First Day!

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!

(Incredibly) High Expectations

It is not often that one is told with complete and utter seriousness that they are the answer to someone’s prayers. And yet, in the last few days, during my pre-school-year meetings with my amazingly motivated and talented counterpart, Carlota, she has told me that she believes me to be, quite literally, God’s answer to her prayers.

I don’t mean this as something even close to a boast; it simply happens that my counterpart, Carlota, has been working on a project idea of how to teach English in an integrated fashion in a manner that includes increasing students’ self-esteem (something very important in a country that has been ravaged by violence) for say, ten years now. And it also happens that a few years ago, I interned with a wonderful non-profit in Boston, Girls’ LEAP, that teaches holistic self-defense to women and girls (as it applies to both the psyche and the body) for a summer. This means that Carlota and I have found that our combined experience complements in a rather serendipitous way Carlota’s amazing, ambitious goals to not only implement an English curriculum that addresses the emotional needs of her students, but also to accomplish what I’ve learned is our school’s goal to become bilingual in the space of three years. 

Counterparts, in case I haven’t run through that one, are the people with whom we work most closely—the mouthpiece for the Peace Corps program and our first point of contact within the schools. Each volunteer has one; Carlota is mine, and she is incredibly dedicated to spreading English knowledge to her students. She sees it as a conduit to not simply a job at a call center where regular money can be made, but more ambitiously as a vessel through which students can achieve self-realization as they learn a new way of thinking and expression. 

Carlota has an unerring faith in herself and an amazing dedication to her project. Last year she submitted her project plan to a city-wide competition and won first place. This is the year of implementation—the year when the plan is put into place and, with the proof and student projects we will collect throughout the year, will culminate in the making of a documentary and giant English Day performance event. And after this? We will enter the plan and results into a country wide contest that could potentially bring money and awareness to our school.

As a woman of great faith, Carlota has told me that she truly believes that there is a divine reason for my presence within the school, and that with the two of us working on this project, we can realize her decade long goals and dreams.

Lower my expectations on this one? Au contraire, I’m not sure how they could get any higher--at least, the expectations that are out there in regards to my own role in the coming years. While this is maybe the most daunting perception within which I have ever worked, it is perhaps also the most motivating.

In a life-situation over which, in terms of life-situations, I have never held less control (aka living with a family picked by Peace Corps, in a country and city and neighborhood picked by Peace Corps, working in a Peace Corps-chosen professional sphere and working for a school assigned to me by…yup, Peace Corps…), nothing has been more refreshing and encouraging than the few meetings I’ve held thus far with my counterpart. And so, on an incredibly high, albeit rather intimidating note, I begin work tomorrow, and all that comes with that…the good Lord willing and the arroyo don’t rise!

Moving Time

Three months, almost exactly, have passed since arrival. In the past three months, I’ve sat through countless hours of training. I’ve learned survival Spanish. I’ve experienced Christmas in Colombia, traveled to a beautiful national park, become a part of a family both in the home and in our group of now 21 volunteers (two of our original 23 have returned home to continue their own journeys there), and I’ve chafed at the bit, wondering when “real life” would start.

And now, finally it’s beginning. In a manner of speaking. 

Unlike the Peace Corps stories of yore, that include taking bus, truck, and crop duster to reach the isolated outposts a volunteer may call home for two years, my new home is a three minute taxi ride from my previous. My new barrio, though only eight blocks away, is slightly less user-friendly, including hosting a few murders in the past few months (one at the park where I’ve already been running each morning), some neighborhood drug trafficking bosses, and a few more industrial-type car-fixing business sprinkled throughout the residential area. It’s not unsafe, exactly—just means that I shouldn’t really leave the house or walk through the area alone after eight at night. It’s also 30 blocks away from my school, so rather than sharing a community with my new, more centrally-located school, I will have two new communities to call my own. 

My new family is wonderful in a completely new way--whereas I had been living with only two, elderly people, here there are many people from ages nine or so up, and lots of relatives who live close by and often stop in. There’s also a tiny dog, Suzie, who is scheduled to have super tiny puppies come February or March!

In other news, although my new room is larger, it does not have windows. However, I do have internet… I guess I’ve substituted fresh air for a window to the world! I also have a ceiling fan, which has a pretty high kill record; anyone taller than five feet tall puts their hands over their head at their own peril—risking tetanus and finger gashes from the deadly metal blades. (Mike, the previous volunteer who lived here averaged one fan attack a month, and just last night Tyler got a little too excited at a football touchdown and experienced the rage of the blades as well.) This is, of course, all a moot point because I am not taller than five feet tall. 

School sort of starts this coming week. This week the teachers start, and along with meeting, greeting, and doing some organizing, they find out which grades they are expected to teach. No, this is not a constant thing. There is no room preparation or anything, however, because here teachers never have their own rooms—everyone just rotates according to the day and time. 

And then the week after this, the children begin school as well. Except, as they do over all things here on the coast, festivals win out over work. Since Carnival begins late February, we’ve been informed by our counterparts not to expect much serious school to happen prior to Carnival. AKA, not for at least a month! We should, however, expect that every Friday, classes will be shortened to accommodate the weekly Carnival-related celebration, which apparently all build up to the real thing. We should expect that teachers and students will show up to school, but the air will be full of festivity and such. 

So, basically, our weeks built in for school observation will be weeks filled with wondering, as always, what in the world is going on! These are the weeks in which I will attempt to meet the teachers, establish something of my role within the school, do my needs assessments, and make something of a plan for March…when “real life”—aka teaching/fulfilling my described job role— may actually begin…

And yet, as I look for ways to establish schedules and routines that will help keep me sane, I’m also considering the notion that the “real life” I often crave—of the sort that includes settling in and establishing routines—doesn’t quite exist. Or at least, not in the manner to which I’d been accustomed. (Shocker, no?!)  But hopefully, after so many changes and since I am very much still going through the Spanish learning curve, I’m predicting that after a few more months here, at least I’ll have a better idea of what sorts of expectations to have…fingers crossed for what’s ahead!

Robbers on the Roof (?)

The night before moving day and all through the house, not a creature was moving, except for a mouse (i.e. the many rats that live on the rooftops, because that’s what they do). I was nestled all snug in my bed, and visions of snowflakes danced in my head. Then up on the rooftop, there came such a clatter, I woke up puzzling (aka freaking out) as to what was the matter. 

A rat, I thought, or just something falling, and I lay there wishing to go back to sleep. But the banging came again, so loud that there was no way it could be a rat. No, I thought, stop being paranoid, Emily. It’s rat’s for sure. They’re at least eight inches long here, not counting the tail, and they live up on the ceilings of houses. It’s a rat. But the banging came again, louder. Like a person-size rat was moving around directly over my head.

My heartbeat began to speed up a bit. What does one do in Colombia when one thinks there may be are people on the roof? I wondered.

A fun detail that helped to increase that heart rate: My window is a sliding glass pane. There are no locks or bars, just a little piece of cardboard to put inside the window to prop it closed…which I’d conveniently forgotten to do after catching some breezes yesterday.  My room is maybe six feet wide total, and my bed is pushed against the wall directly under that window.

I lay still hoping for something, anything, to convince me it was just an animal when I heard a whistle being blown out in the street, which Heidi’s host mother had told us is how robbers signal each other.

Then there was another bang directly above me.

Holy shit, someone was trying to rob us, thought I.

Now, in the US, I would be on the phone in the second with the police. But since I have no idea how concept of 911 works here other than the fact the number is 123, and I haven’t recently brushed up on my scared-out-of-my-mind Spanish abilities, all I could think was that I was a gringa with a glass window. Too scared to leave the room in case they had somehow broken into the house, I reached over and grabbed the aluminum water bottle sitting by my bed. I can get a few good defensive whacks in with this at least, I thought, as I hunkered down on the floor.

There was car horn in the street from the front of our house, and then a muffled cough. There were more noises like feet. So, lacking the ability to protect myself in any useful manner, I then did what any rational peace corps volunteer would do…I called our duty officer—the person in the office whose job it is to answer our calls time of day or night. 

Turn on the lights, he told me, and make some noise. They would get scared and leave. It made sense, so I did so. He also told me to call our security officer who may have other suggestions.

This conversation with our security is slightly abbreviated, but includes only direct quotes:

Me: Frank, I think there were people on our roof trying to rob us. I heard really loud noises, a muffled cough, and a whistle signal on the streets.

Frank: Uh huh.  The rats are really loud here. It could be a rat.

Me: There were whistle signals right outside my house.

Frank: Well. Is there anyone else in your house?

Me: An old man with Alzheimer’s and his wife.

Frank: And the rest of the family? Are they coming home soon?

Me: Umm. It’s just us. I was too scared to leave my room. Also, there are no locks on my windows. It’s glass.

Frank: You should lock your window.

Me: There are no locks on the window.

Frank: You should try and lock your window

Me: Right. Anything else?

Frank: You can try calling the police number…

Me: *silence*

Frank: What barrio are you in?

Me: Barrio ****

Frank: Oh, well, that’s not so bad…okay. Stay in your room and see how it goes. Call me if anything else happens!

I have had more reassuring conversations with my teddy bear. 

But feeling better that I’d turned on my light and made a little noise and rather than a thief jumping through the window, the noises seemed to be gone, I stood near my door until my heart rate slowed to a more reasonable less-than-a-thousand-beats a minute.

At 4am, about 10 minutes later, I heard a whistle a few blocks down, so I figured that our house was safe…but after a little while realized that maybe we’d want to call the police, or something,  so I woke up my grandparents.

After my abuelo was appraised of the situation, he naturally went straight for the machete, then climbed onto the roof in order to terrify and/or kill the robbers single handedly. No one was there. We went to the front and when we didn’t see anything out the hidey-hole, my abuelo patrolled the block a little bit with machete in hand. 

“Todo bien,” he and my abuela declared, when they saw no one on the streets. All is well. Calling the police to let them know there might be robbers working the area is apparently not done here…so I went back to bed, where I may or may not have composed this post waiting for the adrenaline to clear out a bit so that I could go back to sleep. During which time I heard the faint whistle of the robbers as they continued their work on some other street… 

In the morning my abuelos told me that it was probably just the wind. They said in 25 years only once did people scale the walls, and they were people who were working on the house next door… Still, I have to say that this was the first time I was glad that my new room possesses no windows!

Parque Tayrona: A Pretty (and) Sandy New Year's

As a culmination to our two week long holiday break, myself and seven other volunteers journeyed to Parque Tayrona, a national park in Colombia with world-famous beaches and gorgeous scenery. Cobbling as much information as we could from the internet and our Lonely Planets, we jumped on the Berlina Line bus and headed off to Santa Marta, which is two hours north of Barranquilla, and then traveled another hour north past Taganga to the entrance to the park.

From the entrance to the park, a one hour trek into the wilderness takes you to the first beach, Arreicifes. (if you ever decide to go to this park, just make sure you take the right path, instead of heading left along the horse path…having gone left, rather than experiencing the beautiful tourist route we discovered the way back, we managed to hike into the park on the packhorse path, aka through gullies and mounds of horse crap…but just being in nature was pretty hard to beat!)

The beach at Arreicifes is surrounded by campgrounds, but it is too dangerous to swim at, and we had other goals—the beach Cabo San Juan del Guia. To get here we continued walking along the beautiful shore line for another hour, past “La Piscina,” the first swimming beach, and then on to Cabo, a campsite with an amazing swimmable beach as well.

Immediately sucked in by this gorgeous view:



We decided we’d like nothing more than to stay in hammocks in this beautiful gazebo. Exulting in our good luck at getting the last eight hammocks, we soon learned that despite all our knowledge, there was a crucial information gap: turns out, this gazebo was FREEZING come sundown. Huddled in our few layers (read: shorts, a short sleeve shirt, and a tshirt), we endured the winds and were rocked into a semi-sleep to the sound of crashing waves.

Abby (see above) and I may have done some early-morning hammock sharing to avoid hypothermia …and when the sun rose we all agreed that although the feeling of such cold was perhaps priceless in this land of crazy-ridiculous heat, and to have slept in so much splendor was a “good experience,” we’d move to the more plebian location of beach-hammocks the next night.

After thawing out on the beautiful beach, we trekked up the mountainside to Pueblito, a small site of ruins where an indigenous tribe once lived after escaping the Spanish conquistadors:

(250 terraces, where about 2000 people lived around 450-1600 AD)

New Year’s Eve came with fun and lots of foreign friends. Because it’s a family-oriented holiday here in Colombia, the beach was less crowded than expected, but still hopping with foreigners from all over the globe. For the first time in two days, the sounds of Colombian music filled the air and with this familiar soundtrack we danced on the beach under the stars well into the morning.

We also found out slightly tardily that the buses in Colombia apparently shut down for New Years, so instead of returning home on Sunday as planned, we received an unexpected extension to our trip. Though we’d run out of food (we’d splurged on such things as peanutbutter and apples!!...but those were long gone), it was hard to regret the extra pesos we spent on supplies since during the whole  next day we recuperated with long swims (and naps) on the gorgeous surrounding beaches.

Arriving back at Arreceifes that night, we spent the night in relative luxury: hammocks with mosquito netting! This area is where many ritzy folk stay, of the type who pack in roller-suitcases on horseback and apply fresh makeup and (gasp) shower every day! There were plenty of places for them, too, from gorgeous cabanas to hotel-type buildings, to those who “roughed” it in luxury tents and blowup mattresses.

Among some of the other visitors included two American guys on vacation, who were spending a couple weeks down in Colombia as a respite from their corporate jobs. They didn’t speak Spanish, so in return for us helping them order beers, we got to include a few cervezas in that order for ourselves… They also were gracious enough to feed us their unwanted food, like blackberry-sauced plantains, which to us were incredibly delicious…although by their bemused faces it was clear that by our wanton ravenous behavior we were reinforcing whatever you corporate folks think of us peace corps hippies…and yet, after a few days hiking in the brush, we surely weren’t going to turn down any free food! The irony of course is that we were returning from the park to live in cities bigger than theirs…

We found the tourist trail on the hike back. So, between that and the few days we were there, here are some beautiful pictures. In Parque Tayrona, it sort of went: turn around, pick up your camera, take a picture of something gorgeous, swivel and repeat. So if the following picture display is excessive, I apologize…but for us Peace Corps hippies languishing in the concrete jungle of Barranquilla, this was possibly the most amazing weekend had yet!

View from some rocks I climbed up:

Flock of cranes flying past the gazebo:

Path between some of the beaches:

Cranes overhead:

Sun begins to set:

It's not photshopped, I swear:

Sunset in Arreceifes:

Beach flower

View from the tourist trail:

Photos of Valledupar

Pictures of Valledupar!

At the River Gutapuri, with La Sirena (the mermaid) statue behind me. The river comes from the Sierra Nevadas, meaning it's FREEZING. (and so were the showers, for what it's worth...)



Colombian interpretation of a Nativity scene:

Husband of my abuela's daughter--dressed like a Santa to bring in all the whiskey...

Some snacks, in case you fancied pigs' head at the music festival

Hanging out with the fam--Manuel, my abuelo's son, and one of his daughters and neices:

We're going to a "small party with friends," said my grandparents, before we show up to this:

La Pilonera--a dancer in the typical costume:

Chilling in a mango tree with Adrianna, my host-neice: