Wow. First day. I think I’ve already reached Spanish language saturation, which does not bode well for the future…my brain still hurts! Hopefully this will get easier...This first day/this week is all about teacher work--students don't enter until next week. It is like an abbreviated, much less organized version of the teacher prep period in the United States.
In other news, first day went something like this:
I arrived at 1:00 en punto, which was the beginning of the 30 minute arrival window for all the teachers in the school. We crowded into a small teacher’s lounge and then waited for the next two hours, for the all-school teacher meeting. It was supposed to get started at two, but since we got started slightly before 3 that’s practically on time, in Colombian terms.
We filled the only room with air conditioning with about fifty teachers, catching up on all the latest gossip—what folks had done over Christmas, family news, etc. I think the full-body (breasts, stomach, AND ass) plastic surgery workover one of the teachers had done won the most sensational award…
The meeting was pleasantly structured, if occasionally ignored by the audience. We talked about love’s place in our lives, hopes for this coming school year, and then watched a Colombian-produced movie about theories as to why Colombia is poor when it has a variety of exploitable resources, like beautiful tourist attractions, coffee, minerals, etc.
The movie’s take on this was that Colombia wasn’t efficient enough. Gasp! It posited that the Colombian culture does not work hard enough, using examples such as the fact that Colombia has a 6 hour work day, while the Swiss, who have lots of money, work 8.
My personal favorite part was the Japanese-Colombian man who was interviewed extensively, who explained that the reason Japan has a huge amount of products, exports, and money, is because of their dedication and efficiency as a culture overall. This lead to the entire school for the rest of the day, when something went a little slower or someone answered their phone in a meeting (which happens ALL the time), exclaiming that we were being too Colombian, we needed to be more Japanese!
After the all-school meeting, we broke into departments where the departments had to reflect on their past year, and what they’d do to make improvements this year. It included things such as wanting the afternoon teachers to meet with the morning teachers so there was more department cohesiveness, focus on pronunciation, and more. I had some trouble understanding everything because the meeting took place in typical Colombian style, which included discussions turning rapidly into shouting…not always shouting against, instead often shouting with…but still shouting. Many people at once. It’s quite hard to decipher top-speed-shouted Spanish, in case you were wondering.
***and as a highly tangential side note, I totally understand now why my friends were a little bit scared of my family growing up. As an Italian family, we’re quite accustomed to brief shouting spats, during which points are made, won, or lost, but life goes on quite happily right afterwards. Colombia, however, ramps this up about 100 times. I’ve witnessed a well-adjusted mother whip off her shoe to beat her young son with it when he told her he hadn’t bathed…and then two minutes later they were sharing food and perfectly content. What?! After experiencing my temporary fear followed by immediate bemusement in these situations, I am thankful for my somewhat volatile heritage upbringing, to at least come at this with some cushion…
Anyway, after this lively meeting, the day was over, at about 6:30pm. I walked the 20 odd minutes home back to my new home, changed clothes, and went straight to a family birthday party near the Soledad stadium. Where I proceeded to embarrass myself by falling asleep in my chair around 11:30…my brain just couldn’t process anything anymore!
Since apparently it’s not customary to set week-long schedules for these sorts of teacher weeks, I have no idea what the rest of my week will bring, except that there will probably be more meetings, and lots more Spanish. Should be fun!
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