Site Announcements

October 12 - October 18

This week was the Feria del Inglés para el Trabajo and also our site announcements. The Feria went well and we had the opportunity to hear several speakers discuss Colombia’s Plan de bilingüismo. On Friday, we finally found out where we will be spending the next 2 years as Peace Corps Volunteers – I will be serving at IED Edgardo Vives Campo in Santa Marta.

- Monday – ¡Feliz Día de la Raza! It’s Columbus Day, so we had no classes today. Two other volunteers and I went to a really great Chinese food restaurant (in Colombia – who would guess?!) and then went to the mall to see a movie. One volunteer and I didn’t want to see the scary movie everyone else was watching, so we watched Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which was cute and had a nice ending. I also cooked dinner for my host family this evening – stuffed shells and garlic bread.

- Tuesday – We learned about HIV/AIDS and STI prevention and worked on writing prompts with another Spanish class. One volunteer had the genius idea to do a secret gift exchange, “Secret Encouragers”! That should make the week a bit less stressful as we near site announcements on Friday. For our exchange, each person drew a name from a bag and will somehow sneak a small gift or encouraging note to that person each day for the week. After class, I finished reading El rastro de tu sangre en la nieve by Gabriel García Márquez.

- Wednesday – We had practicum this morning and students did a neat reading with feelings as characters. In Spanish, we played a detective game called pelican soup and read an article about blaming everyone else, Es la culpa de las vacas. After classes, I went with a CII-3, a CII-4, and 2 CII-6 volunteers to La Playa just to explore. That was neat and showed me another example of what my site might be like.

- Thursday – Today was the Feria del Inglés para el Trabajo, which was held in the Sonesta hotel in Barranquilla. We listened to speakers talk about English for Special Purposes and the el Plan de bilingüismo before heading back to the Colombo. Then, we had sessions on resiliency and expectations and travel policies. After classes, a group of us went to La Dulcerna to hang out and eat sweet things, like cherry cheesecake.

- Friday – This morning, we learned about teaching primary grades and using technology, as well as how to start using PACA tools. (Don’t ask me what that stands for – no one seems to know!) We also found out who our secret encouragers were, which was very exciting! In the afternoon, we had site announcements. Everyone was so stressed before the announcements, a volunteer decided we should all play Duck, Duck, Goose to lighten the mood while we waited for the office staff to show up, since our chairs were already in a circle. I love us! I will be going to IED Edgardo Vives Campo in Santa Marta.

- Saturday – This morning I went to the library to work on a Spanish report. I’ll be doing mine on Rafael Pombo, so I got to read a bunch of children’s poetry, which was fun.

- ¿Y para qué llorar? ¿Pa’ qué? Si duele una pena, se olvida. ¿Y para qué sufrir? ¿Pa’ qué? Si así es la vida, hay que vivirla, lalalé. Voy a reír, Voy a bailar, Vivir mi vida, lalalalá. Voy a reír, Voy a gozar, Vivir mi vida, lalalalá. – Marc Anthony, Vivir mi vida

- Pizza with parmesan and pineapple is surprisingly good.

- Colombian single-origin chocolate is amazing, as are granizados de maracuyá.

- “To find the root cause of a problem, ask, ‘Why?’ 5 times.” – Es la culpa de las vacas

- Take any opportunity you can get to explore Barranquilla. You definitely get into a routine, but if a volunteer says, “Hey, do you guys want to come explore my neighborhood?” the answer is, “Yes!”

- Did I mention animals make life happier? Well, one of the cats at the Colombo had babies, so there’s a bunch of tiny kittens and a whole lot of happiness there right now!

- “Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.’” – Laso Tzu