Sports & Finca Weekends

COLOMBIA TIP #30 – If you happen to score a goal with your head while playing futbol with Colombians, just smile and act like it’s an everyday occurrence.

So this post is about two things:
-The Binationals weekend for teachers hosted in Armenia
-The Finca weekend with the school from Cali

Firstly, a few weekends ago now (I am so behind on the blogging!), GI School hosted the Binationals sports tournament for teachers and staff.  There are other Binationals tournaments in Colombia for the students (high school just had theirs in Cartagena two weeks ago), so I am happy they didn’t forget to include the staff in the fun too!  There were four sports to play – futbol (of course), basketball, volleyball, and softball.  There were also three other schools with groups of staff that made the trip too – Colegio Bolivar from Cali, Colegio Jorge Washington from Cartagena, and Colegio Karl C. Parrish from Barranquilla.  With the attendance of the last school, it meant that I got to see my good friends Sarah and Eric!  It was so great to see them, talk about how teaching is unbelievably harder than we thought, that we have the same problems, and that Colombia is an awesome country.  I still owe Sarah $50mil pesos, so this is me writing it down and recording it for the next time I see her!

Eric, me, and Sarah at the games!

The three sports I decided to play were basketball, volleyball, and futbol.  Basketball came first, and I wasn’t anything special.  Neither was anyone else, (okay, some of the other gringos from other schools were pretty good), but I don’t think basketball is Colombia’s sport.  When it came time for futbol/soccer, I started to get a little nervous because THIS was Colombia’s sport.  All of the guys suited up with their shin pads and cleats, while I used the tiny shin pads I’ve been borrowing from Allison and my trusty old running shoes.  The girls aren’t very sporty here in Colombia, probably only with the exception of these sports teacher girls.  I was one of three girls that opted to play the first game, alongside Allison and Elia.  So even the female sports teachers didn’t want to play with these supposedly pro guys!  I was nervous.  I was sorry to say that some of the people on my team that were staff at our school I had not ever seen before.  But then when I found out they were sports teachers and were constantly on the opposite side of campus, I felt a little better.  But still, I wish there were more events for all staff at GI so that these situations didn’t happen.

No one really discussed positions, not that I’d be able to understand them anyway, so I quickly made my way up to the front to play forward.  Only sprints for running, not having to come back on defence as much, just hanging around the centre line or the goal line – that’s me!  The game started and as expected, us girls were just decoys, running around and not being passed to.  I guess this happens in every country.  I was getting a little frustrated, but then something strange happened: I got the ball.  As I dribbled up the field, I tried to cross the ball over to the net but instead the ball decided to go at the net instead.  It looked like a decent shot, even though it wasn’t meant to be, but either way I think the door was open for us ladies.  We still didn’t get the ball as often as I would’ve liked, but I was happy to say that every time I did get it, I didn’t do anything stupid with it, so the passes started to keep coming.  Then I had an amazing move where I knee-kicked the ball over a defender and blew past him.  I got the “OOOOOOH” from every person on the field, which was kind of awesome.  Our team went 2-1-1 – not too shabby!  My highlight of the night was when a beautiful cross from my co-homeroom teacher William (a sports teacher) came straight to me and with my head I made no mistake.  He came over, picked me up, and everyone was so excited for me.  Even the guys on the other team gave me a little clap.  They watched me a little closer after that.  I felt very accomplished being able to keep up with the Colombian boys.  I am once again going to blame the altitude – I think it has helped my breathing efficiency or something cause I wasn’t as tired as I usually am.  Or maybe it was just the thrill of playing soccer on a real field again kept me going!

This is me and Veronica lined up playing a game before the sports started at the games.

That night there was a night of dancing after that, so I was definitely hesitant at first.  After four months in Colombia, dancing is still not my thing.  Luckily, a few dancing partners took on the task of trying to teach me.  I even stepped on one guy’s feet (how unbelievably cliché), but I think I improved a bit.  Until next time when I forget everything.

The next weekend, we had organized a trip to a finch in Cali with our school and the same Cali school that was in the sports tournament the night before.  Sam from Queen’s was there again, and I met a lot of new people here as well.  It was mostly foreign teachers – good for feeling at home but bad for practicing Spanish.  Basically the weekend was full of sports, swimming in the pool (though I didn’t because it was too cold.  We were up in the mountains, so it wasn’t the typical Cali heat we had), playing games, and drinking.  It was really fun and I tried my very best not to talk too much about school.  There were probably about 25 of us that were sleeping in this one giant estate, just to give you an idea of how big this place was.  I was in a room with bunk beds with Veronica, Allison, and Rebecca.

This is the finca sitting up on a hill in the mountains – pretty nice!

Elia and I had a fun photo shoot which I think is going to be a new tradition for us in each place that we go to.  Her karate kicks are better than mine to date, but I’m hoping the practice improves them!

We also had someone organize some Minute To Win It games which was fun!  If you don’t know what Minute To Win It is, it’s basically a bunch of random tasks that you try to complete in one minute or less.  Here is a picture of me with a bucket on my head waiting for someone to thrown ping-pong balls into the bucket from different distances.

And here is a few of the GI School crew that came to the Finca – Katie, Caitlin, Ben, Vero, me, Allison.

It was a good weekend to get away from Armenia for a bit and meet some more people like us that have made the crazy decision to teach in Colombia!

October Break Part 3 – Cartagena

COLOMBIA TIP #6 – Colombians are CRAZY about their futbol – so you should be too!

I’m sure you were all wondering what happened during the last third of my trip!  So even though it is long overdue, here are our adventures in Cartagena!

After we parted ways with Libardo and Ricardo, we took a bus to Cartagena which was supposed to take about 4 hours.  It ended up taking 6.  I was tired of sleeping, sick of reading, and just started to be bored out of my mind.  We finally arrived and then needed to take a taxi ride (through traffic, which added to our total car-time that day) to our hotel destination.  Notice I said hotel and not hostel!  We decided after roughing it for 4 solid days that we deserved a nice shower, nice beds, and our own room.  We basically arrived at our hotel, showered, and went out for dinner.  It was a great feeling to be clean and get some food in us.  Because we were so exhausted from a day of travelling, we went back to our room, watched the only English channel (CNN), and went to bed fairly early.

We woke up on Friday and decided to explore the city.  Cartagena is a city that is full of history – it has an old walled city, the new city, and a more touristy section.  I think it was mentioned to us that Cartagena is one of, if not the, biggest tourist destination in Colombia!  We also saw some cruise ships and having that idea pop into our heads was pretty fun!  I hope it becomes a reality in the next two years.  We wandered around the old city and discovered that we could walk on top of the wall!

It was also fairly busy in the streets with tourists and vendors alike, especially those selling Colombia futbol jerseys because there was a game later that afternoon.  After finding some lunch (and ice cream), we decided on a pub/bar place to settle in and watch the soccer match.  It was Colombia vs. Chile this match was included the two games Colombia had left to qualify for the World Cup 2014, and they needed to at least tie one of them.  The bar was freezing, so Veronica went out on a mission to buy us some long-sleeved Colombia jerseys.  We kind of killed two birds with one stone – we had some warmer clothes and we also blended in a bit more!  The game didn’t start off too well and Colombia was down 3-0 after the first half.  But they turned it around in the second half and with a goal and also capitalizing on two penalty shots, so they got the tie they needed to qualify for the World Cup!  It is in Brazil in June and I REALLY want to go!  We’ll just have to see!

This is a picture of the bar as we were celebrating Colombia’s qualifying!  Balloons and jerseys everywhere!

That night, we wandered the streets for a bit because it was a big party happening of course.  But the sun really sucked the energy out of us and we went to bed fairly early again.

The next morning we had arranged to go on a boat tour to an island for the day.  The boat ride was much nicer than the one we took in Tayrona!  We were with about 20-25 other people and there was another boat full of people that came to the beach with us that day as well.

We happened to meet some people from Boston who were in Cartagena for a wedding – one of their friends was marrying a lady from Colombia!  It was very nice to have some English-speaking buddies for a day and not have to exhaust our brains thinking about Spanish!  We mostly just hung out around the beach, read our books, went swimming, AND I officially had my first professional massage!  Bucket List check!  And it only cost the equivalent of $15.  It was a nice relaxing day and a good last full day of our vacation!

We got some nice tans too!  Of course this was the best way to show them off.  Trying to warn the person we asked to take the picture that it was going to be a slightly strange photo was rather funny.

On Sunday, our last day, we woke up early and met up with a lady named Katie (but pronounced “Cat-ee”) for a tour of Cartagena.  Since we had done a lot of wandering ourselves already, it was just now time to gain some of the insight into the history behind it.  Here are some of the pictures of the cool architecture, statues, and look out points.

Veronica decided to get back at me for all the times I took pictures of her taking pictures!

In one place, they had a display of all the different currencies around the world – this is what they had for Canada.  Can we stop and look at how old these are?  There is a $2 bill for goodness sake!

We also found it fun to recreate some of the statue poses – Veronica the flautist, Ellie the lantern holder, and me the basket carrier.

Afterwards, it was time to go home.  I really wasn’t looking forward to the end of our vacation – neither were Ellie and Veronica!

But we decided that the more we travelled around other cities in Colombia, the more we liked Armenia.  The temperature, the speed at which people speak Spanish, and so much more. Overall, it was an amazing vacation and in the 10 days we had, we saw some pretty amazing things.  That being said, it also caused our pockets to be emptied and I made it down to $40,000 pesos in my bank account by the end of it (which is $20)!  But, vacations must end, students need teaching, and teachers need to continue marking and planning and staying up way too late and being stressed and all of those sorts of things.  Counting down the days until the next vacation!