An English Teacher Dreams of Costa Rica

Costa Rica Dreams

Interview with Bethany Kirk, currently the Director and CEO of Instituto Estelar Bilingue, a language school based in Liberia, Costa Rica. I interviewed Bethany on the first anniversary of the opening of her school.

 

 Part One: How she got here

Five years ago, Bethany and her then-husband came to Costa Rica with dreams of an ideal life. As newlyweds they shared the plan of getting away from California to travel and work in a Latin-American country. They chose Costa Rica because of its beaches and because they could improve their Spanish speaking skills, and, since Bethany had an M.A. in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages), it was a no-brainer that she was well-qualified to teach English in any situation that presented itself to her.

They planned for two years before finally making their dream a reality. During that time, Bethany unexpectedly inherited some money, which helped them to achieve their goal a little sooner and, later, helped her to establish the language school.

Although they had both been looking forward to making this move, at the last minute Bethany’s husband got cold feet and didn’t want to follow through. She encouraged him by assuring him that he could spend the first six months writing his novel. Because of her recent windfall, they could afford to live on her modest income as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher until his book was published. But this proved to be a disastrous idea. He stayed home alone all day with his writing, while she was under the constant pressure of adjusting to a new language and culture. Bethany would come home after work, eager to talk to her husband. The first thing she would ask him was, “So, what did you write today?” After awhile, that was all they had to talk about because he wasn’t interested in learning Spanish or exploring the country.

At the end of the six months, Bethany came home from work one day and found her husband’s bags packed and ready, by the door. He had bought his return ticket to California and gave her a days’ notice that he was leaving. Bethany was suddenly alone with her dream of living in Costa Rica.

This very painful experience taught Bethany that some people really hate living in Costa Rica. While travel advertisements lure people to Costa Rica with visions of the pura vida, in reality, Costa Rica is hard on relationships. Only those couples who come here with similar goals and realistic, positive perspectives will survive the pressures. Her advice: Don’t come to Costa Rica expecting to find lasting love.

Bethany is now enjoying success as the founder and director of her own language school, but this did not happen overnight. She began as a part-time English teacher at Idiomas International, one of many private language schools based in the central valley. Bethany found this job while planning her trip to Costa Rica via internet searches and interviews. During the first six months working with Idiomas International, she only taught eight or nine hours per week, and after getting a teaching contract this was increased to 20 hours/wk, which was still not enough to live on.

To supplement her income she did office work that paid around $5/hr. Through this, she discovered that she had a knack for administration and creating curriculum manuals. This talent paid off when she was offered a position as director of II, with a year’s contract. Although the job paid quite a bit more than that of a part-time teacher, she became unhappy with working in San Jose. It was a tough job, but she stayed the year. Then she found a position as director of Intercultura, Centro de Idiomas, in Heredia, which is a smaller, nicer city than San Jose.

Part Two: How I met her

This is where I come into the story.

Unbeknownst to me, my desire to come to Costa Rica for adventure and teaching experience was not an original idea. I was following a well-worn path that many others, like Bethany, had already traveled before me. In my search for a dream life in Costa Rica, I, too, found the Web site of Idiomas International and contacted them to inquire about a teaching job. Lo and behold, it was Bethany who contacted me to set up and conduct the interview. She was friendly and frank. In fact, my impression of her at that time was that not only did she not paint a rosy picture of Costa Rica; she did just the opposite. Bethany was extremely honest--to a fault--about the drawbacks of living in Costa Rica. She said that San Jose was noisy, dirty and dangerous, and that I should think long and hard before deciding to live in a third world city. She sent me a fact sheet of information about the cost of living and things I should know about the foods and lifestyle there.

Perhaps Bethany was doing something new in her field: warning idealists like me not to listen to all the tourist hype about international living.

I owe Bethany the credit for my first real introduction to Costa Rica. Our interview ended up as a friendly conversation in which I tried to encourage her to find some solutions to her dissatisfaction with San Jose. “Maybe you can go to the pool and walk in the park more?”

I had no idea that Bethany would eventually become one of my best and most dependable friends there.

After our interview, I took Bethany’s advice and did some real soul-searching about the offer to work in San Jose. I decided I wanted to give it a try in spite of her caveats. But when I contacted her about two weeks later to say, “Definitely Yes!” I received an automatic email response that she was no longer working at Idiomas International. This should have been my initiation into how quickly things can change in Costa Rica. The message referred me to Bethany’s new email address at Intercultura, so I contacted her again.

Bethany replied to me from her new job at Intercultura, but things were complicated. She said that, since she had originally interviewed me for the previous school, I would now have to go through a whole new hiring process for Intercultura. And unfortunately, Intercultura was not currently hiring teachers, because it was mid-term in the school year….Would I like to come to see her and have an interview when I arrived in Heredia?

So that’s what I did. As it turned out, my Costa Rica contact lived in Heredia, so I decided to share an apartment with her and try my luck as an itinerant English teacher. During my second or third venture into Heredia Centro, I found Intercultura Centro de Idiomas. There was Bethany, sitting at her desk in the Director’s office with a sunny smile, dressed in colorful, summery clothes and handcrafted jewelry. It was a refreshing experience to meet an American acquaintance in this strange world. We had a friendly chat first, and then a professional interview. The next afternoon she hired me to teach a few evening classes.

Intercultura Centro de Idiomas, Heredia, Costa Rica

But I soon became too busy commuting to two other language schools in the area, and some of my classes at Intercultura were cancelled. Bethany and I got to know one another a little bit while I taught at Intercultura, but my other job was far away in Santa Ana and demanded more of me, so after a couple of months at her school, I resigned. I was stressed out and too busy—commuting all over the place, six days a week for 16-hour days. Bethany was very nice and handled my resignation very tactfully. In other words, we parted on good terms. After I left Intercultura, Bethany and I bumped into each other occasionally at the town pool or on the street.

As the months passed, I moved on to new adventures. I was hired to teach at the National University, in Heredia, as a visiting professor. By then I had been in Costa Rica for six months, and the early nightfall and rainy season were getting to me. One, long evening I emailed Bethany to ask her if she wanted to meet in town for a beer. She was also ready for a friendship. We finally found some time to meet after hours to share some Imperial and compare notes about our experiences as English teachers and single women in this strange culture. Our friendship is history.

Part Three: What now?

Why she stays; what advice she has for others.

For the rest of the time we lived in the central valley, Bethany and I met weekly for an intercambio with her Columbian friend, Lily. We “Three Musketeers,” the name we gave ourselves, encouraged one another through all the ups and downs of our parallel journeys in Costa Rica. Lily, bilingual in English and Spanish, had been living in Costa Rica for ten years, working at Hewlett Packard in the customer service department. Bethany had a Tico boyfriend who lived in Guanacaste. She started thinking about moving to be near him and start her own language school with his help. At our intercambios Bethany would update us on the progress of her new business venture. She found a building for the school, and in October Lily and I, along with Mandy, another teacher at Intercultura (we three were elected as Bethany’s Board of Directors), spent a weekend in Liberia helping to paint and clean Bethany’s new school.

 

Members of the Board, November 2010

The rest is history. Instituto Estelar Bilingue opened last January and now has 115 students!

Bethany is following her five-year plan to stay in Costa Rica to see how the school progresses.

What gave Bethany the courage to take this new risk in a foreign country, all alone?

During her years as director of two language schools she gained a lot of expertise in teaching and administration. Finally she decided to take a risk and open her own school. And, her father has been very supportive in offering sage business advice. Finally, after a cancer scare, she realized that “life is too short,” and decided to follow her dream.

Her Tico novio was instrumental in helping her move toward this dream, but when she decided not to make him her business partner, the relationship began to unravel. So here she is, one year later, the director of a growing and vibrant language school. Her next project is to expand the Spanish language school component for Americans who come to Costa Rica as tourists.

 

Bethany, Director of Instituto Estelar Bilingue, at its first graduation ceremony

 I asked Bethany what advice she would offer to prospective English teachers in search of adventure in Costa Rica. She says, “There are no shortages of people who come here. The people who do come here, after all my warnings, are either not listening, or they are really tough.”

Like me. And, like a few other teachers who’ve come to stay. But be warned: English teachers rarely stay longer than a year. If they do stay, usually they move on to other, more secure employment…or, marry Ticos. But, Bethany warns, bicultural relationships have their own challenges.

I owe a lot to Bethany.

In fact, I don’t think I would have survived in Costa Rica as long as I did had we not become friends along the way.

And, now I am the one offering advice:

Don’t come to Costa Rica looking for a relationship.

Don’t come to Costa Rica expecting an easy life.

Don’t come to Costa Rica with a get-rich-quick scheme.

If you come here at all, come to learn about yourself and to change your life.

Finally, accept the people as they are, and adapt to the culture; don’t expect to change it.

You’ll be a lot happier living in a second world country if you come with low expectations and openness to accepting different ways of doing things. For example, there is no mail delivery because there are no street addresses. This is actually wonderful—because there is no junk mail!

There are many good things about living here.

The life is simple. People take things one day at a time and enjoy the moment, en este momento.

The air and light are pure. The landscape is charming and the beaches are fabulous. The weekly farmers’ markets offer the widest variety of the freshest foods you could possibly imagine. Buying food from local vendors and sodas is safe, wholesome and fun. The people are friendly, polite, gentle and good-humored. There is no need for air conditioning or heating because the temperature is just perfect (except sometimes in Guanacaste). Life is lived mostly out of doors and the windows are always open because mosquitoes and flies are not a problem.

So, if you are not afraid of loneliness and insecurity and a long rainy season, life can be a delightful adventure!

Pura Vida.

Take a virtual visit to Bethany’s school:

http://gettingaroundtuit.com/category/instituto-estelar-bilingue/

Do you have the courage to do something unconventional?

“Do you have the courage to do something unconventional in order to find happiness?”

I was relaxing on the sofa, relishing an old classic on a cold winter’s eve. These words sent an electric jolt through me. I sat up. The question, spoken by Mr. Rochester to Jane Eyre, was directed at me.

I imagined Charlotte Bronte’s voice (ironically deflected through that of a man), asking herself this question. Charlotte Bronte, tragic heroine of her own life story: survived the girlhood curses of boarding school and tuberculosis only to die in childbirth. But through Jane Eyre, her magnum opus, Charlotte’s spirit soared free of the conventional life of a woman of her era. Did she find happiness in the courageous act of publishing, or was she happy, anticipating the birth of the only child to be born into that unfortunate family?

I was not asking to be challenged, that movie night on the sofa; I was actually looking for something warm and fuzzy to shield me from grim reality. But Charlotte’s question haunted me.

Do I have the courage to find happiness now, in my time?

Now, in a time when every line of convention is blurred, what is the unconventional thing I would do? I already knew the answer. It took the asking to find courage to consider. I would. I mean, I do. I would do it. I would do what I have already considered, many times. In fact, I have my list; I have a blueprint already in my hands. I was just waiting for the passion in Charlotte’s (alias Rochester’s) voice, “I double-dog-dare ya!”

I would quit my job and go back to Costa Rica and live on the beach.

I would write books and publish poetry in New Yorker magazine. I would do all of the creative hobbies that have been placed on indefinite hold while I struggle on and on as a wage slave.

Now, I know that happiness is not to be found in marriage and family, for society these days does everything it can to promote the fallacy of a happy home. I know now that happiness is not the exclusive property of romantic love, although love is something I don’t want to live without. I know now that happiness is not necessarily found in a career, or in having material wealth; otherwise why are so many successful people still looking for happiness?

But by now I think I do know where happiness is to be found. And I want to have the courage to go and find it before I die.

Happiness is not something you can find, the way you would find a can that’s labeled “sunshine” in some cheesy souvenir shop. It is tritely ethereal, fleeting and shy, like Tinkerbell. It is captured briefly in a moment, as the eye catches a glimpse of Venus in the sea foam while watching the surf at sunrise on a deserted beach. The secret is in catching it, not in keeping it; in being fully present enough to even recognize happiness as it approaches.

To me, happiness is the sensation of being fully alive enough to be creative. It’s being authentic. It’s taking risks. Living simply and living in the present tense unburden me from worries and restraints and free me to create what the heart and spirit bring to mind. Happiness is being free of presumptions that keep me in my place: “You can’t do that,” or “You must do things this way,” or “You must have this.” Happiness is freedom from fear of insecurity. It is “freedom from” and “freedom to.”

Actually, I think now that happiness is not about doing or having anything. Doing and having are what get in the way of it. Happiness is a state of being in which hands, heart and spirit are fully integrated. In old-fashion workman’s terms, it’s being in tune, being true, being plumb, being sound. If my spirit can express itself through my work, that is happiness.

And that is what I would do. All that’s lacking now is the courage to do the unconventional thing. The unconventional thing I would do is to have the courage to resign from my career, sell my stuff and reunite my spirit, heart and hands as a team to accomplish something good in this life. I don’t want to live the remainder of my life as a lonely coward, afraid of possibility, then die a conventional pauper. Charlotte Bronte may have died a pauper, but her unconventional legacy lives on, asking anyone who is paying attention:

“Do you have the courage to do something unconventional...?”

Common Sense , Dancing

I'm learning not to be afraid to take little steps of faith.

They always lead somewhere.

Maybe that's what dancing is...

Confessions of an Empowered Female ESL Teacher

Confessions of an Empowered Female ESL Teacher

I surprised myself this evening. During a discussion at a Women, War and Peace seminar I suddenly blurted out, “I don’t think I want to teach these self-righteous, dogmatic, misogynist young men anymore!”

Huh? Where did that come from? I sheepishly refrained from offering any more unfiltered contributions to the discussion, then went home and cried. My sudden catharsis had come as a complete surprise, to all of us. What came next was also a surprise: I found myself thinking about former students. And then the tears began in earnest.

And as my heart warmed to the memories, it occurred to me that I’m suffering from homesickness: homesickness for the gentle spirits of these people who have touched my life as I taught them to speak English.

So, here’s to beloved students-past.

…I miss my sweet Somali grandmothers, like Sarah, who couldn’t get my name right, so she would call me, “Teacher Honey. That’s a good name,” and smile. The fates of older African women like Sarah were heart-wrenching. They’d never learned to read in their own language; we didn’t have much hope of their employability, but they faithfully came to class and did their best to learn English, holding their worksheets upside down with grace and beauty.

In one of my classes there were up to 35 students each day, representing up to 10 different ethnic groups and languages. From Africa alone, I had students from Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia and Congo, each with their own language, culture and religion. I loved every minute of it!

…I miss my gentle Burmese and Vietnamese farmers.

I still laugh when I recall Tee-Ray, whom I called to the front of the class one morning for a demonstration of, “What are you wearing today?” Realizing, too late, that he was wearing a skirt, I asked the class, “What is Tee-Ray wearing?” and saw he was wearing a peasant’s rendition of the stylish wraparound. I tried to keep a straight face as the class responded, “skirt”---but he got it: the next day he came to class dressed in men’s slacks. But he no longer looked as dignified.

…I still wear the silver ring a Bhutanese woman gave me when she saw that I didn’t wear much jewelry. These women welcomed me into their social circle. This is how I learned that married women wear lots of jewelry.

…I still remember the words of one middle-aged husband and father from Bhutan who responded, during a lesson about workplace literacy, “Teacher, we are farmers. We do not know any of these things.” Oh, how I wished they were not being forced to adapt to our industrial culture. But it was my job to teach them how to survive in my country, and I did so with as much compassion and tact as I could muster.

…I remember a young Moslem woman who would come into my classroom just to look at me. She would smile and take my hand and say earnestly, “You are good. You are good. I want you to come to my house.”

…I miss my eager Korean teachers, who came to the United States in the summer to study intensively in order to be better English teachers in their own classrooms. I helped them to prepare a lesson to present as a practicum at a local school.

Before departing, each student presented me with a delicate gift from their country. I still have a wooden fan, a simple game played with carved sticks and a colorful, silk lucky bag, which I used to hold menudos--small change--for the bus rides when I lived in Costa Rica.

…I miss my Mexican and Guatemalan and Honduran students who fled to the United States to fill the hungry bellies of their children and were determined to improve their English in order to provide a better future for their families. I learned not to ask too many personal questions because it was too painful to learn the answers.

And I miss my university students in Costa Rica. These were some of my hippest freshman.

Here is one of my listening/speaking classes during our weekly language laboratory.

Here is one of my classes of funcionarios, academic professionals who knew more about biology and engineering than I ever will. Just today I received a request from one of these professors, asking me to help translate an abstract for an academic article she was publishing.

For their final exam, they researched the topic of oil exploration and debated the pros and cons, men against women. After all; in 2010, Costa Rica elected a woman to be their president.

And in the United States, I enjoyed spending time with Study Abroad students from Brazil, Japan and China, who came to my home for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and shared their own cultures with me.

So. Returning from my reverie…

Tonight I surprised myself with this sudden homesickness for ESL students-past.

Why? I wondered. Then suddenly it dawned on me. There is a stark contrast between the students I teach now—self-righteous, dogmatic, narrow-minded young men, most of them in their early twenties (and just one woman)—and those gentle refugees and immigrants and humble Korean teachers who once filled my classrooms and still hold a place in my heart.

The students I teach now are sent by their authoritarian government to learn English as a mandate for competition in the global economy; the king wants his men to have a better image with Westerners. As one student told me, their country needs men who are accustomed to Western culture in order to do business with them. Some of them have a sincere desire to learn, but many of them are here just because they have a scholarship, a free ride to spend time in the United States. Many of them go to night clubs and wild parties on the weekends, yet, at the same time they adhere to the belief that theirs is the only true religion. Though they are friendly and sociable, they sincerely believe theirs is a superior culture. They are not here to fill the bellies of hungry children or adapt to an industrial culture because they have been dispossessed of their homes: they are here because their king wants to compete in the global economy. They wear Gucci sunglasses and clothing with designer labels I’ve never seen before.

Tonight, while watching a film about the conflicts in Afghanistan and the continued suppression of women, something occurred to me. If I believe in justice and equality for all humans, should I be helping misogynists whose mothers and sisters are not allowed to drive or go out alone in public?

Recently, I was struggling with some students who refused to follow my instructions, saying they already knew how to write when it was clear their writing abilities were far below the level required for admission to the university. The director held a meeting with the instructors and these students in an attempt to convince them to comply with our course policies. The students were not willing to accept the fact that their writing was not at an advanced level and they were worried about losing their scholarships. The solution: deflect responsibility. Then suddenly one of the students blurted out, “We want a MAN!” This instantly revealed the root of the matter, though perhaps they were not able to express it: their teacher the previous semester had been male, and now they had a female instructor. Not one of the teachers responded to this totally inappropriate outburst and the director, who is a woman, said nothing. Are we accommodating this misogyny in the name of multicultural diversity?

How can I take a stand for what I believe is ethical and just? The solitary female student in my class is covered up like some Halloween costume. She told me that she is allowed to remove her veil when she is with Americans but must cover herself in the presence of the male students from her country. It is difficult for her to speak with a black cloth over her mouth, and just as difficult for me to hear anything she says. I wonder: who is making the rules here? Am I permitted to make a rule that will allow a female student the freedom to speak without a cloth over her mouth? If I continue to accept things as they are, is there any hope that my example will penetrate the veil?

Or would it be best for me to resign in protest? In the end, I have to think about my own needs. Is it healthy for an empowered woman to subject herself to this inflexible male power paradigm, day after day?

I find myself longing for gentle, grateful, teachable latinos...and for the luxury of teaching without a salary. But this is no idle day dream. I know exactly where I want to go and what I want to do; all I need is a partnership with some willing nonprofit organization or group of philanthropists and my dream will be a reality.

The Right to Learn English: Speaking English = Dollars.

I learned this equation while researching my thesis for a degree in Linguistics. The global economy is based on English; those who want the English dollar must speak the language.

My research renewed a desire to live in an American country south of my own. In 2009, I moved to Costa Rica to teach English in the central valley but very early in my journey I decided that my heart belonged to the people of the Caribe Sur. To make a long story short (I hope you will read my book), I returned to the United States in 2011 with a vision to keep my connection with Costa Rica. I got a job teaching intensive English in a university but did not realize how challenging it would be to have students who were all male and all from the same ethnic group.

I went back to Costa Rica for the holidays. While there, I remembered my vision to help the residents of the Caribe Sur to learn English in order to enable them to participate in the tourism economy. One morning I took the bus from Puerto Viejo to Bri Bri and then a taxi to the mountain settlement of Volio to meet with Timoteo, a tribal leader. He came out of his simple dwelling to greet me with a customary kiss and a homemade frozen treat made from cacao and milk. We sat down and conversed in Spanish (a second language for both of us) while various members of his family—a baby sleeping in a hammock, young girls and their mothers, little boys on bicycles—paraded by. We talked about the need for the Bri Bri people to learn English. As it is now, he said, Bri Bri people are prevented from getting the jobs that interact with tourists because they are not fluent in English. His people are victims of economic discrimination because they can’t speak English; their villages are small and the local government does not have the funding to supply a full-time English teacher to the schools. I told him that I would love to help them but that I have to support myself somehow. We talked about the possibility of persuading the municipal government to fund an English class for adults; that way his people could take classes for free while I would receive some type of stipend for my services. We parted with another customary kiss—this time with feeling—and the promise to work toward our mutual goal.

If you are reading this and you want to become involved in helping to end poverty by providing indigenous people with an English teacher, please contact me.

Pura vida!

PHOTOS TO BE UPLOADED SOON!! I HAVE THEM IN MY DOCUMENT BUT AM AWAITING TECHNICAL SUPPORT.