Life is a Game we Play.

One Month Down...

I spent this past weekend in Santa Marta (a 5 hour bus ride from Cartagena) making a guest appearance at a local AIESEC conference with Andres, Bolivar, and Nando (other AIESECers from Cartagena). The scenery on the trip there was really interesting…ranging from beautiful mountains and the sea to exotic fruit trees and farmlands. However we drove through some really poor areas, and it was really sad to see people that were so thin they looked like they were about to die in dirty tattered clothes with their 10 children sitting outside of huts made out of sticks, garbage, cardboard boxes and palm tree leaves. The Colombian military lined the highways in their camouflage uniforms and machine guns. I’m definitely not in Wisconsin anymore…

Santa Marta was a beautiful city. Friday night, we stayed at a farm, but not what I picture at all when I think of a farm. Sure, we had the occasional chicken run across the floor where we were having intense AIESEC conversations about Brand Awareness and PBoXes, and we had to stop a few times to let a cow finish its loud “moo”…but this place was enormous. There was a large house, an in-ground pool, and a patio/hut with a projector and stereo system, pool table, hammocks, and roof made of palm leaves. It’s incredible the similarities I see between the AIESECers that I’ve met in Colombia and those that I know and love in the US. It’s definitely a work hard, play hard attitude. Friday night was really fun—dancing, drinking, playing pool, getting thrown into the pool with clothes on, and swapping stories with new friends. At about 3 am, 5 people piled into each of the three twin beds in the house, and the rest slept in hammocks. We got up at 7:30 am on Saturday for an intense day of AIESEC work. We had sessions (with the occasional break for a roll call or two) until 6pm when we went out for pizza and watched Colombia win its soccer game against Peru. Then we literally climbed a mountain to get to a girl from @Santa Marta’s house with the most amazing view. They played guitar and sang songs until about 1am as I listened and drifted off into a nice deep sleep. I was hoping that Sunday we would get to see some of the city, but we had to get back to Cartagena because it was Father´s Day.

So, I have been here a month now… Overall, I am very happy with my experience. I really love my LC, and I hope they come to Madison to visit!! I have spoken in Spanish all day, every day, and although at times it’s incredibly frustrating and I just want to shut everyone out and think in English, I know that I’ve improved a ton, and I will continue to get better. The beach is a 75 cent bus ride away, and yet I still haven’t gone…and I have yet to eat seafood!! That needs to change. I can’t spend my summer inside with 90 degree weather and no air-conditioning! Between 12 and 4pm I can’t do anything but sit in front of a fan on high…and I still sweat! I tried to be “colombiana” and wear jeans the other day, and I think I almost had a stroke…I have accepted my nickname as the gringuita because of my accent, I might as well embrace my foreignness by wearing shorts and getting attacked by mosquitoes. I need to take more of an initiative to experience Colombia—there are so many things I want to see, and I tell the AIESECers I want to go, but I need to just plan stuff myself and get people to come with me, because otherwise I’ll never get to do anything.

When searching for my Traineeship, I was set on choosing a developmental traineeship. Looking back, I wish I’d taken the education traineeship teaching English at the Colombo-American Institute. A) it’s paid (1,500,000 pesos a month) and B) there’s a structure to follow. It´s with a legitimate school, and they tell you what to do. I feel worthless in my job. I know that there’s a huge demand for what I’m supposed to be doing, and I really wish I could help out, but I have no guidance here. A teacher came up to me today and asked me if I could include this mother in my project even though her children were younger because she has 7 children, no job, no husband and no money for food. Her children get one meal a day, if you can even call an arepa (basically a fried ball of flour) or an empanada a meal. It makes me so sad that I don’t know what I can do to help. I’ve talked to the company that is sponsoring me, and they are going to offer workshops in breadmaking, but they only have the capacity to teach 20 people. I have 200 interested parents. And what do I do every day from 8-1? What can I do? I’ve got a table in a school with no internet, a box of colored pencils…and two more months to do…something.

posted by Erin @ 7:31 PM