One month down!

Wow, been here for a month already…time sure goes fast, but not fast enough! I just can’t wait until December to start traveling and really begin to explore my country. Well, in the meantime I guess I’ll just have to write about my crazy everyday life here in Bogota, jaja. So, let’s start with my apartment. Since I still haven’t been paid, I still only have a mattress and blankets, a few necessary cleaning supplies, a few bath towels, a frying pan, a pot, some silverware, and that’s about it. Still don’t even have a chair! No fridge yet either so still eating a lot of non-perishable stuff like rice and pasta. Well, hopefully we get paid this coming week so that Jordan and I can really start making some down payments on bigger purchases.

So school…it’s slowly getting better. I no longer dread waking up in the morning which I think is a good first step! My kids are still crazy and loud and annoying most of the time but now I am having many more enjoyable moments with them as well. And we’ve had some funny moments too: when one 5 year old girl came up to me and pulled her dress up to her chest in the middle of French class to ask me to pull up her stockings; when all the boys in gym class were told by the gym teacher to tackle me when we were playing tag; when two of my boys had hilarious yogurt moustaches at recess and didn’t even realize it. So yes, it’s getting better but it’s still very stressful with all the extra things I’ve had to do like call parents every week, open a bank account (which is harder here than anywhere else I’ve lived), getting our apartment lease notorized, getting a background check (which I still haven’t done but will explain later why not), etc. I had a mandatory physical check-up done on Thursday at the school’s infirmary and apparently I’ve lost about 6 pounds since I’ve gotten here! And believe me, I’ve been eating as much as I can—up to three types of carbs in one meal too! But I think it’s the 1 hour roundtrip walk to school plus the indefinite number of times I walk up and down the stairs dragging 18 four and five year olds behind me to and from each class. So apparently there are two great ways you can lose weight: 1) the Peace Corps diet (remember, I lost 14 pounds in 6 months due to dengue and amebas) and 2) being a Kindergarten teacher in a crazy school that looks like and is as big as Disneyland.

Well, other than school things are good. Last Friday the entire school celebrated the director Claudia’s birthday. She had school buses drive us out to this famous restaurant called Andres Carne de Res in the town Chia (about 45 minutes outside of Bogota). This place was HUUUUUUGEEEEEE and looked like a carnival on the inside with all the wait staff dressed up in elaborate costumes and just tons of STUFF hanging from the ceiling, multiple dance floors, face painting booths, crazy passageways, etc. It was insane! The director of the school is pretty stinkin’ wealthy so she paid for all the food drinks and whatever for all 150+ people who came out (there are at least 200 teachers in the school but not all came out that night). Although I didn’t see how much it was, the bill itself was more than a foot long and there was more than one bill. Wow! It’s pretty crazy to be around people with money!

Last weekend I also got out of the city again with Sandra and Dona Frany, the mom and grandma of one of my students, and Sandra’s brother Alejandro who is a pilot in the Colombian Air Force. This time we drove about 45 minutes or so to the Northwest to a town called Subachoque. It was small, but everything was lush and green and beautiful! I could finally breathe fresh air again (Bogota is one of the most polluted cities in the world and I can tell everyday since it’s still hard for me to breathe). We had lunch at a wonderful little tipico restaurant where I ordered Ajiaco, the traditional dish of Bogota. It’s a thick soup/stew made with chicken, potatoes, carrots, cilantro, and then you can throw in capers, avocado and sour cream to taste. It’s really good but super filling! Just one bowl and I was stuffed! During lunch we talked more about my story of having been adopted, etc, and it turns out Alejandro can possibly help me out since he has connections all over Colombia and can possibly help me track my biological family. So we’ll see!

Well, and this last week has been a special week since my good friend Simone Parker from the Heller school was in town since she had to wait for a flight to San Andres where she’ll be doing her practicum. She and my other friend Juliana (who is from Bogota but whom I also met at the Heller school) and I met up at the mall next to my house on Wednesday where we ate dinner and just caught up on life (after having not seen each other for an entire month, lol!) Thursday we met up again for dinner at the mall, walked around, and chilled at my apartment for a bit. So great to see those girls! I also went out with Juliana the last two nights for a couple of her friends' birthdays. Friday we went to a nice Italian restaurant in the very fun neighborhood called Usaquen. Then last night we went to a 80s bar called "Full 80s" where, yes, you guessed it, they play 80s (well, and some 90s) classics in English and Spanish. It was loads of fun! It was especially fun when we tried to sneak into the private party of people who were all in costumes like Halloween but the birthday girl kicked us off the dance floor saying "If you're not in costume you can't be in my party" (even though it was a public dance floor). Then Juliana proceeded to splash her beer in this girl's face. Hilarious! Oh well. We did end up dancing anyways but near our tables.

I’ve also had some interesting experiences out shopping and not what with the differences in Spanish. I’m definitely trying to build up a Bogotano vocabulary but since I spend most of the day in a class with five year olds speaking English and elementary Spanish with them, when I’m outside of school my Central American Spanish keeps sneaking up on me. For example, the other day I was shopping for hangers and stickers and had to ask a store person where to find them so I used the words I know—“cercha” and “calcomanias o etiquetas” , respectively, and they looked at me like I was nuts. Here they use “ganchos” for hangers (whereas I know gancho to be a hook in other countries) and “stickers” (jaja, they use the English word!). The biggest one is that I still can’t bring myself to use “coger” for things like “coger el bus” (take the bus) because in Central America it’s vulgar for sex, jaja! Out of habit I still say “agarrar.” But the funniest incident happened the other night when I was out with Juliana and Simone. I was picking up my food order from the counter and asked the guy if I could have a straw for my soda. Well, everywhere else I’ve lived you call a straw a “pajilla” but apparently not here! He looked at me with a very surprised face so I repeated until his buddy said “pitillo” and finally gave me the straw. I went back to our table and told Juliana this and she started busting up laughing because apparently “pajilla” here is when a man masturbates! Omg! So I asked a man for masturbation! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, good times with the Spanish language!!!

So for the most part I’m starting to settle in to my new life here in Bogota. I still don’t feel a 100% at home yet but I keep having to remind myself that it took me several months in San Luis to finally feel at home there, so I got to have patience! It’s just been harder than normal I think because I’m living in a huge city whereas in Guatemala I lived in a small town where everybody knew everybody and it was much easier to make friends. Here it’s just like NYC or Boston where nobody gives a rats a** who you are unless you know someone they know. Also, I haven’t made too many friends with other teachers at school because of how busy I’ve been, but I have made friends with a couple of Americans and a couple of Colombians there nonetheless even if we don’t really hang out outside of school that much. Surprisingly, I wish I could be working in less of a metropolis because even though I love big cities, I really miss the community feel that I had in Guatemala. I really really miss that! When I went to the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquira I instantly fell in love with that town precisely for that reason. Because it was smaller and the people more open and friendly. I truly hope Mogotes turns out to be that way too even though I’ve heard from many Bogotanos that people from Santander tend to be very headstrong, assertive, and strong-willed. Most Bogotanos I’ve met talk about them neither in really negative nor really positive terms so I guess I will have to wait and see for myself what “my people” are like!

Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for tuning in again. Hope everyone is well.