Holes in His Pockets

It's a busy week, as I'm back doing Spanish classes, so it's back to long days at the school.

Spanish classes
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Both myself and Jack are doing classes this week. I qualify for 4 weeks of free classes because I've been over a year with the school, and I can pass them on to Jack. So he started on Book 1 yesterday.

The Colón
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Despite the fact that the currency, the Colón (with the emphasis on the second syllable, and therefore not the same pronunciation as your colon) is constantly falling, it continues to burn a hole in my pockets. Literally.

The coins are big, chunky and heavy. They range from ₡ 500 (about 76c) down to ₡5 (less than a cent), and I have holes in the pockets of every pair of jeans.

However, the Central Bank of Costa Rica has come to the rescue. The new ₡5 and ₡ 10 coins are tiny, and made out of metal so light that they're like something from a kids toy. They could blow away. And when they issue new coins, they don't recall the old ones. So there are now three versions of these coins in circulation. The big old silver ones, the mediums sized gold ones, and now the new monopoly money ones.

When we arrived a dollar would buy ₡467, now it will get you ₡519, so a fall of 10%. For this reason a lot of our bills and our rent are denominated in dollars.
Engrish.com
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My favourite website of the week is www.engrish.com. It highlights signs, notices and menus, mainly from Asia, which are in bad English. We were looking at it in the staff room the other day and they're hilarious.

For example the t-shirt that says Elvis is Dead, Sinatra is Dead, and me I feel also not so good. Or the I love NY, California shirt. Or the toy packaging that says A dangerous toy. This toy is being made for the extremely priority the good looks. The little part which suffocates when the sharp part which gets hurt is swallowed is contained generously. Only the person who can take responsibility by itself is to play. And I do like the Cut Throat Hair Salon.
God Save the Queen
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When we were coming back from the Hotel Fiesta (this is the third week it's featured, I'm getting great mileage out of it) I was dozing in the bus while a sing song got going down the back. I woke up to hear Julia, from Birmingham singing Rule Britannia, followed by God Save the Queen. When I looked back to see what was going on, my boss Barbara told me I should help her sing it.

I said it wasn't exactly my song. "But aren't you part of Britain?" she asked. "Isn't it England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland?"
Working Saturdays
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I've now finished my Saturday rotation. I work five weeks on and five weeks off on Saturdays between 9am and 3.30pm, so now I'm going to have a string of long 3 day weekends until I'm back again on 21 st October. The timing is perfect, as my sister Clara arrives on 29th September for 2 weeks, so hopefully we'll get a chance to do a bit of travelling.
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Well, that's it for another week. The weather continues to get wetter. The mornings are still beautiful, but the rain gets earlier every day, and lasts longer. Last weekend it didn't seem to stop at all. I'm watching the clock now, because I'm working in 20 minutes, so I've got to dash. Oh, if anyone didn't get last weeks mail, filtered because of a bad word, let me now and I'll send you the clean version!

Pura Vida,

Éamon

Sunday's headline from La Nación: Convicts with mental problems spend 20 years in psychiatric hospitals.