Fun, Fun, Fun!

Just in case anyone is worried about whether I am having any fun, I thought I'd post about some of the diversionary activities I have enjoyed.

A couple Saturdays ago, I went to Gustavo's office to talk to him about something. Clearly it was such a pressing matter, I don't remember what it was. While I was there, he told me a friend of his named Isabela was visiting from Medellin and she and her friends were going to take him to lunch. He asked if I wanted to go, and I, of course, accepted. I probably shouldn't have because I was wearing a totally ghetto outfit, but I did. We went to a delicious Arab restaurant. Alex and his wife Veronica, the friends of Gustavo's friend Isabela, live in Barranquilla so they knew the restaurant and they knew what to order. My mom will be happy to know that one of the dishes they ordered was raw hamburger with spices. It was divine, and it totally reminded me of growing up. Sorry, tangential story here: Growing up, my mom would buy ground sirloin and eat it raw with plenty of salt. Because it was a special treat, most of my siblings and I loved to share it with her. It's been a while since I had it, but it still tasted as good as I remember. Along with the lunch being yummy, the company was great. Alex speaks the best English I've heard here. He told me he prefers speaking English to Spanish because it rolls off his tongue more easily. His wife agreed; she said he often gets tongue-tied when speaking Spanish. Funny! Isabela, the one from Medellin, works at the Company of Mary school there and Gustavo met her when he went to the meeting Srs. Cecilia and Elvira went to. She is a super nice girl. She taught Spanish in the US for one year, so she speaks English, too. When she speaks Spanish, she speaks extremely quickly, so quickly that they say she speaks in cursive. What an awesome saying. I know a few LP students who speak in cursive :). While we were eating, they started talking about how many Colombians love things from the US. One of the ways they show this is by giving their children a name of something from the US. A few examples include the children named Michael Jackson, Usnavy, Undollar, Rubbermaid, and Winstonsalem. Nice, huh! One other awesome thing they told me is that they call Alheimers The German Visitor.

Another fun thing I have done is get to know some friends of Gustavo. I believe I already wrote about his friend Jerianne and her husband Alex. He is a restauranteur who owns two restaurants. The first night I was here I ate in his casual restaurant. Since I have been here, he's invited me to his fancy restaurant 3-4 few times. His fancy restaurant is one of the nicest (if not the nicest) in the city. A couple Saturdays ago, there was a special Taste of Arab night at one of the snooty country clubs. Alex was cooking a dish for the evening, and he invited me. The evening was great fun and they food was fabulous. I truly believe Alex is a gifted chef. He knows how to combine foods and flavors in an amazing way. I went with Gustavo, and a couple of Alex's friends named ?? and ?? came too. Along with more food than I could eat, the evening included belly dancers and a live band.


I had my first outing with students last Friday night. I went to dinner and a movie with Luisa, Gina, and Paula. It was fab! Luisa's cute brother picked me up on the corner by the school and dropped the four of us off at Buenavista mall. We watched a movie there that didn't start until after 9:00 p.m. After the movie, we went to eat. Considering I am usually in bed between 9:00 and 9:30, it was a late night for me. At the restuarant, I ate a traditional costeno dish called chuzo de granado (I think). It was extremely tasty and unlike anything I have ever eaten before. It had chicken, beef, and chorizo with bollo limpia (a white corn roll that is kind of like the corn part of a tamale), french fried onions, and finely grated cheese. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it. I also neglected to take a picture of the girls I was with, so I included a picture of them from the retreat. They really are a lot of fun, although they laugh at every single word I say in Spanish. The two in the one picture, Luisa and Gina, have really taken me under their wing. They are not afraid of me at all, and they don't think I am breakable.


All of the English teachers in secondary school teach English classes on Saturdays at either a language learning center or a local university. Kelly and Virna teach at the local university and they asked me to come and talk to their students last Saturday. I agreed, of course, because I was curious about the program they are part of. I first went to Kelly's class, where I was greeted by 20 students from age 18-30ish. Kelly had had them write down questions for me before I arrived, so for 30 minutes the students asked me about me, CA, the US, English, my family, etc. It was great! They were extremely nice and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. I then went to Virna's class, which was downstairs one level. The students were cute and nice, but they seemed afraid to talk to me. About 3-4 asked me questions, but most of the questions came from Virna. The picture is of Virna's group.

Since Kellys also teaches there, we decided to go to lunch afterwards. Kellys husband Hans and Jose also joined us. We went to a Sancocho restaurant, which means it specializes in costena soups. Before we entered the restaurant, Kellys bought an avocado that we put in our soup. I had a super yummy soup, and I drank agua de panela for the first time. Agua de panela is a very popular drink here. It's basically water and brown sugar. It wasn't bad, but it tasted like water with brown sugar. It started raining while we were eating, and we stayed at the restaurant until it stopped raining because Kellys and Hans ride a motorcycle. Our lunch ended up lasting almost 3 hours, but it was great fun.




This past weekend was a student weekend, or so it played out to be. On Friday night I went with a group of nine ninth graders to a Mexican restaurant. I ordered a chicken and beef burrito. It was delicious, but it did not taste Mexican at all. The ingredients were rolled in a tortilla like a burrito should be, but the combination of ingredients gave no impression of Mexican food. I think it may have been because there was no tomato salsa and nothing to make it picante. The night was a lot of fun. The girls were very funny and we talked about many things. I am so impressed with the English of the girls here. They told the restaurant it was my birthday, so the waiters sang to me very loudly and brought flan and a scoop of ice cream with a candle. And to top it all off, the girls treated me to dinner.


On Saturday, I was supposed to go with Ana Elisa, Gustavo, and Jairo to Playa Mendoza where a family at the school has a beach house. In the morning I woke up to commotion in the hallway at the convent and I opened my door to find that the nuns were talking to Juana Maria through her door. They seemed to be pleading with her, so I got concerned. It turned out that Juana Maria had locked herself in her bedroom and she was refusing to come out. She didn't go out for morning prayer and she didn't go out for breakfast. Unfortunately, the convent only has one key per room, so they couldn't just open her door. When I asked Ana Elisa what was going on, she told me Juana Maria was acting crazy, probably because her medication was off. Because of the issue with Juana Maria, when the family arrived to take us to the beach Ana Elisa didn't feel like she could go. Gustavo and I, therefore, headed to the beach with Hector (Dad) and Maria Fernanda (Mafe) (10th grader). Along the way, we met up with Jairo who was in a car with a couple friends. When we got to the beach house, I was so impressed. The property is beautiful! It's a nice house with a pool, a patio, and a play yard. After a few minutes there, Gustavo told me that one of the guys who Jairo had come with was actually a friend of his and this friend had come from Bogota to spend time with him. He then asked me if I wanted to go with him, Jairo and the other two men to a different beach or if I wanted to stay with Mafe. After I wiped the surprised look off my face, as I thought we were all spending the day at the family's beach house, I said I would like to hang out with Mafe. I told her, though, that she could say no since I am her teacher and she didn't really invite me. Fortunately for me, she said it would be fine for me to hang out with her. We had a wonderful day together. After only having been at the beach house for about 30 minutes, we headed back to the city. We went to Mafe's beautiful home in the city where I got a tour of her house and met her nice bulldog name Juana. Yes, the bulldog was actually sweet and cute, if a bulldog can be cute. Hector had to go to work, so he dropped us off at a Cuban restaurant. He suggested I try the seafood plate, so I did. Wow! It was excellent. I have never thought of myself as a seafood lover, but this was amazingly fresh and light and yummy. After lunch we went back to Mafe's house and watched a recording of the stage version of Rent. (Yes, I actually found a student who likes musicals.) When her dad got home from work, Mafe's friend Gina (also a 10th grader from school) came over and we went to Buenavista Mall. We had some time before the movie started, so we went to City Park, an arcade. We played a couple games and rode on the bumper cars. It was actually fun. We decided to eat before the movie, so we went the food court where we ate KFC. The order came with plastic gloves to wear while eating the chicken. Brilliant! I had never seen that before, so I had to take a picture. After the movie, the escalators were really crowded, so we decided to walk down the stairs. Somehow, Gina slipped on a stair and she went sliding down the stairs on her bottom. I know I should have been concerned about her welfare but it was so funny to watch, I found myself on the ground laughing hysterically. I was laughing so hard, I had tears streaming down my face. Gustavo, Jairo, and their two friends walked up while I was laughing, and I am sure I looked horrific. I then felt bad about laughing, but Gina assured me she was fine. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!




The next day, I went with Luisa, Gina, and Stephany to a restaurant on the Magdalena River to eat a typical fish meal. I ordered an entire deep fried fish with coconut rice and patacon (something made from plantains). It was delicious and fresh, and not fishy at all. Luisa insisted on popping the eyeballs out of the fish, so I insisted on putting a slice of cucumber over the empty eye sockets. The girls generously paid for my lunch, and it wasn't a cheap lunch. After lunch, we decided to go to El Museo del Caribe. What an amazing museum! I don't even know how to describe the museum other than to say it is high-tech and totally interactive. The museum is all about the Caribbean land, people, culture, music, and food. I will definitely being going back again. The one picture from inside the museum is in a teepee of one of the native indigenous peoples. I was so fascinated by the museum that I bought myself a t-shirt. It is a t-shirt that is covered in Caribbean words. I figure once I know what all the words mean, I'll actually speak English. It was still early when we left the museum, so we went to Luisa's house (which is another beautiful home) and watched a movie and then played X-Box. I, of course, didn't want to play because I am so bad at video games. I ended up playing two rounds of a car racing game. I won one round, but I am sure that is because Luisa let me win. It really had an amazing day with some fabulous girls.

Then, on Monday of this week, I accompanied the primary English teachers to an ice cream parlor. We hadn't had a chance to get to know each other outside of school, so we decided to have an afternoon snack. Libia, the 4th and 5th grade English teacher, was planning on having her baby Wednesday, so we went to eat ice cream on Monday. Kelly and Norah are the other two teachers in the picture. They teach 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade English. Maria Claudia, the other English teacher was unable to join us. I really enjoyed spending time with the teachers outside of school. They are all wonderful women.

Vamos a la Playa

Does anyone remember that song from many years ago in which the group sang, "Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh oh"? For some reason, that song and La Bamba are the only two songs in Spanish I can ever remember. The reason I bring that up is because there is an extremely poor community on the outskirts of Barranquilla called La Playa that I visited last week.

In an earlier post when I talked about Shakira's school, I mentioned that the girls at La Ensenanza do service hours in the community. I didn't realize until a couple days ago what that really meant. Most, if not all, of the girls in grades 6-11 participate in something called Companeras de Santa Maria. Every other Friday afternoon, alternating groups get on buses and go to the poorest communities in the city and work with people. On the weeks they do not go to a neighborhood, they meet and discuss social issues and what they can do to make a difference. When they actually leave campus, some groups help children with school work, some groups play with the children, and some groups work with the elderly. Last Friday, I accompanied a group of 10th graders who work with about 30-40 elderly people at La Playa. Usually, the girls will bring crafts for the people to do, or activites that will keep their minds active. Friday, though, the girls decided they wanted to throw a party for the elderly. It was awesome! The girls all chipped in money and paid for the cafeteria to make a chicken with rice and vergetable dish and pasteries filled with a cheese and spices mix. They also brought Coke to drink. Before the food was served, the girls had the people play charades. It was so cute. The girls then served the food, and while the people ate the girls turned on music and gave out prizes. They would say things like, "Name an aquatic animal," and whoever guessed the animal got a prize. Then the party really started...The girls pulled out party hats, sombreros, masks, and whistles and passed them out. They pulled out two drums and a long metal can filled with beads and began playing. The elderly heard the music and came alive. It was incredible! I took several pictures from a porch next to where they were dancing, but then I was pulled into the mix. Next thing I knew, I was dancing a cumbia (Let's be honest here. I wasn't really dancing because I don't do that so well, but I was smiling and pretending to do what they were doing.) with a man who is probably 80+ years old. He was a terrific dancer. The girls told me I also did another traditional Colombian dance, but that's debatable. Either way, I had a fabulous time. By the time I was finished dancing, I way drenched with sweat. We then jumped back on the bus to return to school. There were about 20 more people on the bus than there should have been, so I shared a seat with two girls, and some of the teachers sat on the ground. Kellys, one of the awesome English teachers, stood right next to the bus driver. The final picture is of her.

I think the most impressive thing of all to me was the joy in the eyes of the girls as they interacted with the elderly. I did not see one girl without a smile on her face or a willingness to participate. What an amazing opportunity for the girls to open their minds and hearts to people who not as fortunate as them.