Visiting Some Old Friends

Thanksgiving is a time to be with family and friends and give thanks for the good things in life. This Thanksgiving my friend and 9th grade colleague, Tara, and I traveled to visit some of the oldest inhabitants of Colombia - or what they left behind, at least.The town of San Agustín and the surrounding area, in the Huila department southeast of Cali, is home to several hundred funerary monuments left behind by some Pre-columbian civilization. Think Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas but a smaller, less successful population.

Not much is known about these monuments or the people who left them behind except that many of the remains and artifacts (pottery and gold) date back to BC. Archeologists believe there could be many more undiscovered tombs and statues under the ground and that only approximately ten percent of the area has been explored.

Many sites have been unearthed accidentally and subsequently grave-robbed - our horse backed tour guide included. (Luis Carlos actually brought us back to the house he shares with his sister and other assorted family to show us his exquisite finds. Both Tara and I were tempted to buy a couple, not as Christmas presents, as was suggested, but to donate (rescue) to a museum here in Colombia. The going rate for an ancient tomb-robbed pot? $150. Alas, these precious artifacts remain in a tattered cardboard box under a bed.

Getting to San Agustín is not an easy or comfortable journey. After a two hour bus ride to the "white city," Popayán, directly south of Cali, another bus takes you inland for five hours up and down curvey, rocky, unpaved, narrow roads. I generally don't get motion sick, but this ride was pushing my limits.

In the end, it was worth it. (On the way there I thought "These statues better talk and dance for what it's taking to get here!") Aside from the archeological sites dotting the countryside, Tara and I were also taken to see the tallest waterfall in Colombia, La Cascada Bordones, as well as Colombia's "most important" river, the Ria Magdalena, which begins in Huila and ends in the Caribbean near the city of Barranquilla. We were taken to El Estrecho, the narrowest point in the entire river at only 2 meters across.

Another highlight of our trip was staying in the welcoming home and hostal of Mario and his wife, Janeth. Located on the famous cobble stoned Calle Loceria, the first street in San Agustín, the dormitory and family-style lodging catered to travelers who didn't mind getting to know each other. Unfortunately we were the only visitors at the moment, although the town gets plenty of European and Australian visitors, so we only got to know the charming owners, which was not a bad thing. Mario was full of stories and jokes and Janeth always had a pot of coffee or fresh lemonade ready and breakfasts that could easily feed ten. It's nice when you're traveling to feel like you're at home.

And that, in the end, is what a good Thanksgiving vacation is all about.

A Caffeinated Ride

Imagine combining your two favorite things. If that might be cats and ice cream you're going to end up with either a sticky kitty or a furry cold treat. Let's try again. Baseball and taking naps isn't going to work. Neither is grabbing a cup o' joe and riding a roller coaster...or is it?

Believe it or not there is a theme park in the middle of Colombia that combines the country's love of coffee with amusement park thrills. The Parque National del Cafe outside of Armenia is a juxtapositionist's dream come true.

Roller coasters, water park rides, restaurant stalls, several stages with hourly shows (one with dancing robotic orchids), and a gondola-like cable car combine with Juan Valdez Coffee to create a "only here" type of experience.

On a recent trip here, my travel companions and I decided to purchase the cheapest of the ticket options - which allowed us to ride the gondola and basically walk around. It was worth it though, as none of us felt the desire to ride a coffee bean ferris wheel.

The park is littered with coffee plants and, as our gondola passed over one field of them, the aroma of them filled the air all the way up to where we were. It was like being in one of those Folger's Coffee commercials where the thought of drinking coffee somehow makes every rise from bed with a smile on their face as the smell hits their noses.

And, of course, we finally got to meet Juan Valdez himself...so to speak.

Practice Makes Perfect!

After two and half years my Spanish is okay. Its not amazing and my students make fun of my gringo accent but I understand most of what is being said to me, regardless of if I can respond coherently.

Occasionally I meet people, who, like me, want to practice their "second language." Usually the extent of their English, however, is a short phrase from a song or a brand slogan. I've been bluntly told to "don't worry, be happy" and "just do it" on a couple different occasions while walking down a street somewhere.

This last weekend, at a roadside tienda on the outskirts of Armenia, some slightly inebriated 20-something guys were practicing the little English they knew, mostly "how are you?" repeated over and over. Then suddenly one of them remembered another phrase. He stood at the end of the table and, without pause or change in tone, proclaimed "How are you, fuck you."

Keep practicing, guys.

Be Green...Or Else!

The idea of "Environmental Activism" in North America, for the most part, is grounded in its educational roots. The idea that the more people know about how to make environmentally conscious decisions and why they are important, the more likely people will care and thus, make choices of their own free will and volition.

This idea persists in Colombia as well, but imagine, if you will, that instead of being voluntary, it was was mandated environmental awareness? If instead of suggesting an environmentally inspired day, such as "Ride a Bike to Work Day," where people, if they want, are encouraged to leave their gas-guzzler in the garage and huff it to school or work, they were legally forbidden to take their car on the street. How do you think that would fly?!?

Well, today was Dia Sin Carro and it was officially illegal to be on the street with a personal vehicle between the hours of 7am and 7pm unless you were a part of official government business, the police or emergency services, school transportation, or other crucially important things like restaurant delivery services. I mean, really, the President and the Domino's Pizza guy both have things to do today, right?!?

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Of the many reasons I wanted to teach abroad - including stepping out of my comfort zone, experiencing a new culture, and functioning in another language - was to build my professional resume in a unique and meaningful way. One might argue that being abroad in and of itself pretty much takes care of that single-handedly, and I would not argue, but I've been given the opportunity to go even further.

The Associated of American School in South America (AASSA), one of my schools governing bodies, has partnered with the College of William & Mary on a grant project dealing with teacher evaluations in the international teaching community. The project is being mediated by the very capable and experienced, Dr. James H. Stronge and involves two-person delegations from six different schools throughout South America. These schools include the Escola Americana de Campinas in Campinas, Brazil; Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Lima, Peru; and three schools in Quito, Ecuador, including the host school, Academia Cotopaxi.

Four times this school year, I, along with my principal, will travel to Quito to meet with the other fourteen committee members to design a evaluatory system fro administrators to use that will have an aim at teacher improvement through the use of standards and benchmarks with an emphasis on the nature of international education. One of the main issues that a lot of international schools face is teacher turn-over. It is expected as most schools offer two-year contracts and many teachers eventually plan to move back to the U.S. or Canada eventually. The problem comes when these teachers treat their experience abroad as an extended vacation. Improving themselves as educators is not a top priority; their job is simply a means to have funds with which they will experience the world.

At the 2011 AASSA Conference, being held in Campinas, Brazil, the entire committee will meet one last time to share our finished product with the rest of the AASSA member schools' administrators. This is a huge step forward for international schools both in teacher quality but also establishing a potentially unified document that could potentially travel with teachers who may move on to other international posts. I'm excited and honored to be a part of its inception and looking forward to all that I'm going to learn through this process.

We met for the first time last weekend in Quito and it was an extremely enlightening experience. Hearing about other schools like mine was fascinating and being a part of such and intelligent and diverse group of people was and will be invaluable. I am by far the youngest and most credentially inexperienced person at the table, but I feel that my point of view and opinion still is valued.

I know I was considering leaving a year ago to pursue a master's program but I'm glad I stayed. This experience will give me something most post-graduate degree courses couldn't.

Here are some pictures of the Academia Cotopaxi. We did not have a lot of time to explore Quito this time due to our flight schedule but hopefully next time we will budget some more free time in. When I do, I will write more. All I can say about the city as of right now is that it is cold (like a nice sunny October-in-Minnesota-day).

Are We There Yet?

Once, after graduating from college, I went back and swam in the alumni meet, which pitted the current team members against graduates from years close and distant. As a collegiate swimmer, my specialty had been the distance events and so it only seemed logical to me to compete in one of those. "The 500 is short," I remember thinking, "I'll do that one." Never in my life have I ever been less trained or conditioned for an athletic endeavor.

Until now.

Last weekend seven teachers from school took our mountain bikes and headed north to the small city of Tuluá, an hour from Cali. Here we began an 8 hour Travesía (bike tour) of the neighboring mountains visiting remote pueblos such as San Pedro and Buenos Aires.

Now, I ride my bike ever Sunday morning with, more or less, this same group, but its only once a week and never more than four hours, at the most. We stop every so often to make sure no one is lost and then push on some more. These Sunday rides are challenging, now doubt, but the end is always in sight.

This Travesía had no end. While the terrain wasn't horrible - I've ridden on trails with rocks the size of my head - it was still rough and bumpy much of the time and several streams or stream-beds were traversed. The grade of the climb was not impossible either, it just didn't ever let up; seemingly always inclining, an angle of 15° seemed might as well have been flat ground at times.

The entire event was amazingly well organized. A Jeep and motorcycle followed along with the approximately 100 or so bikers as we covered over 60km of mountain trails. The large man with the scruffy beard, greasy hair, baseball cap and red shirt, who we began secretly referring to as el gordo rojo took many pictures of all the participants and provided vocal support from his comfortable seat in the Jeep, much to our exhausted chagrin.

The scenery was outstanding. I'm not sure what our final altitude was but the ride down into the valley was stunning. Cloud-topped mountains displayed their full greenery of virtually untouched forest. Even on the lower slopes as we passed small family farms with fields of banana trees, the majesty of the hills was humbling. I kept saying to myself, "I was just up there!"

Rodrigo and me at the "end" of the course.

At the end of the course we were served lunch (and then had to bike another 7km back to the start) and given a medal of completion. This is possibly the biggest and nicest medal I've ever received for anything, let alone just finishing a bike race. I think maybe it's for gluing my butt to a bike seat for 8 hours; that's definitely worthy of a big fancy medal.

Today, two days later, my legs are a little sore and my lower back is still stiff. I take this as a sign to either bike more than once a week or find shorter Travesías!

Famous: I Know "People"

Sometimes its fun to pick up a copy of the local Podunkville town newspaper. Aside from the finding out what the mayor's wife ate for lunch on Tuesday and how the various high school sports teams fared over the week, you can see pictures of your friends and neighbors mowing their lawns, shopping, or attending the parade on Main Street. Some small town "heralds" also publish the recent crimes and traffic accidents, a guilty pleasure of many, especially if names and pictures are involved.

One of my favorite stories of my mother's while growing up was of a time when she and her sister, my aunt, had to go pick up a book from a friends house. On the way home they decided to cruise slowly by the house of a cute guy, you know, just to see if he was home. Even at that slow stalking pace they were inevitably moving at, my aunt managed to crash my grandfathers car into one parked on the side of the road. If it was mortifying to find their car crashed directly in front of the high school stud's house, it was another to get their names in the paper for it!

That is what I associate with when I see common people attending regular functions appearing in the newspaper. Coming from a larger city, one with dualing publications - one from Minneapolis, one from St. Paul - it better be a pretty big deal to get your face in the paper. If I were to see friends of mine staring out at me from the "Local" section for attending a birthday party or grand opening of another Target store, I would think, "must have been a very slow news day!"

This is not the case here in Cali. Every Friday the city's newspaper, El Pais, publishes a pullout section called "Gente" (People). In it, you can see photographs from various anniversary parties, weddings, business openings, and, most commonly, fifteenth birthday parties (quinceaneras). My students have appeared many times and I often can't help but feel like I've spotted a celebrity when I flip the page and see Maria Camila in an evening gown or Juan Diego looking dapper in a suit. I find this surprising still, after two years, from a city with over 2 million people.

Recently, however, I have been inducted into the "Gente" club. Not the real "Gente" but the minimalized page that appears occasionally in the regular non-Friday editions. This time it was for the recent Honor Society induction ceremony that happened at school. I serve as one of the sponsors for the Jr Honor Society and was, therefore, present for my 9th graders.

The picture shows me standing with, from left to right, my co-Jr. Honor Society sponsor, the Honor Society sponsor (and fellow colleague in the science department), and our school's director.

I waiting to get recognized on the street. Any day now...

Quarantined!

I mentioned in the previous post that several students fell ill for various reasons on our trip to Isla Gorgona. I actually typed that very same post feeling slightly under the weather, myself; I then spent the rest of the three days since we got back in bed drinking inhuman amounts of fresh squeezed orange juice from the corner grocery store.

Today I feel fine. I'm going to assume that most of the other students from our make-shift island infirmary are also up and about. The same can not be said, however, for one girl, who doctors on the island hypothetically diagnosed as having Dengue fever. It turns out that while her symptoms are Dengue-like, the tests all come back negative. The school has now decided that, until her more comprehensive results come back on Friday, all the 9th graders from the trip and chaperones are quarantined from school, incase others are carrying whatever this "bug" is.

Just when I'm feeling well enough to be productive again, I'm not allowed to be. I wonder what time the Tuesday matinee shows are at the movie theatre?

Somos Pacífico

There is a song by a Colombian hip-hop group, ChocQuibTown, that sings the praises of being from the Pacific coast of Colombia. The chorus of their hit single "Somos Pacífico" says "We are of the Pacific. We are united. The region unites us. The color, the race, and the gift of flavor."

This tune became the theme song for the 9th grade week-long class trip to Isla Gorgona this past week. Unfortunately, compared to the trip two years ago with the class of 2011, this group wasn't as unified as the song would hope them to be. Not to say the trip was a bust by any means. Most of the kids, I think, had a great time. However, an unusual and disproportionate number of students found many things to complain about, sucking the fun out of their own trip. One group of girls approached me after only three days on the island and told me they thought the trip was too long and we should go home. Compare this to two years ago when girls were crying as we got on the boats to leave the island after a week.

Every class has it's dynamic and this one's reputation as being non-unified, apathetic, and leaderless didn't fail us in Gorgona. Despite the mediocre attitudes of some of the students, it was still a great trip! These are some of my personal highlights:

No hablo inglés.
I was the only gringo on the trip this year. The Dean of Students is from Canada and has been in Colombia for around 18 years so he doesn't really count. And while a couple of the other chaperones are effectively bilingual, the language of function this trip was Spanish. This might be the first group of students to think I'm a lot more capable in the language than I really am.

Watch your step!
The name "Gorgona" is in reference to the Gorgon Women of Greek mythology. In other words, there are a lot of snakes on Isla Gorgona! Last time I was there we had a couple boa sightings. This time, there were the requisite boas, a tiny coral snake and two encounters with the most venomous snake on the island, Bothrops atrox. Known on the island as "talla equis," this pit viper species can be identified by the X shaped markings along it's back. We found one sitting in the middle of the trail one day and our guide successfully navigated us around it, marking it's location afterward by sticking a forked branch in the ground and inserting another stick in the forked area as a sort of arrow to indicate to other guides the snakes one time location. Another less excited encounter came when one of the 9th graders stepped on a tiny baby one that then scurried into the jungle.

Fresh coconut
Three of the days on the island I accompanied a third of the students on a hike to Playa Blanca to carry out their Biology Lab for the trip. All three of those days I was treated to fresh coconut and coconut milk courtesy of the guide. Delicious way to spend a late morning!

The other schools
Marine Biology is not my forté but I do enjoy poking my head below the surface and seeing the incredible diversity of life that exists there. The couple times I got to snorkel on this trip were incredible! I can't remember seeing that many fish of all shapes and sizes in one place. I'd look down and see a pair of parrot fish poking around some brain coral while a school of tiny black and grey fish with florescent green dots by their dorsal fins darted past only to glance above the surface for a moment and have it all replaced by an enormous school of two foot long iridescent fish sailing past. Unfortunately, I was not with the group that was within meters of a humpback whale and her calf.

Turtle Power!
Almost every night, a group of biologists stationed on Isla Gorgona head out in search of sea turtles to measure, weigh, and tag for tracking and research purposes. The biologists invited us to watch this process this year. The night I took a group of students the biologists hauled in four turtles! How they catch them with their bare hands in the dark of the night is beyond me but once on land, the turtles are put in separate wooden boxes and then carried over to the measuring/weighing table one at a time. One of the more interesting things about the research was that they snip a tiny piece of skin from the back of the turtle's neck for DNA classification purposes. Another interesting aspect of the whole process was the use of only red lights; white light (no flash photography or flash lights) was allowed near the research station.

The Amazing Race
The last day on the island includes a visit to a beach on the opposite side of the island from where our lodgings are. We spend all afternoon enjoying the black sand, good sized surf, and cool westward ocean breeze. To get there though, there are two options. The tough can come with me and a few other chaperones and guides and hike the four kilometers to the south and then up and over the middle of the island. The weak or lazy can take the boat. As our intrepid group of 21 hard-core 9th graders exited the jungle and began traversing the first of three beaches before crossing the over the middle of the island, the boat carrying the weak came into view. And we ran. All 21 in unison. Probably the most unifying event of the trip (ignoring the fact that it excluded those on the boat).

In the end, I know the trip was worth it. (Really, when is spending a week on an isolated and near-virgin tropical island not?!?) I would like to think that most of the students had a good time and it is my wish that, upon reflection, the majority of them will look back at their memories and pictures and wish they were back on Gorgona, even those girls who wanted to leave paradise after three days.

My New Roommate

A few weeks ago I discovered I did not actually live alone in my apartment. Occasionally, upon entering the kitchen and flicking on the light I would catch blur of a little gecko as it dashed out of sight, usually behind the microwave. For about a week I would find the little guy hiding amongst the dishes in the sink and, as I turned on the water, he would dart up and out and return to his countertop sanctuary.

I decided to name him Mike (as that is where he seems to live - behind the MICrowave) and we saw each other on a daily basis for about a week and a half. I was just thinking to myself yesterday, as I was preparing to blend a delicious banana/mango smoothie, that I hadn't seen Mike in awhile. Well, today as I went to fry some yucca on the stove, Mike was waiting for me beside the knobs for the gas-top ranges. He sat there nice and still as I turned the burner on, while the yucca fried, and then wriggled away just as I was dishing them up.

This is Mike in the sink. I wonder if it looks like a water park when you're that small?


This is Mike supervising my yucca frying abilities. He must have gotten the memo that I burn things.