Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Surf Therapy

Surf Therapy

Attempting to go out with people from work, Kären and I took the bus to Prado Mar. This is a beach about 20 minutes away from Barranquilla. We were instructed to take the yellow bus; that’s usually the way things are done here, by color rather than number, name, or route. Unfortunately, we found out on the way there that our colleague who lives there happened to be in Barranquilla for the day.


Little rows of huts walking from Puerto Colombia to Prado Mar
(all these pictures are from Kären's camera as mine is a little bit bulky)

Perro, palmas, y el mar

We actually got off the bus a little late. We arrived in a cute and small beach town. Kären and I were thinking about how we could move there. We walked down the beach a while and looked for the best place for the pescado corriente. We succeeded.

Pescado corriente con arroz, ensalada, y patacones...y una Aguila para tomar.

While eating lunch, I noticed a guy walk by with a surfboard and asked him where to rent them. He told me to ask for Jorge at Hotel Prado Mar. About 10 minutes later 3 guys walked up and asked if I wanted to have a surf lesson. One of them was, in fact, Jorge. Apparently word spreads fast when a gringa wants to surf in a small Colombian beach town. I was full from lunch, but said possibly later. Karen and I ended up hanging out with the guys for a while. When we’d finally digested our food we relaxed on the beach and in the water.

Kären relaxed


Me relaxed

Around 5:30 I called our friend again who said she’d be back by the evening (remember the sun sets here everyday around 6:30), to find that she was still in Barranquilla. Just as we were thinking of heading back to Barranquilla ourselves, the 3 guys appeared again and invited us back to their house. We went.

Jorge aka Yoyi had a bunch of surfing stuff posted on his walls and some pictures of him surfing, along with a bunch of trophies and articles that featured him. I found out he was sponsored by Quicksilver and thought, this guy must be pretty good. I found out that he is one of the best surfers in Colombia. He told me later that he used to be the best (as was confirmed by the articles), but now he’s in the top 5. Slacker. (heh heh). He told me the best time to surf there was around 6-7 in the morning.

This is the view going towards Prado Mar from Puerto Colombia. I surfed at Prado Mar.

Saturday night was not much fun and I did not sleep well, but early Sunday I headed out with Jorge to go surfing. He was a good instructor too. Might as well learn from the pros. Is there such a thing as surf therapy? If there isn’t, there should be. Being in the water, I forgot about everything except for being right there where I was. I loved it. It was a fantastic way to get back in touch with myself and life in general.

Afterwards, I walked from place to place in the midday sun and got a bit sunburned and completely overheated. I was actually glad to arrive back in my nice clean apartment. Believe in or not, I even had a small appreciation for Barranquilla. On reflection, I am glad that beach is 20 minutes away, but for now living in the city of Barranquilla as opposed to the small town on Prado Mar is OK with me.

Note the pile of garbage. I see people littering here all the time and this is where the garbage goes. Sad.

Monday, September 28, 2009

A Not Altogether Peaceful Peace Week

A Not Altogether Peaceful Peace Week

Last week at school was Peace Week. Our director started it out with a school-wide hug. There was supposed to be a moment of silence to listen to Juanes whose song has the chorus, “It’s time to change,” but there was NO silence, which disappointed me. Throughout the week that song, and “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson were played at recess.

Juanes had put on a huge peace concert in Cuba the day before. I had just read about this on the BBC news website that morning. Think of him as Colombia’s answer to Bono and you get the idea.

A highlight of the week for me was making a connection with a student. US history can be boring, especially if you are a 6th grade Colombian boy. I had a student sincerely tell me that the subject I was teaching was really interesting, and a few of his classmates agreed. Miracles never cease.

In week 6 of school I finally got the rest of what I should have gotten before school started: an assessment tool, so now I can actually test my students on what I’ve been teaching them, and the standards that we are supposed to plan our lessons by. These lesson plans, by the way, were due 3 weeks ago. Ha ha ha!

After school monotony, exhaustion, and boredom are fairly typical occurences. I decided to take a walk to, you guessed it, the mall for lack of any other social outlet. I thought I’d go to the bookstore and get a Spanish language-learning book. There weren’t any, though there were plenty of books to learn English. There were also English language novels that cost about $25, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be buying any of those. I wanted to buy a case for my computer but it was $50, um maybe not, at least not on this salary. I talked to no one but the shopkeepers and returned home with a bottle of agua con gas. I downloaded and listened to a This American Life episode called “The Kindness of Strangers”, quite purposefully chosen. Listening to it made me feel a bit more like my normal self.

Needless to say I am hoping the social life picks up a bit. I feel very isolated here. If not for my US neighbor Kären, I’d be even more solitary. I’m not terribly lonely, but I do feel alone and I’m finding it a lot harder to meet people than I imagined it would be. I had to laugh when I heard “So Lonely” by the Police in Taganga. It’s always been one of my favorite songs, but it felt rather poignant at that moment. I know making friends takes a while so I am being patient. This is nothing like traveling. When you travel, you meet new people all the time. I think traveling on most weekends might be a good option.

Friday at school things started out rather positively. My class was working on a peace poem and I thought, maybe, just maybe things were getting better. I had a good first class, but during it se fue la luz, this means not only did the light go off, but the power as well. It was 93 degrees and we all began to roast. The water pumps are electrically operated, so the water goes too. This means no flushing toilets or washing hands. It was a mess that progressively turned into more and more chaos. I can equate this to when there are snow days at school in Oregon: the students go a little bit nuts, but somehow when our trusty head secretary would come on the PA system, and we all knew what to do. Needless to say here in Colombia we do not have a PA system, we do not have phones in our classrooms, we do not even have clocks. Students spread the word that we’d be having a 12:30 dismissal. The power went off at 9. Chaos and extreme heat are not a good mixture. I found out later that this power outage was in the entire city.

I was frustrated with how crazy the students were getting, but I responded calm calm calm calm calmly, until I lost my patience in the last 5 minutes of school. I’m sure it was the mounting frustrations I’ve had with the general lack of order in school since the beginning of the year, and probably my being overheated, but it still is not an excuse. We will have a community circle on Monday and I’ll need to mend things. I am not proud of my behavior, but I think the last straw came and most definitely broke my back. The irony of it being Peace Week is not lost on me.

On Friday evening I went with Kären to another of the Miche Rock Festivals. I really had no desire to go to a rock concert of bands I didn’t know, but I was hoping to maybe connect with some other Colombian teachers who were supposedly going to be there. The best part for me was on the way to catch the bus we had to get change. We stopped and got change by buying a beer from one of the many open-air bars. We then were invited to share a table and drink with some locals, which was nice.

Miche was not too loud, but the line to get in took over an hour. At least it was free. I was just as glad to be outside in the line because we missed some of the growly-type metal bands. Upon entering, we got to hear our favorite band from the time before – the reggae band, whose name I still don't know. We were both exhausted and left after hearing only that one band. We did not end up seeing the other teachers there, and it was crowded. My eyes were bleary and I was happy to go home and get to bed. Leaving when we did ended up being excellent timing on our part. Apparently a riot broke out with the band that came on right after we left. I recalled their name from the last concert ( Circulo Vicioso) and remembered that when they played the mosh pit was a bit crazy. I knew I absolutely did not need to hear them again. Sometimes a little sensitivity and intuition are good things.

Although I most definitely don’t love it here, I’m here now. It’s not going to change, so I think I need to change. Hmm...perhaps I should listen to the song by Juanes, or maybe marvelous Michael Jackson, may he rest in peace

Loka Samastaa Sukino Bhavantu (a little Sanskrit chant of peace for you all)

Saturday, September 26, 2009

El Día de Amor y Amistad

El Día de Amor y Amistad

El Día de Amor y Amistad or Love and Friendship Day was September 19th. Since that was a Saturday, we celebrated it at school on the 18th.

The first thing I heard on the radio in the morning was a song that I hear every single day that has the lyrics, “Estoy enamorado traigado de ti…” meaning I’m head-over-heels in love with you. Pretty par for the course for the day, I’d say.

At school it was much like Valentine’s Day at school in the US – lots of chocolate, candy, and other sweets and a bunch of hyper kids. We played Secret Friend in our class. This is much like Secret Santa, but the gift is only given on one day. The clues student gave about their secret friends were, “S/he has brown hair…” Well, I think I’m the only one who doesn’t.

I bought a little gift for my secret friend called a 'carnation'. I thought this would be a flower, but it was a little package of candy and school supplies.

In the staff lounge I did appreciate the reggatón at lunch. I couldn’t help but compare and contrast: as much as this is like Valentine’s Day with the students, I couldn’t begin to picture reggatón playing with people singing along in the staff lounge at my old school.

Oddly, after school Karen and I attended an English language conference at this beautiful hotel, Hotel Prado. Not the best scheduling really. Even though we would have liked to have spent more time there, with our gifts of mostly candy* from students, our lunch bags, our backpacks full of books, papers, and our computers, we felt like exhausted bag ladies in a hot and crowded room. I felt like my teeth were going to fall out, due to the sugar I’d eaten during the day.

* Kären received one gift from a student that is absolutely hilarious. It is a necklace with a Playboy pendant with loads of bling bling rhinestones in a circle surrounding the bunny. This opens up to a watch inside, on which the brand name is Disney. Hugh Heffner and Walt Disney together at last! Strange gift from a ten year-old, but because we have no clocks in any of the classrooms at school Kären wears it to school daily. Here it is in all its glory:
Playboy on the outside


Disney on the inside

I arrived home and got to brush the teeth and confirm plans for the evening. Just as I went to take a shower, yep, there was no water. I headed off for the gym and was glad for the workout anyway. The gym is in the mall. There were tons of nicely dressed couples there for what appeared to be hors d'oeuvres and music in the middle of the mall. This setting was not exactly romantic to my mind. I received a rose by a beautifully dressed woman who was promoting the event, which I did enjoy.

That evening I was to meet Andrés and his colleagues at a casino for Love and Friendship Day. The casino was in a mall of course. Thankfully the slot machines were downstairs and we were upstairs. There was a Latino band and the music was good – in my opinion virtually all the music here is good. It’s a good thing I think so too, because music is always playing EVERYWHERE. People were friendly, but it was loud and at times hard to hear over the music. So many times it’s not that I don’t understand Spanish, it’s just that I can’t hear what is being said.

Saturday night Kären and I went out with a colleague named Cecilia to a bar called Cheers (since 2009 was written below the Cheers sign), like the one from the TV show. The streets were packed. I wanted to practice speaking Spanish, but because of the volume it was useless. Cecilia is bilingual and I couldn’t even hear her in English. This time however, since the bar was American style, the music I couldn’t hear over was English and from the 80's.

I gathered that Love and Friendship Day was not exactly the romantic holiday that I had thought it would be. It seemed friendship was much more the focus of this holiday. (Aside: This is far superior to how Valentine's Day is celebrated in Korea. I heard from former Korean students that people who do not receive anything from their loved ones on Feb 14th, celebrate Black Day on March 14th. This entails going to a Chinese restaurant to eat black noodles as a way mourn their singleness. Yikes!) El día de Amor y Amistad was a reminder that I would really like to meet more Colombian people. I’m hoping to spend more time going out with teachers from the school. Friendships happen slowly. I am thankful for my one Colombian friend Andrés.

As for now I am immersed in cultural differences. When in Rome…go to the Coloseum. When in Barranquilla...go to the mall.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Oddities and Pleasantries (and a few enigmas)

Oddities and Pleasantries (and a few enigmas)

These random little things are part of my world here.

‘God Purifies’ is written in English on the water filter in the school kitchen. This makes me smile each time I see it.

When students at school run for student council (personera/-o), they give speeches and make campaign posters in schools all over the world. They usually look like this:



This is what some high school posters looked like:
Pretty fancy, huh?

But this is a 6th grader's campaign poster:

Wow! I am definitely impressed.


I am puzzled by the amazing speed of the sweeping up anything that falls or is dropped on the floor at school, but wonder why there is such a dearth of toilet paper.

Why is the accordion so popular here? Vallenato is chock full of accordion. I hear Vallenato EVERYWHERE here.

This is the hole in my wall that I didn’t know was there until after I’d been here about 3 weeks. It is about 10 x 10 inches. It is between two rooms that always have the door open, so it was hidden. Why is it there? I do not know.

The square hole of mystery

Why is the pool closed when I want to use it?

Ahh, the scent of burning fields - delightful.

The distant view of the sea from school and my neighborhood - soothing.
Sometimes from my classroom sometimes it looks like there is a boat floating in the sky because the horizon line is not visible and the water and the sky both look a hazy white.

The occasional sound of a chirping gecko will never get old to me.

I even enjoy the warm humid breezes.

Again, I will profess my love for the magic cashiers at the store. I now buy my groceries, pay my electric, water, and gas bills, recharge my phone, and recharge my internet there.
How do they do it?! They are amazing!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Vale la Pena - Taganga

Vale la Pena – Taganaga

Last week was a real drag at both school and home. What’s the antidote? A beach weekend getaway! I had looked in the guidebook the week before and found Taganga: a sleepy fisherman’s village of 5000 inhabitants that had been discovered by travelers, located only 5 kilometers away from Santa Marta. Buses leave from Barranquilla to Santa Marta every 15 minutes and the ride is 2 hours. That was all I needed to know.

Kären and Dave also were fans of the idea. The plan was to leave school, go home, get our stuff, and arrive in Santa Marta before dark. Well, that didn’t exactly happen, but we left before it was dark. On the bus leaving Barranquilla, I saw parts of the city that I had never seen before – shops selling all kinds of cheap goods, lots of street food vendors, for some reason rotisserie chicken bar/restaurants, and loads of people on bicycles. This was the unsanitized version of Barranquilla, the side seldom seen in my cleaner and safer area of the city. It reminded me a lot of Mexico. It made me realize that I have been dealing with the substantially upper class of Colombia. Things were about to change.

Aside: Why do buses in foreign countries feel compelled to show violent movies at extremely loud volume?

Out the window from what I could see we passed a lot of poverty and a lot of garbage. It made me feel a little depressed. It really put the frustrations of my week in perspective. This was the clase baja and most of Colombia I’d seen up until now was almost exclusively the clase alta.

Arriving in Santa Marta, we used cleanest bus station bathroom ever and jumped in a taxi to Taganga. The taxi took us up over a hill and upon the descent we overlooked a little bay that was Taganga. I knew I would not be disappointed. Kären and I decided the best place to stay was Hostel Divanga. I ate really good fish for dinner and then basically passed out from exhaustion in the hammock next to the pool listening to the che che accent of the Argentinian travelers staying there.

Divanga

I awoke the next day feeling much more refreshed. From the rooftop I saw the view of the bay and a little bit of town. It was a cute little fishing village in a more rural setting of Colombia. There was plenty of third-world poverty to be seen: small houses in poor conditions, plastic wrap garbage that functioned as a toy for a 2 year-old boy and some dogs, and people sitting outside next to food vendors on the ubiquitous plastic chairs.


The roof view

After breakfast at our hostel, Kären and I went on a little exploratory walk through town and to the beach. It was overcast but hot. Here’s some of the town.

Little houses, local people, flowers, and fruit trees


Here is the beach, more of a fishing bay than somewhere to swim, although you could.
View of Taganga

Taganga

more cool plants

In Barranquilla I never see people who aren’t Colombian. There must be some, but there aren’t many for a city of 1.1 million. On this morning walk in little Tanganga I saw several people with hair blonder than mine and heard other languages being spoken. It was kind of a refreshing change.

On our walk I noticed a man with a bright green parrot perched on his shoulder. I went over to him and he gave (not flipped) me the bird. Her name was Goya and we got along pretty well.

Goya with my finger

With Goya on my arm, I sipped on a fruit smoothie of nispero. I do not know how to describe what it tastes like, but it is delicious. It’s a thicker liquid, more like banana or coconut, than say apple, and it’s a little bit sweet, but not overly. I love it.

Goya and me

While hanging out at the juice place and talking to the jugo man and Goya, who being a parrot, did talk, a man walked by and looked at me admiringly. He later came over and gave me an apple and said, "Muy bonita," and was on his way. Very sweet.


The jugo stand

Kären and I continued exploring and happened upon what appeared to be the main entertainment for the locals that day: B-I-N-G-O. It was packed! We walked in and got looks of, “You’re foreigners, do you really want to be here?” I most definitely did, because this was the real deal. This was small town Colombia. This was connecting with the locals seeing and doing what they do. This is the kind of thing that makes me continue traveling around the world.


The entrance to Bingo, you can't see how many people there really were.

Some woman, noticing that we obviously didn’t know exactly how the whole process worked, asked us if we wanted to play. She told us that it was a fundraiser for the school. We were in. With bingo boards in hand, we started listening for the numbers.

I saw food for sale and bought a little portion of rice with fish that tasted like paella and a little salad that cost all of fifty cents. Yum!

Kids were running around everywhere. Some children were playing bingo, others were just playing as kids do. This was their school, although it wasn’t much of a school. There were almost no books or anything else but a few desks. I really wanted to win at Bingo and donate my prize to the school, but sadly I didn’t win. It made me realize again, that I am really dealing with la crema de la crema of Colombian wealth at my school in Barranquilla.

Here in Taganga, it’d be more like a Peace Corps experience. This is where you’d expect disorganization and lack of supplies. Barranquilla feels like a big modern city with all the modern conveniences, and not to mention the modern demands from work. I was thinking about my frustrations with my school, of which there are many, and then looking around at where I was. It felt as different as day and night. Many of my students have gone on vacations in the US and Europe. Most of these children have probably never even been more than 5 miles from their houses. Having taught in Title 1 (meaning higher poverty) schools in the US for the past 5 years, I’m used to students not having a lot of money, but Colombian small town poverty is certainly much different than American urban/suburban poverty. Although my students in Barranquilla might have a lot of material wealth, they are often taken care of by a nanny and don’t spend very much time with their parents. Kids in Tanganga have almost nothing, but here they are spending the day with their family. I will not be the judge of who is happier.

I wanted to take pictures of the Bingo scene, but felt it would not be the right thing to do. I spotted two cute girls sitting at a desk together and asked if I could take a picture of them. We ended up playing bingo together for about an hour. My new eight year-old friend Kati sat next to me and we played our own version, which was good number and letter practice for her. A very smart nine year-old girl joined us. She had a whole strategy for playing Bingo. Another eight year-old joined for a while and she didn’t know all her numbers or letters. This made me sad. It also made me sad to see children following the adults’ lead by just throwing their garbage on the ground.

The Bingo girls

Suddenly, I was starting not to feel very well. I think I was overheated. We said goodbye to the girls and headed to Mojitonet. Kären imbibed in a mojito, while I had a bottle of carbonated water, a bottle of non-carbonated water, and then a beer with lime and salt. I started to feel better being in the air-conditioning, rehydrating, and getting a little bit of salt. The bartender, Eric, was from the ‘interior’ of Colombia and had lived a while in Spain. Because of this, he talked significantly slower than the people in Barranquilla – the Costeños. I can honestly say I think that was the most fluent Spanish conversation I have had since I’ve been here. I love when that happens.

I was feeling much better so Kären and I took a boat ride to the other beach, which was only about 5 minutes away. I knew we’d see Dave there, and we saw him upon arrival. He had walked over a hill and wrestled with a few cacti getting here. Yes, I mean cactus. The landscape here is significantly different than the tropical coast of Barranquilla and Cartagena, it’s more arid and so there are cacti.

The other beach from the boat

After a while of swimming and being in the sun, we met up with Dave’s American friends he’d met on the bus and headed back to the other beach. The walk back was a beautiful and easy to follow trail…once you found it.
View from the walk back

We stopped by Dave and his friends’ hostel. It reminded me of hostels you might see anywhere in the world – people in their early 20s drinking beer and playing pool. It made me feel old. There was also the nasty smell of burning plastic that was wafting into the hostel. All of the above made me glad that I was staying where I was.

After passing some goats, Kären and arrived back at our hostel to find more people staying there than had been the night before. We cooled off for a while in the pool and had a conversation in English, the lingua franca, with the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Israeli travelers. We had the standard traveler conversation of, “Where are you from? Where have you been? How was it? How long are you staying?” People were very intrigued by our teaching here and had lots of questions. This gave me realization that what I’m doing is actually kind of cool despite its frustrations. Perhaps it’s vale la pena – this is a phrase I learned in Spain that means ‘worth the pain’.

We met up with Dave and his American friends at a place called Cactus on the beach for dinner. The menu had some pretty hilarious translations that I wish I’d written down. One was something like fish served to the wind in the sailor’s blouse. We all had pescado corriente, which means ‘current fish’ as you’d want it to be. It was and served with a salad, coconut rice, and the best patacones (fried plantains) I’ve had in Colombia. All this for $5 was certainly a scrumptiously good deal.

I felt like the complete sucker tourist when were approached by an enthusiastic art vendor and I bought two drawings. One was of the exact scene in front me: boats in the bay of Taganga. I didn’t care if I was a sucker, I liked the art.

Next we were serenaded by guitarist Rolando and his rapping son, Pipe. They were awesome. Rolando’s songs were about Taganga and its surrounding area of Santa Marta. He said it was a matriarchy here and had written songs so children could learn about their local history. He had a following of local kids who obviously loved him. The appreciation seemed mutual. When some adorable little girls came by in the middle of singing he yelled out, “Baila!” The girls, being shy, would run away a little bit, but in the distance you could see that they were in fact dancing. After he finished singing, the girls came over and he let them play with his guitar while others were singing. Words cannot describe how precious this scene was. Rolando was not pushy at all with asking for money. We were the ones who asked him if he had CDs. Kären and I both bought one and are very glad we did.

It was night now and time to go dance at El Garaje. This is the kind of place I wish Barranquilla had. It was basically an open-air bar with a few trees growing up through the ground. There was a dance floor and the music was perfect: salsa, merengue, reggaton, vallenato, rock en español, and I loved it all. Thankfully a man named José, who I’d met earlier that day, showed up and was my dance partner.

The next day I wanted to go to Parque Tayrona. José had mentioned taking me there if I wanted to go. After waking up late and waiting a long time for breakfast we were off to a late start. I said goodbye to Kären at the booksotre Literarté, and headed off with José to Parque Tayrona. Upon approaching the entrance of this national park, one of the guards threw his beer can over a fence into the park. I am shaking my head thinking about it. We went to a close in beach called Playa Concha because it would take too long to get to other places in the park, which apparently is huge. I went snorkeling, swimming, and relaxed on the fairly unpopulated beach. I was completely content and stayed a bit too long because when we left it was starting to get dark.
Playa Concha

On the way out we passed a pile of burning plastic. This is a growing problem – the garbage everywhere. Children’s grandparents, and even parents, had biodegradable packaging. The amount of plastic everywhere that will not break down is disheartening. I’m sure there probably is no garbage pick up. Where would it go? Who would pay for it? So the solution is burning plastic. This is a practice I have seen in many third world countries. It smells horrible and puts toxins in the air. Seriously though, can you blame them? Which would you rather have, a big pile of plastic or a bad smell for a little while and then magically no garbage? I feel like what I’d rather do than teach the over-privileged students in Barranquilla, is somehow do some teaching of garbage disposal techniques. How to do this? I don’t know. It’s such an enormous global problem I don’t even know where to start. I do what I can for now. I talk to kids about garbage, recycling if available, and sometimes just about buying less. In Taganga I would talk to kids about telling their parents not to burn the plastic. Children are the future and there are a lot more of them in the world everyday.

José picked up a family that was walking down the dirt road out of the park towards Santa Marta. They wouldn’t have gotten home until very late if they’d walked the whole way. I was glad he helped them.

We stopped for dinner at Judi’s house in Santa Marta. This is a woman who cooks food out of her house, which is a ‘restaurant’. It gave me a good look at how I imagine many urban Colombians live. There was a front room with a TV, a kitchen with a big stove (this was a restaurant), a bedroom, and bathroom, which all was built with just basic concrete cinder blocks. The bathroom had a toilet with no seat and to flush you used a plastic bowl to scoop water out of a larger receptacle. The shower was a pipe that came out of the wall on to concrete. Outside on the concrete back ‘porch’ was where we had dinner. It was dimly lit with a single exposed low watt lightbulb, a partial roof of corrugated steel, and a washbasin for doing laundry. The powdered laundry soap and the water basin functioned as the sink to wash our hands. Judi cooked, served dinner, and was back to her TV of Hollywood stars with Spanish subtitles. The contrast of her life and the one she was watching was striking.

By the time we left it was completely dark and I was not looking forward to the bus ride home. A friend of mine who was in the Peace Corps in Guayaquil, Ecuador gave me an odd piece of advice: sit on the aisle seat on the bus. I asked why and he said that it is safer because you can get away if someone is bothering you. I remembered this advice and did that. For a while no one sat next to me. Then one of several drunk fútbol fans got on the bus. Of course one of them sat next to me. He did nothing, but it’s never pleasant to sit next to a drunk stranger on public transport. As soon as I could I moved to sit next to a woman. This was certainly better, though I did get sneezed on from one of the drunkards across the aisle and felt the snot land on my arm. Yuck!

The police stopped the bus and I was glad to have the cedula (Colombian ID) rather than my US passport as ID. It helped me feel a bit less like a foreigner, though I’ll admit, the whole ride made me a little nervous. I was quite thankful to get back to Barranquilla, and my clean apartment. Right now as I write this I hear la canta de las ranas or singing frogs outside my urban apartment after a rainstorm. The whole weekend gave me a chance to reflect on things and get a bit of perspective. I look forward to traveling more in Colombia, but for now, it’s back to work.

“Children they don’t need a lot of stuff. Children sure do need a lot of love. They need love to give ‘em pride, make ‘em feel real good inside, if they don’t get it at home they’re gonna go lookin’” – Greg Brown from the song ‘If You Don’t Get It At Home’

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Things That Make Me Laugh, Smile, or Cringe

Things That Make Me Laugh, Smile, or Cringe

Although there are many things in Colombia that fit that description, I will limit this posting to name brands and signs I've seen, along with some visual aids:

Juan Sushi - gracias arigato

La Casa de la Brownie - this has a picture of a brownie with chocolate sauce on it. It just makes me giggle.

Cunit - That's just too close for comfort

Romance Relax - This is the name of my mattress














Now seriously, would you go here? The Moron Orthodontist with a picture of a rabbit with an extreme overbite? Hmm maybe adults need braces in Colombia because they went to Moron when they were younger.

Super Kike - no comment

Juan Valdez - My daily coffee



















Hindu - You don't have to convert to drink it

















Oh my god! The OMG organization! I just picture a convention hall full of teenagers texting.




...and there are many more to come!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Junior

Junior

Yes, upon the first day of meeting students I heard about Junior. Come on, we’re talking about 6th grade boys here. This is the soccer (fútbol) team here in Barranquilla. Last Sunday I went to go see them, and thankfully they won.

Before the game with sexy cheerleaders


Right before a goal.
Advertising with the odd absence of a scoreboard.

I will not pretend to be a sportswriter, that I most definitely am not, but I will write my uneducated personal highlights.

They played a team called Chico from Bogotá and were down 2 – 0 the majority of the first half. Right before halftime they scored a goal, but they were still down 2 – 1. Little bags of water to drink are thrown on to the field when the players are thirsty. I heard the word puta a lot!

In the second half they made a remarkable comeback scoring 4 points. If I thought my classroom was loud, that was nothing compared to when Junior scored a goal. The game ended with Junior winning 5-2.


This was just part of what looked like the cast of YMCA

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I wouldn't mess with these guys though.

the mascot is a shark

Selling of Colombian treats

Why in Spanish speaking country would choose a team name in English that begins with a 'J', which Spanish speakers pronounce like an English 'H', I do not know. The chanting of Junior sounds a bit strange because of this. JUNIOR! JUINOR! JUNIOR!

GOAL! (Though it's hard to see, because the man in front of me stood up as they scored.)

No Reason To Cry Over Spilled Beer and Spoiled Milk – (the days that followed)

No Reason To Cry Over Spilled Beer and Spoiled Milk – (the days that followed)

On Tuesday morning, my alarm clock didn’t go off – I woke up at 6:25, had to be out the door at 6:30, and start work at 7:00. I still had no water, so no shower for me.

The school schedule, which is still not official after 4 weeks, started extracurricular activities today. I was supposed to observe my director teach a class, but she didn’t. I ended up teaching the class with a bit of help from the counselor. There were about twenty 7th and 8th graders whom I had never met. Not fun. Ironically, the topic was ‘how to manage stress.’ I ended up teaching some yogic breathing, which actually did help. Nothing like not having any lesson planned for an hour and a half with a bunch of teenagers you’ve never met before. It’s a good thing I know how to wing it.

Afterwards, I drank 3 cups of coffee and ate patacones con queso. This also helped. I was laughing at myself and at the irony of my extracurricular subject matter. On top of little sleep, no shower, being unprepared to teach an extracurricular activity, I still had to teach 5 hours of Language Arts and Social Studies. Surprisingly, I had decent lessons with all three classes afterwards. It felt like maybe I’m finally starting to break the ice with students. My principal brought me the teacher’s manual of my literature today, finally.

I found out at lunch why we didn’t have water, it’s a small thing called paying the bill. The problem was, I didn’t know we had a bill and the vigilantes didn’t tell us we had mail. I am going to ask for mail every single day from now on. Thankfully, I had grabbed some money on my way out the door. School didn’t end today until 3:45 (yes, it still started at 7 – yuck!) and we don’t leave until 4. The water place closes at 4. I gave Alberto, the helpful, tolerant, but incredibly hard to understand chofer, money to pay the water bill while I stayed at school teaching. Some other bills are also past due – not a good thing. Whoops! How were we to know? A bit of guidance might have been nice.

Right after school I got more money and went to the store and paid the other bills. Thankfully, I paid the electricity bill before it got cut off. Life without fans and AC here would not be pleasant. I bought two 5-liter containers of water and two cans of beer (you can buy individual cans of beer here and I always do because they’re heavy). Mind you, I still can’t wash dishes or flush the toilet until the day after tomorrow. Delightful.

Afterwards, I went to the gym to take a shower and visited the Zona de Humedades and specifically El Turco. This is the steam room in the gym. I’m sure it sounds nuts to go in a steam room when it’s 90 + degrees outside. Actually, it feels very cleansing, and remember, even when I do have water, it’s never hot water. El Turco felt wonderful and was certainly the most relaxing part of my day.

After El Turco and my not hot shower, I was packing up my backpack when I noticed some liquid dripping out of it. I had accidentally squished a can of beer by repacking the water on top of it. Just as I’d finally gotten clean, I had a backpack that smelled like a fraternity. This is the backpack I take to work everyday. Remember, when I got home I couldn’t wash it because I have no water. Ugh! This did make me laugh though.

I arrived at home to find my amazing boss in our apartment building trying to get the water situation resolved for us, while I stunk of beer I that hadn’t even drunk. Apparently to fix the water, they needed some spare part. My boss went, bought, and delivered it. I also found out that when I’d been teaching her lesson in the morning, she had sent Alberto to go see why our water wasn’t on. What an incredible woman!

Kären got water that night. I didn’t. I was glad at least one of us had water. I went to her apartment and filled pots with water to flush and clean my very stinky toilet. I had left the milk out as I ran out the door in the morning, so I went and washed the pitcher of spoiled milk at her apartment too. While I was doing this, she said I could borrow her backpack for work the next day…and then she dropped her 5-liter container of water on it. Hilarious.

The next morning I showered at Kären’s. When we arrived at school, it had no power or water for several hours. Unbelievable!

After 48 hours of no water in my apartment, it is finally back on. I was supposed to go out tonight, but my friend forgot. I’d post this now, but guess what? The internet isn’t working either. Mercury went into retrograde on Sunday and it certainly has done so with force.

I have hassles and annoyances, but certainly not horrible problems. I’m safe, I have food, some (though not much) money, and I now have water. I’m in good health, but exhausted. The disorganization of my school this year is driving me nuts. Apparently, it wasn’t like this last year.

Maybe now that I’ve learned a few lessons here the hard way, things will start to go more smoothly. I’m trying to stay positive, but my patience is a bit worn. I’m keeping things in perspective: things could be better, but they could certainly be worse. Let’s hope they get better.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Un Día Normal (it’s not always an adventure, you know)

Un día Normal (it’s not always an adventure, you know)

I arise at 5:28 just as the sky is starting to lighten. It’s already 86 degrees (and 100% humidity 100% of the time) in my bedroom, and the fan has been on all night. I make my coffee, shower, eat breakfast, make lunch, go downstairs to await my carpool, which is supposed to get there at 6:30, but arrives at 6:45.

We get to school at 7:04 and students are to be in class at 7:05. I get to my classroom as the bell rings. The kids, in the 4th week of school, have been on a temporary schedule since the beginning of the year. I received the real “draft” schedule 15 minutes after the students left on Friday. They noisily enter my echo-ey room and mess around at their lockers, as I am writing about 'what makes a responsible citizen' on the board for our homeroom activity. I am interrupted many times with, “Meess, Meess,” and a random assortment of questions. About 7 minutes later we are ready to start the day. We discuss the new schedule, and about being a responsible citizen by having your materials ready to go for the day. It’s not the students’ fault that their school is disorganized, but they still need to be responsible.

At 7:25 Language Arts starts with me as their teacher, but we have a letter from the director saying to vote for student council representatives at 7:30. We line up and go downstairs to vote. We are then told to come back at the beginning of second period, in Spanish of course. Because the schedule had just changed, I needed to know, “¿A qué hora empieza la hora segunda?” since I did not know. We were to return at 8:15 to vote.

We go back upstairs and actually get a bit of work done, but the majority of students are moving as slow as molasses getting the lesson of ‘elements of fiction’ in their journals. We have an actual book discussion because they were able to check out an English book from the library finally on Friday. The library has a very limited selection of about 150 old looking, Goodwill type books that would make a rather paltry classroom library, let alone a pre-K – 12 school library. We are making headway in the lesson, but then it is time to vote. They vote for personero/a. This went remarkably smoothly.

After voting, it’s back to a bit of fiction, prediction, and ‘what good readers do’. Many interruptions of questions peppered the lesson, because they don’t really know what good readers DO do. My lesson was cut short with elections, but we did accomplish a fair bit.

9:05-9:25 is recess duty for me. It is amazing to watch kids run through the center of school, while others are eating. Apparently it’s not allowed to make a student miss an entire recess because s/he needs to eat. Amazingly, I have seen very few accidents or tears and have not been asked for a band-aid once. They probably know not to ask, because, of course, I don’t have any anyway. This non-collision collision course I see at school daily, I’m certain, prepares the students for driving in the future. This particular recess was markedly quieter than others. Maybe in Colombia I will like Mondays at school.

9:25 is my break for the next 45 minutes. I go to the bathroom and wash my filthy, white board marker dust-ridden hands. I check our school e-mail, relieved to find nothing. I then look at my new ‘draft’ schedule for the week and do some planning. My students stay in my classroom for everything but PE, art, lunch, and recess. The teachers are the ones who move. My fantastic teaching partner Sandra is giving her math lesson on fractions, ratios, and the greatest common factor. My mother would never believe I would say this, but I kind of miss teaching math. I am thankful to teach only 2 subjects though.

I look at my schedule and it’s kind of kooky. I teach homeroom 25 minutes everyday. I have recess duty 20 minutes everyday. Today is a light day – only 4 periods, tomorrow is 5 + my extracurricular/re-teaching (I’ll get back to that) for 2 more periods, Wednesday I have 5 periods, Thursday is the goofiest of all - after homeroom I will teach the extracurricular class and then nothing again until Social Studies from 2:15 until 3:45. I guess we know when I’ll be planning. Friday is fairly heavy to make up for light Thursday with 6 periods. Whew!

After I figure out the schedule and do some grading, it’s time for me to teach my second class of Language Arts. This is usually the better behaved class, but they’re all fussy because they checked library books out on Friday and were to read 30 pages over the weekend. Since my other class had gone to the library first, many of the suitable books had been picked over. Some of the picked books were most definitely NOT “just-right” books. I realize this, and swiftly change my lesson to take a step back and teach the “How to pick a just-right book” lesson, so this doesn’t happen again.

They were to bring books for the classroom library (it was one of the many supplies on their huge list), but there is not one classroom library book to be seen (remember, this is not my homeroom). A few students produce books they have, which, I kid you not, range from Archie comics, to Captain Underpants, to an abridged version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by none other than William Shakespeare. Yeah, I think they need the ‘how to pick a just-right book’ lesson IMMEDIATELY. To be fair, two students had chosen perfectly-leveled biographies to read on Walt Disney and Amelia Earhart, but this trimester we are focusing on fiction. These were the only books brought in, for a classroom library total of 5 books with only 2 ‘just-right’ books. Teaching math is looking better all the time. Doh!

I expected Barranquilla, a city of 1.1 million, to have some selection of English language novels. Nope. I also expected a bilingual school that’s been in existence for 17 years to have a better book selection. And…no. I really wish I had sent more of my awesome classroom library books, I did send about 12, but my box that I shipped August 4th hasn’t arrived yet. Some are in my storage shed, and some at my former school Highland. I think I might have to ask the teachers there to send me some of my books.

I asked my students if they had a public library here in Barranquilla. They told me no. They are probably right, but I will ask around. This made me feel sad. Most of the students have not read more than 2 novels in English in their whole lives. This means, hmmm, 6th grade? Let’s take a big step back. My students are generally bright and, don’t forget that they are all reading English as a Second Language. Wow, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover with these students, but they need to be reading more in English.

Next, it’s lunch. Usually the staff room is so loud it is often worse than the classroom. Seriously, it is impossible to carry on a conversation at a reasonable volume level, with the person sitting 6 inches from you, and be heard. It reminds me a lot of the dinner scene from Annie Hall. Of course they are talking, no wait, I mean, shouting in Spanish here and they're not Jewish or from New York, but you get the idea.

Although the staff is nice, Kären – the 5th grade teacher from Washington state who is my neighbor – and I don’t get invited into conversations very often. Mainly, it’s probably because they don’t think we understand Spanish. We do, but not when it sounds like a shouting competition. This is part of the Costeño culture – talking fast and loud. Also, we are new, and it always takes a while to break into the staff room conversations at school even when you speak the language fluently and are in your own country. I have a salad and a cheese-filled arepa for lunch that I brought from home. People not only seem amazed that I’m vegetarian, but also that I cook. Thankfully, they often say it looks good and/or tastes good. I then go upstairs to the kitchen to wash my Tupperware and fork, because there is no sink in the staffroom. I keep the fork at school, because there is also no silverware.

Lunch over. I’ve got some planning and grading time. I grade their Social Studies quizzes, which range from 10 – 100%, that’s a pretty wide range there kids. Looks like some people didn’t study. Fortunately, there is this fabulous thing they do at the school called re-teaching. It took place after school last year, but now will happen before school while other kids are doing their extracurricular activities. This sounds great in theory. It won’t start for a while, so we’ll see what it’s like in practice.

My wonderful director enters my room to ask me to have a meeting with her at 2:00. Of course I will. I look at my cell-phone clock, it’s 1:33 (actually 13:33), I’d better do some planning for tomorrow too. I go to the meeting at 2, which of course ends up being 2:18 and school ends at 2:30. I had sent her a bulleted e-mail asking questions practical concerns like: Why doesn’t my bank deposit amount match what I thought it should? That solved. When will I receive my box? She’s looking into it. How do I pay utilities? Answered, but I’m curious about the amount it will be. She had asked me if I wanted to teach an extracurricular class last week and I wanted to get the logistics of what, when, and where. Answered with, “Tomorrow morning.” Um, I’m not really prepared for that considering that I’m finding out now and I’m still not really sure what I will be teaching. She said she’d teach it tomorrow and I’ll observe. I said Thursday would work better with my kooky schedule and she said she’d switch it to then and I’ll start teaching on Thursdays. She really is a problem solver extraordinaire.

Then I’m off to get ready for tomorrow at 2:41. The Social Studies department head stops me to ask how I’m feeling about things and for me to be honest. This is a question I am asked a lot here: “How do you feel about things here?” and sometimes “¿Cómo sientes aquí?” I think people genuinely want to know, and then want to make it better for you if things are not going well.

I was in my room for all of 2 minutes, when Dave, the Canadian teacher, came in to see if the internet device I have would work in his computer. There was a whole conundrum with the internet device, and neither one of us has had our service for a week and a half. He gets a weak connection in his apt, and I do not. The aforementioned fabulous director let me borrow her internet device (modem?), which didn’t work until I downloaded some software. We are waiting for the arrival of the new modems.

Time to go home with my carpool at 3:04. This is probably the earliest I’ve arrived home from work, it’s just after 3:30 hot and sunny – the high is 95 degrees Fahrenheit and I think that it must have been that temperature right then. The pool is closed Mondays, so Kären and I headed up our steep hill to the gym. We worked out, headed to the store and were home before it got dark, which is 6:30 here.

I was excited to make gallo pinto, which is a Costa Rican dish for which I have all the ingredients: cooked rice, black beans, onion, red pepper, cilantro, and they have this great curry sauce here that is much like Lizano from Costa Rica – hooray! I enter the house and want to wash my sweaty hands and take a shower, to find there is no water. Yep, that happens from time to time. There is still no water as I write this. Remember, that means no flushing the toilet either.

I used the water that I have in my fridge to wash my hands. In case you’re wondering, you can’t drink tap water here. I was buying a 5-liter container of water every other day, until Dave said another Canadian who has lived here for years just boils his water. What a concept! Not to mention that I’d been boiling my water for coffee everyday sin problemas.

I sat down to eat dinner and wanted to check my e-mail and my friend Dan Skyped me. He said it sounds like things are going well. I said something like, “’Well’ is a bit of a superlative” and then basically launched into this story.

My reason for writing this is not to bore you with mundane details of my life, but rather to remind people that I am not on vacation. I am working here. Yes, it is exciting and adventurous to live in a foreign country. Parts of the experience are absolutely wonderful. Other parts are frustrating as hell. When you work in a foreign country other parts are also run-of-the-mill.

There was just a knock on my door and I was expecting it to be Kären telling me the water was back on, but it is Andrés. He had just finished his English class, lives nearby, and has no cell phone minutes so he stopped by. We are talking to each other in mostly Spanish as I type this. I have learned in the past 20 minutes that vigilante means the doorman – a handy thing to know (those pesky false cognates), and that adelgazando means to be getting thin. I may be able to go over to his apartment to take a shower. He offered…but just found out the whole neighborhood doesn’t have water. So even though I’ve had the generous offer of a shower, there is no water anywhere.

Suddenly I remember the gym. Maybe they have water and I know they have showers. It’s in my neighborhood, but you never know. This could turn out to be my lucky day. I go get Kären and Andrés gives us a lift to the gym.

¡Exito! Success! This is why we tell children to be creative problem solvers. There was water at the gym. I am clean and it’s time for bed at 10:52. Buenas Noches.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Mi Apartamento

Mi Apartamento

My apartment is quite roomy for one person, with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and living room. It is nice, and a lot bigger and nicer than I expected.



view from the top of my hill


my kitchen - note gas stove! But no cabinets.


dining room


living room


the office bedroom (there is a tiny yoga room, but it's so small, the picture didn't turn out)

my bedroom

my view outside - 18 inch wide balcony (what you can't see, but I can hear, is the highway behind the hill)

bathroom (it has a twin)


Clothes washer in the kitchen. Clothes must be hung to dry.

I live in a complex called Miramar, which is so new it isn’t even on Google maps. It’s also still under construction. It’s in the northwest area of the city. The hills are very steep here, unlike anywhere else in the city. At the top of my hill I do have a distant view of el mar - the sea. It is windy and at night the wind often howls through my windows.

It feels a bit isolated from most of the city, and like I’m surrounded by cement high rises, but it is very safe. It is also close to school and El Centro Commercial Miramar. That seems to be a big deal here. This means that I’m close to a mall where I can grocery shop (we already know about the magic cashiers), do banking, eat a meal, buy clothes and household products, and fortunately, in my case, go to the gym. The Miramar mall is extremely new (not all the stores are even open yet) and is not nearly as big as the neighboring Centro Commercial Buena Vista. That’s a place where people like to go hang out, much more so than Miramar.

I’m not much of a mall girl, but I am glad I can walk to the grocery store, gym, and bank – now that I finally have a bank account with some (not much) money in it. Also, the air conditioning is nice. For some reason it never ceases to amaze me when I open the door and walk outside after going to the gym and grocery store – it will be 7 o’clock at night, dark, and a warm, humid, summery breeze hits me like a wet blanket. I love hot humid weather, so for me it’s great. Oh, one last thing, there is a pool in my complex Portal de Miramar. It’s hot and surprisingly sunny right now, so I think it’s time for a little swim before I start on the mountain of papers I need to grade.