Back to School

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Here I am back in Barranquilla! I had a wonderful time seeing lots of friends and family at home over Christmas. It was so nice to see everyone and to be with so many of the people that I care about.

When I flew into Barranquilla, I couldn’t help thinking about what it was like when I first got here in August. I didn’t know anything! Not even my address! In the cab ride home, it felt nice to realize that everything looked somewhat familiar, not quite so foreign looking. And of course, I know where I live now! I can help direct the cab driver to my apartment (in Spanish of course). To me it doesn’t really seem like I’ve learned much more Spanish since I’ve been here. But then on the other hand, I know that I am more comfortable speaking Spanish than I was 5 months ago. The biggest improvement is that I can understand people much better. Here on the coast, people talk very fast. They drop the ends of words sometimes, and they are genuinely difficult to understand. It definitely took me awhile to get used to how people talk here.

I am really hoping for a big improvement at school for the second half of the year. I feel like I had such a terrible beginning to the school year, and had a very hard time recovering from that and building relationships with my students. With the combination of the lack of supplies, the constantly changing schedule, and the fact that I didn’t really know what was going on… it was difficult. Add in the fact that I really do have a difficult group of students who had run off an American teacher last year- I felt like I was set up to fail. Since the American teacher last year left at Christmas, I was hoping that when I came back after Christmas that that would send the message that I really am their teacher for the year and they might as well work with me. Anyways, things do actually seem better. I feel like overall I have positive relationships with my students. And I think they might actually view me as a teacher now, and not someone who doesn't belong at their school. At least I felt more like my regular teaching-self this week than I have all year.

Other things that happened this week…. our class had a dance-off to choose the king and queen of carnaval…. There is a new comida rapida restaurant right by my apartment- and it has Mexican food! I’m really excited to have a place to eat and hang out at so close by…. And there are lots of pretty, purple, flowering trees.

These trees are all over!

It reminds me of springtime and cherry blossoms.

Another flowering tree.

Bright flowers

♪ ....Everywhere you go♪

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More Christmas in Colombia pictures!

How the Grinch Stole Novenas

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The last week of school we started out each day by going to a novena. I guess this is a catholic thing, or at least it is here in Colombia. They are short services with prayer, songs, and scripture to prepare for the coming of the Christ child. There is one each of the nine days leading up to Christmas. (Nine days… novena… ah-ha) The school has a mass, or misa, about once a month or so. It never ceases to amaze me how well behaved the students are at mass. It is such a drastic difference to how they normally are.

Each day of the novenas a different group of students performed songs and acted out a part of the Christmas story. Since the school is bilingual, we sang Christmas songs both in English and Spanish. I loved getting to learn some new Christmas songs. Feliz Navidad was sung several times during the week, and why not? It is in English and Spanish!

But one day, instead of having a novena, the Grinch came. The senior class has chosen Dr. Seuss as their theme for the year. So, they all have these white pants/suspender outfits that they periodically wear. At the very beginning of the year they performed a Cat and the Hat vs. the Grinch dance-off. I was both amazed and confused by that whole thing. Anyways, one morning, the seniors put on a reader’s theater of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. True to form it had an elaborate backdrop, set and costumes. You could say the Grinch stole the whole novena.

Exploring the Mangroves

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Christmas Vacation is here! And it is time for me to catch up on some blogging. So, here is the third and final installment of pictures from the weekend trip to the San Barnardo Islands. We spent the night in the nearby town of Covenas, and spent the next day hanging out on the beach. After wondering up the beach a ways, we saw a place that offered canoe rides up an inlet to see mangroves and garzas. I had read about mangrove forests, but had definately never seen them. They are trees that grow along tropical coastlines and help prevent erosion.

Right outside our hotel in Coveñas.

La playa

Elizabeth paddling us into the unknown. (Actually we had a guide who did most of the paddling)

Mangrove roots extending down towards the water. Because they grew in saltwater, the roots are adapted to breathe air.

Reflection of the roots.

Entering the tunnels of mangroves! We saw lots of crabs and shellfish in the roots. I couldn't get a good picture of them though.

Garzas

Eating a mango con sal on the beach.

The Aquarium

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One of our stops on the tour of the San Bernardo Islands was an aquarium on Isla Palma. Here are a few of the strange and wonderful things that Elizabeth and I saw at the aquarium.

Lots of fish in very clear water.

Pelicans

Tortuga

Pirates!

More pirate artifacts. There was a whole room full of stuff!

Flamingoes! I had never seen one before! It was like looking at cartoons- they couldn't possibly be real.

Apparently, they're not particularly nice...

Monkey? Wasn't this supposed to be an aquarium?

I'm on a Boat!

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Last weekend Elizabeth and I went on an excursion to the San Bernardo Islands. Mission: get out of Barranquilla for a couple days and find turquoise water.

There seemed to be pretty limited information about the nearby towns in our guidebooks, but with the suggestion of our coworker we took a bus to Sincelejo. This was very helpful to us because my guidebook doesn’t say anything about Sincelejo (although it is on a map), and Elizabeth’s guidebook mentions it, but doesn’t show it on the map. So, after school on Friday we went to the bus station, and caught a bus to Sincelejo. Four hours later we arrived, just a little too late to catch a bus to the next town of Tolu. Although it was little disconcerting being in a town we knew nothing about, we found a nice taxi driver who took us to a hotel and told us where to catch the bus in the morning. From the very little that we saw of Sincelejo, it seemed pretty nice. There was a beautiful church next to a plaza with lots of Christmas lights. It was surprising that there was nothing about it in our guidebooks, although there probably isn’t much there to offer tourists. In the morning we took a 45 minute bus ride to Tolu and then were offered a short bicycle-taxi ride to purchase our tickets to go to the islands. All in all, things went very smoothly!
Soon we were on our way.

Turquoise Water!!!

The Islas San Bernardo are really an archipelago. The day tour included the boat ride near several islands and stops at two of the bigger islands. The first island we stopped at was Isla Palma were we went to an aquarium that was actually combination zoo, aquarium and pirate museum.

Here is the the island Islote. It's small and completely covered with houses, with just a couple palm trees still hanging in there. The lonely planet calls it a tropical shantytown. They may be right!

We had 3 hours to eat lunch, snorkel and enjoy the beach on Isla Mucura. It was amazing! I had really only been snorkeling once in Mazatlan, and it wasn't very good snorkeling. Here, I got to see coral, and lots of pretty, brightly colored fish. At the end of our time snorkeling, everyone grabbed onto a rope on the back of the boat and our guide pulled us slowly back to the beach. We saw lots of starfish as we "swam" back to shore. Amazing.

Life is good.

Mission accomplished.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

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It’s the second week of December, Christmas lights are up, the school has Christmas decorations, the grocery store plays Christmas music. Yup, it’s beginning to look like Christmas. Except, it’s 90 degrees! I realized today that I haven’t been listening to Christmas music, or watching Christmas movies. I guess it just doesn’t really seem like the holidays when I still use air conditioning.

Yesterday was a holiday, Dia de las Velitas, which had something to do with lighting candles to guide the Virgin Mary on her journey to Bethlehem. Anyways, Dave and I walked around and looked at some lights. So, here are some light pictures as well as some other pictures. Christmas and palm trees tend to make me want to sing Mele kaliki maka. :)

Lots of lights!

Santa, resting in the shade of a palm tree.

Christmas at the beach