Hello cyberworld! So the semester is pretty much over, wippeeeeeee! It's our last Day 6 today and all the grades are entered in the system, I've finished writing my osos (group observation reports) and my curriculum structure, so I'm pretty much chillin'. Well, I still have a few more days of classes with the preescolar students but I have no more work, work to do. Finally! Friday is our last day here and I believe it's report card day. Only 25 students failed my typing class this semester (out of 300), which is a MUCH better statistic than last semester when 110 students failed! I can pretty much chalk it up to the fact that there weren't as many homework assignments this semester for the second and third graders, but instead a lot of in-class assignments which they were able to complete more often than not. It's the homework that gets them because they NEVER do their homework!
So now that the school year is over, what is it that Alyxe will be doing?? Traveling, of course!!! The traveling has already commenced. This last weekend was another three-day puente. My friend Adry, who is my good friend Mike's girlfriend, had to go to this town called Guamo in the department of Tolima, southwest of Bogota. She has family from there and they were there for the funeral of one of Adry's aunts who recently passed away. So since she and Mike had to go anyways for the funeral, they decided to make it into a weekend getaway for us too (us being Jeni, Casey, Marianne and myself--all Montessori teachers). We had to pass through two towns that we had previously been to to get there--Melgar and our random New Year's spot of Girardot. Passing through Girardot made Jeni and I bust up laughing remembering how miserable we had been with the bug bites and how random our NYE was. When we got to Guamo,I was reminded soooooooooo much of San Luis, where I lived in Guatemala. Same weather (HOT! HOT! HOT!), same kind of buildings and streets, and the people were super laid-back and friendly. For a second I seriously thought I was back in San Luis. We stayed at a nondescript hotel that had a pool, open lounge areas on the first and second floor, bar and restaurant. We left on Friday evening and rolled up to the hotel around 2 in the morning or something and the next morning and until yesterday we spent pretty much the entire time by the pool, soaking up the sun, having some not-so-cold beer and rum (they do not believe in ice apparently), and just relaxing. Saturday morning we did walk the 8 blocks to Adry's family's house to have some amazing home-made changua, which is seriously my favorite food here. Changua is a soup made with hard-boiled egg, chicken broth with cilantro, queso campesino, and then you add a special bread that gets soggy to the mix. It sounds disgusting but it's seriously like the my favorite soup here. It's pretty much my favorite food here since for the most part Colombian food is pretty tasteless. Anywho, so we ate changua and huevos pericos (scrambled eggs) and hung out with Adry's family for a while until we decided to go back to the hotel and relax by the pool. The rest of Saturday we spent by the pool and chilliaxin in our room just talking.
Sunday we got up and again, hung out by the pool, napped for a while and in the evening we ventured out down the street where a food festival was going on in honor of the Corpus Christi holiday they celebrate there. We ate delicious lechona (pork mixed with some vegetables and other stuff) right off the street (and no, I didn't get amoebas this time!). Sitting there in the market area reminded me even more of San Luis and how I would always eat my pupusas or something at the little market stands. And the weather was just so nice and perfect! Sitting there in the marketplace made me realize that the small town life and warm weather is exactly where I belong. I can't handle too much of big city life, especially not that of Bogota. I seriously miss being able to walk down the street and people knowing who I am and feeling part of a community. I don't have that in Bogota...heck, I don't really have that in any city I've lived in in the States either. I realize that's what's made my experience here in Colombia so different. It's not that I've disliked my time here, it's that I don't have the same connections and sense of community that I did when I was in Guatemala. But I know that if I were living in a town like San Luis here in Colombia, my experience would have been all that much richer. Jeni and I had this conversation a few weeks ago and we both agree that that sense of community is something so important to both of us. Bogota, like any other big city, just doesn't have that. And even thought I have great Colombian friends here in the city, it's just not the same. I really feel like if I'm going to continue living overseas, I have to be in a small town.
On that note, I still am so up in the air about where I'm going to be in the next few months. I've been looking for jobs in the DC area, have applied to a few (with no success), and I'm also keeping my eyes peeled for jobs here too. I found a fantastic opportunity with an NGO here called "Children of the Andes." The position is a field officer position, which would involve a lot of travel to Cartagena and other areas working on program management aspects. The organizations work with at-risk and marginalized youth in poor communities in four programmatic areas: education, building safe communities, supporting families, and workforce development/preparation for adult life. The model of development of the organization and its values are a perfect match for what I want to be doing long-term. I really think it would be a perfect job for me, so I've applied and am crossing my fingers for a reply. The NGO is based in the UK, has an office here in Bogota and another field office in Cartagena, I believe. So I would be based here in Bogota and would have to make frequent trips to other parts of the country as well as a trip per year to England to report back to the donor community. Wish me luck!
Well, that is all for now. I am excited for the school year to end and to continue making trips around the country. Next stop is Cali to visit my good friend Carolina and then off to my birthtown!! Stay tuned for more adventures from Alyxe!
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