Just another day...

So I know you guys have been clamoring for another blog post, but I've been SUPER busy, so I apologize for the tardiness, but here you go.
 The last time I wrote, i had jsut finished my final exams for first quarter. I'm pleased to inform those of you that don't already know, that I ended up with a 4.0 GPA - I got A's in all 7 of my classes!

And now we're halfway into Second Quarter, and things are a little trickier. Just like last quarter, I have 3 classes per day, each of them being 2 hours long every day. Even though we're only 2 weeks in to this quarter, I've already completed 2 classes. So far I am taking (or I have taken) Musculoskeletal Anatomy, Personal and Professional Inventory, Professional Communications, Professional Ethics, and Bodywork Experiential. Don't worry, I'll go over them each.
 Musculoskeletal Anatomy (MSA) is a horrible class. That's not entirely true - it's a hard class with TONS of information and a bad teacher. Our instructor's name is Andrea and she's from San Diego and has never taught this course before. She is completely new to Costa Rica School of Massage Therapy and has never taught 16 weeks worth of material in 15 days before. So it's challenging for all of us. Luckily, we have an absolutely fantastic textbook that comes with wonderful flashcards, so we're able to teach ourselves the information because she doesn't seem to be doing it. In the 2 hours of class every morning, she spends about an hour 'teaching'. I put quotes around 'teaching' because all she does is read from our fabulous textbook - and if we ask a question that's more in depth, she either says she doesn't know, blatantly ignores us, repeats whatever she originalyl said, or changes the subject. So it's really hard. Hardly no one pays attention in class because we're all busy teaching ourselves the material that she's left out. She also doesn't write the tests (Jill does) and because it's her first time here, her PowerPoint presentations were given to her by Jill as well. And she never reads ahead and prepares for class, so she has a limited clue of what we need to know to pass the tests. The first test we took last week, practically everyone did horribly. There were 3 people who had A's, and all 3 of them pointedly admitted that they guessed on several of the questions and just got them correct by pure luck. There were also a couple questions on the test that covered information that we weren't taught, or that Andrea has said specifically that we didn't need to know. I recieved a 79.48% and when I questioned some of the answers I had been confident about, I was informed that I was studying wrong. And when I opened the book and pointed to where I found my information, she told me the book was wrong. But she doesn't tell us it's wrong BEFORE the test, only after. Anyway, so we had another test today, and yesterday for the review, she literally had today's test in hand and was looking at the questions and telling us what muscles we need to know, etc. Which was helpful, because there were 54 muscles that we learned in 4 days along with several bones, and not only do we have to know the location and the action of each muscle, but we also have to know the Insertion, Origin, and the Striation, as well as all the bony landmarks on every bone. So it's a virtual ton of information, and we were saturated from studying to the point where we were resolved to failing this class. Luckily, we managed to convince her that 54 muscles was too much to learn in 4 days and that she needed to be mroe quiz-specific. I'm fairly confident that I got better than a C on this test. But we'll find out tomorrow.
 Personal and Professional Inventory was a really interesting class. Russ Bennet was our instructor, and he's also one of the founders of CRSMT. Really nice guy. I went in to this class thinking that it was going to be about what we need to start our business or something, but I was totally wrong. It was an evaluation of what's inside each of us and what we carry with us wherever we go. On the first day of class, Russ told us to dress in swimsuits and put on lots of sunscreen, and then he led us down to the beach. Of course we were completely confused until we walked up to a bunch of kayaks and were informed that our assignment was to kayak (in pairs) out to the Island. So we paired up and went sea-kayaking for about 40 minutes and then landed on this tiny island and the guides gave us water and fresh pineapple and we hung out for about half an hour, when Russ gathered us all together and we sat in the sand to do a guided meditation. He asked us to see ourselves as we were right then, and then to, in our minds, zoom back to where we were and what we were doing 3 months ago. Then after some time spent revisiting the past, we zoomed ahead to 3 months from now, when we were all at CRSMT Graduation. It was a really cool, really emotional journey. This class involved a lot of really deep personal discussions, such as what traumatic experiences we've had in the past, what led us to choose massage therapy and why we're here, what we hope to change about ourselves as we journey through these 4 months in Costa Rica...it was really intense. And then on the last day of class, we met up at 4:45am and because it was raining, we went into the Director's house for our sunrise ceremony. We each had to present and declare a change that we were serious about making for the next few months in order to better ourselves. It took some thinking and some courage, but it was a really cool thing to do - we were up before the birds vowing to enact change in ourselves. Some people said they were going to try and be more emotionall open, some said they were going to try and stop lying to themselves...it was really emotional. My declaration was that I am going to do things that make ME happy because I want to do them. I've been trying to please everyone else for so long, that I've kindof forgotten how to do that. So whether it's wearing a fun dress, or singing while I'm making dinner, I want to do things that make me happy and try not to think so much about what other people will think of me for them. Yeah. =)
  My Communications class is taught by an amazing woman named Vickie Torrey, who hails from Charlotte, NC. It was all about learning how to effectively communicate with other human beings, be they clients, friends, or medical professionals. We looked into eye contact, body language, external distractions, and things like that. The whole class was only 3 days, and the final was yesterday and was rediculously easy. Another 100% feels really good after that bad MSA score.
 Professional Ethics is also taught by Vickie, and we jsut started it today, so it hasn't all been laid out for us yet. Obviously we're going to be talking about ethical situations in our massage practice and we're going to debate ethical dilemmas and things of that nature. Today in class, we had to write out our own personal code of ethics. I challenge any of you to do this - it's insanely hard. Rewarding, but difficult. Vickie also teaches our Pathology course, but that's not till next week.
  BodyWork Experiential is my afternoon class that's taught by Hillari, who was my nutrition instructor last quarter. I think I love her more and more every day. The whole class is basically about "Ok, you know how to give a relaxing Swedish Massage, but here's how to actually do work on people". So we're learning how to go deeper into the tissues. It's SSSOOOO cool! Exhausting, but awesome. We're learning how to use our elbows and how to get up on the table with our clients and work on them, and it's so much fun. Pretty soon, we're also going to learn how to do pregnancy massage, infant massage, jeriatrics massage, and things that require special training like that. It's so amazing to be working on someone and to actually feel the knots in their muscles, know what muscles are knotted in what way, know how to work on those knots, and then actually feel them release under your fingers. It's amazing.
 This quarter we also have started working in the Clinic giving massages to the public. The first week, all of our clients were either students or instructors, so they were all people we knew. Even if you know the person, giving 3 hour long massages in a night is nervewracking and tiring. This week was our first week in the Clinic with people from the community. Because it was the first week for the public, not alot of people knew we were open, so we still did alot of massages on people we knew. I massaged an instructor, an administrator, and then one local guy. It was really scary to massage a guy! It was my first full-body massage on a male client and it was terrifying. Luckily, he spoke pretty good English. But before the massage, Hillari came in and sat me down and was like "ok Rika, we need to talk about your next client". I guess he comes in all the time for massages and only gets massaged by the tall blonde haired, blue eyed American girls. If he likes you as a bodyworker, he'll reschedule only with you until you leave Samara. The thing she wanted to talk to me about was that he always asks the girls out and can sometimes be seen as overly friendly, so she just wanted to make sure I was ok with it. I said it was fine, so he came in and I did the massage and he talked the whole time, which was hard when I was trying to focus, but it made me relax into the session more, so that's good. It was actually the most fun massage I've given. And somehow the timing ended up being perfect!! I'm still totally stoked about it! And he left me my first tip!!!!! 2,000 Colones, which is about $4, but that's still so cool! And I'm pretty sure he's scheduled another session with me next week, so I might have a regular!

Okay, I think I've given you guys enough to read for tonight. And I need to eat dinner and do some readings for class.

Pura Vida!