The David Kitson Library in Nosara began the new year with the intensive English as a Second Language course taught by interns from Middlebury College in Vermont.
This program has been scheduled every January for 17 years. Many local Costa Ricans have learned English by taking this course over successive years.
This year, 87 people enrolled, which is a goodly number of people as the library is limited in space and we only have four teachers. This year Hannah Smith, Eleanor Patterson, Elinor Itin and Daniel Balnes were our interns. They are exceptionally committed to the teaching program. We thank them for choosing to come to Costa Rica during the January term to teach the ESL course, which included very intensive classes four days a week for the entire month.
The morning classes are for the children and high school students and the evenings for adults. This year we added a special course for the Recycling Center ladies in the mornings to help them become comfortable with English terminology related to the recycling program. The 18th of January was the date for the annual “thank you party” for those who were library patrons for the year 2013. The gathering was held at the lovely home of Angela and Ben Phillips in Garza.
As the Library Director, I gave a recap of the many activities of the year that were made possible by patron support. This coming year will see the continuation of our important projects: Seniors Club, Children’s Reader Clubs, “Soy Bebe, y Me Gusta Leer”, as well as our other monthly commitments.
During 2014, the Adult Readers Club will start off the year reading “Perfume” by Patrick Suskind. The library is planning to buy Kindles tablets for reading books for the adult Spanish readers group so that many people can read the same book at the same time.
The library’s yearly fundraising event, which will be held towards the end of February, is still in the early stages of planning. It will be a surprise for the community, we hope. More to come. Remember that the library is constantly receiving new books so do come in and check out the supply!
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