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 15th. Then starting July 28th, 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.
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.
So, like I’ve said, I suck at updating my blog… I’ll do my best to recap the last week…
Life has been pretty hectic in the house-- a lot of relatives have been coming and going because of the death of Andres’ grandpa. His aunt, uncle, and two cousins have been staying here for a week. I’m going to be really sad when they go because they’re so fun to talk to. The cousins are 2 girls (12 and 16) that can talk about anything. I’ve decided that my competence level in Spanish must be at about their level because when I’m with them, it’s fun and easy for me to talk. Sometimes with the LC, I just feel kinda awkward. However, I decided to start calling people to go out for coffee or walk around downtown in the afternoons, instead of only showing up for events where everybody’s there. When there are more than 7 people talking, I have no chance of understanding what they’re saying or participating in the conversation, so I just kind of sit there. You know how we say “5th wheel” or “tag-along”…well they call that person “arroz blanco” (white rice). White rice because it only serves as an accompaniment. I don’t want to be arroz blanco! Hahaha
I’ve been working every morning until about noon on my project, and tonight I have a meeting with the director of the school, a few teachers, and the parents. Basically, how I’ve decided to handle my job is as follows: I gave out a survey asking about level of education, abilities, occupations, interests, etc. From there, I’m trying to contact other teachers to see if they would be willing to teach some classes in the evenings (math, computers, etc). I’m going to offer to teach some English. I’m going to hold a few classes explaining the basics of how to create a business plan to hopefully trigger the entrepreneurial spirit needed to create a microenterprise. I’m also working towards establishing a relationship between the school and “el SENA” which is an organization that offers training in all areas from sewing to cooking to farming. The company that sponsors me is a flour mill, so I’m setting up a meeting next week to see if they can be of any help—either donating raw materials or offering workshops in bread making, etc.
Last Saturday, I went to a kickboxing/martial arts class with an AIESECer. It reminded me a lot of the BoxBlast class at the SERF. It was really fun, and I think I’m going to join the gym and go to some more of the classes...they have everything from pilates and yoga to taebo and dancing. People here are so friendly; I was jogging on a treadmill and the older guy (probably about 50 years old) next to me started talking to me, asking me where I’m from, how I was liking Cartagena, where I’d been downtown, what I was doing for work and fun, etc… It’s so different from my experience in Spain, where my own “family” wouldn’t even talk to me! I feel like in Europe, they kind of reject Americans and hosting a foreign exchange student is just a source of income, but so far in Colombia, the people so happy that you weren’t scared to come to their country, and they want to share with you their rich culture and talk to you all the time! I love it.
I’ve also started to feel more comfortable doing things by myself. Since Andres has been really preoccupied with his family, I have started to venture out more, spending time downtown, calling other AIESECers, etc. It’s been really good. I finally visited Marilene (the trainee from Holland) at the foundation where she works and I am so glad I live where I do. She is living above the foundation right outside the center in probably the poorest neighborhood I’ve ever seen. I don’t think anyone owns shoes, but yet somehow every “house” has huge subwoofers and is blasting salsa music so that you can hear it 4 blocks away. I want to take a picture to show the contrast, but I’m scared to bring my camera out! She really likes her job though, and the director of the foundation is a saint, really an amazing woman. I am going to try to start going once a week in the afternoons to hang out and help out with some of the activities for the local children.
Another note on the buses…I should just carry a bag of candy with me when I need to go somewhere, because everyday, at least 5 people hop on my bus and walk up and down the aisle trying to sell candy, apples, pencils, crackers, water, icecream etc. and then hop off again. Do that five times, and you make it to work free and maybe make a few pesos from selling a piece of gum. Then there are the men with guitars, the clowns, and the man with no legs and cement blocks for hands that dragged himself down the aisle begging us to put money in his mouth…
Word Vomit
So, how´s attending a family funeral for cultural immersion? Andres´grandpa, who we lived with, died yesterday morning. He´d been real sick for a couple months and spent all day in bed since I´ve been here. It´s strange because Andres was going to come with me to work at 8am, but when I went to wake him up, he said he was too tired and would meet me later. So, he was able to be there for his grandpa´s last moments. His grandparents have taken care of him his whole life—they are more his parent than his real parents that split when he was real young and lead new lives with new families. The wake was last night, and all of the extended family came to the house. A ton of AIESECers showed up for support, so Andres knows we´re all here for him. I´m going to be staying at a friend´s house for a couple of days while family stays at Andres´. This is a situation where I really wish I could speak in English, it´s kind of hard for me to express sympathy in Spanish.
Other than that, last Friday was the opening conference for the official launch of our project. It went really well—about 80 people showed up for it. The conference was divided into three sessions. The first was a debate between three people in different sectors about the current situation of Cartagena. The second session was lead by a woman from Ashoka about social entrepreneurship. The third session described AIESEC and its accomplishments on an international, national, and regional level. Andres introduced the project, and Marilene and I both gave about 5 minute presentations on what we’re doing and why. I had a speech prepared and practiced, but when I got up in front of everyone and started talking, I couldn’t remember anything and just started blabbing. Everything else went really smoothly…we spent a ton of time interviewing children at the school that I work at and at the foundation where Marilene works and making a video to show the reality in Cartagena and then showing AIESECers in action. I’ll try to post the video, it turned out really well.
After the conference, we all went out for Chinese food and then headed over to an AIESECers house to hang out. And by hang out, I mean drag mattresses out onto the roof and drink beer and listen to the neighbors’ vallenato music. Beautiful.
Sunday was Andres’ birthday. I’ve decided that birthdays are a bigger deal here than in the US. You don’t just get a “Happy Birthday!” on Facebook, you get a paragraph, and a phone call, and probably a card and a hug too... Angie and I took Andres out for lunch and ice cream, and I finally got to see Bocagrande (the touristy side of Cartagena). It definitely has a different feel to it than the residential area I live in…high class hotels, familiar stores, clean sidewalks, lots of, um, Americans. We had a birthday party last night which was really fun. Learning to dance…I’m so white. I really like the LC here, and I’m glad that I feel like I have real friends already. It makes it a little easier not to be homesick and missing good times in Madison.
I started helping out with the English classes at the school I work at, which has been wonderful. All the kids are super friendly, and it’s really fun to interact with them. Two girls have started to come eat lunch with me and help me learn “costeñol” (the Spanish slang they speak here on the coast). A boy also made me a CD and wrote “From: Luis, To: You” on it because no one can remember my strange name.
Two things:
I’m still trying to adjust to how slowly things move here. The other day, I tried to take my sweet time when meeting a friend to go shopping, and I showed up 15 minutes after the time we’d planned on meeting. She came 45 minutes later.
There’s definitely a stereotype that Americans have a lot of money. I think Andres has tried to spend more of my money than I have. He’ll point stuff out and say, “This is really cheap for you, right?” and then sort of expect/hint that I pay for it. After converting to dollars, it usually isn’t cheap for me. Most things cost about the same. It’s kind of annoying, and I try to emphasize that I took out loans to come here, and I’m not really even spending my own money!
