Food for Thought

            So because I am a gringo trying to integrate myself into the Pueblo Rican community, my stay has been injected with some rather strange and unexpected, um things.  Sorry, I cant think of a better word and I don’t really feel like breaking my back to make this a supreme piece of literature cuz I ain’t getting no Pulitzer for this anyways.  Moving forward, the one I am the least comfortable with is an elevated amount of police involvement that I now have in my life.  Basically I was informed when I got to Colombia that it was a good idea for me to acquaint myself with the local authorities so that they know I am around and so I know who I need to look for incase shit hits the fan.  Now this is totally fair and reasonable by any and every means I can imagine.  However, today I had my third meeting with the police concerning my safety and such and I was informed that they will be checking in with me every three days and that I need to inform them when I am coming and going from Pueblo Rico.  I even have my own personal security officer who I am to call if I ever feel unsafe.  Oh, they also took a couple of photos of me for the record books.  You know, to show people when I get kidnapped or whatever.  I was also given a list of activities to avoid, such as staying away from crowds, keeping my schedule unpredictable, avoid talking to strangers, and keeping my eyes open for suspicious vehicles.  Basically I am supposed to be on guard at all times.  All of this makes sense I suppose, as every time that I tell someone that I work in Pueblo Rico they tell me to be careful of the guerillas.  Now I have been thinking about it and I can’t imagine the shit storm that would happen here if something happened to the volunteer gringo, who is here to improve the lives and future of the town’s children.  For that reason I totally understand the erring on the side of caution and I am truly grateful that they are putting forward all of this effort into keeping me safe.  I am not even saying that to sound PC.  I do feel much safer knowing that they actively taking measure to make my stay more comfortable.  However, it is feeling a little bit house arresty for my taste, if you know what I am saying.  I have never really been the type to do this type of reporting in and checking up as it kind of cramps my whole “I go where the wind blows” philosophy of life, but it made me ponder a great many things.  Oh and to preface this I literally just read the US Constitution for shits and giggles.  Like last week.  I’m pretty sure that it was the first time since 8^th grade or something, but its an interesting read and I’m going to go ahead and assume that you all are just like me and that y’all haven’t skimmed through it in, oh ever?  Too much sass?  Sorry, anyways, as Americans its actually something we should be strongly familiar with. But the point of all this is to ask you a question that this combination of things has got me thinking about: what is freedom?  I sure as hell don’t have a perfect answer and I’m pretty sure that you all will have pretty drastically different things to say on the subject too.  So the better question is what is freedom to you?  Now think about your answer, think about what it may mean to someone else, empathize with them enough to understand what they’re doing with their lives, give ‘em a hug and say “That’s cool with me, bro”.  Peterfreund 2028.  Buy yo pins, y’all.

School, the actual reason that I’m here, or whatever:

            Man where do I start.  Well here goes.  High school.  You know, that super angsty time in our lives when we were swimming in the hormones of puberty (well some of us) and taking a first stab at taking a stab at figuring out who we are and what were about in this crazy world of ours.  And guess what, it’s the exact same here.  I know I shouldn’t have expected otherwise, but it unbelievable just how exactly the same everything is here.  There are the pretty girls, the jocks, the nerds, the weird kids, and the beautiful everything that happens in between.  Back in the day I was very far from the top of the social food chain so I can empathize with the vast majority of the students and what they are going through.  And to be honest back in the day really wasn’t even that long ago.

            So my job here is basically to be a cultural liaison to the kids, I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned that at some point.  Anyways, for the main idea is that I am not actually a teacher and as such I spend the majority of my time sitting in class observing and whenever the teacher wants me to work on pronunciation with the kids I am called into action.  Now even though I am not the primary teacher I do find myself in charge of the kids quite often inone of the teacher’s class, who I will surely discuss with all of you at some point.  I’ll talk about discipline in a second, but I will mention that I spend a good chunk of energy trying to get the kids to remain calm.  Anyways, I am in class either 4 or 6 hours a day, depending on my schedule.  This takes me basically from 7am to 130pm.  After that I am beat.  Like seriously tired.  I feel like a wimp, but this stuff is draining.  Then I go home to my angel of a host mother, who I will rave about at some point in the near future, and I eat lunch and then take a cat nap.  I’m trying pretty hard to cut the nap out of the regimen, but it just feels soooooooo damn good.  Anyways, up till now I have been teaching the English professors from 3-5 pm, which I will likewise discuss further in the future, because it is a rather interesting situation if I do say so myself.  And sometimes I hit the soccer pitch and get played the fool.  However, today I started this club, which is also part of my job description and that will last either from 3-4 or 3-5.  Twill be determined later, and then I teach the professors for 2 hours.  So no matter which way you cut it I got some pretty impressively long days, by my standards at the very least.

I really like the kids here.  They’re all very curious and fun loving and to be honest I have yet to find a true bad egg in the bunch.  However, what is quickly becoming apparent is that here there is definitely a baby bird feeding complex going on in the classrooms.  I am sure that it exists everywhere in the world, but it is the first time that I’ve experienced it, or at least noticed it.  The basic principle is that the loudest bird, which demands the most attention is the one that gets fed.  Now it is obvious that this tactic works because the teachers here, conscious of the decision or not, pay the most attention to the loud rude birds, and let the quiet polite ones sit idly in class.  Having played the quiet version of this proverbial bird I know how frustrating this can be.  In general the classroom here is a much more rowdy environment that I ever experienced in my Newton, MA classrooms.  There is literally never a completely quiet moment.  At any given instance there is a kid talking to someone else in the room or sticking a head out the window speaking to a friend outside, or simply calling at the teacher for attention.  As a result everything goes unbelievably slowly during in class.  The lessons, which last two hours, usually cover a single basic topic, and a few examples.  The rest of the time is spent in anguish trying to maintain a grip on the classroom.  For instance, in a class period last week, which again lasted two hours, we covered “there is and there are”.  Two hours to explain something, which is directly translatable from Spanish.  I don’t know if I am just unaware of the teaching / learning processes and mechanics of teaching in high school, but I feel that you should be able to cover much more than this in a single class.  I want to stress again that these kids are no morally worse off than whoever you may find in the states, but there is a certain lack of respect and discipline that seems to be endemic.  But anyways, its not my job to run the class, but I can’t help but get a bit frustrated when the teacher gets baited by the students into losing her temper.

What’s been working for me to calm the kids down is just to get right up in their face and guilt trip them into submission with overwhelming politeness.  I kid you not, but the Jewish and Chinese disciplinary guilting is strong in my blood.  It’s the whole “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” mentality.  I guess I did practice that tactic to pretty successful ends as a camp counselor all those years ago, but I’m more than a little pleased to see it working here too.  I basically just say please do so and so in a neutral tone, which just barely leans towards puppy dog pleading.  It’s a pretty excellent tactic because it redirects all that douchebaggery the kid was spewing back at his or herself.  Its winning by not playing the game.  Take note my young leaders.  However, if y’all got better tactics lemme know.

The picture edition

So there are things that I should be telling you about things, but for now you get pictures.  Yay! Oh, and bonus non colombian things as well.

So this is the Grand Canyon.  It is both grand and a canyon, go figure

So I had to climb down into rim of the canyon to take this picture for y'all.  Kinda sorta scary, I have a pretty strong memory of getting some pretty sever tunnel vision, heart palpitations, and general anxiety from being on said cliff edge.  And yes, I did pee into the thousand foot drop off, I know you were all wondering :D.

Pueblo Rico, this is outside of my house.  You can see one of the little canchas and the surrounding mountain sides.  I kinda like it.

This is my neighbor's house, but mine is almost identical.  They're pretty cozy, but awesome.  They have all the modern amenities, minus inter webs, if you were wondering.

I ate some shit playing soccer in the coliseo with some kids.  Slipped right in a mud puddle, and made a mess of myself.  Nice little puffball though.  And I bought a guitar here, which is always awesome, but I don't find myself having so much time to play it...

Ah, the wonderful city of Medellín

I went to the feria de las flores last weekend and there were these awesome animal sculptures made entirely of flowers.  Pretty cool.  This is Armie the Armadillo

Larry the Bird

Izzy the Iguana

A close up fixture of Izzy's tail.  I told you they were made of flowers

That guy

There is always cool graffiti to be found if you keep your eyes open, this is a bit that was on the side of a highway in Medellín

My favorite from the collection "el caos"

A cool walking bridge in Medellín, you can see all the mountains and lot of the city from here

The pueblos built into the side of the mountain

They set up these massive overhangs in the botanical gardens of the city, which I thought were pretty cool.  I'm not sure if they're always there or if they're part of the feria

Cool exhibit in the botanical gardens.  Flower waves, crashing on a lighthouse

Don't forget to take a close look sometimes

Some cool street art that was going on outside of the botanical gardens by a metro stop.  Oh yeah, medellin has probably the best metro system that I have ever been on.  Super fast and clean.  Super crowded, though.

This one was way creepier than the nice happy lion family, but still cool

I went up to this place about an hour outside of Medellín called Santa Elena where they make all of these floats for an annual parade.  I had to leave the city due to time constraints unfortunately, but the day I left this float and many others are carried down the street on the backs of their creators during said parade.

It was cool seeing where they made all of the floats and they take advantage of the tourists popularity of the site by turning this little pueblo into a party town for the weekend.  Pretty cool

Inside of the hostel where I stayed in Medellín

BONUS! I gave myself a flu shot one time :D

This is a giant sequoia.  It is rather large.  I took this pic on spring break last year when I drove from Manteca CA to Joshua tree by LA and back.  Y'all should check out highway 1.

I think y'all know this story, but I got hired by a band to drive a van from Denver to LA an along the way I passed through Canyon Land in Utah, which was pretty cool.  Y'all should go there too

Pueblo Rico

One of the concrete canchas, this one is behind the school and overlooks cerro Tatamá, which is behind some cloud cover, I'll work on getting y'all a picture

Just down the street from the school looking 90 degrees to the left of the last picture.  The overhang that you see there is the coliseo and the little dome is part of the church

This is pano from inside tho the school, kind of a good view.

People cleaning in the school

Its not that windy, the trees are just kinda like that…

            So now that everything has calmed down and this whole experience has obtained a sense of normalcy that I usually takes me less time to find, I am happy to report that this place is pretty friggun awesome.  I have been without internet for a while now, so I cannot remember exactly what I said before, but this town is tiny.  When I say tiny I mean tiny.  So small infact that people that I have not met yet happily greet me by name as I walk by them in the street.  This is probably the closest that I will ever get to being a minor celebrity, which is pretty awesome.  Well, that is until I become a senator, or president, but that is a rant for another time.  Anyways, this town is three hours by bus from the capital of the region, Pereira, and is high up in the mountains.  It is not I am on a mountain side looking down at some far away place, but rather I look down into a vally, which again rises into another mountain.  Basically there’s mountains everywhere and amazing.  Some of them are forested, but others have cow pastures, coffee plantations, banana farms and other interesting things that decorate the landscape.  The things is that it is always cloudy here, so I unfortunately not be comeing back to all of you with the tan I all know you wish that I had.  But anyhw, because we are so high up the clouds seem only just out of reach when you look up, and it is not uncommon that they simply settle down and envelope the pueblo.  This morning was the first sunny one that I have experienced so far here in Pueblo Rico and I was quite surprised to learn that have been living under an absolutely gargantuan peak, which I have since learned is called Cerro Tatamá.  Its rather crazy how even the biggest things in the world can lie hidden from existence for all intents and purposes under just the right conditions.  Anyways, the next time I see it I’ll snap a picture for y’all.

            In the town square there is a small park which is surrounded by various little tienditas.  There is a general store, several restaurants, a couple of discoteques, some billiards halls, cafés, a bank, and the obligatory awe inspiringly beautiful church.  And that, my friends is basically the whole town.  When there are only 11,000 people in a town you really don’t need a whole lot more to be honest.  There burbs, if you will, radiate out in all directions and people live throughout them as you would expect.  One of the coolest things about the whole place is the number of places to play soccer there are.  There is one full sized pitch behind the school, which is pretty awesome to behold, especially in such a small town, which is reverently referred to as the stadium.  The other three are smaller, probably 40% of a normal cancha, two made of concrete and one of artificial turf.  My favorite is easily the concrete pitch called the coliseo (coliseum if you couldn’t figure it out), which is none other than that perfect, gritty, piece of shit, field of dreams, factory of faith that will give you your favorite scars and greatest memories.  This field is indiscreetly tucked behind the church and is for all intents and purposes a giant box.  20 foot concrete walls with the very best vulgar amateur graffiti surround the place and the floors have been worn smooth from the blood sweat and tears of hundreds of matches.  I’m pretty proud to say that I took a tumble and donated a few drops of the old sangre to the floor myself, no big deal or anything.  The sad things is though that I have only been playing with teenagers and the kind of just dick on my life.  Its kindof awful.  But thankfully they grow em short here so I can play a little bit of bully ball if push comes to shove, but I really try not to because no one likes to be that guy. 

Yeah. People like soccer here.

A hodgepodge of what's been goin on

Medellín:

            So Medellín is the cats pajamas. Just go ahead and do yourselves a favor and buy a ticket there.  I got my ticket there for 300 bucks 3 weeks before my flight…  Just saying, you could do it if you put your mind to it and put down the smokes or booze or whatever else if your poison for a couple of months.  And then you could pick it up here again for way cheaper if you really want to.  Anywys, the ciy is absolutely unreal.  It is nestled in the valley of two mountains, which is awesome to begin with, and the buildings and suburbs spill up either flank in a fairly unreal manner.  I took some pics, but they really don’t do the place any justice.  However, at night when the sky is pitch dark and you look down the valley and see lights spread out across the mountains, it really is a sight to behold.  To be honest it kind of looks like your standing at the bottom of a giant fluorescent taco shell, but think about it… Tacos…

            So I went for the feria de las flores, which is an annual festival that coincides with the harvest season, which outside of the united states is actually a really big deal because, you know, food.  Right?  Moving on, the city is super clean and has some amazing things to see and if you go during this festival you will be happy to find all sorts of amazing exhibits and such having to do with flowers.  My favorite was a giant flower armadillo that was like 9 feet tall and almost 20 feet long.  Made of flowers.  Pretty cool.  There was also an iguana, a bird, a jaguar, and a myriad of other animals.  There was a giant area set up in one of the city’s parks that was basically filled to the brim with a pretty unreal orchid exhibit. Think the flower show, but South American and outside in tropical weather.  Also the night life is pretty dope.  There is an area called parquet lleras off of calle 10, which you all should check out.  Theres like a billion trillion gillion bars and clubs all packed into something like 5 or 6 city blocks, and my friends it makes for a bumpin good times.  Just be careful of your wallets, if you know what I’m saying.  But yeah, check the city out.

            The one shitty thing that happened was that a taxi driver had no idea where to bring me and my friend david when we were looking for our hostil and he didn’t want to admit that he really didn’t know.  He was being difficult, but it wasn’t like he was going out of his way to rip us off or anything, generally a nice guys, but we definitely don’t operate on the same plane of existence.  Anyways, we ended up giving up and had him drop us off outside, alone, pretty not sober, at a metro station at something like 4am.  Not a good idea, but we weren’t getting anywhere anyways.  Fast forward, we find a bus and eventually get to our hostel at 5 am a little grumpy and a little worse for wear, but thankfully safe, unrobbed and alive.  We may or may not have dodged a bullet there, but don’t let that get you down about Medellín.  Do yourselves a favor and know where you need to go before you try to get there drunk at 3 in the morning.  Fucking love Medellín.

A word to the wise...

Here is a word to the wise.  If you ever find yourself in a place known not to be water secure always, and when I say always I mean ALWAYS test the faucet to see if everything is working before you go about your business.  I just found out the hard way…  There was definitely water an hour ago when I was doing the dishes…  And now I feel dirty…  And I've had beans at least twice in the last 24 hours…

Hindsight

In hindsight that last post was way more of a hissy fit than I thought it was going to be, sorry y'all.  It was all just a bit overwhelming so I apologize for the less than alegre read.  Anyways, things have mellowed out but also gotten weirder since my last post.  I met with the principle of my school here in Pereira, and shit got weird.  All was normal at first as we discussed the fact that I had a lot of work to do, which I totally expected.  She really loved the fact that I graduated with a degree in Biology and we discussed all of the cool things that we could do in order to put steps in motion in order to make Pueblo Rico a place where tourists could enjoy the surreal paisaje of the place and also help out the town economy.  Anyways, things got a little weird as she started giving me words of advice about keeping myself safe.  Everything made sense at first as she was telling me to avoid unsavory characters and that I will undoubtedly be a center of attention as a gringo.  Then shit hit the fan.  So there was another volunteer in the same pueblo as me who had to leave because he gained a reputation as a bit of a partier and a pot head.  Not cool for a foreign volunteer.  Made sense, whatever.  Then she started telling me about how Pueblo Rico is different from most places because of the fact that people are not afraid to be openly homosexual.  Whatever, progressive place surprising but cool, right?  Wrong.  She started ranting about how a man from the town had developed a strong attachment to this male volunteer and stuff had gown down one night after a night of hard drinking.  The quote was something like "he was very drunk late one night and the man who had an attachment to him found him and, well… you know… and then he had to leave".  At this point I was more than a little freaked out.  I am sure that you all can read between the lines there, but this was not cool.  She then proceeded to tell me to be careful when accepting drinks from people, and that I had to be very careful of my every move.  I knew that the pueblo is filled with some unsavory characters already, but this was something else entirely.  I will not lie I had a nice little panic attack.  Anyways, I continued to talk with her and things were not any less weird, but I don't really remember the conversation as I was a little fixated on what she had just told me.  Anyways, this is the best part.

I got to lunch with the other volunteers and on the way I talk with this guy who actually knows the guy this happened to and told me that he had to leave because of his weed habit.  A little confused I didn't inquire further.  He gave me this guys phone number and I proceeded to call him to dig into the situation.  This was one of the most awkward calls of my entire life.  How do you ask someone about a recently traumatizing experience in order to best know how to protect yourself, when it may actually cause them a lot of harm.  Sensitively is what I did.   I asked him about what had happened in Pueblo Rico and such and he said that he had to leave because of the weed smoking.  Somehow I proceeded to ask something like "is that really all that happened" and he responded "yeah, why what did you hear".  Then I took the plunge into the deep end and just straight up asked if he had been taken advantage of.  I figured it was ok because he wasn't talking with any reservation and seemed not to be hiding anything. He said no.  No way.  Nothing even close to that had happened.  Technically a good thing I suppose, but still confusing.  Apparently this principle is an extremely opinionated person with lofty ideals who tends to jump to conclusions and such and has a reputation for firing people without just cause.  So I don't really know what the deal is going to be at this school.  Now super relieved that my greatest obstacle may be a slightly less than sane principal, not a town with a rape culture, I happily continued my day and now I am writing this post.  ALSO.  I am sure that I am interpreting what happened wrong to some degree as my understanding of the spanish language leaves many holes in my ability to comprehend exactly what people are saying.  So, I apologize to the karma gods of I am totally getting this wrong, but this is what I heard.  Don't worry, though, I will proceed with an open mind with this program as if none of this ever happened.  Can't do much good here if I am afraid to step out the door as they say.  Anyways, here's today's life lesson, my friends: don't be afraid to get a little weird.  I'm about to at the very least.  Until next time.

But again, sorry about how moody this post is too, but this county just keeps getting weirder.  I promise that the stories will get happier as time goes on.  Peace. Love.  The Gap.