Group Hug!

In Colombia there is a word used to describe an event where people come together in unification.  In the U.S. we might refer to it as a "group retreat" or possibly a "team-building conference."  Here it is called a convivencia (literally, "living together").  Since the 9th graders I teach lost the privilege to go for a week to Isla Gorgona due to irresponsible behavior by many during a similar event as 8th graders and several incidences this current school year with theft and poor treatment of substitutes, it was decided several days away from school with the teachers in an isolated environment to work out some class issues, might be a positive thing.

So, off we headed to a finca ("farm") in the department of Quindio in the heart of the coffee region for two days and nights of "living together."  This region is popular for other trips by our school as the weather is normally comfortable and it is relatively close - about three hours by bus.  During this time the students attended a several workshops by either us or a couple of outside psychologists about team-building, confidence, responsibility, and inclusion, among other themes.  While the dividends of the experience are yet to be seen, I think the trip accomplished one major feat: it humanized some of the teachers for the students, and possibly vice versa.

The event flew by but we still found time to enjoy the space we were in which included several nice pools, a stream with a small waterfall, and a bonfire.  While its no whale-watching, snorkeling, or coral beach, it was a nice break from the daily school grind.

At my "empathy" workshop: Camila, Maria Paula, & Isabella

Nicolás at the "empathy" workshop.

Los Muchachos: Sebastián, Juan Camilo, Rodrigo, Andrés,
Henry, Lucas, Pablo, Juan Camilo, Luis, & Nicolás

How low can you go? Picking up a cut-off paper bag with
no hands and only your feet touching the ground

New challenge: How many 9th graders can you fit in one pool?

Welcome to the Quindío countryside.

Taking a dip in the stream near the waterfall.

Las chicas y la chorrera
(Andrea, Catalina, Juanita, María Antonia, Isabella, & Laura)

Singing at the bonfire...probably Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift
(Note: Some kids using their BlackBerries to follow the lyrics.)

3:29.34 Later

I can now say I am an International Athlete. This past weekend I completed my first marathon. (I say "first" because although today I am hobbling around like a ninety-year old man with two new hips who forgot his cane, I plan to continue this athletic endeavor.)

The race took place along the beautiful Lago Calima in the northern part of the Valle de Cauca region (where Cali is located). The lake itself is actually a man-made resevoir created by the damming of a river and it is high in the mountains. This meant the course was hilly, the air was thinner, and the climate was perfect.

I did the race with one of the guidance counselors (Adriana) and a few senior students. One of the seniors had a family finca ("farm" or cottage) in the area so we all drove up the night before, had a great pasta dinner and relaxed. Being that I was traveling with people from school who do not want to get kidnapped, etc, we had a bodyguard escort us on a motorcycle and the car was bullet-proof. The bodyguard stayed with us all weekend, obviously.

My favorite conversation during the ride up included the sentence from Adriana who stated matter of factly that "If the guerilla stop us and try to shoot us we can just sit in the car and 'Miguel' [the body guard] will have to drive thru the cane fields to get help. If they pull a bazooka out though, we should probably get out of the car." Where are you people taking me that this conversation even needs to be brought up!?!

Anyways, the race began at 6am while the sun was still trying peak over the mountains. The starting of the race was a little anti-climactic because there were only about 500 runners total and at least half of them were only running the 1/2 marathon; running is not a very understood or popular sport here in Colombia.

The course was gorgeous but the hills were awful. I felt as though I was either running up or down the entire time; climbing or jamming my toes - pick one. Adriana has run several marathons in her life, including New York, and she said that this one was by far the most difficult one she has competed in yet.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story for me:

This is around km 9 going throught the pueblo El Darién. The course started in the town, went 5 kilometers south and west, then returned to the town to go to the northern end of the lake.



At km 22, just past the half-way mark with a split of 1:36-something, and still feeling good enough to whip out the camera and snap some pictures. This is the dam at the northern-most end of the lake. The course continued around the tip and climbed away from the water for a solid 4 kilometers or so and then turned around to head back.



The military was present about every 1/2 kilometer or so. If I didn't want to count the painted kilometer markings on the road, I could have just waited to see army men. It would have been about as accurate.



Some of the aid stations had tables, others did not. This one did not. The girl working her assigned stop at km 24 was handing out the typical refreshment: bags of water. You can get these all over Colombia and they are a lot more environmentally friendly than bottles since they take less energy to make and less space in landfills. They are GREAT for races though because you just bite off the corner and squeeze the water into your mouth instead of clumsily spilling all over yourself with a paper cup.



The turn-around back to El Darién happened at km 26. This is right before km 28. Yes, the scenery is unbelievable, but sometimes it felt like the entire course was uphill.



KM 36 had cows in the road. Typical...
I hit my "wall" soon after this and the camera was forgotten temporarily. KM 39 got walked as I was tightening up pretty badly and it was uphill. It got to the point where I realized I could walk as fast as the tiny running steps I was taken - so I did.

When I got to El Darién's town square everyone was cheering and encouraging me on. The finish line was facing the "wrong" way and I wanted to walk across is so badly but I didn't know where to go in my exhausted state. Forget about speaking Spanish, I could barely function in English! I threw out the universal "where-do-I-go?" arm position and picked out one guy's voice who was telling me I had to "run around the park." I know it was a small block but seriously? The finish is RIGHT THERE and I just did 42 km! "Around the park" is an eternity!


After that eternity I finished and my new friend Juancho Correlón was there to greet me. 3 hours, 29 minutes, and 34 seconds later...

After I finished and waited for the rest of my group to come a lot of other runners were shaking my hand and asking me all kinds of standard questions like where I was from, did I like Colombia, did I like running, what was my time, will I do more, etc. As the sole foreign runner (and a pink freckly one at that) I was getting a lot of attention. As we were leaving an official came running over and said to Adriana, "You can't leave! You won a prize!" She asked him what he was talking about and he tells her she was the first finisher in the womens' division. Needless to say, by the time we left the area both of us had become minor celebrities.

I don't think I'm going to visit the track for the next couple days though.

Break Part I: Time Machine

First off, I must say that I am thoroughly enjoying the flexibility that having three entire weeks off between semesters is allowing me to do.

This first week off of school I jumped on a plane and flew the (barely) hour hop to Bogotá and met up with two other teachers who were already there, Christine (hailing from Sheboygan, WI and fellow UWEC alum) and Luis Armando. We spent the night in Bogotá, which is quite a bit cooler than the Cali heat I've been accustomed to the past five months; I guess elevation will do that to you. It is also significantly cleaner and more cosmopolitan than Cali as well. Kind of like if Chicago was in the mountains. I will definitely be planning a trip back to just explore Bogotá.

The next morning we took a bus to small town about an hour north of the capitol called Zipaquira. After a quick Colombian lunch of soup, beef, potato, and rice we continued walking through town until we reached the other side. Our main intention of stopping here was to visit the famous "Salt Cathedral." This subterranean attraction is exactly what you would think it is - a gigantic cathedral carved out of salt. This area of Colombia was once an ocean and therefore has a high salt content in the ground. Mining the salt has been a lucrative but dangerous business. In the early days of the mine, the workers would bring a statue of the Virgin Mary down in the tunnels with them to pray to. Eventually someone suggested that they carve out a cathedral where they have already mined so that they have an actual place to worship. And in the early 1950's that is what they did. In the tunnels of this working mine is an enormous cathedral about 200 meters into the side of a mountain. Along the way to the actual cathedral room, we passed 14 smaller chapels, each representing one of the Stations of the Cross. While walking through the tunnels, which smelled strongly of sulfur, we would pass prayer benches that looked like they were made of marble. Who knew that when salt hardens in creates a stone-like material that is like a transparent marble. The guide showed us how light can pass through it and that the pulpit and baptismal fountain are all made of this hardened material. (Side note: They have to use salt water in the baptismal because pure water will "eat away" the salt stone.)

After breathing in some fresh mountain air, we navigated our way by two different buses and a cab ride to the beautiful little town of Villa de Leyva, roughly three hours further north. This area of Colombia is still cool, but also surprisingly drier than the rest of the country. There was no need to pack shorts for this trip!

We spent the next three days exploring the little village and the surrounding area. One of the big attractions of the town is the huge center plaza. It is supposedly the biggest in all of Colombia and could probably rival many a city center throughout certain European and colonial American cities as well. It was almost as if time found a way to skip over this tiny pueblo each and every year as the rest of the world moved on. It was not difficult to picture yourself back in the early 1600's.

The food was amazing, as were the little craft shops all along the cobble-stoned streets of the town. One of the favorite flavors of the region is a soup called ajiaco (say: ah-hee-ya-koe) which consists of chicken, corn, and potato stew flavored with a herb called guasca, and avocado. There was also a type of fruit that Christine nor I had ever come across, called feijoa. Luis Armando explained that is very expensive to ship to other areas and because Cali has so many other fruits the demand to bring in others, such as feijoa, is not there, so neither is it.

There is so much to do in and around Villa de Leyva that it is nearly impossible to get it all done in one trip and relax at the same time. And really, if you're not relaxed in Villa de Leyva, you're doing something wrong! The last whole day we were in the place that time forgot we rented horses and a guide and took a tour of some of the local attractions on the outskirts of town. The first place we stopped at was a collection of small ponds that had a brilliant gem-like blue color in the very desert-like area of the valley. Being from the water-filled Midwest, this site wasn't terribly exciting to either Christine or me so, after a couple of quick pictures, we remounted our horses and left the Pozos Azules behind us.

Next stop was an ostrich farm! Now, just to be clear, ostriches (or "avestruzes") are NOT endemic to Colombia or anywhere else in South America. Just to be clear. Anyways, we walked through the farm and learned a lot of interesting facts about these huge birds. Did you know that males can live to be 70 years old but only reproduce between the ages of 3 and 26? I was secretly hoping I'd get to ride one a la Swiss Family Robinson but I had to settle for being pecked at and chased for the ostrich food in my pocket. However you picture that is probably how it looked. Feel free to laugh but just think about what you would do if an eight-foot tall BIRD were coming after you. Yeah. Think about it.

Moving on...the next stop was a small museum off the road built around a kronosaurus fossil in the ground. As I said before, this area used to be an ocean so everything in the museum that has been found in the area was marine in nature. There were a lot of shells, fish, and aquatic plant fossils. And let's not forget the gigantic alligator-like aforementioned museum centerpiece. After a good ten minutes (seriously, it wasn't that big) we were off again.

The final and most ridiculous stop on the horse-led tour of the country was a visit to an ancient Muisca Indian site. There are two reasons this area is important archeologically. The first is that it is like a smaller and simpler Stone Henge. There are two parallel rows of two to four foot tall pillars spaced about one meter apart from each other and nine meters apart from the other row. The position of the shadows apparently told the Muisca when certain growing periods were to occur and they based their festivals around this primitive clock. The other interesting aspect of this area is the abundance of giant stone penises standing, excuse the expression, perfectly erect out of the rocky mountain ground. When the Spanish settlers first began taking control of the area they were so appalled by these enormous phalluses that they knocked a few over and then decided to rename the area El Infiernito (or "The Little Hell") in an attempt to make this place suddenly evil and discourage the Muisca from going there. I can see why they gave up knocking them down when some of them are as big around as an old oak tree and up to two stories tall. Crazy stuff here in Colombia, I tell you...