Depende

I arrived here to Bogota on January 2nd with 35 other volunteers from the United States.
For the past few weeks we have been living and working out of a retreat center called Santa Cruz in Cota, which we affectionately call"the convent", right outside of the city of Bogota.  Bogota is at about 8,000 feet and the weather feels like summer in the Rockies--I'm loving it.  I'll be flying out of Bogota to Cartagena on Jan. 22 and will then be traveling to my placement on Isla de Baru.  I'm making the most of this weather because soon I'll be in inescapable heat and humidity!


Although our current housing situation is like "Real World" without as much partying and with 8 to 12 hours of work a day, I have been enjoying getting to know my fellow volunteers.  We do not have internet at Santa Cruz and we did not have Colombian cell phones until very recently so that definitely has helped with the bonding process.  This morning we had to say goodbye to four of the volunteers who are leaving a few days early for their site in Cartagena.  Everything already feels incomplete without them!


Depende is the mantra of orientation...seems that everything just "depends" here.  I've determined that accepting uncertainty must be the key to sanity in Colombia.  I've gotten used to a not expecting a solid answer to anything.  The schedule "depends," information about my teaching site "depends", traffic "depends" (and I've never seen traffic this bad in my life!), hot water in the shower "depends", and time really "depends"--meal times and meeting times in particular.


I had a nice blog entry saved on my flash drive, but the flash drive decided to snap in half yesterday, so instead of a well written blog post, here is my best list of the most notable situations I've run into so far.

-I bought a pirated music CD of 150 songs on the street for the equivalent of $1.
-There are two tiendas/bars/houses accross the street from Santa Cruz that are frequented by our pack of gringos almost every night.  Beer costs the equivalent of 75 cents and the adolecsent Colombian boys love to impress us of their knowledge of American 80s songs from the jukebox.
-80s music and Lady GaGa seems to be pretty popular everywhere.
-I am currently staying in a dorm-style room with 5 other friends--well, 2 of them left for their sites this morning :(   We fall asleep laughing and wake up laughing, and we know far too much about each other than probably should be known.
-I have a great running route along the back roads by the fields.  I pass a cilantro patch along the way and it smells so good.  There are also countless stray dogs running around.  I often run with a rock to hit them so they will run away.
-The cows and goats tied up to the sides of the road are great natural lawn mowers.
-We blow out the power in Santa Cruz a lot.  This is probably why even the cheapest Colombian phones come with a flashlight feature.
-Every beaurocratic process here takes about 10 times longer than you would wait at the DMV.
-The other day we went on a tour of La Catedral de Sal.  In this salt mine about an hour from Cota, miners sculpted an underground cathedral out of the salt.  I licked the salt on one of the walls and haven't gotten sick yet!
-We have two Spanish classes with our training, the beginning/intermediate, and the advanced.  I am in the advanced class and am probably farther behind than anyone else, which is incredibly frusterating.  It is also frusterating to currently be living in "gringo-land" where my Spanish hasn't yet had a chance to improve. 
-I co-taught a 45 minute 5th grade English class at La Montaña, a school nearby, for my practicum.  La Montaña is probably one of the most prestigious bilingual private schools in the country, a stark contrast from where I will be teaching in Baru, but it's been exciting to be at the school still.  Entry about the Colombian social strata and education systems to come later.
 -I'm lucky to get 3 minutes of hot water in the shower, which is still 3 more minutes of hot water than I'll be getting in Baru. 
-Food here is a bit bland.  I tend to eat rice and potatoes twice a day, and they are customarily served together.  I also eat far too much chicken and quite a bit of salad, yucca, and plantains.  The plantains are fried, baked, chips, etc., and luckily are growing on me.  Again, this is probably as good as it will get.


Una Noche "Tipical" del Transporte

Last weekend, two of my friends and I embarked on typical Colombian adventure from Cota to Bogota.   We left around dinner time to catch the local bus that would take us to Portal 80, where we would then transfer to the TransMilenio, Bogota's bus-version of a subway system.  On better traffic days, this is a 15-20 minute journey.  As usual, the local bus was packed when we got on, and as usual I wondered right away why I hadn't taken any Dramamine.  Sitting in stand-still traffic, the driver decided to make a u-turn, and soon we were on a dirt road dodging pot holes, mud puddles, people, bicycles, horses, trucks, and other buses, until up ahead we were forced to stop.  A bus identical to ours was stuck in the mud in front of us and all of the passengers were trying to push it ahead with all their might.  And so we sat there in the bus and waited.  And we watched them try to push the bus.  And watched them some more.  By this point I was sitting down next to the driver because I felt so nautious, and I asked him after a few minutes what we were planning to do.  We were planning to wait until the bus ahead of us was out of the mud, and then we could continue, since of course our identical bus wouldn't get caught in the mud.  The bus in front of us never made any progress, and after about 15 minutes, we made another u-turn, once again dodging everything in our paths, and headed back to the smooth main road, breifly relieving my stomach.  Soon I recognized that we were back in Cota near Santa Cruz, actually driving on my back road running route.  Around the cilantro patch we turned right onto yet another dirt road, and after around 15 more grueling minutes of potholes and mud puddles, but fortunately few people and animals and busses and the like, we arrived back to the main road, and eventually made it to Portal 80, nearly marking the half point of our journey after over an hour. 
How long does it take to get from Cota to Bogota?  Depende.

Welcome to my blog!

Buenas!  Hola de Colombia.  I hope to update my blog throughout the year at least every couple of weeks or so. 

I had a long entry written out but it appears that my jump drive just broke, so you'll all have to wait.

Here's a bit about where I am.  I have been in training with 35 other WorldTeach volunteers since January 2nd.  We are staying at a retreat center called Santa Cruz in Cota, right outside of the city limits of Bogota.  On January 22nd I will be flying to Cartagena and then traveling to my placement, Isla de Baru, about an hour from Cartagena.

Soon I will have more regular access to the internet, so hopefully I'll get a real update up here soon.
If you want to get regular updates from my blog, click "Follow" on the upper left part of the page.
Also, let me know if you'd like my Skype name or my Colombian cell phone number (on my cell phone I can receive calls and texts from the United States for free!)