Malpais? Not at all: Wonderful country!

Yesterday mi daughter had to attend a Malpais concert. There was a long earth wake in the afternoon and I was so afraid, that I decided to go with her and her friends. I am not a concert person. I love music, any music, but with a comfortable volume and in a nice place. Jumping among heads and yelling trying to communicate with the person right after me is not my idea of enjoying music.

Anyway, when I arrived to the gym, I realized that I knew the musical group. Fidel and Jaime Gamboa played in UCR pretil when I was there. Tapado Vargas is part of Editus. But the most amazing part was seeing Manuel Obregón playing the keybord wearing just an old, simple, blue t-shirt and a wrinkled pair of pants… I had attended his piano concerts and of course I like the Orquesta de la Papaya with those rare instruments made of turtles shells, pieces of wood, bamboo, sea shells, and so on; but this night was completely different.

Manuel Obregon is our Minister of Culture. He was wearing suit two hours before. And now he was in a school full of teenagers without Security Personal. His music colleagues made fun of him. Fidel Gamboa said: Now we are going to take advantage of “all the culture” that we have in this stage… and they played together a funny melody called “El Portoncito” and Minister Obregon did the funny chorus and made female voices…
Manuel Obregon is a wonderful professional musician. He is a classical pianist. He loves music and he plays a lot of instruments. Yesterday night he played marimba (La Coyolera and El Torito) and acordeón.
After the concert, some teenagers went to take photos with the musicians and they were not interested in the Minister. They looked for Jaime Gamboa and Tapado.
I felt really proud of my country. My daughter is a reporter from her school newspaper and she asked to Jaime Gamboa if Malpais is going to change because of the Ministry of Culture, and I almost cry when I was listened to the recorded interview and the musician said: “Para nada, nosotros somos unos ‘pisos de tierra’ y así vamos a seguir!”
This is our country: A place where a Minister can be in a public place without bodyguards. A place where a person is important because of his real hard work and skills, not because someone in the Government decides that he is good in some political position.

This is our Minister of Culture. This is our CULTURE.

San Isidro Labrador, quita el agua y pon el sol...

When I was a child, I used to sing this little song when it was rainy: San isidro Labrador, quita el agua y pon el sol (Saint Isidor Farmer, put away the rain and bring the sun) in order to go outside to play.

The Catholic Sanctoral says: "Isidore the Laborer, also known as Isidore the Farmer (1070-May 15, 1130) was a Spanish day laborer known for his goodness toward the poor and animals. Isidore frequented Holy Mass every morning but often reported to work late. Late, though he was, his plowing was nevertheless accomplished by angels that resulted in three times more productivity." That is why, Saint Isidore became the Catholic Patron Saint of Farmers.

In our country, we had a lot of towns named after him. In Heredia, there is San Isidro, a little country town with a wonderful landscape of San José, and one of the most beautiful Costa Rica Neo-Gothic Catholic Churches.

In May, all towns named San Isidro have “Fiestas Patronales” and the Catholic Church organizes Oxen Cart Parades, Animal Baptism, and music contests.

Last Friday, Professor Olga invited the Cultura y Lengua Meta group to visit San Isidro de Heredia and to enjoy the Cimarrona’s Contest. A “cimarrona” is a traditional band, formed by, professional or not, musicians who play popular music with some percussion and wind instruments.

We had a wonderful weather, not cold at usually it is in this own. The professor asked for parking the cars a little far from the Church because of the crowd. I thought: “What crowd? This is a little town and nobody will come over there”. By the time we left, there were cars all around three blocks from the Church!!


There were a lot of people in the Church’s garden. Families together, little kids with baby caps, elder people, a lot of teenagers and kids groups, everybody was at the Fair.

After a while, we went to have some dinner at the “Hotel”.
It was very surprising because the cafeteria was a big, clean, and elegant place. The food was traditional: tamales, picadillo de papa o arracache, carne mechada, arroz con pollo, lomo fingido, arroz con leche, agua dulce, etc.


I was impressed by the absence of alcoholic beverages and consequently, no drunk people walking around.

We had a wonderful time. And it was a generous offer from our professor who wanted to share her town and traditions with her students. This is culture alive!

Teaching Experience in the UNA

Last week, I had an amazing teaching experience with my classmate Randall. We prepare two lessons about culture to his Inglés Integrado group. The group has a low-intermediate level and there are 30 students in it. They are students from all Univesidad Nacional Schools.
On Monday 10th, I started the class talking about culture. A brainstorm led the students to express their feelings about culture. Then, we talked about stereotypes. The students had a lot of fun pointing out negative stereotypes about “smelly” countries, extremely confident people, stereotypes about poverty or dirtiness form some social groups in every country, and of course, positive stereotypes as tasty food, wonderful crafts, friendly people and exotic environments.
Now, the mood of the class was ready to work in groups. Students got in groups of 4 or 5 and every group chose an envelope. Each envelope had pictures about well known aspects of an specific culture: United States, France, India, China, Africa and Mexico.
Each group had a big board paper and markers in order to create a descriptive chart about the chosen culture.
The group needed a lot of helping in vocabulary, but the students had a lot of information about every culture, so they shared anecdotes, movies comments, gossips, and more.
The students understood each other very well, and they shared personal supplies as color markers, stickers, glue, and information between work teams.
With the visual aid ready, each group presented to the whole class some aspects about the culture of India, China, United States, France, Africa and Mexico.

They needed a lot of help for the speech but they were enthusiastic and chatty.

For me, the experience with university students was new and I enjoyed it a lot. It is different to teach a second language to children, high school students or adults who want to speak English. These university people are full of dreams, work, experiences and hope. They share what they want to do in a few years: travel and make money to buy all this particular things from some cultures: jewelry, paintings, crafts, and they want to visit museums, parks, monuments, places full of History and magic as the Chinesse Wall, Tah Mahal, Egypt Pyramids, Sahara Desert, New Delhi, and hundreds of exotic places. One of the student talked about visit the Spatial Station MIR and moon walking.

For the Assessment part, they need a lot of help because it was the first time that they use that kind of rubrics. I was glad to read their comments, because they were suportive and nice.

They finished the class time having fun, laughing and asking for new words in English. I felt comfortable with them and I loved the experience. Luckily, I had a second chance with them observing Randall’s teaching performance and that is another good anecdote. Please check his blog to enjoy it: http://cultureanduniverse.blogspot.com/.