LIFE TIP #5 – Never underestimate the importance of water!
A lot has happened in the last month, so I’ll mention a bit of everything to keep all you faithful blog readers up to date!
First there was Valentine’s day! No official Valentine for me, but it was nice to receive a few flowers from some of the other teachers on staff. Students and teachers could buy flower grams to send to people (4 for you Glen Coco!) so I had a nice bouquet by the end of the day!
Romantic gesture of the day – one of my students gave his girlfriend (another student of mine) a bouquet of origami roses with a note that said “I will love you until the last rose dies.” So cute, yet so unbelievably sappy too!
We also went to a concert at the local church one night too – Sheila Romero from Puerto Rico was in town and Crista got us all tickets to go! Of course it was a little difficult to understand, but they had the lyrics projected on the wall in front of us, so it was easy to pick out words that I knew that way! Between songs, she would kind of give her back story or have little anecdotes, so we learned that she didn’t want to enter into the musical business because it was so cut-throat and she didn’t think she was meant to do that. So instead, she got involved with the church and made her own music that way. She has an incredible voice!
A couple weeks ago, we had Culture Week at school. Think back to when you were in elementary school and you had Play Day – but this was for an entire week! I welcomed the break and a chance to see the students in a setting outside of the classroom. There were many different activities put on by the different departments at school (i.e. Spanish, English, Math, Gym, etc). Aren’t the kids so cute when they’re not in class?
One Grade 9 class
The Grade 10s
The Math department ran a few activities for Middle and High school, and the station that I ran went really well! We had different teams competing to stack plastic cups the fastest in a relay race, but in order to stack the cups properly, they had to add integers! Here are a few pictures of the action:
Searching for the right numbered cup – “What’s −3+5?”
As you might have guessed, there were a few tower tumbles! So some teams had to restart and catch up to the other teams after that happened!
The Friday of Culture Week was my favourite – in the morning, there was an assembly with various students and teachers performing music and drama. Veronica and I were brave enough to play guitar/sing in front of the whole school! It was just a little nerve-wracking…
It was also the day that was Colombia-themed, so that’s why we are wearing our Colombia soccer jerseys!
In the afternoon, the students participated in an obstacle course type thing that teachers can also participate in. I had heard about this infamous event, so I brought my extra set of clothes to wear for it! As a grade, your group would complete various tasks such as carrying people from one side of the field to another without them touching the ground, climbing over a wall that was as tall as your shoulders, and tossing shoes to knock off pylons from the soccer posts. At the end of it all, we went on a slip-n-slide and then proceeded to army crawl through the thickest mud pit I’ve ever seen. By the end of it, we were all COVERED in mud from head to toe. But it was fun!
That’s me in the green shirt swimming in the mud!
The one Grade 10 class is my Homeroom, so I completed this endeavour with the Grade 10s! So here is a few of us at the end (can you spot me? C’mon, I don’t look that much like a 16 year old, do I?)
Yep.
And finally, last weekend I travelled to Barranquilla to visit Sarah and Eric and to experience Carnival! I arrived on Saturday around noon, went to change into crazy Carnival clothes, and then headed out to the parades. As we were waiting in a crowd of people, I started to not feel so great. I hadn’t really eaten a proper meal or drank anything that day, so I started to feel the consequences. My vision started to go black and I fainted! They took me to the medical tent where I was given some hydrating liquid to drink, and we had some trouble communicating in Spanish about my name, how I was feeling, and what happened. I think it was a combination of lack of water, crowdedness, and the intense heat (Barranquilla is not in the mountains like Armenia, so it was much hotter there)! But don’t worry, I recovered for the rest of that day and we went out the next day in full force! We saw lots of different dances in the parade (and lots of the same ones too – Eric said at one point, “Now Katie, this dance is called the Cumbia, it’s very rare,” after we had seen it 25 times already), but it was really neat to see the different cultural aspects of Colombia.
This is our section of the stands for the parade! You may notice that our faces are a little less tan than normal – apparently it’s some sort of tradition to cover people’s faces with flour, and the people in our section were not shy about rubbing flour all over the faces of the gringos!
Sarah and I at the parade
Us Canadians were also very happy with Canada’s performance in the Olympics! Especially in the hockey – not ashamed to admit that when I had last period off when the Canadian men were playing the Americans, I got a little comfy in my classroom to watch some of the action! (And yes, my shoes are awesome – whether you’re from Colombia or Queen’s you’ll agree!)
Katie En Kolombia 