Working Hard in Colombia

We have been keeping busy over the last few weeks.  Lesson planning, grading, and tutoring consumes almost every minute of every day.  The students are enjoying our classes as we are and we just hope they retain some knowledge after our class.  The system in place is against us.  The students only get English one day a week which makes it nearly impossible for them to learn a language.  The English department is considered a joke and many students (and professors) treat it as such.  There are so many obstacles to overcome but we do what we can.  The best thing that we have tried to do is to make it relevant to them, prove that English is indeed important.  Our presence at the university alone does this but also many students have high aspirations to travel and live abroad; so we focus on these things.  It seems to be working and even a student who absolutely refused to speak English from day one is participating and talking in class. 

Along with teaching our classes we have now implicated English/ Spanish classes at home.  It started with our 16 year old neighbor with dreams of becoming a movie star in Hollywood.  If anyone can dream that big they deserve all the help that I have to give, so I began teaching her 2 twice a week and in return she taught me Spanish.  Word spread quickly and by the end of the second week I had everyone sitting down for English class in the living room.  We are also lucky enough to have a more formal Spanish lesson every Monday with a fellow English professor.  My Spanish is improving at a rapid rate although I could only improve.  At this point I can follow a conversation and understand, in general what everyone is talking about.  I am able to catch words and piece them together in context; luckily Colombians are very expressive people so the big hand gestures help. 

Our first holiday is this Monday and we are excited to have an extra day to enjoy the city.  Our weekends are filled with chores and school work and it is hard to squeeze in sightseeing.  A fellow English professor was kind enough to take us out last weekend.  We ate at Crepes and Waffles, which I consider a Colombian Cheesecake Factory.  It a giant chain restaurant that everyone loves!  It was delicious and a burst of flavor compared to our usual food.  Then we went to a bar and enjoyed listening to Romantic music as we drank Micheladas.  Micheladas look like a Margarita with a rim full of salt but they are actually beer and lime juice.  Normally I would consider watering down my beer a blasphemy but all of the beer here taste similar to Corona so I welcomed the diversity of a Michelada.   After our 3 day weekend we are going to enjoy our Santa Semana, or Spring break, some of the other volunteers will be visiting and it will be very nice to see them and hear what their adventures are like. So we are happily in the home stretch to some much needed time off!