FARO

San Jose Centro Ciudad

Tomorrow at 9:20 (after my morning grammar class) I will head into the city in order to build my new FARO route. FARO F=Facilitator (a teacher at the Institute) A= Ayudante (native helper) R= Ruta (route) O= Oir,Observar and Oraganizar (Listen,Observe and be Organized!) I need to find 10 native people that will agree to meet with me twice per week for 15 minutes in order to discuss themes that I have pre-selected to study. Each theme will include an emphasis on an area of grammar which I must use, for example: direct and indirect objects, any of the tenses (past perfect, past imperfect, future, subjunctives, conditionals, etc...) Some themes I have chosen include: education in Costa Rica, poverty y economic factors, the government, Costa Rica's lack of military, Christianity, their perception of U.S., bullfighting, soccer, etc... I have memorized an introduction in order to explain my program and what is required of them. Please pray that I am able to find men that are patient, interesting and easy to understand. I am both excited and scared of this new arrangement! There are 2 other students in the program and we will meet for an hour as a group on Mondays and Fridays to share our experiences and to pass in our required reports. In addition to my route I also have to report on 1 activity per week in which I spoke nothing but spanish for 20 minutes or more. I have begun putting some ideas together for activities: visiting an orphanage, visiting the largest mattress factory in Costa Rica (here in San Jose... I thought maybe I could show them how to build a comfortable mattress too!), going to the National Museum with a guide and going to a nice restaurant with my wife and speaking only spanish together. (I like that one the best!) My ayudante (helper, who I have not found yet) needs to be a native speaker that can also speak some english. He will help me to put together (in proper Costa Rican lingo) questions to ask on my route and to phrase my reports back to my facilitator. I have been told that FARO is a way to accelerate my speaking and comprehension and I pray that this is the case... because it is definately stretching me at the moment!!