heading south, moving on up...

Connecting flight, boarding pass in hand, upgraded to 1st class.

sweeeeeeeet.

I drink good coffee every morning, comes from a place that's far away....

Blogging at 6 am ... who does that? At least security went crazy fast at this hour.

As I sip on my grande gingerbread latte and enjoy the last bagel and cream cheese that I will most likely have for several months (just a couple of the Americanisms, along with peanut butter, that should be exported to the rest of the world), the overwhelming emotion of the past 10 days is finally starting to sink in. As I live in the moment, flying back to the States enabled me to gain much needed perspective on my life in Colombia. Likewise, I know that over the next few days, as I pause my travels in Bogota before returning to the "real world" of Barranquilla, I will likely end up reflecting on my trip home over and over. Days on end of passionate conversations have resulted in a million thoughts and ideas about anything and everything running through my head. I do not even know where to begin...to understand, let alone explain. 3 languages worth of words are often not enough for me to express myself.

Did I return to the US in search of something? To escape something? Out of homesickness? What made me decide, with only a week's notice, to book a flight not to some wonderful exotic destination in South America, but to Chicago, IL, with the intention of bouncing all over Wisconsin for a week and a half? Would it be hard to say goodbye all over again or would I be excited to return to Colombia after the trip passed in the blink of an eye? I asked myself the same questions that others asked me with confusion. Occasionally I was able to articulate an explanation, more often I simply said that it was something I needed to do and that it was the best decision I could have made. I love my life in Colombia, where every day is an adventure, something new and challenging, I love speaking Spanish and understanding more and more everyday, but something told me that it was time to step back to home base, if only for a moment. Seeing my friends, the people who have inspired me, pushed me, sparked a passion inside of me, the most amazing people in my entire life, was indescribable. The jaw-drop-bug-eyed-I-can't-believe-that-you-are-here expressions, the hugs that reach across months, across thousands of miles, and seem to pause time indefinitely are a priceless feeling. A few photographs survive to recount the reunion, but the best memories that endure are the ones in which we are too caught up in the moment to do anything more than live the life, to love the life, more fully than anyone could have ever expected.

worth the effort...

Whatever the cost, be it distance and money, there are no real obstacles when it comes to seeing the most important people in your life. I know what I am thankful for and I love you all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez and cappuccino shisha

reading Living to Tell the Tale and listening to an IPod full of Latina music is a sure bet for some interesting conversations on 18 hour bus rides across the country...I love talking to the locals who have had relatively little exposure to people from outside of Colombia and who are fascinated by the idea of a foreigner not only visiting, but living and working in their country, learning about Colombian culture...

...hanging out in Bogota, listening to Christmas music with Tiff, Arnie, and Steve, watching fireworks off the balcony, eating Doritos, McFlurries, and Reeses PB Cups, the HOBO is on it's way, I fly out of the country at 230 tomorrow afternoon.....

life is good.

learn to expect the unexpected...

Finished grading the last of finals yesterday evening, just turned in my students' grades, and the semester is officially over for me.

Exactly 2 weeks off until I need to be back in Barranquilla to tutor students during the winter semester 3 week intensive course.

Trainee dinner chez nous ce soir then catching a night bus to Bogota. Sunday afternoon I'm off to El Dorado airport.

Never would have guessed that I would be heading to the destination that is on my e-ticket right now. Unexpected, but unbelievably excited. Can't explain why, just know that it is something I need to do. I'm ready for this.

oh yeah.

¡Estoy Aqui...en Barranquilla se baila asi!

¡Vibrante concierto!

Shakira hizo vibrar de la emoción a las miles de personas que acudieron anoche al concierto que ofreció en el Estadio Metropolitano. Fue un espectáculo con su gente y para su gente, pues en él intervinieron Joe Arroyo, Los Hermanos Zuleta, Checo Acosta y Jorge Celedón. Por primera vez, en su tour ‘Fijación Oral’, la artista barranquillera mezcló su música pop con la costeña, tal como lo había soñado.


Shakira sent vibrations of emotion through the thousands of people who attended her concert yesterday evening in the Metropolitan Stadium. It was a show for with her people and for her people, including local openers Joe Arroyo, Los Hermanos Zuleta, Checo Acosta y Jorge Celedón. For the first time, as a part of her "Oral Fixation" tour, the Barranquillera artist mixed her pop music with a costeña style.

The energy, the magic of Colombian culture, the pride of a city filled the air last night as people young and old piled into the stadium. A city that is often seen as harsly geographically segregated based on socioeconomic status came together, rich and poor are nothing more or nothing less than Barranquillero, and no one would change that for anything in the world. These lines are blurred during the Carnaval celebration that will soon begin and in support of a local hero who has shown the world the talent and potential of a country known far too often only for its violent past. From the opening vallenato, salsa, and cumbia performances, to the artistic and entertaining performance by Shakira herself, the dancing and the singing did not stop, on the stage nor in the stands. The encore resounded with choruses of Barranquilla, te quiero, En Barranquilla me quedo.
...

when in Rome...

Email that I sent to my students earlier today...

from: Sarah Stafford
to: Alejandra Velilla, Alejandro Palacio, Ana Lucia Arrazola
date: Nov 15, 2006 10:03 AM
subject: class cancelled

Hey guys - I am emailing the three of you since you are the only ones who come to our convo class anyway. Yes, that's right, I am cancelling our class for SHAKIRA today...sorry about that! I knew most of you would be on your way to the concert as well :) Stop by my office tomorrow if you would like to chat at all. Have a great day! ~Sarah

...I love that this is considered completely acceptable here :) Fingers crossed that the rain holds off. If there are arroyos in the streets like there were yesterday, the south side of the city will start to flood again, and we could be in for quite an evening...

I don't really care what people say...

I have butterflies in my stomach.

Food for thought...

"The most popular food in the world is not the Big Mac. It's pizza. And what is pizza? It is just a flat piece of dough on which every culture puts its own distinctive foods and flavors. so Japan has sushi pizza and Bangkok has Thai pizza and Lebanon has mezze pizza. The flat-world platform is just like that pizza dough. It allows cultures to season and flavor as they like - and you are going to see that more now than ever."

- The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman

Spa day gone sour...

Manicures, pedicures, facials, waxing, massages, highlights....you name it, and it is crazy cheap here. The girls and I decided to splurge on a fun spa and shopping day around Barranquilla yesterday. There was one minor bump in the road however...I got the haircut from hell. My fears of not being able to explain what I wanted in Spanish underestimated the final result. Apparently the idea of "only a little bit shorter" doesn't translate very well. I almost walked out of the salon in tears. Every single woman and girl, young and old, has longgggggg hair here, so I don't think they know what to do when they see someone with short hair, but I felt as if the stylist was a toddler who had gotten ahold of their mom's scissors and decided to randomly cut out large chunks of their own hair. It's way too short to pull it back in a ponytail until it grows out and the layers have no rhyme or reason to them that I can see.

Update: I took matters into my own hands this morning and *snip snip* made a few adjustments. It looks significantly better, although this was one cultural experience that I could have done without.

tongue twisters & famous last words...you said it, not me

Good to see that BBC has a sense of humor...

Rumsfeld in his own words

FEBRUARY 2003
And it is not knowable if force will be used [in Iraq], but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

OCTOBER 2002
[Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.

FEBRUARY 2002
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.

MAY 2001
Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think: 'What in the world am I doing here?' It's a big surprise.

In a world of worlds that you can call your own...

Melissa, Amy, Leslie, Evelyn and I spent the past long weekend camping at Tayrona, which is still one of my favorite spots in all of Colombia, hands down. As we piled out of the minivan at the park entrance and I heard the unmistakable tune of “Numa Numa” playing at the tienda alongside the road, I knew that it was going to be a good weekend. (Please note, Katy, I refrained from busting out any high impact knee lifts, but only because there was no one with me to fully appreciate it like you would have).

There is nothing like hiking through the jungle, hanging out on stunning palm tree-lined beaches, and falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing on the beach to remind me that this is SOUTH AMERICA. Leslie entertained us all weekend with her crazy fear of falling coconuts. As we gazed up at the night sky from our hammocks late Saturday night, we joked that the full moon fading in and out of the clouds reminded us of Pirates of the Caribbean. The craziest part is realizing that isn’t too far from the truth.

I may be a city girl, love the hustle and bustle of a busy cosmopolitan lifestyle, but I love the adventure side of traveling as much as a weekend in Bogota. It may not have been a Wisconsin state park or campground, but the weekend reminded me so much of all the camping trips that I have taken my whole life. There was far too much rain during the evenings to make a campfire, but we still managed to roast marshmallows over candles. We taught more than one Colombian the ingenious invention of “s’mores” this weekend.

Back in Barranquilla, life continues as usual. Teaching or studying…it doesn’t matter, the end of the semester gets draining no matter which role you are in, and I’m glad that finals are next week. I’m getting a little tired of grading papers, writing quizzes for my students, and dealing with the runaround inefficiency of the university. I also have a few French lectures to give next week, which means that I will be spending the weekend putting together a few powerpoint presentations, but I am actually looking forward to that (French, a language that I actually know? International relations, foreign policy, the EU and other IO’s? piece of cake). I’ve been happily getting more than my daily dose of politics lately as I have been glued to the election coverage the past few days, during every break I can possibly fit in at work. I’m looking forward to what is going to come next.

We have about a week off before the “winter term” begins, although that looks like it will be pretty smooth sailing as the assistants haven’t been assigned any classes to teach. We still need to stick around to help out with tutoring, but my schedule will much easier. And then…4 weeks free! AIESEC reunion for Christmas in Medellin, celebrating New Years’ at the Feria de Cali, and basically just doing what I love the most here…traveling around Colombia.

Back home, people always seemed to get annoyed when stores put out Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. One of my roommates had warned us a few weeks ago that before we knew it, Christmas would “vomit all over Barranquilla”. A rather disturbing image, perhaps slightly exaggerated? That was what I naively thought. The minute that Halloween was over, the gaudy decorations seemed to appear overnight. This will be my first Christmas in a warm climate and it seems ridiculous to me to see restaurants with garland draped over every square inch, apartments adorned with lights and artificial trees, waist-high talking Santa Claus statues outside of businesses, and “Let it Snow” signs …when I usually feel as if my life has been put on hold and summer vacation never really ended.

“Let it Snow”?? really, people??

I had a great discussion with one of my conversation classes yesterday about snow. Out of about 12 students, only 2 had ever seen snow in their entire life, which had been at Nevada del Ruiz, the highest peak in Colombia, part of the Cordillera mountain range, near Manizales. They were fascinated as I told them about skiing, sledding, ice skating, building snowmen, snowball fights, having school cancelled for snow days growing up in Wisconsin.

That's all the news for now...

AIESEC Colombia recently launched a National PBOX on Internal Displacement and Poverty in Colombia. Alcance Social is a mutual cooperation between AIESEC in Colombia and Accion Social, the entity created by the Colombian govt. to manage national and international resources as well as to execute all social programs of the Presidency. These programs focus on vulnerable parts of the population affected by poverty, drug trafficking and violence. The objective of the PBoX is to stregthen processes of social economic stabilization of displaced population; and raise the awareness about internal displacement and poverty in Colombia. The internships of Alcance Social are fully financed by Accion Social and interns will work directly in projects of Accion Social as well as with NGOs all across Colombia. Right now there are 23 interns working together, 13 trainees and 10 Colombian AIESEC members. They are working right now in Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Manizales, Pereira, Armenia, Santa Marta and Cartagena.

Want to learn more? The blog that the Medellin Alcance Social trainees have recently set up is worth checking out.