Why Everyone Should Have a Rosa

In case you didn't already know, Rosa is the sweet woman who comes to clean our apartment every Wednesday, and I love her.  Not only does she do the obvious, like clean and iron, but she is consistently making other little improvements around the apartment and providing ways for us to be more tidy and organized; she's kind of like MacGyver, but older and Colombian.  For example:

• That pesky kitchen drawer that continually slid open for weeks on end?  She taped some cardboard to either side, so now its stays shut, no problem.
• The heap of shoes we had in the laundry room?  Why, she fashioned a shoe cubby from an overturned plastic shipping bin we had lying around.
• What to do with the collection of pens, pencils and markers that David brings home in his pockets everyday...Hmmm.  Well I suppose, if you are Rosa you would take the box from a hard drive that we haven't thrown away yet, put it on its side, and turn it into a pencil holder.  Genius.
• Vase for your birthday flowers?  Cut up a Gatorade bottle.  I actually came home and thought she brought us a vase, until upon closer inspection I realized it was in fact a Gatorade bottle.
• Frozen plastic containers full of water for watering plants without flooding them. 

These are just a few of the genius ideas she has come up with in our apartment.  If Rosa had a blog, I would be pinning her ideas to my "Good to Know" board like crazy.  And you all would be re-pinning them.  (Social media overload?  Possibly.) 

In addition to all her handy fix-ups, I think Rosa may also have special powers.  Every once in a while Every other day, our lock on our apartment gets all jammed so that we have to use the key to unlock the lock while the door is already open so that we can close it.  Sounds confusing, and its a pain in the arse.  However, it never fails that whenever Rosa as come for the day, it is magically fixed when we get home.  I have yet to figure out how she does it and I know if we mess up the lock, it won't be fixed until the next Wednesday.

In summary, we (and our apartment) would be a mess without Rosa in our lives.  She is just another one of the many characters in our Colombian lives that has made our year abroad so much easier and enjoyable.

The New Normal

Now that I have been here in Cali for more than 7 months (crazy, right?) I have been looking back on some of those things that really threw me for a loop when I first got here.  I still don't think I ever really had culture shock, but there are definitely some things that caught my attention my first few weeks.  These are now things that I see or experience quite often, and usually don't think twice about, except for maybe a laugh or two.

• Being in a cab with the tank reading E and/or having to stop for gas
• Seeing a family of 4 riding on a moto
• Knowing its OK to cross the street only when the street performers and jugglers entertain waiting traffic
• Ridiculously enhanced breasts and butts
• Not having Internet and/or power at school in the morning.  OK, so the power thing has only happened twice after rainy nights, but I've learned to embrace it and have an energy free alternative just in case.
• Our cab driver watching music videos on a portable player, normal right?
• Motos that drive on the sidewalk to avoid traffic
• A horse or mule drawn wagon on the road with cars, trucks and motos
• Brand representatives at the stores trying to sell me things (e.g., toothpaste, laundry detergent, chicken seasoning, etc.)

There is however, one thing that I would like to add that I don't think I will ever get used to that still makes me awkward/uncomfortable/anxious: that would be the workers in clothing stores that attack me upon entering and continue to follow me around the store.  They are kind of like that servant in Adam Sandler's "Mr. Deeds" who is "very, very sneaky".

I specifically learned to say "solo mirando" to help them understand that I don't want a shopping partner and that I am just browsing; unfortunately, few actually get the message.  This leads me to move swiftly through stores in attempts to avoid and dodge the workers and in some cases not even enter stores where the worker to customer ratio is not in my favor (really anything over 1:1 is dangerous and scary).  Needless to say, I haven't shopped a whole lot here in Cali.


I'm sure there is plenty more to add to the list, and it will likely continue to grow.  I will keep you updated on all of the quirky things I witness on a daily basis here in Cali.

Giving Thanks in Colombia

As you might assume, Colombia doesn't usually celebrate Thanksgiving, and for obvious reasons (no Pilgrims, duh).  However, because my school is a bilingual school AND there is a large population of American teachers at our school, I actually got to celebrate it twice this year.  This almost made up for the fact that I was missing my first Thanksgiving with my family.  Ever.  I made the trip home every year in college for the family party and food and never had a serious enough significant other to render missing dinner with my own family (we got lucky last year that David's family had Thanks-o-ween so we could both go to both celebrations).  Oh and work shwork.  Thus giving me, I think, the title of the only cousin/granddaughter to never miss a turkey dinner.  Until now.  Sad.  But like I said I had TWO celebrations here with friends and what I can call my Colombian family. 

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Mike and Mandi hosted 70+ people for Friendsgiving.  They made three turkeys, and the rest of the dinner was left up to the guests.  Of course I immediately signed up to bring dessert, the same Sour Cream Apple Pie I made for my family last year, but this time I had to make it with homemade pie crust.  However, as the dinner approached, it looked like there was going to be a lot of desserts and not so many sides, so I offered to bring something else and Mike requested stuffing.  I promised nothing, having never even thought about making stuffing before, but set on my way to track down my Aunt Lori's stuffing recipe.  Growing up, I was never a fan of stuffing, until I tried this stuff, it's awesome.  And upon getting the not-so-recipe-recipe (which is great because its pretty clear I never follow recipes anyway) I discovered the key to delicious was butter, and lots of it.  Mmmmm.  I did end up cutting down, especially because I was making a double batch.  And of course nothing ever goes smoothly, like when I realized the GIANT aluminum pan I bought for said double batch was not going to fit in our tiny oven.  No problem.  Stuffing loaves it is!  They turned out preeeettty tasty.  Thanks Lori for the yummy recipe!  I also made homemade spiced apple cider from scratch: 'lotta apples, little cider.  But also pretty good.

Homemade crust is a lot easier than I thought

Mmmmm Apple Pie

Too big.

Crispy Stuffing Loaves!

On Tuesday that week, our school hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for the whole faculty and staff.  It was nice to see so many people come together from so many different backgrounds to celebrate and enjoy time together.  I am extremely grateful for the wonderful community at my school, which has made this transition amazingly easy.  For this dinner each section was in charge of something different; David had vegetables in high school and middle school had desserts.  I thought about making the Sour Cream Apple Pie again, but then decided to try something a little more traditional, and so I stumbled upon this video and recipe for caramel apple pie:

http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-favorite-apple-pie-recipe-getting.html

also with homemade crust.  Other than having to make to batches of caramel because the first hardened too soon and having a crust that stuck to the pan a bit, it seemed this was a hit. 

Flour coated apples for filling (caramel added late)

Lattice crust with a little CB pride.

Toasty and warm in the oven.

Although I couldn't be with my family in the States for Thanksgiving, I have to say all of this and the friends down here were quite the place fillers and I think in the future these celebrations with friends and my family away from home will be something I miss too.

My Culinary Challenge

When Kelsi and I discovered that we had the same awesome birthday of November 11th, she invited me to take part of her 80s themed 11-11-11 party for a joint birthday celebration.  After showing up to the Halloween party with Oreo eyeballs and chorizo monster toes, Kelsi and Kristin immediately said I was in charge of making 80s food, a request I happily accepted.  As the date approached, I spent more time than I'd like to admit looking for some good 80s themed food, which is slightly more difficult than Halloween food.  Luckily, I found a totally rad recipe for a Rubik's cube cake, what can be more 80s than that?!  So I decided that that would be my challenge, to somehow make this cake, successfully.

The thing with reading other people recipes is that they make it seem so simple: "Here's how to make a Rubik's cube cake in 6 simple steps!"  False.  More like "here's how to spend 8 hours making a cake that should not be attempted by novices."  I just wish there would have been a warning on the recipe caution:  the stress incurred while attempting this cake will take years off your life in addition to the hours spent on a CAKE.  I mean, I probably would have tried to make it anyway, I just like a little honesty from people. 

As you probably have already read, cooking in Colombia is not the same as it is in the US, baking even less so.  Some things are hard to come by; for example, I knew I couldn't even attempt this beast unless I had the ever so elusive Colombian food coloring.  Luckily, I found it in Exito during my very normal weekend along with powdered sugar, to which the check out guy respond "azucar? en serio?" clearly he had never seen or used powdered sugar and was perplexed by its texture.  With my marshmallows, powdered sugar and food coloring in hand, I set out to practice making fondant that would be used for the colored squares.  I didn't want to make a whole batch so I cut it down, but did some serious estimating, with some serious estimation errors and spent two hours adding more and more sugar to the gooey mess I had all over my hands and counter.  Finally I had gotten the right consistency, and knew if I actually followed the directions when it came time for the real deal, I'd succeed with much less stress.  I also made a practice batch of Dona Torta vanilla cake which calls for 1.5 sticks of margarine and 4 eggs, a little different than Ms. Betty Crocker.  Turns out the cake is delicious, but may or may not also take years off your life. 

Thursday evening came around and I knew it was time to get serious.  The recipe called for two boxes of cake, so I figured I'd make one chocolate and one vanilla so people could have a choice.  I made the chocolate and then got started on my fondant, which did go a little more smoothly, but still took longer than I would have liked with the coloring and having to add sugar little by little to get rid of the stickiness.  Chocolate cakes done and fondant made in about 3 hours on Thursday night, I figured I could easily come home Friday at 3, make my chocolate ganache, roll and cut fondant and make another batch of cakes with time to spare...false.  For someone who claims to be a "math person", I clearly didn't think this one out: the recipe calls for two boxes of cake divided into three pans, but Thursday night I make two 8 x 8 inch chocolate cakes and was planning to make two more vanilla Friday, which would leave me with veeeerrrry short cakes.  Whoops.  So instead I came home Friday and had to make two more boxes of cake (thank GOD I bought an extra!) and split it into two pans to get some height on it.  As I was putting one of the pans into the oven, a little bug managed to fly into the batter and get stuck so I quickly pulled the pan out to get the little guys out, but not before burning my arm on the oven.  Now, this has happened to me before, the burn, not the bug, only I was making cupcakes at my mom's and the burn made me drop the whole pan of cake batter onto our non-self cleaning oven.  Oops.  I still hear that story, sorry mom!  Luckily that DIDN'T happen this time, I probably would have cried. 

Ouch

 While the cakes were cooking, I got out my semi-sweet melting chocolate, heavy cream and butter to make the chocolate ganache, by far the easiest part of the whole thing.  Then I set out to roll and cut my fondant into squares.  Even though I took the fondant out of the fridge as soon as I got home, it was still pretty rock solid, so I got a great arm workout trying to roll out my fondant with an empty wine bottle (thanks for the idea Kelsi!)  It didn't help that I could never get the 7-8 squares I needed in the first roll, so I would have to re-ball and roll two or three times.  Took forever.  I also at some point had to shape and put a crumb coat on the chocolate cakes.  After all that was done I had to do the same with the vanilla cakes.  At this point I am semi-delirious from now working on the cakes for 3+ hours while realizing I am about to run out of the one can of vanilla frosting I bought.  Shit.  In a panic, I frantically search online for homemade white icing recipe, throw together some of the extra powdered sugar and butter and then in a brief moment of sanity I said to myself: "this is NOT worth it."  I realized people would not be critiquing this cake the way I might, the chocolate ganache would coat the cake just fine, plus I had fondant to put on too.  So I left the weird concoction in the bowl and went back to my cake.  I took a break in there somewhere to shower and Madonna-ize myself before coating and cooling the cake. 

I thought about taking the cake and finishing it at Kelsi and Kristin's, but I couldn't think of how to get all the pieces safely and neatly over there, so I finished it at home, all except the fondant squares.  The cube survived a taxi ride to San Fernando where it was ready to get its fondant.  Turns out I am also bad at measuring, and the squares were too big, so I had to cut them down again.  By this point, I said forget it to trying to make it look all nice and fancy and just put squares anywhere and everywhere.  Finally, by 9:30 Kelsi and I had our Rubik's cube birthday cake.  Everyone seemed to be pretty impressed and it turns out it tasted pretty darn good too, thank goodness.  I wish I would have gone with the "in progress" look, but I was too chicken and my cake shaping skills are not the best, so my cakes were a little instable.  Maybe next time.  HAH yeah right, there will NOT be a next time for this cake.  OK maybe there will be.

Verdict: SUCCESS!

Totally yours,

The Truth About Life in Colombia

I know my life in Colombia is in a lot of ways very different then my life in Chicago: having to use a different language to communicate, traveling another country, not driving a car, teaching rich kids, just to name a few.  But really when it comes down to it, the majority of my life here is, well, just normal.  Last weekend for example, was very uneventful.

Friday night a group of about 10-15 went to Hooters in Granada to watch the seventh game of the World Series.  Now if I'm being honest, I actually had very little interest in the game, but was just looking for something to do.  And yes, Cali has a Hooters, and the food was only OK.  After a disappointing ending for most (I mean who REALLY likes the Cardinals anyway?) we attempted to split up the $400000+ peso bill and failed, and then were off to our various destinations.  For David and I that meant home, because yes, we are kind of like old people and like to get to bed at a reasonable hour, even on Fridays.  Others went to Rain, a dance club up north and I believe Talbot's, a little pub up in the same area.  More than anything I was just tired, plus my White Sox shirt & Sperry's are not meant for late night dancing. 

Saturday morning my body gave me the usually pre 7am wake up call so I went downstairs to read and made myself some breakfast.  Then I cleaned the apartment a little bit, because despite the fact we have a cleaning lady, we can still manage to make a mess in 3 days easily.  Around 10am I went to grab a coffee and read a little more at Crepes and Waffles only to discover they didn't open until 12, so I walked to UniCentro to Juan Valdez.  I ordered a macchiato arequipe, thinking it would be similar to a carmel macchiato.  It was, however, the tiniest thing I have ever seen. 

But I happily sipped it and read my book/people watched at the mall.  After a couple hours and being mistaken for a woman named Maria, I decided to continue my hunt for food coloring in Cali.  At last!  I was successful and found red, blue, green and yellow powdered food coloring at Exito, which then meant I also bought the rest of the ingredients needed to make homemade fondant for what I hope to be a super cool 80s birthday cake for my friend Kelsi and I.  If you're in Cali next week, feel free to stop by for our 11-11-11 birthday party!  Afterward I walked home and got ready to head to school for some volleyball against the girls high school team.  We played on the outside court which resulted in a reddish nose and quite a few bug bites, despite putting bug stuff on twice.  Sheesh.  After losing to the girls team 3 games in a row, Shana, Amy and I caught the Mio back north and I got off and got my nails done before heading home.  I caught the end of the Hawkeye game, enough to see them pitifully lose their lead and the game to MN, jumped in the shower and then Skyped with my parents.  My oh so eventful day ended with a Saturday night trip to the grocery store with David.  Jealous?

Sunday was anther early morning that started with me finishing my only-ok-560-page-way-too-long book and then my two hour attempt at making a practice batch of fondant.  Note to self:  If you are going to make a smaller batch actually measure the ingredients!  Although it took forever, I finally got it to the right consistency, and so my self-assigned challenge of cake making is on.  Wish me luck.  Then I made some hummus and started sauce for the lasagna I was planning for dinner.  Lots of internet, blogging and Facebook in between, then I made the rest of the lasagna, threw it together (despite any real recipe) and put it in the oven.  More internet surfing and then dinner.  The night ended with a declaration that I would not do any work all weekend, since it was 8pm on Sunday and I already hadn't.  By 9:30-10 I was in bed, getting ready for another week of work.

So there you have it: a perfectly normal weekend.  No traveling, no parties or visitors or ridiculous field trips, just life. Now you may notice my weekend was mostly David free, but that is only because is taking a statistics class and spent the majority of the weekend working on it, and maybe hit up the casino on Sunday with some of the guys, maybe.  While I do enjoy, even love the exploring and traveling, it can be exhausting and there is something to appreciate in just enjoying the neighborhood we live in for its everyday-ness. 

Tubing in San Cipriano

This weekend was by far one of the best weekends yet, solely because of a wonderfully planned day trip to San Cipirano.  Thank to some great planning by our friends Kristin and Kelsi, the day went off without a hitch.  We all met in San Fernando early in the morning around 6:30 (well 6:45 because I made David and I late, oops), got in a big white van and started our 2.5 hour trip.  Normally, people get on a public bus that heads to Buenaventura on the coast, but since there were 11 of us, it was best to get our own transportation, which was only $50.000 round trip (about $25 USD).  The drive was VERY curvy, so I made sure to have some Dramamine on had, which I only had to use for the ride home. 

When we arrived in San Cipriano, our van was kindly greeted by men and boys pounding on the sides of the van and chasing the van until we finally stopped.  No worries, they were just getting our attention to let us know they would be taking money for the brujas (see below).  We knew going into it they were try to scam the 11 gringos, but in the end, Kristin got them down to $6.000 a person each way, not too bad.  Now what is a bruja you ask?  Well, imagine a wooden platform with wheels that rides along abandon railroad tracks.  Now add on top some wooden benches, be sure NOT so secure them too well, the shaking and fear of falling off adds to the fun.  You have more than 4-5 people?  No problem, just rope tie another platform/picnic bench thing on and hope it doesn´t disconnect along the way.  But how do you get this wooden board/picnic bench device moving?  With a moto of course!  Prop the front tire of the moto onto the the platform and place the slightly flattened rear tire onto the right rail track.  And viola!  Now you have yourself a bruja (brujita).

Yep.  I´m serious.  This is what we had to ride from where our van parked, to the actual little village where we rented our tubes, got in the river and had lunch.  It was a treat.  To add to the fun, there is only one track, so when a brujita comes from the other direction one has to get off the track (moto, platforms, people and all) and let the other pass.  From what I could tell, who has to get off is usually determined through a staring contest.  Luckily our driver was a very good starer and very intimidating, so we only had to get off once.

In all honesty, it was a fun little ride, except when we had to go over bridges.  I hate bridges.  When we got off our brujita, we had a short walk to the place where we rented tubes, and paid $1.500 each to get into the park area.  Once we got there, they took our lunch orders so it would be ready when we were done, packed up the cooler, sun screened up, waited for the boys to get themselves ready for an extra 10 minutes and then started our 30-45 minute hike to where we could get into the river.  Along the way we made a little doggy friend who someone later named Sirius because he looked like his anamagous from Harry Potter (I have clearly found the perfect group of people to hang out with here).  He followed us the WHOLE way down, it was pretty cute and after a while I even stopped worrying that he might bite me and give me rabies.

Tubing was lots of fun.  We stopped along the way to hang out, jump off things and chat.  It was however a little bit more work than I imagined as there were quite a few areas with small rapids or giant trees obstructing the way that were nearly impossible to avoid, but fun nonetheless.  It was a beautiful day and we had the perfect amount of time on the river.  Near the end, we found a rope swing for jumping into the water.  Some (most) people were very good at it, like David, but I think the BLACK bruises on my inner thigh from the knots are a sign that I did not have good form.  I can only imagine what my jump looked like since I have no upper body strength whatsoever.  Luckily no one caught it on camera. 

I don't know if this was excitement or fear for what obstacles might lie ahead

Gorgeous day

David jumping

After our tubing, we walked back to the little tienda/restaurant place and changed and had a traditional Colombia lunch with Sancocho, rice, patacones (plantains) and I had some delicious camarones (little shrimp), but there was also a choice of fresh fish, chicken and I think some other seafood.  At 4 we made our way back to the brujita for our return trip, hoped in the van and made our way back to Cali.  It was a wonderful day trip that seemed perfectly executed, something I feel I won't always be able to say about plans we make here, or life in general. 

Last, big thanks to Sam and Kelsi for all the photos.  I need to invest in a waterproof camera, or some really good Tupperware in case anyone is wondering what to get me for my birthday or Christmas!

Life Without a Car: A Pro-Con-Con-Pro

The privilege of driving is a funny thing.  Before I was 16 I couldn´t wait to drive, I begged my dad to take me to get my license as soon as I got the paperwork, which in turn meant he woke me up one morning when he got home from a midnight shift at 7am to take me.  Then the excitement wore off a bit because I had to drive everywhere and I realized how annoying traffic really was.  When I headed off to the University of Iowa I did so sans car, and anyone who knows anything about my first month of college, that it was not an easy adjustment.  Thanks again to my big sis Nicole for 8 hour round trip drive and 1 night stay just to take me to Target.  By Thanksgiving of my Freshman year, I had a car again.  Then there were the 3 hour (yes, I can make it in just over 3 hours) drives between Chicago & Iowa City in which the reason for the drive determined if at the time I would enjoy or loathe the drive.  So really in the 9 years I have been driving, I´ve only been without access to a car to drive for about 3 months.  Coming down to Cali, I wasn´t sure what life would be like without my own car, but here´s what I´ve come up with so far:

Pro: More exercise walking lots of places
Con: Almost being killed by crazy drivers and motos while walking lots of places; commonly seen are motos driving on the sidewalk to avoid traffic. Scary.
Con: Grocery shopping is a pain
Pro: Not driving in traffic or in a city that appears to have a complete lack of driving laws
Con: Sitting in taxis in traffic or having a crazy taxi driver
Con: It rains a lot, so walking isn´t always an option
Pro: School provides bus to workP
Con: Paying for taxis-Ok this one is kind of neutral, taxis are SO cheap.
Con: Riding a bus to work
Pro: Public transit here is pretty legit, cheap, clean, mostly efficient
Con: CROWDED Buses
Pro: Not paying for gas
Pro: Other people can't ask me to drive them places

Overall I would say it has been more of a positive than a negative.  To be honest until someone else asked me, I had hardly thought about not having a car.  The adjustment this time around has been much easier.  And a good thing, because I doubt Niki would be as willing now to make that trip to Colombia for 1 day just to take me to La Catorce.

Calle de Arte

This weekend celebrated a Colombian holiday "Amor y Amistad" or "Love and Friendship".  Its basically Valentine's day.  And no, David did not get me anything and we didn't even do dinner.  Buuuut considering he didn't go to work Friday because he was sick and felt pretty miserable all weekend, I let it slide. 

Saturday was also the day that San Antonio holds is annual Calle de Arte, or Street of Art. I hopped in a cab Saturday morning with some fellow southsiders while David recuperated at home watching what turned out to be an awesome Hawkeye win. He made our way up to San Antonio, which only took two cabs. About 3 minutes after Sam, Rita and Carlos picked me up, our first cab driver told us we better take a  different can as he didnt think his would make it up to San Antonio. At least he was honest. So we got out and switched taxis.

I had intended to complete all of my Christmas shoppin here, but as indecisive as I am, I walked away with nothing.  Not that there weren't things worth purchasing.  There was so much beautifully handcrafted jewelry, bags, art etc.  Apparently piggy banks are a big thing because it seemed as every other table had hand painted piggy banks.  Some favorites of mine were those painted and dresses as various characters suck as Batman, a singer from Kiss, Captain America and even Freddy Kreuger, creepy.  There was also music everywhere.  And beers.  Happy Saturday to us.

After shopping down the 2-3 streets filled with art, we made our way to a co-workers home where her French chef of a husband was making and selling Quiches. They named their place Don Quichote, fully equipped with lamenated menus and evrything.   How cute.  We met up wth some other techers are the festival and about 10 of us sat and had lunch at their house.  For $10.000 pesos each (about $5 USD) we got a slice of quiche of our choice, salad and a glass of wine. Can't beat it. 

Also, yay for me making a signature!  Check out my fancy HTML skiiillllz.

First Colombian Manicure

As today is Open House and I will be meeting my students´ parents for the fist time (good thing I am blogging instead of prepping for it as I speak), I decided to treat myself to a mani-pedi. All in all it was not too strange, and was definitely cheap. A manicure and pedicure cost $10.000 (about $5-6 USD), although I could have gotten the promotion for only $7.000 and I´m still not sure what the difference would have been. There are no spa chairs here, no rolling warm soapy water, just a bucket with room temperature water in it. I told the woman from the start that I didn’t speak much Spanish, yet she kept asking all kinds of questions, and while my Spanish isn’t that terrible, I certainly don´t have the manicure vocabulary down. I think she caught on and I apologized, telling her that normally my Spanish is better, but it had been a long day teaching and my head “no funcionada”. When it came time for the color I could see there wasn’t too much to choose from. Another girl brought over a pink and a purple for me. I chose a reddish color and asked them if they liked it. She responded very bluntly, “¿Para Usted? No.” And they told me that the new colors they brought over were beautiful on white (blanca) skin and so I went with their advice and took the darker, slightly more tame purple, which turned out to be iridescent. While normally I would not where this color, especially when meeting parents for the first time, I´m banking on the fact that the parents will be impressed I even got a manicure and either think “she´s already so in touch with Colombian fashion” or “poor stupid gringa” and feel sorry for me. Either way, I will definitely treat myself to another manicure in the future, but might be more picky with the color they use.

Nirvana

Some photos from our day hiking at Reserva Natural Nirvana http://www.reservanirvana.com/.  The parents Association took all the new teachers to this beautiful place for hiking and lunch.  It was gorgeous.  We even had our own security personnel.

Club Campestre

Last Saturday the school treated us to a day at Club Campestre, one of the country clubs in Cali. Although the principals and director belong to another club, the administrative assistant and the community affairs director belong to this one. The big yellow school bus picked us up at our apartment around 10 and took us just down the road to the club. It is a beautiful place. We had a million choices of things to do thrown at us. After a short tour of the place, David decided to play Squash before playing some tennis while I went my first Rumba class at the gym for about $12.000 pesos, about $6-7 USD. Normally I would have run out of the room embarrassed by my lack of coordination in dance, but all the women with their Latin flare around me actually made me feel better because I KNOW I will never be able to move like them, so looking like a complete idiot was just fine. I was with the beat about 40% of the time, but man was it a workout. I thought time was standing still. An hour of that and I was done for. Some of us went and sat by the pool, although I foolishly forgot my suit, so I sat in the shade and read a bit before everyone met for lunch.

After lunch 6 of us along with Sebastian decided to go horseback riding. Now, if 1. you know me and 2. you are anything like David you just burst into laughter at the thought of me riding a horse. Although I was the second to least experienced rider, I survived, albeit barely. I told the gentlemen helping us that I was a beginner and I wanted a horse “muy tranquilo”. They told us they were all horses for beginners and my friend Amanda (who speaks MUCH better Spanish) said that Diego had told her Serpentina would be very calm and I could ride him. I had my suspicions given that it was the BIGGEST horse there, but took her and Diego’s word for it. I got on pretty smoothly. Ok that’s a lie. I almost fell of the opposite side of Serpentina having swung myself up too hard and almost choked the horse. And then Serpentina was walking off on his own and kept playing with the reins in his mouth and bobbing his head all over. Diego readjusted my hands on the reins at least 6 times before we were on our way. Once we started Serpentina and I were getting along just fine. Others had their horses trotting on the trail, but we stayed slow, UNTIL we got to a steep part in the trail and we were bringing up the end of the line so Serpentina picked up the pace a little. No one prepares you for how much you are going to bounce when a horse trots, but I was surprisingly ok with it. Then came the point when we got to an arena of sorts where they decided to let the horse’s trot and gallop, which they would all do after Amanda’s horse, the leader (and Serpentina’s mother) started. That was frightening. I tried to pull the reins to stop or slow down but it didn’t work very well. I managed some “No me gusta”s, and luckily after a time or two around the other guide pulled Serpentina and I to the side for a rest while others went on trotting their way around. The rest of the ride was uneventful (thank goodness) other than my horse kicking Sebastian’s horse who was much more discontent with it’s reins than mine, and apparently who none of the other horses like. I even managed to get off the horse without falling or hurting myself or the horse. Towards the end of our journey, Amanda shared with me that Diego had said that Serpentina was calm because he wanted HER to ride him since she was more experienced and the horse was actually kind of crazy. Go figure. But in the end, Diego told me that I did very well, and I was left with a very sore butt for a couple days.

After some ice cream we made our way back home. Olga and Matilde said that they would put our names in whenever we’d like and we can go up to 12 times a year and 3 times in a month. They also said if friends or family visited, they would be more than happy to put their names on the list to visit either with us or while we are at work. Just one more reason for you all to visit!

Random Thoughts in Colombia

I need to get some white pants. EVERYONE here owns and wears white pants. I wonder if its because they don´t have labor day…

American service in restaurants is sooo much better. Every meal here takes 2 hours, drinks come with you food if you´re lucky and they can never remember who ordered what. Granted the majority of our meals out have been with 15+ people but still…

I would kill for a clothes dryer right now.

I really dislike this Colombian keyboard on my school desktop. If you see _ I probably meant ?, which is actually up in the number line. And then there´s this second shift key. What the heck_ And I think if you use shift the character doesn’t appear until after you type another key, how am I supposed to know if I actually pressed it or not?! Also I´m pretty sure I´m not using the right ´.

I have more bug bites now than I had in 24 years in the US…

Fastest Blog Update Ever

First 2 days of school down woo hoo! I love my kids (I know I´ll take that back at some point this year, likely within the next 2 weeks), they are so darn cute and have the cutest little Colombian accents. They ALWAYS say hello and goodbye, and `Thank you Misses´ (with a long e sounds like meeeses) when class is over. One of my Manuela´s told me today that I dress beautiful, guess I´ll have to keep dressing to her standards. I have been on their case constantly about speaking English in class when they are doing group work, which then means they keep asking me words in English which is fun for me to try to figure out what the heck they are trying to describe. Yesterday we had and 8 period schedule for the first day, but today we had our standard 5 period, so I only taught 3 classes and was done by 12:50 right before lunch. Tomorrow I will only teach 3 again, but this rotating schedule is tricky to figure out: today class periods were A,B,C,D,E with a 30 min break between B and C and 40 minute lunch between D and E, but I only taught A, C & D. Tomorrow will be classes F,G,H,A,B with the same breaks and lunch etc etc. Although its tricky for planning, it gives me usually 140 minutes of prep time and the day seems a lot shorter. Still no Internet at home arrrggggagagrgrgrrgrgrgagag. Although I think I am getting used to it, I really hope we can get it up and running soon. Today after school some teachers are playing volleyball and tomorrow is softball, then next week starts yoga and body combat, no wonder everyone here is so fit! Oh and it should be noted that Middle School (me) beat High School (David) last Friday in kick ball 24-14. Off to plan some lessons before volleyball!

Retracing My Steps

Yes I KNOW I haven´t updated this religiously, but no Internet at home + first week of school + moving to a new country makes it difficult to find time for some of these things. But I will try to retrace the steps I have taken here in Cali since my first post.

Our first Friday here we had lunch at our director´s house which is here on the campus. We had arepa which is a traditional type of bread treat they have here and pan de bono which is hot cheese filled bread rolls, both delicious. It was also a juice workshop in which we got to try different juices and combinations of all the yummy fruits they have including caruba (David´s favorite), lulo, mango, papaya, maracuya (passion fruit), guanábana (my favorite) and a couple others I can´t remember. They were just as delicious as the food. During our lunch break Joe, our director (who is originally from Indiana), took out his set of Bocce balls. David and I quickly got on a team and showed off our skills. Everyone was pretty impressed with us and those who weren’t playing pulled up chairs around where we were playing and started watching. Our team won 3 of 4 if I remember correctly. David told me that I throw just like my grandpa, which if you know my grandpa is a pretty great compliment for any Bocce ball-er to receive.

That Saturday we spent the morning shopping some more and then moving into our apartments. Since the bus moved south to north, David and I had LOTS of helpers moving our things to our apartment. We unpacked and unpacked and unpacked some more, then decided to take a break for a swim. While we were up at the pool Sebastian and Matilde stopped back by with our Space Bag of sheets, pillows and towels we left on the bus. The security guard gave them a really hard time about getting in because he couldn’t call us because we didn’t have phones. We were glad to see they were being so strict. We decided not to go dancing that night and stayed in. We attempted to put curtains on our floor to ceiling glass doors in the bedroom, but they were too short length and width…and then the holder for the rod came out of the ceiling. Needless to say we were up preeeeetty early Sunday morning…

And so we ventured back to Homecenter (similar to Home Depot or Lowe´s) to return our cortinas and buy new hardware along with some other things we were in need of. I was worried about having to return something, but given my overwhelming experiences with returning things in the states, it wasn’t too bad. I was even able to double check (in Spanish) that we could use the voucher for other things if we couldn´t find curtains. We found some that are still too short, but they get the job done so they were good enough for us. In the afternoon we went to the new chemistry teacher, Wojciech's house where he and his wife Sonia made us homemade pizza´s and gave us a chance to make some pizzas of our own with the ingredients we brought. Very yummy and very relaxing after a busy week. Monday started a loooong week of meetings, but also gave us a great opportunity to meet all of our new co-workers. Those updates will have to wait for another time. Ciao!