Teacher Binational Games & New Teacher Friends

COLOMBIA TIP #31 – As a gringa, you are twice as likely to be remembered.

I’ve experienced walking down the street and having people stare at me like I’m from Mars or something.  Mostly this is because they know that I am not Colombian, and especially in a city like Armenia, it is a rare occurrence for foreigners to be here (unless you’re teaching at the school).  Little did I know, I’d be remembered for other things too!

It was that weekend again – Binationals for all the teachers at the bilingual schools in Colombia.  I had been looking forward to this weekend since the last one ended!  I would be able to play sports, meet teachers from other schools around the country, and see people I had met from last year’s event!  Also, Sarah and Eric from Queen’s were going to be there and of course I was looking forward to seeing them!  Unfortunately, two days before we were scheduled to go, our principal informed us that the trip had been cancelled because too many people had changed their minds and flaked out.  We originally had 28 people planned to go, but then during the week leading up to it, there were excuses of “I can’t go anymore”, “I don’t have the money to pay”, etc.  So we went down to 12 people fast.  But I decided that I wanted to go and see my friends and participate still!  I don’t know what happened to the other 9, but Katie, Matt, and I hopped on our own bus to Cali and stayed in a hostel just so we could go.  Matt has an injured knee and Katie didn’t want to participate in the sports that they had, so it was just me playing in the games.  We arrived and the other teams were happy that at least some people from GI School came (and they were sure to express their disappointment with the others)!  We arrived late Saturday afternoon in time to watch some of the last games of the day and see a few people.  The Cali team captain asked if we still wanted to go on the chiva (party bus) and go to the dance clubs afterwards, and we said “of course”!  He also asked me if I’d be playing soccer with their team – that’s where I was surprised that they remembered me playing soccer!  Guess I made a little bit of an impression last year.  I also had Sarah and Eric ask if I’d play with them and their Barranquilla team, and Conor was there from Pereria asking if I needed a team to join then I could join theirs.  So I found myself in a tough spot!  That night, Katie, Matt, and I just went out for dinner at a pretty cool Oriental restaurant where they made the food in front of your table.  We were pretty tired (for no reason, the travelling and then watching sports?), so we just went to sleep afterwards.

Here’s the chef making the food foe us right before our eyes!

And with a little fire going on too…

We woke up to get back to the Cali school for our one day of sports!  I was all ready to play with the Cali team, but then I was told the Cartagena team needed another player, so it was finally decided that I would play with them.  I played three soccer games with their team, and for most of the games, I was the only girl on the field!  This also made it difficult to even touch the ball cause guys don’t always trust the ladies when it comes to sports.  But they started to trust me a little more, but I don’t think I was anything extra special this time around – I wanted my GI Armenia team with me!  Pereria had another game right afterwards, so I played my fourth soccer game with their team, all before lunch.  I was pretty exhausted, but I was loving it!  We went to the cafeteria for lunch and man, was this school nice.  It’s about twice the size of our school, but the buildings and campus were amazing.

Throwback from last year – missing you Elia and Allison!

After lunch, it was time for volleyball, and this time the Cali team insisted that I play with them.  One thing you should know about the Cali team is that they are super competitive.  It can be a good thing and a bad thing, but it makes you love it when you’re playing with them and hate it playing against them.  So I didn’t like them in soccer, but they were great in volleyball!  At the end of the day, I had played four soccer games and two volleyball games with three different teams.  It was awesome.

But the day wasn’t quite over!  We went back and get cleaned up for a night out dancing and it was so fun!  I’m not exactly a dancer, but when you’re on a moving bus with 20 others, you can blame your bad dance moves on the bumpy ride!  Each time someone asked me to dance, I warned them that it was not my strong suit, but they always said that I definitely could dance!  I think they were just being nice.

That’s me, Oscar (Cali), Katie, and Daniel (Cartagena).

The next few weekends included a couple mini trips – first was Pereria for Matt’s birthday and to see those teachers (we also met Angela from Texas, Nikki from Wisconsin there), and then a trip to Salento to meet up with the Manizales teachers that we had met – Michelle and Lee (from Toronto!), and Andy (Minnesota).  Our little foreign teacher group has grown and it’s wonderful!

This is also the time of year when we have to decide if we are going to resign our contract with the school or find somewhere else.  I was very back and forth earlier about what I was going to do, but now I’ve had this new idea of not necessarily leaving Colombia, but finding a new school here.  There is still so much do see and do around here, and I don’t want to give up on all the Spanish that I’ve learned just yet!  But I think I want a new start at a new school, so we’ll see what happens!

Beaches & Volcanoes

COLOMBIA TIP #48 – Sometimes things (like volcanoes) are greatly exaggerated in Colombia.

After we had rested and rejuvenated in the hostel and back in civilization, we had one day to spend in Santa Marta and then one in Cartagena.  We went to a beach in Tayrona Park, the same national park that we visited last year (but a different beach).  It’s really a beautiful place and even though I am slightly afraid of the ocean, we definitely went in for a swim!  I also finally got to read some of my giant Game of Thrones book, so it was worth it bringing it on the trip (I remember thinking at times, “Geez, this thing is weighing me down!”).

After the beach, we hopped on a bus to go back to Cartagena.  This bus, however, was more of a coach bus that picked us up straight from our hostel and brought us to the Cartagena hostel.  It was much more comfortable and even had music videos playing for the entire bus ride!  I was sure to add the names of the good songs to my list of canciones that I need in my iTunes.

We arrived at the new hostel to drop our stuff and then went for dinner at the same Vietnamese restaurant we had been to the year before.  The owner wasn’t there that night, but the food was still delicious.  After being in the sun all day then travelling on a bus afterwards, we pretty much went straight to sleep that night.

In the morning, we got ready for our volcano tour that we had booked and got on the mini tour bus to take us to the location.  We spent a good hour picking everyone up at their respective hotels, and so we started to get antsy.  But we finally arrived at the volcano site and discovered it was more of a “volcano”.  It was also raining, so we were a little hesitant to strip down to our bathing suits and climb up the stairs to the summit.

My face says a mix between “You call that a volcano?” and “Man it’s freezing and rainy!”

Before arriving, it was explained to us that the town where this volcano was located was very poor and benefitted greatly from all the tourists that came there.  They had their own ways of making money just by doing what they could – giving mud massages when you were inside the volcano, helping clean all the mud off of you afterwards, and cleaning your shoes from all the muddiness too.  However, it was almost like they didn’t give you a choice!  When you went into the small lake after the volcano, the ladies swarmed you and began to dump buckets of water on your head without asking.  A little boy who was cleaning the shoes automatically did it, but then expected you to pay him for it.  And when I did give that boy some money, he didn’t even say thank you.  It was sad to see how poor these people could be, but then also how ungrateful they were when they were given something.  I definitely cannot say this happens everywhere in Colombia, but it still does happen.

Once we made it up the stairs to the top, we had to slowly climb down a ladder into the pit of mud.  I imagined it to be like what the Dead Sea experience would be because you almost floated from the dense mud.  All you really needed to do was balance yourself to not go belly-up!  We had a trustworthy guy taking pictures with a camera so we have the whole experience documented.

And we survived!

After the mud pit, we drove in the bus to another location for lunch.  It was a really good lunch and we talked to some other travellers from Argentina and Chile.  We hung out on the beach for a little bit afterwards playing Frisbee, but it was pretty dreary out from the rain.  We could not pass up the opportunity to practice our Colombia beach poses though.

And also laugh at my still swollen feet.  What’s worse: the swollen-ness or sock tan?

That night, we grabbed all our stuff and headed to the airport to head back to Armenia.  It was sad to have our vacations over, but it was definitely a great trip!  When we got onto the plane, there were two guys that asked us if we lived here in Colombia because they had seen us on the original plane on the way to Cartagena. We explained that we were teachers in Armenia and they happened to be teachers at the school in Pereria!  So we made a couple new friends (Jesse from Michigan and Conor from Ottawa) and planned to have some get-togethers with our two schools in the future.

Another interesting thing that happened within our first week back at school, was another friendly match of Colombia, but against CANADA!  Of course, I had to cheer for my home country even though I knew we were in for it.  But surprisingly, Canada was playing alright and only lost the game 1-0!  I was pretty happy with it, but I still heard it from the students the next day.
My responses?
1. “Colombia (ranked #3 n the world) beat Canada (ranked #120) 1-0 – congrats…”
2. “Let me know when you want to play hockey against us!”