Club de Conversacion

I am leaving Colombia in two weeks and I have yet to write anything about the real reason I came down here: to teach English. So now is about time. It ended up being a pretty sweet gig -I got to meet some really great, dedicated, super intelligent students and hang out with some sweet professors. The plan was for me to do a conversation club meeting 8 times a week so that students could go to the one that fit into their busy schedules, and then also do classroom visits to add a cultural, native speaker component to the classes.

A few teachers have invited me to their classrooms to help with oral exams or play games or teach idioms, but really most of my time has been spent on the conversation club and planning field trips for the students to practice English outside of the classroom.

I have a group of faithful students who are super dedicated to the language (and some who have never taken a class but rather have learned everything they know from TV and music, which is just so impressive!) and then other students who come and go. Sometimes it is frustrating because since it is an optional activity, I find myself alone in the classroom when exam time rolls around (or like Tuesday mornings, Wilson is my only student that shows these days, so we just decided to take club over to Juan Valdez for coffee slushies.)

In the club we cover topics of all varieties: Minnesotan vocabulary (eh, don'tchya know?, hot dish), the election process (why the heck do we still use the electoral college?), oragami and the story of 1000 cranes, tourist destinations in the USA and Colombia, dying Easter eggs, skits using the words "awkward," and "sketchy," etc. It's fun because I have no supervision and we just do what we want. Plus when I have visitors (which is OFTEN man!) I just bring them in and the students are fascinated just with asking questions.

Megan with the Wednesday afternoon students and their paper cranes...

...which turned into a paper plane contest.

On Saturdays I plan outings for the students so they can maybe have a bit more fun practicing the language (although what is more fun than a paper plane contest?) I make sure that whatever we do is free so that anyone can come. People usually bring friends and are excited to speak in English, so we always have a good time. We have gone to museums, gone out to coffee, cooked, gone to the beach, and my personal favorite, tie dyed!

Touring the colonial walls around the historic center.

The Inquisition Palace

French Toast for Breakfast!

Tie Dye in the beach!

Overall, it has been a really great experience and I am going to miss my students a ton. Thanks guys for a fantastic time!

The City of the Bikes

Bienvenidos a Mompos

Meg and I decided we needed a vacation from our constant vacationing, so we headed out for a relaxing weekend in Mompox, a sleepy town a few hours southeast of Cartagena. Honestly, the most exciting part of the trip was getting there and back (although back was much more entertaining because we were accompanied by a British man who spoke no Spanish, but definitely spoke his fair share of English, if you catch my drift...)

It is a nice town on the banks of a river (requiring a ferry ride to reach). We really didn't find much to do there, so we mostly ate and read. Not a bad weekend if you ask me. One interesting thing I found was that there were hardly any cars there; most everyone chose bicycles or motocycles as their mode of transportation. Megan and I indulged ourselves in a moto ride one afternoon, and our new friend took us all over the town, pointing out the highlights (like, "Here is a church. Here is another church. Here you can buy cheese. Here is church.")

We also took a boat ride up the river. Since it is not high tourist season right now we ended up being the only people on the boat ride with our guide, a friendly man who loved to point out all the wildlife and share all of his knowledge about the river (and so naturally we ended up talking about politics and the upcoming presidential election and the changes that need to be made in Colombia. An excellent conversation.) Basically, we got to see a zoo-full of animals, but with no bars, no glass, and no protection from flying poop...

King Fisher

Iguana

(We saw too many of these for my liking.)

Our guide and a flock of birds he scared out of the tree for us.

Monkeys!

(Yes, poop throwing was attempted.)

Cow

(Never a complete trip in Colombia without a cow.)

Just beautiful.

Why I Will Never Improve my Spanish

Everyone here wants to speak English with me! Or, they want me to teach them English. Which is fantastic. Except, when am I going to improve my Spanish?

Actually, it has been going really well, considering. Considering what?
Considering the fact that costeños, or people from the coast, and even more specifically, people from Cartagena, are the most difficult people to understand in Spanish in the world. (I am pretty sure that is a true statement that can be scientifically proven.) They swallow letters, they cut off words, they combine words, they create words, and man do they speak fast! It is beautiful and I love it, and once I learn to understand it, I will be able to understand any Spanish speaker in the world!

Here are a couple important words to know:

¿Qué más? - A greeting which literally means "what more?," but the answer is "bien," which means "fine." So... I am still trying to make sense of this one.

Esa es la que te cae. - "Whatever you say!" Pretty sarcastic, I think.

Bailate ese trompo en la uña. - "Spin that top (like the toy) on your fingernail." It's like, "yeah right, I don't believe that."

Por si las moscas. - "For if the flies." Like, "just in case."

*LUIS- Help me out here! Let me know if I need to make corrections and give me some more ideas! You know best!*