Pumpkin? Pie?

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Ah, Thanksgiving- turkey, pumpkin pie, family, buttery-pan rolls…. I wasn’t really sure how I would be spending Thanksgiving this year. We had talked about making some kind of dinner, or at least pumpkin pie, but we had also talked about taking advantage of the 3-day weekend to travel somewhere. (Colombians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but since we are supposed to be a bilingual school we celebrate some of the American holidays as well. We actually had school on Thanksgiving, but then had the next day off in honor of Thanksgiving.) Anyways, we decided to go for the full meal deal.

First of all we needed to find the ingredients. The grocery stores don’t carry turkey, cranberries, Crisco, pumpkin, or sweet potatoes. So, we had to do some improvising. Personally, my first priority was the pumpkin pie. How can you have Thanksgiving without it? Pie-making is serious business in my family.

Here’s the “pumpkin” that we found. I don’t know what it actually is, but it looked kind of like a pumpkin.

When we got back home and cut it open it did actually look and smell like a pumpkin!

I must confess that even with all my pie-snobbery, I've always made pumpkin pie from a can. After some advice from Sally and Alex via skype, (and a few hours) the pumpkin was ready to go.

But what about the crust? No Crisco... and no pie plate! hmmm....
After consulting with Dave's mom on video chat, I decided to go with more of a bar approach. And so here is the final product. Is it pumpkin? Maybe. Is it pie? Not really.

Somehow it still tasted like thanksgiving.

Of course the pie wasn’t the only thing. We made a chicken, mashed potatoes, salad and a “sweet potato” puree. Also, Dave has an oven and I don’t. My kitchen table is bigger. Our solution was to cook at Dave’s, pack up the meal, and take a cab over to my apartment. So we loaded our backpacks with food, and piled everything into a cab. The cab driver didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary, but I thought it was pretty funny.

When all was said and done, there were seven of us at the dinner: Dave, Elizabeth, and I as well as a couple of our Colombian co-workers. I am definitely thankful for my new Colombian and North American friends.

A Night at the Country Club

I decided it was finally time to catch up on some blogging from the last couple of weeks. Anyways, here are some pictures from an event called Passion del Caribe.


Dave and I were invited by one of our coworkers. We didn't really know what to expect, except lots of dancing. It was at a country club, which was not a big surprise. Going to country clubs is pretty common here. So far we've had two school functions at country clubs. (Ruah, and The Chaos... I mean Science Fair) For some reason I was still caught off guard by all the fancy tables and table centers. I started to wonder, what kind of passión is this? Were we going to see some telenovela-style passión? Would people just sit at their fancy tables and clap politely, or would they dance?


The presenter of the show began to introduce the show and another presenter as well. Acabo de llegar de Miami... presentadora colombiana... hmm... I think she's talking about my new assistente famosa! Yes! Helping me with parent/teacher conferences by day, fancy presenter by night! Who knew?

Turns out the evening did have a lot of dancing, and singing, and even a stand-up comedian. One group number was just revered to as Las Nalgas, which consisted of girls in swimsuits booty-shakin' to African/Cumbia drumming. I think it's safe to say that there were people who came just to see this act!

Professional Salsa Dancers who were REALLY fast!

Dancers in cool costumes.

Towards the end of the night, a large salsa band started playing, and the show turned into a dance party. I saw my coworker famosa and she seemed just as surprised to see me as I had been to see her!

Sonny, the Cumbia-Dancing Shark

A couple weeks ago I blogged about a dancing shark. Willy the shark is the mascot for Barranquilla’s soccer team, Junior. Our school is sending a team of high school kids… somewhere… to compete in…. something… I’m not really sure. But anyways, our director decided that it was time for the school to officially choose a mascot. And so it was put to a vote.

The choices were-

a dolphin,

a bull,

or….

a shark!

Guess which one won! Our new mascot is Sonny the Shark. His favorite music is Reggaeton, although he loves to dance the cumbia. He wears a hat and has a Caribbean flair.
It’s so funny. The whole idea of this cracks me up. But at the same time today was such a perfect example of the entertaining, enjoyable things I love about Colombia and the frustrations that I don’t love so much.
This week was last week in the trimester and the students had 6 different trimester exams, each accounting for 20% of their grade. Definitely a stressful week. We had half days which I was very appreciative of considering that teachers had their final grades due at the end of the week too. Basically students come to school, take a trimester exam, have recess, class for about an hour and a half, and then go home.
With this in mind I was surprised to read my e-mail Thursday night and discover that there would be an assembly to unveil the new mascot first thing in the morning. The e-mail courteously explained that the whole school would all go to the assembly which would take about a half hour and then return to take exams.
Although this seemed like really bad timing to me, I literally had my kids half way out the door and down the hall, when a student ran up to me and told me that the assembly had been re-scheduled for later. At recess I asked what time the assembly would be, and was told it would be right after recess at 9:25. Fifteen minutes later, I was told the assembly was moved to 10:30. About 10:20 a janitor came into my room and told me that the assembly was starting right at that moment. (This is kind of an on-going joke because there are so many last minute assemblies, and then changes to the last minute assemblies- check out Elizabeth’s blog) I had my students finish cleaning and getting ready to go and then we arrived late at the assembly.
Anyways, did I love the idea of Sonny, the Cumbia-Dancing Shark? Yes- it’s really funny! And kids were excited about it. It was fun. It would have been more fun if they assembly had just been scheduled at 10:30 to begin with, and then had actually begun at 10:30.

Dancing Sharks, Angelitos y Millennium Goals

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Working in a school is never boring. And things don’t normally go as planned. All that is to be expected. In this school I often feel like I have no idea what will happen any given day. This is not so much because of a language barrier, but because many times no one really knows what’s going on. The unexpected things are not always bad- often they are unscheduled assemblies or mimes at recess.
Today we had an Autumn Festival. It was a whole-school event planned by the Junior class. We knew about the event, but never really received any details so I had no idea what to expect. (I don’t think this is something that happens every year either.) Yesterday the kids got a note saying that they needed to bring $10.000 pesos to get into the Festival. When I asked about collecting the money and what would happen to students who didn’t bring money, the response was, “That’s a good question!” I asked again this morning and was told that I don’t collect the money- the students would just pay to get in.

I was still unclear about this whole thing….

Me: “And the kids who don’t have money?”
Secretary: “Well, they just don’t get in.”
Me: “Yeah, but do they go somewhere?”
Secretary: “No, they don’t go into the rooms.”
Me: “So, they just wander around?”
Secretary: “Yes” (laughs a little)

Okay… At this point I’m imagining students just wandering around the school doing whatever for 3 hours. An hour later I was told that I did need to collect the money and that someone would be around to collect the money and distribute bracelets. Ah-ha! They use bracelets to get into the haunted house and stuff. Some pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place! Miraculously, every student in my class brought the money. Then I was told that I had supervision duty during the second shift from 12:30-2:00 by the food carts. So, when it was time for the students to go to the Autumn Festival, I stayed in my room while they all went…. somewhere…. it was a good thing they apparently knew, because I wouldn’t have known what to tell them.
Once I went to the Festival, I saw the central location was in the coliseum. There was food, booths and a stage. Turns out if you didn’t have a bracelet you could still be a part of the festival- you just wouldn’t be able to do the activities. It was surprisingly relaxed! I sat back and watched some students dance to Michael Jackson songs and then listened as students and teachers got out their guitars and sang. One of the extra-curricular activities is Rock Band. So they rocked some Oasis, G&R and Metallica. All in all it was not a bad way to spend the afternoon!

Here are some of the other strange and wonderful things from school this month....

Futbol!

One Friday we had an afternoon of intramural futbol. I was under the impression that some of my students would be playing, but it turns out it was a game of teachers vs. high school students. The big draw of the afternoon was visitors from Barranquilla’s futbol team Junior. The first visitor was their mascot- a shark. Because no Colombian gathering is complete without dancing- you guessed it, the shark danced! There was also a surprise visit from one of Junior’s best players Teofilo Gutierrez. It was like a movie star came to the school.

Dia de los Angelitos

A few days ago the Pre-schoolers came “trick-or-treating” at our school. I guess this is a Colombian tradition. Kids get dressed up as angels and ask for candy saying:

Quiero paz, quiero amor, quiero dulces por favor!
Or another variation is:
Angeles somos, del cielo venimos, pidiendo limosnas para nosotros mismos.

Millennium Development Goals

The school has a club called AISMUN, and it is a model United Nations. One of the things they have been learning about are the Millennium Development Goals written by the United Nations. We had an assembly where the club shared information about the goals and also lead the school to STAND UP and TAKE ACTION! Events like this are organized around the world to Stand Up against poverty and tell governments that they should be working towards achieving the Millennium Goals.

To San Lorenzo in the back of a pickup

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I am just now getting around to posting some more pics from my trip to Minca. Better late than never, right?
Anyways. Dave and I were told that we should try to head up a little higher to the town of San Lorenzo.From there, we were told, we could actually see the snow-capped peaks of the Sierras and it would be even colder than Minca. (It's like Canada! Well, maybe not quite Canada...) There is a public transportation option that leaves in the morning and takes you part way there and you walk the rest. So, in the morning we went to get some coffee and figure out the plan for the day. While at the cafe, we met a family who was headed up to visit their aunt and uncle close to San Lorenzo. And that's how we ended up in the back of a pickup headed to San Lorenzo.
After a very bumpy ride (public transportation? really? on this road?), we arrived at the aunt and uncle's house. They were all really nice. We talked with them for a little while, then walked and explored further up the road. We never actually made it to San Lorenzo, but we did see very beautiful scenary. We went as far as the El Dorado bird reserve, and then turned around to catch our ride back to Minca.

I think if I lived on this road, I'd travel by horse too!

We crossed lots of little streams and waterfalls like this one.

The family told me that these are a type of sunflower, but they're like shrubs!

We saw sooo many butterflies.

The family told me that this flower is called siete cueros.

I think this is crocosmia.

Can you see the purple siete cueros up in the tree?

Cute little birds enjoying a snack.

Flora de la Finca (en Minca)

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Here are some of the plant pictures that I took while staying at Sans Souci. Minca's elevation is 600 meters with temperatures in the 70's. Definately very different from Barranquilla!

These bamboo-looking trees were really tall!

This flower is called Brugmansia. It is a shrub native to the mountains of Colombia. The flowers hang down and can be pink, white or orange.

I think this flower may have been native as well. I saw it along the road a lot.

There are many species of Orchids in Colombia- most of them found in higher elevations.

La Finca en Minca

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This weekend was a 4-day weekend! It was actually the first time we’ve had a day off since we started school on August 18th. Needless to say-I was ready for a break! Originally we had thought about going to la Guajira peninsula to see flamingos. However, apparently, they are being eaten by sharks! Anyways, Elizabeth decided to go on a surf holiday and Dave and I went to Minca. Minca is a tiny little town up in the Sierra Nevadas de Santa Marta. Costeños go there for the cooler temperatures. The nearby town of Santa Marta is at least as hot as Barranquilla, and it is amazing to go from temperatures in the 90’s down to the 70’s in just a half hour. The road itself is pretty bad and busses don’t make the run up to Minca so Dave and I arrived in moto-taxi. I actually hadn’t been on a motorcycle before, so I was a little weary of the idea at first. But I have to admit that it was pretty cool to be on a motorcycle heading up into the mountains of Colombia. Every minute the air was cooler, and there were more and more trees!
We stayed at a finca, or farm, called Sans Souci. The German owner offers a discount if you do some work. We agreed to do some work and were offered the job of grinding coffee! The dried coffee beans needed to be put through the grinder to remove the light-weight outer shell.

After going through the grinder, there was a bowl of the coffee beans and bits of the outer shell. In order to separate the two, you had to swirl the bowl around and blow. And I thought I’d be weeding or something!

It was very relaxing to be there. Where I live in Barranquilla there are a lot of new high-rise apartment buildings and construction. Sometimes I feel like there is just too much concrete in my life. It was nice to be surrounded by lots of trees and beautiful flowers. With lots of flora around, there was also lots of fauna…. I think I got more bug bites this weekend then I ever have before! The room we stayed in came equipped with mosquito bed nets, but no window screens, so by the end of the night we had visits from lots of moths, a couple geckos, 2 GIANT flying cockroaches and a bat!