Photo Blog becomes Video Blog - Part 3 - There's a good reason they call it the RAIN forest.

So I’ve gone from no time blog to way too much time to blog.

We’ve left San Jose and are now in Tortugero.  Or as our guide for the next few days has said, “Your hotel in the middle of nowhere.”

It was an hour-long boat ride to get us here.  There are no cars in the very small town up the river a few minutes.  You get in by boat, you get out by boat.  Or you can swim.  We could see a thunderstorm about a half mile away as we loaded the boat.  It was dripping a bit as we started down the river.  By the time we got here it was – and still is – pouring rain.  Not just raining, ‘cause you know, hey it’s a rainforest! – but plan-cancelling pouring.

We got in, got a little welcome-to-the-island drink and got oriented.  This is the only hotel I’ve ever been to that required an orientation.  Then we had lunch and then got our room assignments.

Hysterically, I’m in room 102.  (For those of you who didn’t teach with me last year, that was my classroom number.)

I didn’t take pictures of the hotel in San Jose because, while it was nice, it was a very standard ‘North American Hotel’ and I didn’t think it merited the disk space.

Now I wish I had just for contrast.

In San Jose I had a single king sized bed with pure white linens on top of a feather bed.  There were, no joke, 7 pillows on that bed.  It was about three and a half feet off the ground – I had to climb up on to it.  There was a robe on the back of the bathroom door and a bathtub I could have done laps in.

Here… well, let’s just say it's a good thing I’m a fan of roughing it.  I had a weird sense of déjà vu when I walked in and it took me a few hours to place it, but I finally figured it out.  This room reminds me of sleeping in the platform tents at Camp Dean as a kid.  Only with electricity.  And a toilet that flushes instead of an outhouse.  Though, that said, I’ve never been anywhere else that has a sign that says ‘don’t throw your used toilet paper in the toilet, put it in the trash.’  So um… not a WHOLE lot better.

Other than that, though, it’s quaint.  Rustic. 

Here, have a look.  I actually remembered that my point and shoot has video.  Go me! 

[ETA: Maybe there will be video tomorrow.  The connection here seems to be stable and strong for text and still photos, but it's telling me that my little two minute video will take something like 3 hours to upload.  So... yeah.  Working on that, but it may be a while. :)]

Anyway, much like what frequently happened at Dean, it’s pouring buckets here.  It’s so loud that I can barely hear the music or video I’m playing on the computer.  It’s so bad that a ‘rain or shine’-policy tour group has canceled our trip into town and moved it to where we were supposed to have free time tomorrow and we have the free time now.

Of course there’s one little hut that has – theoretically anyway – internet and a bunch of us headed up there to kill time and we discovered that the internet usually doesn’t work in the rain.  Sigh.

So now I’m back in my hut typing this up so I can just send it whenever the internet does work.

Oh FABULOUS.  Ick.  Just like Camp Dean, I apparently need to wear bug spray to sit on my bed.  Blech.

Anywho… Things I’ve discovered since shooting that video:

• ·      There is no glass on my windows.  The roof extends far enough that the rain isn’t coming in, but it does present a bit of a privacy issue.  I’m wondering what else I may end up hearing howling tonight other than monkeys.  Also, I tend to sleep with my music or a t.v. show going.  I don’t think my neighbors want to hear that.
• ·      That safe system is a hot mess and I don’t trust it.
• ·      The rain is REALLY loud in here. I can barely hear my music even with the computer right on my lap and the sound turned all the way up.
• ·      The wrought iron beds are cute, but when you want to lean against the headboard and work on something, they’re really uncomfortable.
• ·      The mattress… um… isn’t.  It’s about six inch thick mattress/boxspring/something that sits on a wooden platform.  [ETA: apparently this is not a huge problem.  I just had a two hour nap on the thing and slept fine. :)]
• ·      I got like 8 hours of sleep last night [and this after going down for an hour-long massage that I really, really needed] and yet the sound of the rain around me makes me want to sack out.
• There is no phone, radio or clock in my room.  
• Gekko's like my window screen.  Currently from the outside.  Picture tomorrow.

So anyway, we’re told we get two wake-up calls tomorrow.

The first is at 4:30 a.m. and will come courtesy of the howler monkeys.  The second comes at 5:50 and will be the wait staff coming room to room with coffee, tea or hot chocolate for us while we get ready for breakfast.  Weather permitting, of course.

Tomorrow is supposed to be two boat tours.  In open boats.  Can’t wait to see what happens if this rain doesn’t let up.  I also found out that when it’s cloudy, even at ISO 1600 (the highest my camera has), I can’t take pictures of the animals on the shore when the boats are going.  Just nothing comes out.  I’m hoping a clear day will help.  Or slower boats.  Or I may have to switch over to my point-and-shoot and help the ‘blur reduction’ setting helps. 

I can hear something chittering a few feet away from my window.  I have no idea if it’s a bird, a squirrel (do they have squirrels out here?) or a monkey.  And I can’t see anything.  Though everytime I hear it, I grab my camera and run to the window.

They said they’ll tell us tomorrow’s weather ‘later’.  Which I can’t figure means anything good.  If it was going to quit raining and be better, they’d tell us that straight out, right?  Guh.

I’m still waiting for that one day where I get to go out in the rain forest for many hours and just shoot and shoot and shoot and come back with 1000 pictures to sort.

Obviously it’s not today and with the rearranging of tomorrow, and the highly ambiguous weather report, I’m guessing it won’t be tomorrow either. 

Remind me to never come to a rain forest in the rainy season again.

Tomorrow night those of us who signed up are going to the sea turtle nesting sites.  They said that even though it’s a bit early in the year (they usually start coming in around July), that there have been some sightings and they say there’s a very good chance we’ll see a turtle come up to lay her eggs.  We can’t take any kind of pictures or video though which sucks.  Hopefully it won’t rain through that.

ETA: Okay, I've had two hours of sleep and the rain has stopped.  Of course, being near the equator it's also pitch black... but my mood is somewhat less damp.  Here's hoping tomorrow is both drier and better!

If Schools Were Hospitals

If Schools Were Hospitals
by Kymberlee Ricke
written July 12, 2010


So, "merit pay" is one of those words being bandied about in education more and more lately as districts look for a way to eliminate tenure and find ways to fire teachers on the higher end of the salary scale.

Now, I'm not saying bad teachers should be retained. That would just be stupid. But there's such a huge difference between a 'bad teacher' and a teacher in a difficult teaching situation.

So let's think of it like this: Medical Professionals, you are now on merit pay. If your patient gets 100% better, gets to perfect health, you will get a bonus.

But if your patient dies, you will get docked and you will be put on probation. Now, sure, there's always one who spoils the numbers, so we'll track your patients for a year and take an average. If 70% or more of your patients are as healthy or healthier than they were before they got whatever it was they came in to see you for, you'll get a bonus. If you're under 50%, expect to be fired. And it doesn't matter *why* they're less healthy at the end of the year, just that they are. If they came to you for asthma treatments and got so healthy that they went running and got hit by a car [lost a parent or had another trauma]? Hey, they were your patient and all we care about is the test results we can get from them at the end of the year.

Geriatrics [economically depressed area schools - especially high schools], we know you're screwed, sorry about that. We get that you're getting people who are reaching the end of the line and you really don't have a lot of time to deal with the possible mistakes made in the past and really if your patient dies [drops out] there isn't much you could do, but we're still figuring your numbers the same way as everyone else. So if you're really talented, you may want to think about taking your talents to another area. Yeah, that leaves the 'less than the best' trying to do that really difficult job, but if you're that good, why would you want to jeopardize your career in such a risky area?

On the other hand, Obstetrics [gifted programs], you're in great shape! You get people coming in who have, for the most part, been getting great medical care for 9 months and have taken pains to improve bad health habits. And if you do everything right, you'll have *two* healthy patients on your service a year from now. And if things go really badly, you can hand off at least one of them to neonatal [regular ed.] Which means that person is off your service and no longer part of your statistical group.

Cosmetic Surgery? [Transfer Students] You need to be really careful because when they come in, there's absolutely nothing wrong with them, but when they leave the hospital they'll have bruises and stitches and staples [spend at least two weeks trying to adjust and catch up to the different curriculum], so be damn sure that your perfect patient is even more perfect a year later or you'll hear, for the rest of your life, "This is all your fault, this was fine before you cut into me. [at the last school]."

ICU [Special Ed], we'll cut you some slack. We understand that by the time they've come to you that things are pretty bad for reasons outside your control. But they should get *better*. They may never get to 'perfectly healthy', but dying is not acceptable and will be held against you regardless of the condition they came to you in.

And just in case there was a question, we're going to hold all hospitals to the same standard. It doesn't matter if you're at Cook County General (public hospital that must take all patients, regardless of ability to pay) or the Mayo Clinic/Johns Hopkins/UCLA. It doesn't matter if your facility has the money to give full body scans [individualized testing/programs] to every person who comes through the doors or if you're hoping you don't run out of band-aids [pencils] before Friday. It doesn't matter if you have the kind of program people apply for and fight to get into and therefor follow the protocol to the letter [parents that give a damn] or one where we throw you eight or twelve critical patients at a time, half of whom won't get the meds/do the follow-up care if they do make it out the door [parents who don't care].

So at the end of the year we're going to round up every patient you've seen - possibly including those you only 'saw' as you passed them in the waiting room [students who transfer in and out again, but happen to be with you for state testing] - and give them all the same battery of tests. The first test will be to see if they can walk into the exam room [read]. If they can't walk in, they can't even have the rest of the tests. Wait, what about that person who uses a wheel chair and didn't come to you about walking-related issues in the first place? Yeah, that's rough for you but everyone should be able to walk, shouldn't they? You should have done something about that. Nevermind that no one did anything about it for the first 10/20/30 years of his life, or even that there was nothing *to* be done. And just because you did a great job making sure his swine flu was cured [he could do math], if he can't walk into the exam we'll never get to the part where we check to see if his heart is beating or his skin is clear or if in fact, he made it through the swine flu with flying colors.

So yeah... let's put the whole world on 'merit pay'. This will certainly make sure everyone can walk, have clear skin and survive the swine flu. There's no reason at all to take into account individuals, economic situations or political climate.

A minor political detour...

Okay, like I said in the header of this blog, I will occasionally have non-photography related posts here.  Today I'm going to make one of them.

It's an essay I wrote last summer to explain why I find merit pay for teachers a bad idea.  I need to have it up where I can point a few people at it.  It seems silly to start a whole 'nother blog just for that.  If you aren't interested in that sort of thing, move right along.  I have no problem with that. 

If you'd like to start a discussion with me about it, great!  But let's stay respectful and mature. If not, I'll have to delete comments and I hate doing that.

I'll be back with more photography soon. :)