Food...I mean, English Class!

Since Carnaval has been over for almost a month, things in Barranquilla are finally starting to happen. Projects put on hold for indefinite periods are starting up. Classes are held with regularity, and normalcy of the Barranquillan sort is beginning to settle in.

Of course, in a week there's a full week of vacation for Semana Santa - Holy Week/Easter, but we're not going to think about that yet.

Instead, let's focus on how last weekend, a project that has been discussed since basically the time we got here finally came to fruition: English classes for English teachers throughout the whole of Barranquilla.

Coordinated through the Secretary of Education, these classes were begun last year by the former Response Volunteers. Three hour sessions held on Saturday mornings, they're a chance for English teachers of all English abilities to gather and learn about US culture, as well as have a space to practice listening and talking English.

With six volunteers in the city, we hold two different classes on alternating weeks. With Jessica and I co-captaining a class, naturally, naturally our topic is...food! She likes to bake, I like to cook...we thought we'd take red and blue and make purple. Our idea: use food as a lens for culture, covering geography, cultural trends, holidays, nutrition, recipe exchanges...and have an awesome excuse to cook up food every other week. We call it: "Food and Culture in the US: A Taste of Culture"

Okay, so, maybe we like food a little too much...but 18 teachers, a giant batch of homemade English muffins, peanut butter and jelly (of the homemade strawberry sort) sandwiches, and three hours later, we have to say it was pretty much a success.

...And what's our next class? The West: Vegetarianism, Fast Food, and Easter. California-style pizza and hot cross buns, here we come...!

For the fact Colombians are usually apathetic about peanutbutter, 

our class got surprisingly into their PBJ's

Of course we taught the song "Peanutbutter and Jelly"...at the "And Jelly!" moment here...

We had them use charla paper. They turned into professional artists...it's a little hard to see, but this is a masterful rendition of a "breadbasket" with all sorts of goodies from the Midwest. So good it made me a touch nostalgic...

Shameless plug: TravelGoGirl.com

In the Peace Corps, we have three "official goals."

1) Our primary project - in my case, teaching.
2) Our secondary projects - an integration of our work into our communities, like English classes for the school district (see future post), school cleanups (see past post), and more.
3) Cultural exchanges, etc.

Recently, I was offered the opportunity to contribute to an awesome online publication about my experiences here; this, you might say, is part of my third goal, and hence I am shamelessly plugging it: my new monthly colomn in "GoGirl," a story-based travel magazine blog written by and for women all around the globe.

Though perhaps reminiscent of some of the posts I have here, it's pretty exciting that a) it's public, and b) it's part of an awesome blog compilation of travel stories...so I'd love if you checked it out!

http://www.travelgogirl.com/2012/03/barranquillas-carnaval-to-live-it-is-to-enjoy-it/

Going in circles...

Literally!

The other day, I decided enough was enough. Due to weather, school schedules, street safety, and the lack of a key to my house to let myself out without family noticing, I haven't run in months. Although I do a fair amount of walking, this was not a) satisfying my love of aerobic exercise, or b) counteracting the four-persons'-worth of food I receive on a daily basis.

Now, what I did will probably not alleviate the associated problems with the latter issue. However, happiness on the aerobic front is mine, because I bought an elipitical!

Whoa, am I in the Peace Corps, or, as we sometimes call it here, the "Posh" Corps??

Yet to be determined.

However, the giant department stores here each carry an eliptical along the lines of 240 mil pesos (under 150 dollars), and I had saved enough to afford this from my "moving in" allowance when I became an official volunteer.

Securing it from the store, taxi-ing it home in its giant cardboard box, and putting it together was a totally new adventure, which required the assistance of two menfolk (awesome co-volunteer Tyler and equally awesome host brother Gonzalo), some pretty skilled diagram-reading, and some jerry-rigging. (it's a super good thing my host brother is an engineering student, to correct both the mistakes Tyler and I made putting it together initially, as well as to take the whole thing apart after first construction attempt to correct a faulty-manufacturing issue...)

And so, because I don't go in circles enough in my real life (hah!), I can now jump on my rickety elipitical and do some more, all without leaving the darkness comfort of my cave room!

Tyler got excited and dove right in

Easier than reading Spanish directions?

Gonzalo working his magic

Boston Brass

Last night, I experienced my first "cultural event" in Barranquilla by way of the Boston Brass. Not sure what they were doing venturing so far from home, but this amazing brass quintet performed classical faves, personally composed music, and American Jazz favorites. They head off to Bogota next.

Favorite music features included compositions by Gershwin; favorite non-music features included the Boston-accented Spanish and the fact that they described what an accordian is to folks whose teeth are cut listening to vallenato, an accordian-heavy music style here.

Favorite thing in general was the theater: Teatro Amira de la Rosa. It's the city's largest and sort of only public theater here, with red plush seats, balconies, and beautiful acoustics. They have plays, musical concerts, and other events with some regularity, although locating the schedule for the theater is a feat in itself.

It's located only a 10 minute walk from my school and as it sells tickets for just a couple of mil, it's pretty amazing...which in my mind makes up for the fact that there's nothing else of any great substance in this post :)

from http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/98/baq16hd7.png/sr=1

 

A good day

 

Today was a good day. There were points of this day where this was not a sure thing. But thinking it over, I’m fairly sure it cannot be overall classified as anything but.

Today’s major events included 1) Park cleanup, 2) Baby shower, 3) Music.

1) Park Cleanup

The first, biggest and best of today's events was the park cleanup, for which I can take absolutely NO credit.

A little background to this: my head coteacher, the bilingual coordinator at my school, is incorporating a program into English teaching that she developed (and for which she won first place in the city last year). Its basics include increasing self-esteem and confidence of the girls. In the eleventh grade, the girls are required to do a year-long volunteer project that they’ve developed.

Just to give perspective on where we started, when we introduced the project we first we had to explain what volunteering was in Spanish, before even attempting to discuss it in English. Last week they presented their ideas.

It’s hard to present this without gushing all over the place as I’d like, so here are the facts—

A group decided they wanted to clean up Parque Metropolitano, which boarders the stadium near Soledad, which is like our Harlem or Roxbury, if you will. Except poorer. Many of my students live in this area.

But they didn’t want to just cleanup the park. They wanted to then teach English to neighborhood members in the park.

Wow, I thought, how incredible they decided to do this. When was it going to happen? we asked. “This weekend!” they said.

Yeah, right, I thought. No way anything would actually get pulled together this quickly. But after a few last minute time changes, it was confirmed it was happening and I hopped on a bus to head to the park. After an unintentional bus tour of Soledad, I managed to arrive at the park slightly late, where I saw this:

And heard the sweet sounds of children laughing and sharing English (the little boys were today's students, the girls are mine :) ).

At least twenty girls from my school and from another school had showed up, filled multiple bags of trash, and were teaching English to the children in the park…all of which was completely planned and executed by them. There are no words to describe my emotions.

2) Baby Shower

I arrived home to find my house looking like this:

 

It was decorated for the baby shower of my older host sister who doesn’t live in this house. How do you say baby shower in Spanish, you ask? That would be: “Baby Shower.”

It’s a totally imported idea, replete with lots of games and food. We had one of these just two weeks ago for a cousin. Same idea, but everything in pink. So, for the next six hours…we baby-showered.

3) Music

Afterwards, I spent some time with the other host sister and her boyfriend. We ended up sitting on a curbside outside their friend’s house, talking about Mozart’s Requiem. Then he went and got his guitar and they played beautiful guitar music and sang, until his grandmother came out of her house to shush us. Which is really just hilarious since she must have the most sensitive ears ever (and not going to lie, I’m slightly jealous of her lack of tolerance for noise, since that can only mean she is one of the few who lives without it)…?

***

Maybe this week was hard because of the disorientation from traveling to Bogota last weekend. Or maybe it was just that it was a regular old school week, with hours of classes, a little less sleep than I’d like, and nothing too special overall but still the general struggles of life in a foreign country/family/job. Either way, nothing makes me happier than the fact that, at the end of the day, because of today, this was not only a good day, but I guess I'd have to say a really good week.

International Women's Day

In case you weren't aware, the 8^th of March marked International Women’s Day for the world. Because here we don’t let anything pass us by without a party, here it was an occasion for which we held  celebration time in every school and place of work.

As soon as I sat down to the first school assembly, it became clear that this was not going to be a recognition of the sort we might offer the US. In the morning session, we simply had the male teachers stand and give 30 minutes of prayers thanking God and Senor Jesus for the existence of women.

In a burst of unsurprising irony, the male coteacher in my next class taught the “Infinitive Purpose” verb structure with the sentence: “I cook a meal to honor my husband who flies to Miami to meet with Barak Obama to settle world problems.”

I did my best to counteract with my own version of the lesson, which included teaching the translation of “Women’s Rights,” equality, and the quote “I celebrate Women’s Day to _______”, which happily after only a very little encouragement brought responses like “…to realize my dreams, to work, to be remind myself I’m as important as men, to learn the history of strong women.”

The Afternoon Jornada, however, went all out with an all-school participatory presentation. Though I was hoping for mention of some of Barranquilla’s famous women at the least (we even have a woman mayor right now!), instead we went a slightly different route… First we had prayers thanking god for women, more of the same. Then, about a hundred of the tenth grade girls dressed in scanty but beautiful dresses did a runway model show. And as icing on the cake, one of the male teachers spent twenty minutes giving piropos to the woman teachers, including myself.

A side note on piropos: these are one of the banes of walking around the city. If a woman wears anything even slightly revealing…we’re talking simply jeans rather than a work skirt…we are subject to the most public, dirty attention I’ve ever experienced. I’ve had things shouted in my face, whispered in my ear, or been stared at so intently by men passing on motorcycles they’ve literally come close to crashing. They say anything from “Pretty!” to “Come to my bed,” or the like. It’s like all men are suspended in permanent 13-year-old mindsets, and it’s disgusting.

That being said, we received piropos of the most cheesy sort, like, “An angel came down and asked if you needed protection, but I said no because another angel like you wouldn’t need it..” etc. Enjoyed immensely by all, it was then time to feast – they’d gotten food from a restaurant for all the teachers, although I declined as I was late to another meeting.

But at least I know that women are loved here…at least enough to have a party for them. Next step: next year, inject just a lil bit of history/women’s rights into this day..!