Life is a Game we Play.

un monton de cosas...

A ton has happened between my last blog entry and now, and I have no idea how to organize my thoughts, so I apologize in advance…

Starting with last Friday…I about had a mental breakdown. I was left alone in our house from 12pm until the time I went to bed…I watched 9 hours of Spanish soap operas… I had no “saldo” on my phone to call anyone and no pesos for a bus ride downtown. I was literally stuck with my thoughts and horrible Colombian acting. I really enjoy the company of Andres’ grandmother, but I can only spend so much time talking about the fruit here that is so “sabrosa.” All I could think about was running around the Arboretum and jumping in Lake Wingra, sitting at the terrace with live music and a pitcher of beer, riding my bike around the Capitol City Loop, Stella’s spicy cheesy bread from the Farmer’s Market, grilling out at James Madison park, and everything else my friends in Madison were doing. It’s easy to get distracted like that when you’re left alone. I called Andres at 9:00pm to see where he was, and he said he’d be right home and we’d go out for a bit. I ended up falling asleep in my clothes sitting upright at 11:30…

BUT, things got exponentially better. I stopped being a baby at about 7:00am Saturday morning and decided to make the most of the rest of my weekend. We had our LC team building activity at a guy named Carlos Blanco’s farm in Turbaco (a small town about 20 min from Cartagena). Like the farm in Santa Marta, it was equipped with a pool and a patio. It was great...tons of icebreaker activities where I got to meet almost everyone from the LC, and us trainees were given some time to express our expectations and desires which was really good. We played soccer and went swimming, ate some fried rice, and AIESEC role call danced the afternoon away. Picture our LC retreat…but in Spanish. Three other trainees have joined me, and there’s one more coming next week. I’m excited because we all get along really well, Maciek from Poland is crazy, and Maria from Finland is probably one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met. Hopefully, they’ll want to go with me to the beach and to some of the other touristy sites in the area!

Saturday night, Andres and I went to a birthday party for the girlfriend of a guy I work with at Fe y Alegría. It was at this really sweet, modern bar in Bocagrande (the touristy area of Cartagena). We all dressed in white, Favio (who I work with) even had white shoes and a white belt on, and then Laura, his girlfriend, wore this gorgeous red dress. At about 11:30 all of us went into the back of the bar and put on these mardi gras style masks decked out in glitter, feathers, and sequins, and surprised Laura with balloons, confetti, and a very enthusiastic version of Feliz Cumpleaños. I continued with my merengue/salsa dancing lessons, and we called it quits at about 4am. While a cold glass of Spotted Cow on the terrace still sounds pretty fabulous, I am completely content drinking a Colombian Aguila on a rooftop…or heading downtown to stuff my face with “fritos” –fried goodies uch as arepas, empanadas, and carimañoles!

Meena, I think I met the Colombian version of your Roxanne… She’s the half-sister of the guy that I live with. She’s eight years old and according to her, we’re BEST friends. She’ll grab my hand and take me around to all of the adults and say “this is my best friend. She understands me, see?” and then ask me a question like “what’s your favorite enter any theme here.” We played a card game that I think is called “Maria Wins.” This is how you play. You pick a random number of cards to keep in your hand. Then you put a card on the table and say what it is. (Cinco, for example) This goes on until Maria decides to clear the pile, or until someone lays a jack because neither of us knows what a jack is in Spanish. If you ask who won, she says, “I did because I put down enter last card she laid down here.” She makes me braid her hair everyday and is basically glued to my side 24/7. As I mentioned in an earlier post, sometimes it’s easier to communicate with little kids than it is with adults, so I enjoy the time I spend with her and my little neighbor Michael.

Update on my job…yesterday freaking rocked. The director of Fe y Alegría held a meeting with all of the parents, and I spoke for the last 15 minutes of the meeting about my project. I am going to be teaching 6 classes on entrepreneurship, starting July 15^th. Then starting July 28^th, the workshop in breadmaking is going to start. It is 3 hours a day, for 4 consecutive days. There are 5 sessions: Basics in Breadmaking, basics in pastrymaking, advanced breadmaking, advanced pastry making, and hygiene/control of sales/marketing. When I announced that people could come up and sign up for the courses on my little sign-up sheets, I felt like I was in the middle of a mosh-pit at a rock concert. It was a free-for-all. Papers were flying, mothers were pulling on my arms, everyone was shouting out questions…but you know what? I understood them…all of them. And it really made me appreciate my month that I’ve had here to adjust. Before, I felt like I wasn’t doing anything, but now I know that by waiting a month to get started, I’m actually going to be able to do a much better job. Had I started right away, I would have had no idea what these parents were saying to me. Now I feel completely confident with my Spanish (which is the coolest, most accomplished feeling ever!), and I really want to put together high quality lessons. I stayed after the meeting about an hour talking to different parents about the current state of poverty in Cartagena. It’s incredible how grateful they all are to have me here helping out. It’s completely different than any experience I’ve had in the US. I had 50 year old woman on the verge of tears thanking me over and over for paying attention to them and helping their families. Comparing with experiences in my past, I thought that the parents would reject me…what does this 21 year old American girl know? What can she do for us? But, it’s been the opposite. Parents have invited me into their homes for coffee or lunch, and I have accumulated a stack of phone numbers, email addresses and business cards.

I also learned something about my traineeship that makes me feel a little better about everything. Turns out, I was supposed to have a teacher helping me with this project, but she hasn’t been working with me at all. The school is trying to get certified under some code of quality by November, so all of the teachers and the director are extremely preoccupied with that. We’re trying to bring another trainee to the school to work directly with the psychologist, and the director told Andres that it would be better to wait until after the certification, because they were really busy and couldn’t dedicate the time to work with him on the project. Andres got pretty mad, and I feel like he’s forcing this traineeship on the school. Like to be able to say that he had 3 trainees working on the PBoX, but I think it’d be better to wait until the school can actually dedicate the time to get something out of having him (and me) here.

posted by Erin @ 10:50 PM