City & Country Hopping on Weekends

TRAVEL TIP #2 – Always have the address of the place you’re going in a foreign country. 

The next weekend we made a quick trip to Bogota to sort out passport things in the capital, but also see some of our students take part in the Binationals Sports Tournament.  We arrived at CNG, the big school in Bogota, and my 6^th SACSs School’s campus I’ve been at.  We walked towards the soccer fields where the girls were apparently waiting to play, and as we rounded the corner, I saw not only COJOWA students sitting on the stands, but GI students right next to them!  Everyone yelled “MS. WILSON” and I didn’t know who to react to first and I sat in the middle of both groups.  Then I discovered they were playing against each other (for the 5/6 place game, but still).  Of course.  All the girls from both schools asked who I would be cheering for and deep down I had to cheer for COJOWA, but GI would always be something special too.  GI ended up winning 2-0, but it was fun to watch both of my schools and both of the soccer teams I had helped with play against each other.

We also visited downtown Bogota for one afternoon and found the government buildings, including the Justice Building (above).  This was the site of the 1989 attack by the guerrilla group M-19 and thought to be orchestrated by Pablo Escobar.  It was kind of neat because we had just learned about it from watching Netflix’s Narcos.

The next weekend after that, the weekend trips kept rolling.  Christian has family in Orlando and his aunt works for Universal and was able to host us and help us get into the parks for free!  We were especially excited about the Harry Potter parts, both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, that Universal has at their parks.  After a long trip through US Customs (we didn’t think about asking for their home address before we left and of course had no way of contacting them in the foreign country.  Naturally, two suspicious Canadians were sent to a side room where we waited for another hour before getting a chance to talk to the Border Guards and phone his aunt who was waiting outside for us!), we had the evening to visit part of Universal Studios quickly.  We went on some rides that I had remembered from my last trip to the park, which I calculated to be around 10 years ago.  I had to take some pictures that I could match up from the previous visit, but some things had changed!

Then and now with the Back to the Future Delorean:

Then and now with the Universal Globe:

We also visited Diagon Alley (which is AMAZING by the way), had to get some Butterbeer, and had dinner just outside the park where a steady stream of people were exiting around closing time for a good couple hours.  The next day we got our passes for both Universal Parks, went on a bunch of rides, saw Hogsmeade and took the Hogwarts Express back to the Diagon Alley part in the other park.

Dragon on top of Gringotts bank in Diagon Alley

Wands for sale at Ollivander’s shop

By the end of the day, after much contemplation, we decided the trip wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t bring home some Hogwarts School robes, so I officially have my Halloween costume for the next few years at least!  In the picture, our wands are sticks from the backyard.  We didn’t buy the $40 wands, that would be too ridiculous!  Not that we weren’t ridiculous already…  It was an amazing trip and was very lucky to get to go on this quick trip to the USA.

The last couple of weeks before school ended went by pretty quickly.  We had a random holiday on a Tuesday and it was a holiday in Colombia called Dia de las Velitas where you light candles and let them burn all the way down, make wishes, and don’t go to school for some reason.

We had a group day trip to Playa Linda, a short boat trip from Cartagena, and I found some new friends who like math as much as me as we worked on some in the sand!

I was definitely ready for some time off to visit home and then off to visit my friend Sheryl who is now living in Costa Rica!