COLOMBIA TIP #15 – Take all precautions to beat the heat – hats, sunscreen, and jumping in the water every 20 minutes.
I have now made it through the first couple months of school and it’s been pretty good! I think this school is good, the students are still a little crazy (but that’s usual), and the staff are wonderful. This year is a bit of a change for me because rather than the five groups of students I had the last two years, I am down to three! This means I can get a lot more done at school during my off periods. The majority of my school work time goes towards grading, which I am also currently avoiding. But of course, the extra time at home leaves more time that can go towards cooking! I still stick to easy things like pasta and chicken, but I have unofficial classes and have helped make pita pizzas, baked chicken, curry, tacos (which I proudly made myself again tonight), and tomorrow’s lesson with Christian is pasta with sausage in it.
Hungry anyone?
The weekends here have brought various activities, the most common being visiting the beach or the pool. Pretty much all of our apartments have pools and so sitting by the pool and reading or napping while working on your tan is a nice chill activity. By “chill” I mean “relaxing” because you definitely need to hop in the pool every 20 minutes or so because you’ll be sweating bullets. Also, don’t forget the sunscreen! There isn’t much of a beach in front of my apartment, but down the street is a better spot to hang out. They sell umbrellas or “tarpas” to sit under with chairs, and there are always people walking by selling ice cream, water, pop, beer, food, hats, sunglasses, and various jewellery. Sometimes it can be annoying but sometimes it can also be handy. I broke my sunglasses a few weeks ago and bought a new pair on the beach!
Another weekend adventure was that a bunch of us went on a boat for an evening in the bay area of Cartagena. It was a friend of Elizabeth who owns the boat, so it was easy to organize. The drinks were pretty good too, until something interesting happened. As we ordered mojitos, Ali and I had a strange one given to us that was made with dark rum. As a replacement, we got a mojito made with aguardiente. It became the joke of the night – “aguarjitos”– but it was pretty gross. Luckily we didn’t have to pay for those and the third time was the charm!
Wandering around Centro or the Walled City is always fun too. I still get lost in there very easily with the skinny streets and buildings that are all colourful and look the same, but it is very neat! We went out for Kathy’s birthday one night to a restaurant and then went to an outdoor bar/restaurant place that had a live band playing. It was typical Colombian music, hard to explain, but it was very cool to hang out and listen to. After that, we wandered around Centro for a bit and I found some of the statues I had visited earlier in my Colombian career and took some déjà vu pictures!
The left picture is from my 2014 visit to Cartagena and then I noticed that now in 2015 these guys need to just make a move in their game already!
The left picture is from my 2013 visit to Cartagena and now in 2015 I’m amazed at the strength of this lady’s arms!
This past weekend was pretty interesting because for the first time so far I travelled out of Cartagena! I began helping out with the girls’ soccer team after school, kind of playing and hopefully soon kind of coaching, and they had a tournament at the Karl C Parrish school in Barranquilla. The boys’ soccer team, boys’ basketball team, and girls’ volleyball team were all going too, so it was a lot of my high school students that I’d get to see in another environment! Unfortunately, the volleyball and basketball teams did not advance, but both soccer teams were in the sem-finals on Saturday morning. We all stayed in a hotel in Barranquilla for the night, and the kids were all pretty good about not going crazy in their hotel rooms and such. The next morning, the girls won their semi final game but the boys did not. The final game that afternoon ended in a 0-0 tie and the girls won in a shootout! The goalie (one of my grade 10 girls), stopped 3 of the shots, and one of my grade 9s scored the game-winning shootout goal! They were all very excited and their hard playing paid off.
We also got the Sportsmanship Award, so that’s why they’ve got two trophies!
It was also fun to go to Barranquilla because that is where Sarah and Eric work! They took their car and worked a bit at school so that when I was done with the teams, I met up with them. We watched their school in the boys’ soccer final, but they lost in a shootout to their biggest rival team. That night, a few of their friends came over and we played the university-favourite card game called BANG!. It has so many rules and I needed a refresher, but it was fun! I was pretty exhausted from being out in the sun all day, so I went to bed relatively early. In the morning, we just hung around, had leftover pizza for brunch, played a few more rounds of the card game with the three of us, and watched some NFL football (Eric and I are in the same Fantasy League). I was just happy being with them and catching up!
This is the last week of school before October Break! Christian and I are heading off to Bolivia to the Salt Flats in Uyuni which is something I have wanted to do for a long time! I also just watched the Blue Jays beat the Orioles so life is all good.
Katie En Kolombia 