In The News

The Summit of UNASUR in Bariloche, Argentina to discuss the increased use of Colombian military bases by the U.S. military was the only thing running on any television I saw yesterday afternoon, except the occasional soccer game of course. Click here for a quick New York Times article covering the story.

The Beat Goes On

This past weekend was of normal length. Colombia is now entering a bit of a dry spell for my newly beloved puentes or three-day weekends, but I don´t need to worry to much as they will be back with a vengance starting in mid-October. Nevertheless, I decided to set off into the mountains in search of a slightly cooler climate after spending Friday night rocking out to a concert here on campus with my foreign language major buds pictured below. The two other language assistants and I along with three of our Mexican friends studying abroad here in Cali spent the weekend at the recreational facility of the university, complete with mountain views, a pool, a fresh and clean river, and of course, nightly dancing. The whole time I was thinking to myself, ¨Why doesn´t Northwestern have something like this?¨ Aside from the sunburn, I have no complaints. My lungs, perhaps more than any other part of me, especially appreciated the trip to breathe in some fresh air. On our return to the city, I could immediately feel the air quality plummet, welcoming me back to my newly adopted home.

In terms of work, things are generally positive. I have now set into my schedule here at the university, running an English conversation club Tuesday through Friday, helping out professors Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and teaching kids from nearby disadvantaged areas on Thursdays. My favorite of these duties thus far has been my conversation club. At the moment, we´re keeping the topics light, focusing on the always deep and profound Michael Jackson and an American city perhaps best known for its intellectual prowess, Las Vegas. As my friend Josh recently wrote me after expressing exagerated excitment over the release of the next Twilight film, please note the sarcasm. My students here are enjoying speaking English and starting to be a bit less timid, but we´ve still got a way to go. One difficulty thus far has been the great variance of ability within one club session, but I´m experimenting with some ways to make sure everyone gets something out of the two hours. A good sign is that the numbers of students coming each day are growing, meaning word is getting around that conversation club is a bit more fun than your regular English class. In conversation club, you get to have a stab at dancing the moonwalk and listen to American top 40 pop as well as discuss slightly more serious topics such as American and Colombian politics. Beats conjugating verbs any day of the week. Also positively, I have finally been able to make a solid contact in terms of volunteering and hope to be starting in the next week or so with a program that tutors kids recently rescued off the streets of downtown Cali. The search for such a position has been one of several lessons of patience and perseverance I have had so far here in Colombia. I am looking forward to starting this second aspect of my oficial purpose here.

In addition to these focuses on teaching and volunteering, I have been reading quite a bit. With college officially over, I get to make my own classes, reading what I want to read and pursuing topics as far as I wish to pursue them. I´ve broken up my more academic readings into three grouping which I hope to keep going throughout the semester . Colombian history, the writings of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and Contemporary Latin American issues, leaving that final one quite interdisciplinary. After sitting in on a couple of official classes here at the university, I decided to hold off on those until January and take one semester to explore the previous topics on my own without any other academic stresses (at least on the student side of things). As I finish books, I will try to write up some thoughts and post them on here. Call me a nerd, but this all gets me very excited about life-long learning after university.

I have also had time this week to continue exploring a bit of the city, visiting Granada, the ritziest neighborhood of Cali I have yet to visit, as well as the famed Cali zoo. The streets of Granada are lined with art galleries, fancy restaurants and cafés and not so fancy discotecas, pulling all this off without, to me at least, seeming too pretentious. The zoo was indeed more than I had expected. Colombia contains the greatest diversity of both birds and butterflies of any nation in the world as well as great biodiversity in fish and amphibians which the zoo presents very well. Marveling at these creatures in environments that were nicely un-zoo-like was a lovely way to spend the afternoon with a group similar to the one that spend the weekend at the cabañas. Cali continues to offer plenty to explore, but I can feel myself itching to branch out and visit another city. I am currently starting to plan a weekend getaway to Popoyán and trying to find some travel companions to come along. As they say here in Colombia, a big hug to everyone! Hope to hear about events going on in your lives. I have really enjoyed the updates I have received from many of you so far. Seeing an email from someone back home always puts a smile on my face!

And A Couple Photos of New Friends

A couple photos of a group of foreign language majors that Servane and I have been hanging out with.

Photos from My Weekend at The Cabañas

The following photos are from this past weekend which I will write about shortly. 1) View from the cabañas. 2) View from the drive to the cabañas. 3) Swimming Pool. 4) Servane and I. 5) A group of us taking a break from dancing salsa and merengue.

Photos from Petronio and Fishing

1) Billboard for the Pacific Music Festival. 2) Inside the Plaza de Torros for a concert night. 3) Pacheco, Linda, and I enjoying the music. 4) I caught a tilapia. 5) The other language assistants and I with Juan and his baby daughter post fish fry.

Photos from Cali and La Universidad Santiago de Cali

1) The Cali River...oh so clean. 2) La Ermita Cathedral downtown Cali. 3) A view of dowtown Cali. 4) Main Plaza of the University. 5) The view from where I am currently staying on campus.

Chit-Chats and Haircuts

There is something invigorating about meeting someone new. You never know what to expect. At times, you aren´t even expecting to meet anyone at all. Simple tasks here in Cali such as a visit to the office of this or that here at the university have resulted in conversations that have lasted half an hour chatting with a secretary or the director of a department. I´m not sure what this says about caleños in terms of efficiency in the work place, but they are certainly warm and welcoming which I have so greatly appreciated.

My favorite first meeting as of late was with Migali. Tuesday, I decided the mop on my head had to go and that I wasn´t going to begin down my old Chilean road of some odd Beatles, 70´s, retro-not-quite-chic coiffure. Thus I asked around and set off to have a haircut just down the road from the university after, of course, consulting my dictionary for some haircut vocab I thought might be vital in describing what I wanted done with my locks. After a few minutes of describing my desired -do and basic chat, I got the question that usually comes up after two to five minutes. ¨You´re not from here, are you?¨ Blame it on the blue eyes or the oddly accented occasionaly flustered Spanish, but no matter how you slice it, it´s pretty obviously that I´m a foreigner. The declaration of my nationality attracted the manicure ladies, who at the time had no customers, to draw near and begin to ask questions. One question I generally ask is what someone´s favorite place in Colombia is. Rather than the usual Cartagena and Medellín answer, I got two Buenaventuras and a Tumaco, both cities on the Pacific coast west and southwest of Cali. These cities were where these women were from. After the manicurists returned to their posts, Migali, the woman cutting my hair, began to really tell me about Tumaco. Tumaco is a town just north of the Ecuadorian border on the Pacific, beautiful but very poor as Migali described it. She continued explaining that she had moved to Cali ten years ago, but that her mother and son were still in her home town. It is a place to which she would prefer to never return. The old people are really the only ones left, she told me. Eight, nine, ten people get killed every day. She explained that her mother lives at a sort of crossroads between paramilitary and guerilla stomping ground and that one has to be very careful to whom one talks and how they talk to them or it could be their life. She wants to get her son out. After he graduates from high school this year, she´s bringing him to Cali. I prodded and asked who she blamed more, the paras or the guerillas. Neither of them. That was her reply. It´s all just a mess and everyone is caught in between. You can´t just blame one side or the other. It isn´t that simple. That was not the easiest conversation to segway out of, but after a minute of two of silence, the two of us found our way back to more standard topics such as salsa and snow. I greatly look forward to getting my ears lowered again for another chat with Migali.

Last night, I had a slightly more planned first meeting with the minister of a small Presbyterian church here in Cali. Javier picked me up from work at seven and we went and sipped on some coffee and talked life for a while before heading to the house of some church members for supper. All the conversation was pleasant and the people, again, so warm and so hospitable. Nothing that happened nor nothing that was said was especially out of the ordinary, but what was so nice was being able to have real social interaction in the home of people in no way affiliated with the university. It is nice to branch out. I can´t wait to get to know the church community and I hope I will both find what I´m looking for and be able to be of some service. Only time will tell, but I´m feeling quite good about it.

Of course there have been many other first meetings and fun conversations these past few days - a trendy barista at a euro-chic contemporary art museum café, a multitude of children from the pooere neighborhoods of Cali up on the mountainside to whom, every Thursday from today forward, I will be teaching English and playing to hour of soccer that is their reward for good behavior after class, Alex, a seemingly brilliant man who has psyciatric troubles, but loves learning English and has come to all my conversation clubs thus far, and so on - and there will be many more to come. What I can also look forward to is continuing the friendships with students I have already started. Tomorrow night, the university is having a concert on campus and I will be there with my favorite foreign language majors, ready for a good time. More on classes and such soon. For now, chao chao y nos vemos!