El día del amor y la amistad

Today was the Colombian national holiday of love and friendship. For me, it was a little bit of a sad day. Yes, I have made friends here, and many more than I thought I would have made in just a few weeks, but when I think of love and friendship, I think of people who are very far away, and I felt a little lonely because I couldn't celebrate this day with them. Today has also made me reflect on how lucky I've been in the realm of friendship. The two most recent friend-making times have been entering college and then studying abroad. Well, at Cornell I found some of my best friends just one room over or maybe a few steps further away. Then, in my abroad program, I found four lovely women who were not only wonderful to discover a new culture with, but who were also truly my people - people who I connected with beyond "let's explore Argentina together". And now, here I am, and here we all are, making friends all over again. Through my own experience and conversations with others, I've noticed that a lot of us are meeting a lot of new people and making many new friends, but we haven't really found our people, and that's been tough. I was thinking tonight, around a table of new friends, that maybe, in this chapter of my life, I don't need to find my people. Maybe what I need now is good company - friends to laugh with and share experiences with. And maybe I don't need more than that because I already have my people, and while we are thousands of miles apart, they'll always be there.

When I got home tonight, my friend Katherine had sent me an email that translated to something like this: Sally, I'm not sure if you know, but today is the day of love and friendship, so I hope you had a wonderful day. Although we've only known each other for a short time, I think you're a really sweet person, and I hope we become good friends in the future.

So I hope all of you had a wonderful day, too, and that you were able to share it with people you love. And don't worry if you haven't met more of your people yet. It may take awhile, but it'll happen. In the meantime, you already have your people, and I think we should all feel quite lucky about that.

Week 6

I’m sorry it has been so long since my last post. You can either take it as a good sign, because I’m enjoying myself too much to blog, or a bad sign, because I work too much to have time for a blog. Either way, here goes a very, very long update. Many thanks to those who make it through the whole thing!

The job, the school and life as a teacher...

After four full weeks of classes, I am flooded with so many thoughts on various aspects of my work situation. I am constantly trying to figure out which part of this job is the hardest: the fact that it is my first real job, the idea that the first year of teaching is always the most difficult and time-consuming, the disorganization of the school, the lack of books and resources available, grading papers, following the many, many rules of a Catholic school, or the sassy attitudes of my students. Perhaps the most difficult aspect is seeing my own qualities in many of my students.

Front entrance to the school

I’ll begin with the girls. Overall, they are quite wonderful. I am teaching 8^th, 10^th and two levels of 11^th grade, and each class has about 15 students. I am definitely lucky for having such small classes, and I don’t think I realize how much easier it makes my life. The girls are sweet, and a good portion of them is eager to learn, make me smile, constantly ask about my life, and show true potential. These are the girls that keep me sane and make me love teaching. The others… well… they don’t listen, they’re disrespectful, they complain when I give even the smallest homework assignment, they show no effort, and they are constantly on their cell phones in class. It is really quite amazing how girls in the front row blatantly talk to each other and text away in the middle of class. I can see you! I can hear you! You are in the front row! Discipline has surprisingly been one of the biggest challenges (surprising because it’s a Catholic school), but with help from both other teachers and feedback from my students, I’ve slowly learned the ropes on how to manage a classroom of dramatic adolescents.

When I relate my teaching experience here to my own high school experience, it’s hard to tell if the difference lies in my attendance of a prestigious, well-endowed, secular private school or in the fact that I’m in Latin America. Here are some glimpses into my teaching experience thus far:

1. On the first day of class, we introduced ourselves and played a name game. The girls were allotted ten minutes at the end of class to write about themselves; this exercise was purely for me to get to know them a bit and, more importantly, to see their level of English. Their mini autobiographies looked something like this: Run-on sentence run-on sentence, run-on sentence run-on sentence, run-on sentence. I talked to my supervisor about their writing quality because I didn’t want to intervene and accidentally contradict other teachers in their Spanish classes. My supervisor’s response? PLEASE teach them how to write. They’ve never been taught, and if their teachers haven’t taught them yet, they won’t be starting this year. I went home and talked to Sebas about it. He went on and on about how Colombians aren’t taught how to write, so his theory is that the girls don’t know how to write because their teachers don’t know either. The following day I entered my most advanced class and wrote on the board: “My name is Sally I am 22 years old, I have a brother he lives in the Dominican Republic, I miss him.”  My question directed to the class: Is this sentence correct? Their response: Yes. Well, you all don’t need a grammar and punctuation lesson, but you can see how we spent the first week or so of classes.

My "office" / the English library

2. Unit 1, Reading 1, handed to me by my supervisor to teach to the 11^th graders: Alternative Families. Pre-reading discussion prompt: “Hannah, who has two mothers, describes her family as a bunch of people who love each other. Do you agree with Hannah?” The following discussion may have been my biggest culture shock thus far. As would be expected in a Catholic school, the consensus was simply that no, this is not okay; two lesbians should not be allowed to have a child together. One of the girls decided to defy the rest of the comments by explaining that she watched an interview of a man raised by two women, and he turned out okay. This comment was by far the most liberal, and while I would typically respond to it thinking, “You seriously need to watch an interview to understand that a man raised by two women can turn out ‘okay’?” I was instead so proud of this one student who disputed the rest of her classmates’ comments and took some time to think for herself. 

3. I’m only allowed to assign homework two specific days of the week, and I’m only allowed to give quizzes on one specific day of the week (ex. 11^th graders can have homework on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and quizzes on Fridays). Not only does this make planning difficult, but it also gives the girls an opportunity to challenge my authority. For example, last week when the 8^th graders were completely unfocused, talking and not doing any work in class, I suggested that they focus more because what we didn’t finish in class would be homework. One of my students declared, proudly and in Spanish, “Actually, Sally, you have to respect the homework schedule.” Oh, the nerve. Actually, sweetie, you need to respect me, because I’m your teacher.

4. Two of my classes do not have grammar books, and three of my classes don’t have reading books either. For the grammar portion, this means that I not only need to come up with the syllabus completely on my own, with no past experience of teaching English nor knowledge of what the girls have already learned in their past English classes, but it also means that I need to pull rules and concepts out of any book or online site that I can find. You’d think teaching English grammar rules would be easy, but try explaining when to use prepositions like “from”, “by”, and “of” when all of these words translate to a simple “de” in Spanish. Meanwhile, my literature teaching experience involves finding simple enough books online, converting them to word files and emailing them to my students.

5. D-i-s-o-r-g-a-n-i-z-a-t-i-o-n. Imagine walking to your 11^th grade class and passing all of your students on the way. “Come on girls, we have class now.” “No we don’t.” Hmmm, that’s right. No, we don’t. Why? There’s a high school meeting in the auditorium! When was this planned? Who knows! Who did they tell? Who knows! Not me. Who is “who” that makes these last minute decisions that we suddenly won’t have afternoon classes? Who knows! In addition to the whole issue of classes being cancelled here and there (which obviously makes me look like an idiot to my students), there’s also the issue that the girls don’t really have a “homeroom” time or free periods other than the morning break and an hour for lunch. If a class ever needs to coordinate for a presentation, a social work project, student campaigns, etc., when are they supposed to find the time? During class time. Of course this is never planned in advance, either, so I’ll be walking into a class, and another teacher will say to me, “Oh, Sally, could the girls use your class time to plan their campaign for student elections? Thank you so much, you’re so helpful.” Yeah, it’s cool. I didn’t plan a class or anything.

View from the English department

I acknowledge that I sound quite bitter in a lot of these anecdotes, and during the first couple weeks I really was bitter. I was constantly frustrated when I had planned classes two weeks in advance only to find out in the same day that this or that grade had activities planned and no class for the day, so I would then go back and have to re-plan everything (note that I cannot simply move everything to a day later, because I am only allowed to give homework and quizzes on certain days of the week). In the past week and a half, though, I have learned to relax and go with the flow. It hasn’t been easy, but when a class is suddenly cancelled, I simply enjoy that I have a free fifty minutes. The difficulty has been that I have high expectations for myself as a teacher – I want my students to excel and be the best possible, but the 11^th graders can’t do their best on their big English exam in March when classes are cancelled every other day. I have accepted that I can only do the best with what is provided and possible, and if the girls don’t ace their English exam, that’s okay. I did the best with the time and resources that I had within my reach. Meanwhile, I can enjoy my job a little more. If the school has no problem with girls missing class all the time, then I won’t have a problem with it either. I know I will feel like a failure if my students don’t reach their fullest potential, but I have to accept what is in and out of my control. 

Ecovida

A couple weeks ago Sarah and I went to a festival put on by the Universidad de Caldas called Ecovida. It was a small organic festival for farmers and artisans in the Caldas department to sell their products. The food and artisan crafts being sold weren’t anything particularly exciting, but while we were there, we participated in an indigenous religious ceremony. Unfortunately, it was difficult to hear everything said in the ceremony due to all the people there, but the general idea was to love and care for the Pachamama (Mother Earth). We all stood in a circle around a fire while a few people set gourds of liquid beside it. We lifted our arms in the air, held hands in the circle, and then crouched down to touch the Pachamama for a knee-aching portion of the ceremony. Finally, we hugged everyone around us, thanked each other for sharing the experience together, and then took a sip of some spicy juice (the bittsweet?) as the gourds were passed around. It was a peaceful experience.

Salento & La Valle del Cocora 

On Saturday I went with nine friends (3 other foreigners, 6 Colombians) to a small town called Salento and the Valle del Cocora – the largest wax palm tree forest in the world. Wax palms are incredibly tall but also really thin, so they look really goofy popping out of fields of grass in the middle of a lush forest. The Valle sits in the southwestern corner of the Parque Nacional de Los Nevados, all of which is just south of Manizales. After a two and a half hour drive, we arrived in the Valle at around 11am and went for a beautiful four-hour hike through the valley of palm trees. At our halfway point we took a break at a waterfall, where my friend Alfonso decided to take a dip, even though the air temperature was no more than 60F, and obviously the water was much cooler than that. On our return, the air cooled and it began to rain (don’t EVER assume that you will get a day without rain here), and we headed into a local restaurant for a feast on trucha (trout) just before it started to pour. It felt so great to go for a hike, and I can’t wait to go back for a 3-4 night trip into the park, where you can stay at farms that provide bunks and a cooking space. (Also a great overnight spot for those who plan on visiting me!) 

In addition to the beautiful scenery, the other great part of the trip was the company. It was a really fun group, and the mix of cultures and languages was amusing. My German friend Nicole doesn’t really speak much Spanish, but she speaks English well, so she and I always converse in English. I obviously speak in Spanish to my Colombian friends, even when they try to speak to me in English. Then, some of the Colombians we were with only speak Spanish and German, so they communicate with Nicole in German. Quite the mix of languages, and it’s easy to get confused! But I think this situation is symbolic of my multicultural experience here.

Alfonso, Sarah, Me, Luis Miguel

When I’ve told people that I went hiking with a group of ten people, the response has been, “You already have ten friends to go on a trip with?!” Granted, I wasn’t the one planning the trip - I was was merely an invitee, but yes, I surprisingly have made a lot of friends. In my first two weeks here I was really worried that people would be friendly but wouldn’t actually care to become legitimate friends with some American girl who would just be around for a year. Everyone already has their friends – why need a new one? Luckily, this was purely an assumption and far from the truth. I’ve already met a ton of people around my age (mostly students), and because Manizales is so small, I continue to run into the same acquaintances who then become friends, whether our get-togethers are planned or unexpected. It’s funny to think back on my experience in Argentina, where I would have given anything to simply have one good Argentine friend, yet here I am after 6 weeks in Colombia, and I already have about 10 Colombian friends whom I am closer to than my one “real” Argentine friend (excluding my host family). Everyone here is incredibly friendly, and many are eager to make new friends and have long philosophical discussions with someone from a different country and culture. It’s exciting to think that after such a short time I have already formed so many relationships, and this number will only continue to grow.