Reflection #3: Options & Choices

Today, I did something most un-Costa Rican at lunch.

Today's Lunch

In Zapote to deliver my remaining course materials to the school office, I decided to have lunch at a nearby soda that I knew offered excellent meals.

I was one of the first lunch customers so had to wait a few minutes for my meal to be ready.

When the owner of the soda proudly delivered my hot, heaping plate, I was delighted with how delicious it looked...and amazed at how much food was piled high on the platter.

In clockwise order around the platter were huge servings...easy double the North American norm...of green salad, beans, rice and fried plantains, topped by a fillet of fish that must have been 8” long and 4” wide.

The size of this meal was typical for a soda, as was the price: about $3.35.

The fact that I did not eat all of this meal was not typically Costa Rican. I left enough of everything but salad to feed another non-Tico.

Yes, Ticos have hearty appetites. And much of what they eat is high in fat, salt, sugar and carbs.

Very soon after arriving here, I made the decision to go easy on meals like today's lunch, but to enjoy as much fresh fruit as I wanted. Good choice!

Positive Experiences

Walking home from Zapote (got home before the rain started today, so far I am still dry), I found myself reflecting on what a positive and happy experience I have had here. Certainly it's a beautiful country and the people whom I've met and interacted with are wonderful.

But in so many ways, exercising available options and making the small choices of life, like what and how much to eat, have been a continuing source of joy.

I was happy to find a couple of pairs of good quality casual slacks that were on sale for less than $6.00 each AND fit.

That happiness was enhanced when I found a neighbour lady who was able to shorten and hem the slacks for me for about $9.00 for both pairs.

Similarly when the shoulder strap on a recently purchased weekend size bag broke, with some effort, I found a man who was able to repair the strap, quickly and inexpensively.

What was truly gratifying was that all of these transactions, the purchase, alterations and repair were done in a combination of Spanish and sign-language.

Sure I could have chosen to buy slacks at Winners back in Toronto, had the slacks altered at the mall and given the bag away. These would have been easy, no-brainer decisions. But it was truly gratifying to find and exercise local options for those small choices.

Little Achievements

Certainly, our major accomplishments and successes make huge contributions to our happiness.

But so do the little achievements, like completing small transactions in a foreign language.

Throughout my life, I have been plagued by the consequences of default decisions. Those are the decisions that we simply let happen to us, instead of consciously making deliberate choices for specific reasons.

Thanks to the lady who shortened my slacks and the man who fixed my bag, I now know how gratifying it can be to make choices consciously and exercise options proactively, regardless of how small and relatively insignificant they may appear.

A good lesson, well learned. What a great souvenir of this wonderful country!

Reflection #2: Things That Are Different Can Work Quite Well

From a North American perspective, there are many aspects of life in Costa Rica that shouldn't work. But they do work...and work quite well.

300 Routes

Take the bus system for example.

There are more than 300 bus routes in Costa Rica. The government puts these routes up for tender by privately owned companies.

The routes are awarded to the companies whose tenders best meet defined criteria, which presumably include specific area to be served and fares.

As a result there are hundreds of companies operating thousands of buses in serving these routes.

For those of us accustomed to publicly owned municipal transportation systems and one huge private company—Greyhound--dominating the private sector, the patch-work quilt approach in Costa Rica seems chaotic. But in fact, it works quite well.

In the central valley, where the majority of the population lives, hundreds of buses carrying thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of passengers make their way to and from downtown San Jose every day.

In outlying communities such as Alajuela, Curridabat, Desamparados, Escazu, Guadalupe, San Francisco, Uruca and Zapote, these buses pick up passengers at unmarked stops or wherever the passengers flag down their buses.

The buses themselves range from the strictly utilitarian models such as the flat nose Bluebird buses that serve San Francisco to the spiffier late model Mercedes and Volvo units that serve upscale Uruca and Zapote.

In San Jose each route has its own unmarked spot on some unnamed street... somewhere in the downtown area.

Changing buses means paying full fare on the second, third, or perhaps even fourth bus to be taken. But that's OK...fares seldom go higher than 400 colones or about 75¢.

Outside The GAM

A similar situation exists outside the Gran Area Metropolitana (GAM), which is roughly the urban area surrounding San Jose, which in turn is most of the Central Valley.

One is that there are of course fewer long distance bus companies, which operate out of about 15 terminals scattered around San Jose.

The terminals range from the tired and old, dirty and dangerous 'Coca Cola' to the sleek and modern Gran Terminal Caribe.

Coca Cola, which is little more than a wide alleyway is the former Coca Cola bottling plant. At this terminal, which serves about a dozen companies, passengers routinely sit on their luggage to prevent it from being stolen.

When scheduling arrivals at Coca Cola, most people try to arrive during the daylight hours.

The danger factor may or may not decrease with the new presence of armed police officers. That of course depends upon the vigilance of the individual police officers and how long the increased police profile initiated by the new security minister remains in place.

The Gran Terminal Caribe is the cleanest and best bus terminal I have ever seen. It also serves about a dozen companies, all of which serve the Eastern part of Costa Rica.

The spotlessly clean terminal includes 3 separate food courts offering everything from North American fast food favourites to typical Costa Rican and Caribbean food.

Regardless of company or terminal, all long distance buses match...and in many cases exceed...Greyhound standards.

Tica buses, which operate on routes from San Jose to other Central American countries and Mexico are far superior to anything I have ever seen wearing the legendary greyhound logo.

Similarly, the bus that I took back from Manuel Antonio last week was cleaner and more comfortable than any Greyhound bus I have ever been on.

Regardless of which route or area buses serve, from my experience they share 3 characteristics:

1. The fares are very low.

Inside the GAM, fares range from about 25¢ about 75¢.
Outside the GAM the fare for a 4-hour bus ride is typically $5.00-$7.00.

2. They get passengers where they are going...usually on schedule.

It is not uncommon for drivers to take detours to avoid congestion.

3. The buses are litter-free

Every bus has a litter basket by the back door, where departing passengers deposit food wrappers and other debris from the journey.

As I said at the beginning, from a North American perspective, the crazy patch-work quilt of the Costa Rican bus system shouldn't work. But it does.

Not only does it work, it works very well.

If the purpose of a public bus system is move a large number of passengers, inexpensively and on schedule, the Costa Rican bus system achieves this purpose better than most North American public transportation systems.

The Costa Rican bus system is one of many examples of things that from a North American perspective simply should not work...but in fact work better than their North American counterparts.

The moral of the message:

just because something is different from what you are used to,
it does not not mean that it is not good and that it will not work.

Into The Home Stretch: Reflection #1

I am now into the home stretch of my Costa Rican Experience.

It's time to do some reflecting on the whole experience before heading back to Toronto on Saturday.

I'll be taking a direct Air Canada flight from San Jose to Toronto.

There is something immensely comforting about flying back to Canada on our national airline.

And the comfort level is even higher when the fare is the lowest available, even including flight arrangements with stop-overs in various US cities.

Options

Looking back, it seems that the best place to start reflecting is the series of posts before I left for Costa Rica.

On January 14, I wrote about the prospect of facing too many options, emphasizing teaching English.

If you have been following my blog, you know that I did get a job teaching business English. Although the required 4-month commitment ends on June 16, my last class was on May 31.

From a financial perspective, teaching English was less successful than I had hoped.

Based on my pre-departure research, I anticipated about 20 hours of teaching each week.

When I was hired, I was promised a minimum of 8 hours weekly (at an hourly rate of 4100 colones...or about $7.50, a good rate for an experienced teacher).

As it turned out, I'm not sure I ever had a full 8-hour week. Most were in the range of 0-4 hours of teaching.

It also turned out that each hour of teaching required about 1½ hours of preparation, travel and administrative time. This meant that each 2-hour class, for which I was paid about $15.00, consumed about 5 hours worth of time.

Thus, my effective hourly rate was about $3.00, which is what a maid in a 5-star Costa Rican hotel might earn.

However, financial and bus travel considerations aside, teaching was a very positive and rich learning experience.

Surprise #1

Two aspects of teaching that really surprised me.

Hired to teach business English in a third-world or developing country, I had expected the students to be roughly comparable to high school graduates.

I could not have been more mistaken.

My two students were among the brightest and most capable people I have ever met... anywhere.

One has two MBAs and runs a company with about 200 employees that generates about $25 million dollars in sales annually.

The other is an electrical engineer, about to start on his MBA, who is about half way towards his sales goal of $50 million for the current fiscal year.

On a daily basis, each of these individuals interacts in English, with other senior business executives from North & South America, Europe & Asia, sometimes with, and sometimes without, the assistance of interpreters.

Their success is in no way dependent upon their living and working in Costa Rica. Both would be equally successful anywhere in the corporate world.

Surprise #2

The second surprise was how woefully inadequate and inappropriate the teaching format and resources were.

As a perfect example of how to teach children, the proscribed approach was rich with 'say after me' repetitions, exercises, classroom drills, workbooks, quizzes and tests. Arghh!!

Published in 2006...in England no less...the text book is a magazine-comic book hybrid, probably most suited to junior high school students.

The accompanying CD even includes pop songs with sing-along lyrics printed in the book. I know that karaoke is the favourite bar activity here (yet another reason to avoid bars!!) but this is totally ridiculous.

Lots of people in the world of ESL seem blissfully ignorant of the reality of Andragogy (the art and science of helping adults learn): helping adults learn is a lot different than teaching children.

As often happens, a totally unrelated conversation offered a possible insight into the use of inappropriate teaching resources.

Being Grateful

Last Thursday, in conversation with Anita, the hostess of the Casa Buena Vista where I was staying, she told me about Steven Segal's offer to help the Costa Rica police with their martial arts training.

From there it was a short step to the arrogance that many foreigners display in their offers of assistance to third world or developing countries such as Costa Rica.

Anita, herself a foreigner and also a 35-year resident of CR, said many foreigners think that they are smarter and more qualified than Costa Ricans.

She suggested that this mindset leads them to believe that Costa Ricans should be grateful for whatever help comes their way.

I confess that as a foreigner this was my mindset when I started teaching English.

Happily, my first class with my first student put an end to it.

Not everyone in Costa Rica...or other developing countries for that matter...is a smiling souvenir-seller.

A New Option

The world of adult education is rich with alternative approaches to helping adults learn English.

One of the best would be coaching...not structured classroom teaching. And online, on demand...not in person, in structured classes.

Hmmmm...now there is an interesting new business opportunity to ponder on Saturday's flight.