Lapa Verde

 Lapa Verde. The bird is beautiful, but the Spanish School is out of this world!

Every Tuesday and Thursday, after language classes, we had Culture classes.

Clases de Baile

Clases de Cocine

And during the two weeks of school vacation, we ran programing in the mornings for kids. My AMAZING co runners (both FANTASTIC spanish speakers) and I had a blast working together.

Wisconsin and Chicago are NOT far away from each other.
I am coming to visit ladies!

But something that really made Lapa Verde stand out was the school itse'f.

Yes, of course there were times I thought "4 HOURS of spanish class, am I NUTS?!" (rhetorical question) but for the most part, I had a great time in my classes at Lapa Verde.

My first two weeks were with 5 teachers and our Spanish teacher. We were all focused on words we needed for the classroom, and our teacher changed the plans to help us with that goal.

In the 3rd week, many folks had gone home, so there was a shuffle with the classes. I had a new teacher, with one of the others from our other class. That week was a SHORT one for me, as I basically missed Monday (coming home late from Arenal) and missing Friday (to go to Tortuguero).

The 4th week, I had a new teacher, but NO other students in the class, so our focus changed a bit. I had been trying to read the boxcar children in Spanish, and was KINDA getting it. At the same time, I was having a hard time with when to use the various past tenses of spanish (HOW MANY does a language need!?) My teacher had me read outloud the story and whenever there was a sentence that had grammar we had worked on, she would ask me to explain why it was written the way it was, or who/what the "lo" at the end of a verb was referring to. It was FANTASTIC.

The last week of school, there were only 5 adults and 3 children left in the program. Classes shifted again, but I was still in my own class, and we had a BLAST using songs to listen for and hear the grammer structures we were studying. ALSO in that last week, with 8 students and 6 teachers, we had a lot of fun together during the coffee break. Somehow, we all shared SO MUCH FOOD with eachother. There was picadillo, there was challah (3 loaves, even with challah french toast, is too much for 3-5 people to eat), there were AMAZING deserts, it was a really fun week.

Week 1 and 2- Alejandra

Week 3- Ana
(and a morning at the National Museum followed by finishing The Boxcar Children in Spanish)

Week 2 and 4- Dennis

And then it was over!

I gave my graduation speech. Instead of only speaking in front of eachother, as all the other graduates had done we invited our host families so there would be a bit more of an audience. It was a very special night.

Marino joined us later to take us to the "fiestas" or fair. He claimed that all of Santo Domingo was celebrating my graduation (really, it was to celebrate the anniversary of the city) but we had a GREAT time.

That night, dinner was Tamales wrapped in banana leaves (SO SO GOOD!) and ALL the fried food my heart could desire! One fact that was proving hard to forget was that there was only 1 week until I got on a plane back to the states...