¡Feliz día de la independencia!

Celebration at St. Francis College

Parade!

Today, along with most of Central America, Costa Rica celebrates its Independence Day.  Since we arrived, everything has been decked out in red, white, and blue to celebrate “la mes de la patria” - that is, the MONTH of the homeland!  All the celebrations made this a particularly chaotic week to start working. My placement for this year is at Centeno Guell, a public school for students with special needs. I will be working in the Departamento Deficientes Visuales (Visual Deficiencies). This department serves students who are blind as well as students with multiple disabilities (physical, mental, visual, aural, verbal etc).  There are two other departments: one for Deaf students and another for students with Mental/Developmental disabilities.  

[Sidebar: I struggle with the appropriate language to use to describe the departments at the school. The language surrounding Special Education is so delicate in the US and I’m still trying to navigate the technical terms in Spanish.]

On Monday and Tuesday, I had a chance to spend time in two different classrooms within the Baja Vision department. I will continue to see the rest of the classes next week (I suppose).  On Wednesday, there were no classes so I joined the teachers of the older students to watch the littler ones march in a parade throughout Guadalupe.  It was adorable, and kind of like a warm up for today. Today I marched right along with the teachers and students in an enormous parade throughout Guadalupe. I was dressed up in traditional Tico garb (with a floppy hat, bandana, and all) holding balloons and walking alongside the wheelchairs.  It was hectic but the kids got a lot of cheers from the hundreds of spectators.

On Tuesday, Fray Jorge came over for dinner to see how we were doing after two days of work. He is simply wonderful. He put us all at ease, told some great stories, and was very encouraging. He also got to meet the Syracuse group via skype! He told us he thought it was serendipitous that FrancisCorps had an all female house in the same year the Poor Clare sisters (the Franciscan nuns) celebrated their 800th anniversary...not sure what to make of that one :)

More soon! Sending love to the States!