rican, born and raised here in Quepos. Other than San Jose, she hasn’t really traveled outside the area. She has the patience of a saint, though. I have no idea how I compare to the dozens of other students she has taught, but she never seems bored, and I have yet to see her roll her eyes. Instead, when I mash all the syllables together of some word, she slowly and quietly says the word correctly. And she’ll say it again and again and again, until I get it right. She is relentless, particularly with the accent marks on my written work, which I continue to completely ignore. I do think that annoys her slightly.
It’s been a very long time since I was in a formal classroom. And forever since I had a teacher who used pictures to illustrate concepts. Fortunately, though, Tay makes frequent use of them, and she has them for everything. And remember those worksheets from primary school? I must complete dozens each day. After I finish one, we review it together. I’m like an 8-year-old waiting for her smiley face on my paper.
When my students in Botswana weren’t getting a particular math problem or concept, they would say, “Mistress, the math, it is refusing me.” At the beginning of my 4th hour today, as Tay was about to introduce yet more irregular reflexive verbs, I had that moment. I told her I had had enough for the day. She smiled and said, “Okay”. I realized at that point the power of adulthood—I don’t have to stay for the entire four hours. I decide when enough is enough. There’s no punishment and no guilt. There’s no principal’s office. I love being an adult!
