Medellin Metrocable

My friend Leslie, who I met at the language school in Cartagena, is here in Girardota and staying with us. We are a fabulous foursome now - Marcela, Dieter, Leslie and I. The neighbors are commenting how international M & D are becoming. It's really quite funny. A Colombian, a German and 2 North Americans are quite the hit around this rural area of Colombia. Most people here have never traveled out of their country so they are quite wide eyed with us visitors. In the next few weeks, another couple from Germany, that M & D met while traveling in Mexico on their road trip, might be coming as well.

There have been only a few colombianos that I have met that want to travel out of the country. They unfortunately find it very difficult and/or very expensive to obtain the necessary visas. The image of Colombia being an unsafe country - drug, gun and mafia/FARC infested - persists in two ways: one for tourists and one for residents wanting to travel. In my planning for my trip to Colombia, I experienced the many misguided "facts" based on fears and history from the 90's which were true up until Uribe took over 7 years ago. But I did not realize how Colombians are unfairly judged throughout the world by limiting their ability to travel, visit and move. We are very fortunate as Americans to be able to travel so freely throughout the world. So in some way, it is no wonder that Colombians stick to their own country. Plus, it is a gorgeous country!! It is similar to the US in that it has a variety of climates and regions - mountains, coastlines, deserts, cold and hot climates etc.

So since Leslie is here, I played hookie from school and we all went into Medellin. It was the first day without rain I have had in that city of nearly 3 million people. Remember how I had talked about there being a Metrocable (cablecar) line? Well I was incorrect, there are actually 2 and we rode them both today. They are like a transfer line when you ride a subway - as long as you do not leave the station, you can hop on another line. Well this line, instead of being another train, is a cable car. I took some pictures for you all to see. I intentionally included photos of the cities and murals people have painted on their buildings so you would not think I took them at an amusement park. The dark, odd shaped buildings you see in one of the photos are actually one of the cities library - El Parque Biblioteca Espana. I love how green and mountainous the city is.

The rainy season

It is the rainy season - or their winter - now. It typically is from oct - dec. They have some MAJOR rainstorms - complete with thunder and lightning. Most of the storms have been at night. But yesterday, M D and I got a spectacular hour of storm watching just before the sunset. It was a quick storm, so we got to watch it come in and leave again. Tons of thunder, lightning and rain. Boy can it not just downpour rain here! There are all types - sprinkling, spitting, rain for 5 minutes or rain for a few hours. It typically does not last for too long and then everything dries up within an hour or so. It is quite miraculous! The people describe the storms as "mucho agua". I tried to sequence the photos in order of the storm for you.

Volunteering

Hey I just found out that is you click on the pictures, they can enlarge. Hope you enjoy because as always, pictures really don't do it justice!

I love volunteering in the school. The children are soooo loving and kind. I feel so welcome everyday!! All the children have warmed up to me and I am not such a spectacle. Although everyone in the school knows my name, I only know a few outside of my class. The children I know the names of are the ones I see on my walk home and practice my Spanish with. The teacher of the preescholar class I work most with, Alba, has asked me for some teaching suggestions a couple of time. So I now am consulting in Spanish. She is quite amazing and has put a lot of the ideas into practice already. She seems happier and more relaxed which I am glad about! It seems like it is a win - win situation. Some of the teachers have asked me to go to other schools but I said I did not want to. I feel it is more important to build the relationships with one set of kids because the relationship is what is making them feel more comfortable talking in English. Plus I do not think I want to be an exhibit each week. I am also learning more spanish because Alba knows to speak more slowly. The other adults are getting more familiar with me and are willing to have conversations with me too.

A lifetime without love is of no account. Love is the water of life. Drink it down with heart and soul. Rumi

The people here fully embrace this idea. They not only embrace love for themselves but they make sure everyone around them is gulping it down as well. The kids are really thoughtful with one another, taking care of each other and sharing their things, even more openly than I see in the states. Granted I have also seen some punches and kicks etc but overall there is such a warm loving atmosphere in this culture - an overall feeling of everyone taking care of each other EXCEPT for when they are driving. Then it is every moto(cycle) for itself. Beware if you are anything but a motorized vehicle. It is really healing to be here! I hope I can drink it down and send it back to all my loved ones who are reading this. For you all have made my life very rich!!! My life in Eugene for the past 14 years has been a river - deep and wide - and it has always been supported by my sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles at the headwaters. I have heard that life just keeps getting better and I wholeheartedly believe and can tell you that this is true!!!!

Here are some pictures of the school: the front of it, the preescholar classroom, the view from the back, the outdoor area where we all eat and play, the recycling bins
































































They have some recycling here in Colombia. I have seen it in the school, in the town and in Medellin. I did not see any in Cartagena though. The village where we live, there is a fellow who recycles for the community and is able to sell the materials for a profit. I do not think recycling is a common practice but everything has to start somewhere. M & D do not know of a landfill down here either. A common way of getting rid of garbage is unfortunately by burning. There are times when you can smell the burning of plastics from the neighbors or you can see people burning in the hills. One of the neighbors, gets rid of his plastics/garbage by mixing it with dirt/rocks and then burying it in the road. At least this is how I interpret what I have seen. In the picture, the ordinarios (garbage) bin (from the school) does not have a cover but this is atypical - you master recyclers out there do not have to worry. The other one is from Medellin and I love that they have public compost.

Part of a community

It is so darn relaxing and peaceful here in Girardota. I feel so lucky to be in this wonderful place! I love having banana, orange and mandarin trees on the property. We get to have fresh fruit and juice almost daily :-) M, D and I see new and different bugs almost daily - beetles, moths, grasshoppers, larvae, ants, crickets etc. There are so many different birds and flora/fauna here it is incredible! Hummingbirds of all sizes and a variety of colors but mostly green, butterflies that are yellow, orange, blue, red, black, white, brown and combinations of the previously mentioned colors. Yes I know I am in the tropics but it is still quite amazing.

My walk takes about 20 - 25 minutes down to the school and 40 minutes to an hour back up depending on whether I spend time admiring the views and animals along the way and/or stop and talk with people. Most of these pictures are taken from my walk down to town. I have a few regular stops where people talk with me and offer me some treats. Have I told you how friendly and sweet people are here??!!! It's great practice for me to have conversations and I love having the time to be able to stop and spend some time with different folks. In the states, I was always so busy - going between one activity to the next that I only would have 5 or 10 minutes to stop and talk with my neighbors. Now at least my only time constraint is being home by 6pm - the time it gets dark. It is light at 5:30 - 6 am and gets dark by 6pm year round. They do not observe daylights savings time.

I love how they make a road on the driveways or the road leading up to many houses around here. Some of the road is dirt, some of it rock and some of it is has concrete section. I got to watch as they made a portion of it whem I first arrived. They use concrete, rock and some gravel/sand and mix it up and make the 2 lanes for the tires. After they pour it and when it is still wet, they hand press a metal pipe into the road to form the grooves which helps with traction and water run off.

1 Month

As of today, I have been in Colombia for one month. Boy how time flies by! 2 nights ago I was dreaming in Spanish. It was a restless night of sleep but I do remember people talking to me in Spanish. Last night, I dreamt that one of the neighbors was telling me in Spanish that I needed to learn more Spanish. “Laura es necesito aprendar mas espanol”. At least I slept better.

I have been back volunteering at the local school here. It was really trippy and strange. Here I am in a foreign land but what are the children learning in school? All about Christopher Colombus and the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria that sailed across the Atlantic and discovered America. The kids drew and colored Indians with feathers in their headbands and tepees. I did not realize until this week that when Colombus landed in Massachusetts, it was the first of any of the Americas were discovered. At the school, they had an assembly with all the classes. The classes walked in single file and sat down in rows on the floor crisscross applesauce. A few teachers talked and then everyone stood up and placed their right hand on their heart and sang a song - sound familiar??? Things are so similar yet so different at the same time! Then a variety of children performed different acts - mostly dancing - break dancing, dancing routines etc. All the classes sang 2 more songs and then the assembly was officially over but everyone formed a big circle and different kids danced in the middle. It was really neat to see. They also had 3 different flags. One for the country, one for the town and one for the county/region. I am really loving being in the school. The children are much more comfortable talking with me. Thank Gosh!! A group of 9 and 10 year olds sit down and talk comparing words in Spanish and English. I am really grateful because they are really particular on how I pronounce the words.

Tonight M, D & I went over to a neighbor’s house and helped make arepas. I love arepas!! They are similar to a thick tortilla made out of corn. The corn kernels are boiled in water and then we put it through a grinder, mixed the corn flour with salt and some water and rolled them into their circular form using a wooden rolling pin and an arepa mold. They were then heated over a charcoal grill which is one of those 50 gallon barrels. How ingenious! It was really fun! The family has 3 girls ages 8 - 14 years. They make arepas as a side business each Friday so I am planning on going over there each Friday. I feel sooo lucky J

Back to Medellin

Cartagena is quite the town. Most people do not call a place that has over a million people a town. But it feels more like a town than a city. I did not explore the new part of the city with all the skyscrapers and I had no desire to. You can see below a picture of the old town and across the bay, a picture of the newer city. The pictures are taken from the same spot. Now where would you go?? Most of the people must live over there as well, especially since the Old City is primarily businesses.

I love all the walking I have done here. I walked the perimeter of the Old City on the wall itself, I walked to the beach, I walked to classes etc. Granted most of the walking was amid much of the bustle of city traffic. The taxis and buses here like to communicate with their horns. They are many different types of beeps, depending on how bad they want riders or how much competition there is or from what direction they are approaching a person walking. But I had to cross a bridge over the far end of the bay, so I had some nice views. At sunset, the pelicans would perch (roost??) in the trees for the night. It was quite the sight to see - 15 - 20 pelicans perched in 2 trees. (If you look back to the picture of the entire Castillo, the trees you see in the forefront next to the water are where I saw all the pelicans) Walking along the Carribean Sea, I got to watch the local fisherman work. Boy do they work hard!!! I watched 12 - 15 men pull in these huge nets. There were 2 boats - 1 boat had 2 men and the other boat had 1 man. There were 2 - 3 men pulling the lead line and then 2 lines of about 5 men each pulling the nets in. It was fun to watch! The men were hams and didn’t mind me watching and taking pictures. Throughout the 20 - 30 minutes, several of the men came over one at a time and talked with me. Colombianos are so darn friendly!! They love to make sure everyone is happy, content and love to talk, dance and laugh! Anyway back to the fishing, the pescadors let the nets sit for about an hour right before the tide comes in. On this particular fishing net, they caught about 3 milk crates full of fish (which they said is about average) and were off over the jetty to pull in another net.

I took another bus back to Medellin. This time, I left at 7am so I could travel by day and see the landscape. It was well worth it (even though it is 2 hours longer by day) Colombia is gorgeous and remote. There was a 2 lane road (one lane each direction) that drove 14 hours through vast, untouched lands or farm(primarily grazing) lands. The land was green, lush, and full of mature trees dotting the open fields of varying shapes and sizes. I cannot believe how much land is untouched by humans - I LOVE IT!!! Granted the land closer to the coast are in flood plains and further inland, it is rugged - hilly and steep. But it is wonderful to see. I wish I could have taken pictures, but there are no view points and no places to stop even if I could get the driver to stop (let alone ask him). Very expansive this land is. The closest we have to this amount of open and untouched land is in Alaska.

Boy these bus trips are quite interesting. I really do not understand much of how it all works yet. There are no announcements when we pull into a station of where we are or how long we are going to be there. People just disappear and new passengers appear. There are no visuals or written schedules. I did not want to get off the bus for fear of being left behind. It was funny at one stop, most of the people got off so I started pouring more water into my water bottle that I drink from and the conductor (there is a driver and what I call a conductor who addresses the needs of the passengers and somehow keeps track of who comes and goes) says we are stopping and can get off. By this time, I am the only passenger on the bus, I continue to pour my water. He tells me again that I can get off and seems like he wants something. So I ask him if it’s necessary that I get off and he said yes. I apologized and got off. He then locked the bus up and went to get something to eat. Somehow I was supposed to just know that it was time for everyone to eat lunch. I am going to try and ask for a schedule my next bus ride. This bus ride, I sat in the middle of the bus but this bus had 3 tv’s so it really did not matter but the volume was low so it wasn’t as bad as my last bus trip. They showed 4 movies - 2 were family oriented and 2 were absolutely violent and about the corruption of cops and prison guards. In between the movies, the bus played some great music. It was very similar to the people - upbeat, happy and energetic.

Volcano Dipping

Today, we went to Volcan de Lodo El Totumo (the mud volcano). It’s a miniature volcano, 15m or about 45 feet tall, that instead of spewing ash and lava, it spews mud. Inside the volcano there is lukewarm mud with the consistency of cream or melted chocolate (at least that is how I liked to think of it) which people get to dip into and have a mud bath. In the states, people pay hundreds of dollars in a spa for a mud treatment. Down here, you can take a bus trip, about an hour or so east of Cartagena, and soak in the mud for as long as you like, get a quick chocolate mud massage, all for about $15. When you are done soaking in this incredible consistency, you climb down the stairs and rinse off in the lagoon. The mud is supposed to have therapeutic properties. I have never been in anything like it before. You climb down about 3 - 4 rungs on a ladder and then you are in this incredibly foamy, thick concoction that you are comfortably suspended in with about 15 - 20 other people. At first, I did not know how to do anything but float. It was so thick, it did not seem like I could penetrate it. A family from Colombian told me to just push my feet down and I was surprised to find how you could move through this supportive cream. We could write on the surface and it would keep what we had written or drawn.

Pictures are of the volcan, the lagoon, the people floating, yours truly getting a massage and the family from Colombia and I talking/writing.