Monday, March 7, 2011

Well, I should probably win a prize for Colombia’s worst blogger. I even planned to improve this semester – I wrote a big “here are a random ten thoughts to summarize my experience thus far” and then never finished that nor posted what I had written. So this post is a synthesis of random thoughts from quite a long time ago, some of which I probably no longer agree with, but I thought it'd be better to post them now rather than never. There is no specific order to what lies ahead, but it provides a small window into what has been going on in my life (or rather, was going on in my life). From here I’ll be skipping to the present, more or less, so if you want to find out about January and February, you’ll just have to send me an email.

There is nothing like a study abroad experience.
You can try to recreate it, but it’s simply impossible, and there are two words that explain why: zero responsibility. Oh, sure, you’re responsible for getting good grades, but let’s be real here. I may have failed my first midterm in Argentina, but all I had to do is actually read what was assigned, and then I ended up with an A. Anyway, the study abroad experience is so glorified because your job is to make friends and have fun, and that’s pretty much it. As much as you may try to recreate that by working abroad post-graduation, it simply isn’t the same. You wake up at 6am Monday through Friday. You actually have to show up to work. You want to travel every weekend, but you can’t because you’re making somewhere between $300-$800 a month. It’s a sad truth.

Somos Pacífico (Chocquibtown)
I’ve had a hard time answering questions about Colombian culture, and it’s mainly because Colombian culture is impossible to summarize. From city to city and department to department the terrain changes, the people look different, the people act differently, and all of sudden you feel like you’re in a completely new country. If you come and visit me for a week, you sure won’t think Colombia is culturally or racially diverse at all, and in my first month or so here I didn’t think so either. Since then, however, I’ve travelled a bit and experienced that feeling you have when you first arrive in a new country and have no idea what the common phrases are or what culture shocks are going to hit you. I gained my first exposure to another aspect of Colombia in mid-October when Sarah and I travelled to a small town called Nuquí on the Pacific Coast. If you’d like to get a feel for the Pacific Coast, check out the music video of “Somos Pacífico” on youtube, then take that exact feel but make it 10 times more tranquilo. Sarah and I initially went imagining a relaxing beach vacation upon the completion of the first term at school. It definitely didn’t turn out that way, partially because of the rain, and partially because getting to the nice beach from Nuquí required finding a man who would canoe us over to it. Despite all this, the trip was still an incredibly rich experience in an unexpected way. Because of the rain and circumstances, we spent most of our time walking around the town, which lies in the poorest department of Colombia. After two months living in a wealthy area of Manizales, my thought arriving in Nuquí was, “Now this is Colombia.” There were muddy dirt roads, shacks for houses, chickens running around, and a majority of the population was of Afro-Colombian descent and sitting outside their houses in plastic chairs, sipping tinto (black coffee), socializing, and watching the gringas walk by. We made some friends and had some really fascinating conversations that opened our eyes to Colombian life in a different area of the country. On the Pacific Coast life is simple, life is rough, life is rainy, but life is also good.


I often arrive home to parties in my house.
Over the past few months, I’ve often arrived home from work to a small party in my house. These little fiestas have become somewhat representative of my experience and social life here. They are usually on Fridays, though sometimes not, and they usually consist of a group of my roommate’s friends getting totally smashed after a midterm. Of course I am never asked or notified about these get togethers, even when they occur on a week night and I have work in the morning. The typical situation is as follows: I walk up the stairs of my apartment building and hear loud music and laughing. I open the door and see a group of boys either in the living room or on the balcony. Sally! Come take this shot! Uh… no thanks. And from here there are three possible scenarios: 1) I say sorry, I have a lot of work, and retire to my room to spend the night grading papers and tests, attempt to go to bed early, but alas there’s a discoteca in my house (I know this seems lame, but after two months of multiple parties per week, this starts to become a favorable option); 2) I join them, but they are totally hammered and rambunctiously performing a sing-a-long or talking about waking up next to girls that aren’t their girlfriends, so after awhile I give up on socializing and do my own thing, or 3) I join them, make new friends, experience a “real” Colombian party, as they put it, and do my best to catch on to humor in Spanish, which is by far the most difficult part of language acquisition. For the most part, the parties have been great, but there are definitely some downsides, like when I can’t sleep at 2am on a Tuesday and I have to wake up in four hours. Also, when I get home from work, what I’m usually looking forward to is a little bit of piece and quiet, considering my work day consists of, “Sally! SALLY! Sally, come. Sally, I have a question. Me! Me! PICK ME! I wanna answer! HOMEWORK? NOOOO. Sally, PLEASE!” Though in the end, it’s nice not worrying about making plans on a Friday night because the plans come to me, and it’s been a great way to meet people and make more friends.

Roommates (or apartment mates) are complicated.
This one goes out to you, Banana. If we ever live together again, I will never complain about you leaving all your crap in the living room. In college I was blessed with amazing roommates (shout out Beth and Ali J) and apartment mates (shout out 118 and 219), and to be totally cliché, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. There’s just a certain level of respect and courtesy that I assumed was second nature – something understood and carried out by all people who have any sort of social understanding. I realized I’d been mistaken when I got home from work one day, used the bathroom, and then discovered that instead of buying more TP, my roommate had simply removed mine from my bathroom. Then, of course, I went to wash my hands, but he’d taken my soap as well. Then there’s the massive stack of unwashed dishes in the sink, going almost a week without lightbulbs in the common spaces (mind you he was on vacation while I was at work all day, and we remained without light until I went out and bought them), the constant unannounced parties on weekday nights in my apartment that I am not even warned of beforehand, and the fact that I usually don’t feel comfortable inviting people to my own apartment. It’s all the more complicated because my roommate’s mother owns the apartment, so technically my roommate is my landlord. It really isn’t all that bad, and it’s improved significantly after winter vacation – the nice, long break was needed. Upon our return, my roommate explained to me that his brother gave him advice on living with other people, so now my roommate thinks he’s the all-knowledgeable one on how to live with others. His know-it-all attitude is usually incredibly irritating, but if it’s getting him to wash his dishes and respect my space, I’m really just okay with it.

Fortunately, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
Every time I travel to another part of Colombia, I just become happier that I’m living in Manizales. I’ve realized that the key to happiness when living in, as opposed to visiting, another country, is to live in a city where there is little tourism. Of course there is tourism in Manizales, but it’s minimal. And of course as I walk down the street with my blond hair and blue eyes, I get a few stares or a “mona, mona” (rubia in Colombia), but when all is said and done, people leave me alone. I’m treated as an equal. People on the street aren’t constantly trying to sell me junk or lure me to their hostel or onto whatever guided tour, and sometimes it is just so nice to be ignored. In retrospect, Mendoza was similar in this respect. Because of the minimal tourism, I feel like Manizales is that much more my city and my home, and I get protective when I see other blonds (Hey! I’m the token Mona!) or uncomfortable when I walk down the street with fellow gringos that make me stand out that much more. Back to my main point, though, I couldn’t be happier in another city. I haven’t travelled a ton, but I’ve visited a few others cities which have been fun and beautiful, but I end each trip thinking, “I’m so happy I live where I do.”

La Navidad (AKA December 1-January 11)
I should have been ready for this after Danny’s first December in the DR when he explained that normal life stops, people don’t work, and life is basically a month-long party. Well it’s quite similar here in Colombia. Christmas lights are HUGE here. They start putting them up mid-November, and then on December 8th, a national holiday, cities in the entire country light up all the lights for the first time for a big alumbrado. It’s always a competition among cities for the best lights, and then on the night of the 8th people sit outside their houses with their families and light up candles in lanterns along the sidewalks and streets, and those without houses walk up and down the streets to see all the lights and take pictures. It’s a beautifully fun and happy celebration that officially kicks off the Christmas season, but the season really starts as soon as they start prepping the lights two weeks beforehand. At school there were non-stop events all leading up to the holidays, there were multiple three day weekends, and you couldn’t dare to get something official done because work just seemed to either slow down or cease completely. The party and family time continued all the way through the Ferias, and finally the lights were taken down and special holiday food was no longer served after the 11th of January, which is also some national holiday.

1 comment:

  1. What an enlightening entry! I really liked the coordination between your narrative and your photos; that made me feel as though I was a fly on the wall.

    ReplyDelete