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Published: January 5th 2006
Nice to meet you...
The monkeys love to hold hands with the kids (and vice versa). Monkeys' skin is leathery but soft.Sorry we haven’t had an update in a while - things have been busy, but more importantly, we haven’t had internet access in our home. Hopefully that will get set up soon. With a suggestion from my mom, I did go out and get one of those hard-drives that plug into the USB port so now I can take that to the internet cafe (yes, they have all sorts of computer equipment her -- they have everything, just like back home... but more about that in a different blog, after we get caught up).
Anyway, to pick up where we left off, the Sunday before Christmas, we dropped off most of our bags in our new apartment and headed for the hills. The first half of the journey was along the main highway that runs NW-SE through the middle of the country - some nice views, but pretty uneventful. After a pit-stop for ice cream in San Ramon, we turned north and headed up into the mountains. Parallel to, more or less, and to the north of the main highway is a range of volcanic mountains that extends through Costa Rica. Instituto Asis is just on the other side of
Leave our stuff alone
Those crazy toucans weren't shy at all. these mountains. This part of the ride was much more exciting as the road wound up through the mountains, through rainforests and cloudforests, then descended through miles of farms of ornamental plants (and, of course, like a scene out of a bad sit-com, an ice cream break followed by kids riding in the backseat of a warm car on winding, bumpy roads is a recipe for trouble). We arrived at the casa of Doña Maria, our homestay home for our visit to Instituto Asis, after dark just in time for dinner.
The house is on the nice side of standard Tico - it has concrete walls and a corrugated steel roof (which seems to be their favorite building material - the less well constructed houses use it for walls, too). It is about the size of a small beach cabin and immaculate. Maria’s daughter lives across the street and her two little boys, Norman Eduardo - better known as Ti-Ti - 4, and Jose Daniel, 6, had been eagerly awaiting our arrival. As we unpacked and got ready for bed, we could hear their giggling outside the window. They were too shy to come in, but would peek in
The Intercultural Exhange
The kids from across the street (and their cousins, Jose Andres and Melissa) loved to draw and had a great time here with Ellie's Polly Pocket dolls. the window, then run away laughing. When they saw Ari and Ellie had brought teddy bears, they quickly ran home, got theirs and showed them through the window. The cultural exchange had begun. (Quick aside about names: it seems that many of the younger generation here have “American” names such as Melissa, Jennifer, Alexander, Jackie rather than the typical “Latin” names you would expect like Maria, Consuela, Juan, Pablo and the like).
As I mentioned in the last entry, we had a problem with a rooster. The only explanation we could come up with was jet lag. At night as we sleep snuggly in our beds (Tico standard -- thin foam rubber mattress over a board) the only sounds were the chipping of crickets and the occasional passing car or truck. Until about 3:00AM, that is. Then, one nutty rooster who must have just flown in from Bermuda, or some such time zone, started his cuckoo-ri-koo (in Spanish, roosters don’t say cock-a-doodle-doo). His brethren did not join in until the sun came up somewhere around 5:30.
For those of you who haven’t had the chance to check out its web-site, Instituto Asis is a small, private wildlife reserve
Our hostess and the kids
Here's our wonderful hostess, Dona Maria, with Ari and Ellie and her grandson, Titi. Thank you Maria for a wonderful visit!! about 3 hours northwest of San Jose. It is in the heart of farming country in the foothills of Volcano Arenal - a beautifully picturesque cone, that for our stay peeked through the clouds only once. Arenal is a very active volcano and chances are that if it wasn’t shrouded in clouds, we would have been able to see lava running out at night (don’t worry, moms, we were far enough away not to be in danger). All around are miles and miles of farms --pastureland for cattle, ornamental shrubs, bananas and citrus. About 10 years ago, the land where Asis stands was pastureland. Now, thanks to the efforts of Alvaro, the director of Asis, and his father, the founder, it is a lush tropical jungle. A river runs along its edge and caiman filled lagoons (again, moms, no danger) are in the middle.
Instituto Asis does a few different things - teaching Spanish is really just a sideline. Its principle missions are wildlife rescue and rehabilitation and community education. There are 3 spider monkeys that live in a large pen just outside the main building that were rescued from being kept as illegal pets. They are very friendly
You'd lose your cabeza if it wasn't attached!
Ari and Ellie wore tags naming the parts of their bodies during this lesson. and enchanting for the kids. Many study breaks were taken so they could go hold the monkeys’ hands -- they come right over and if you stick out your hand, they reach through the fence and grab on. Their skin is leathery, but soft, and their hands look much like ours. I guess it is rare that they see a mop of hair like Ari’s, so one of them had to give it a tug the other day. We also had the chance to feed them bananas - this gets them (both the kids and the monkeys) very excited and makes for great study breaks.
In addition, there are 3 rehabilitated toucans that hang out at Asis. They also will come right over to you, especially if you have a piece of papaya or banana in your hand. Although we saw many toucans when we were in Belize, you can never get used to the sight of these beautiful birds with the big, colorful beaks - they really look as if they just flew off a box of Froot Loops. As you can imagine, coloring is a large part of Eliana’s Spanish lesson curriculum. The toucans, however, had their
Colocho!
The kids played Colocho (Twister) to practice 'right' and 'left' and 'hand' and 'foot'. Mom and Dad joined in too at one point...but luckily we don't have any pictures of that! eyes on the magic markers - a couple times they swooped down (classes are held in the open air area of the first floor of the main building), grabbed a marker and took off into the jungle with it clutched in their beaks. Fortunately Alvaro knows where they go and was able to recover them.
Spanish lessons were taught by Alvaro, Lindsay and Buck (the only other employee of Asis is Teniente - the animal caretaker/handyman). Lindsay mainly taught the kids - she is a very nice, soft spoken woman in her early 20’s. Although she had the patience of a saint in dealing with the kids, she seemed a bit inexperienced in the need to keep them active/entertained while teaching. Buck is a 50-ish guy from Oregon that has been teaching Spanish in elementary schools in a Federal pilot program. His usual role with Asis is organizing groups to come visit but this time he was there by himself. He pitched in with the teaching and got along very well with the kids. The only other people at Asis were Nicole and Elizabeth - 2 high school seniors from Oregon that were brushing up on their Spanish.
The Chick Song
Buck (aka Ernesto) taught the kids a cute, little song in Spanish about a chick. Here they sing, perform the hand motions, and eat bananas all at the same time...man our kids are talented! Although they complained of boredom sometimes and occasionally would go and sit with Dara during her lessons, the kids did well -- Ari especially. You could almost see his brain soaking everything in like a sponge. Within a day or two he had learned how to conjugate regular verbs. Alvaro told him that he has had plenty of people there who couldn’t get that down within 3 weeks. Add that to the monkeys, toucans, caimans, swimming in the river (note: kids swimming in the river, caimans in the lagoon not near the river), walks in the jungle and picking coconuts out of the trees and you can well imagine what a great setting it is for Spanish lessons. In addition, they got to help me out doing some of the volunteer work I was doing - feeding the animals, painting, and helping to build a kitchen area for the animals’ food.
We also lucked out with the kids across the street from where we were staying. Even though they didn’t speak English (except Jose Daniel kept saying “perro - dog; pollo - chicken”) and ours spoke little Spanish, that did not to stop them from having a great time
Funny Ducks
These funny ducks (can't remember their name) like to stand on this skinny branch, on one leg, not moving. for hours at a time. together. Although we come from different cultures that are worlds apart, it is readily apparent that kids are kids. When Ellie sometimes wouldn’t touch her food, but then later ate everything in sight, Maria said that Ti-Ti is exactly the same. Or when the Flintstones was on television (in Spanish) and Ari couldn’t take his eyes off the set while he chuckled and giggled, or when there was mud to be stomped in, rocks to be thrown, sticks to be swung -- Jose Daniel was the same as Ari.
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Thanks for the report of your Asis adventure. Sounds like everyone had a great time. Perhaps Ellie can learn to sing her Turkey Song in Spanish, to go along with the Chick Song. (Un pavo es un pajaro comico....?) I don't think Ari's ever had such long hair -- looks good. We look forward (noww that you have the technology) to what's going on now that you're back from Asis.