Placement Assignments and Thanksgiving

CARTAGENA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... is where I'll be living for the next 2 years. Placement announcements were last Thursday, or on Thanksgiving. I couldn't be more excited for CARTAGENA! Ahhh! I will be visiting my school, Soledad Román de Núñez, from Tuesday until Saturday this week, and so, although I know a little about the school, I will keep you in suspense but promise full details upon return to Barranquilla. In the meantime, you can read alllll about Cartagena and how great of a place it is going to be to visit (but seriously, #1 travel destination in Colombia; you have no excuses).

Thanksgiving dinner couldn't have been better. Although I tried to 'keep my expectations low', it was hard to do as Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Nevertheless, we were not let down. Peace Corps directors and their families all cooked up delicious (and American-style) food and we had a FEAST with about 60 people. From turkey, salad (woohoo vegetables, finally!), stuffing, casseroles, humus, green beans, carrots, pumpkin and apple pie, cakes... I might have eaten more than anyone and had a food baby that extended about 5 inches over my unbuckled jeans. It was glorious. Furthermore, we were able to watch a little US football and relax as digestion set in. Tons of fun, especially since everyone was so elated and relieved that site assignments were revealed and therefore the waiting/guessing game was finished.

10 Reasons why Barranquilla is not Denver

1.       Personal space/touchy-feelyness—family and friends are constantly around; I’ve been home alone once for 30 minutes since arriving (although they respect my space if I go into my room and close the door). Everyone is always touching, stroking, kissing, or holding someone else. I sandwich myself between Colombians and their butts so I don’t fall over while riding buses. Thank goodness people use deodorant here; I think I would have died of BO if I was surrounded by antiperspirant-less Turks in this heat.

2.       Wildlife—my roommates have included a cockroach, ants, lizards, and mosquitos. Most mosquito bites are on my legs; I counted 46 today. Bruno, my nemesis; aka the hyper, yappy poodle that lives in the back of the house. GIANT iguanas at the Peace Corps training facility.

3.       Fruit—there are a bazillion different varieties. I still know none of their names, so enough said.

4.       Party, party, party—people love to drink, dance, talk, and listen to music whenever given a chance. Every night is not necessarily a party, but for every holiday (which there are lots of, thanks to Saints) or weekend everyone comes out of their homes, pumps the music and dances in the streets or bars. Below: my neighbors' sound system.



5.       Dirty dancing—should have been made on the Colombian coast. It awkward enough to watch 8 year old girls dancing very provocatively in tight shorts and badazzled bikinis, but they fact that they are legitimately amazing dancers and that all teachers are cheering them on leads to many “this-would-never-happen-in-the-US” moments. However, it’s not just this, but all types of dance, that everyone here is incredible at.  

6.       Machismo—especially prosperous on the coast. We’ve been warned that stereotypically men here have several girlfriends (of course there are exceptions).  

7.       Arroyos—rain water eventually drains into the Atlantic Ocean, using the streets of Barranquilla as its way to get there. Upon arrival to Barranquilla, the Peace Corps gave us a list of 25+ locations not to be at while raining. These arroyos can swallow people, cars, trees, and anything else in their path; serious business. After a rainstorm many streets remain uncrossable, giving me an excuse to be at least 2 hours late after a rainstorm and a transition into my next number…

8.       Costeño time—you have every reason to have a lengthy conversation with anyone while en route to somewhere, and therefore to be late. People come and go whenever and linger everywhere in between. Everyone here is incredibly social and warm.

9.       Soccer is the new football—no American football here but instead futbol, aka soccer. People are playing it, watching it or talking about it. All of Colombia’s home games for qualifying for the World Cup will be played in Barranquilla’s massive stadium. Venezuela and Argentina teams will play here in November and tickets only cost about $15 USD.

10.   Personal hygiene—my surplus sweating has shockingly led me to be more hygienic. Showering twice per day is standard; in fact, it’s expected when it’s especially humid. Showers, I may add, consist of a single, cold stream of water about half an inch wide. My desire to not be known as ‘the dirty gringa’ also has triggered a need to put away and fold my clothes, make my bed, and sweep my room daily.

Now that I have internet on my laptop, here are some long awaited pictures!!

My host brothers and room.

With students from the first school visited.

My Spanish class (me, Tyler, Monica, and Orlando--our teacher)



From my visit to Santa Marta



Volunteer Site Visit in Santa Marta

Last week I visited Marcy, one of the Peace Corps response volunteers who has been living and working in Santa Marta for 10 months. Santa Marta is only 1.5 hours from Barranquilla and is gorgeous: right on the coast so that the beach is never more than a 15 minute walk away and next to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It’s a tourist destination, and so I even saw some sunburned gringos along with many Colombians on vacation. It was great to see another city in Colombia and to better understand what I’m up against these next 2 years. I find out my site placement (or where I will live and work for the next 2 years) on Thanksgiving but will continue training in Barranquilla until mid-January.

Marcy works in the secondary school at Leseo del Norte. Much unlike the US, everyone is given a number, or strata, indicating their socioeconomic status. Stratum primarily depends on neighborhood and the quality of houses, safety and cleanliness. Generally, 0-2 are lower class, 3-4 middle class, and 5-6 upper class. It all seems very exposed to me. People in 5 and 6 neighborhoods pay considerably in taxes whereas those in 0, 1 and 2 areas pay none or very little. Schools are scattered throughout; however, anyone can go to any public school (although there are restrictions due to transportation and materials costs). Therefore, although Marcy’s school is in her strata 3 neighborhood, most of the students come from 0-2 areas.

Public school teachers and students go to school either from 6:30am-noon or from 1-5:30pm. At Leseo del Norte the bathrooms have been broken and unusable for 3 months, so consequently both morning and afternoon school days have been shortened by an hour… an innovative solution. Like many Colombian schools, if students are late they are not allowed into the fenced-off campus, meaning that there were a couple stranded outside waiting-out the day by selling things or playing soccer. This is all very curious because once inside punctuality is nonexistent. There were about 70% of students inside classrooms and 30% outside/on-time. The noise level was booming; comparable to my school in Turkey, which I thought was next to impossible to achieve. The students’ English ability was very low but all were super excited to have us and eagerly said “hello” in the halls. A lot to work with for sure. Like all Colombians I’ve met, the teachers were extremely welcoming and happy to have a Peace Corps volunteer at their school. Unlike primary school, secondary English teachers are required to have passed a specific English level in university, so most spoke the language well. I observed a wide spectrum of teaching proficiency, so again, a lot to work with. Supposedly once at site, my job will only consist of 16 hours per week co-teaching with Colombian English teachers in their classrooms. The majority of my job will be educating these teachers on effective TESL methods, specifically experience-based leaning (versus lecture based). I will also have secondary projects in the community, but I won’t decide on those until I get there.