My first weekend out

As I finally felt better and was able to socialize this weekend, I realized that I love Colombia so far! Friday after school was the annual "we're finished with the first week of school" staff party, which was supposed to be at our boss' house (on campus), but since it rained a lot, it was moved to the cafeteria. There was free beer, appetizers, and very loud music. It was fun, but also kind of strange to be drinking where your students were eating lunch a couple hours beforehand. After that, some of us went to this teacher's apartment, Mac is his name. We continued to drink and hang out. The girls ended up dancing in the living room to Madonna songs while the guys sat outside and drank together. It was all very middle school of us. Then, since we had skipped dinner, Mac who has lived here for 6 years I think, took us to this place to eat called Segundo's. It's basically a big huge grill and you can order whatever kind of meat you want, I had baby beef, it was delicious. I'm glad I'm not a vegetarian, it would be next to impossible to eat here. (Bethie, if you're reading this, you would hate it.)

Saturday, during the day, the parent association here, invited all the new teachers to a place called Nirvana. It's about an hour drive, north of Cali, and it's a huge environmental haven, where we went on a 2 1/2 hour hike up a mountain, in awe of all the cool looking trees, flowers, and plants. We saw some animals too, some horses, a caterpillar as big as my foot, and some really cool rainforest looking birds. It was really beautiful, I took a bunch of pictures, that I'll have to add later.

Saturday night I went salsa dancing for the first time here. I remember learning the basic steps in Puerto Rico, but it seems that it's just like my Spanish ability...if you don't use it, you lose it. Luckily, I didn't dance, there was a band, so it was more of just watching the band perform and watching other people dance. It was a really fun atmosphere though, oh yeah, and the place was called Blues Brothers, which was odd. There were murals of John Belushi on the walls and other pictures up of B.B. King and I can't remember who else. It made me feel like I was in the States again, but just listening to salsa music.

Yesterday, I didn't do much of anything, slept in and then went grocery shopping. Part of our pay is given to us with these food coupons that we can use at the grocery store for anything, food, TVs, or you can even use them at certain restaurants. They make me feel like I have food stamps, I don't really understand the whole concept of them, they're just like cash, so why do they use them? I haven't figured it out yet. The only problem is that if you use the big amount coupons, the cashier can't give you cash back, so I had about $4 in change owed to me, and had to buy about 2 packs of gum and 4 packs of Halls to try to reach the exact amount.

The kids at school have calmed down quite a bit. I think I forgot to mention that the first couple hours I had 2 boys who every time we lined up, were punching each other in the balls. I talked to them very sternly and basically told them that they could really get hurt doing that (not to mention give up the chance of having kids someday...I didn't mention that part), but every time I turned around, they were at it again. Well, so far so good today, no ball punchers, and they're even getting the hang of listening to their teacher! I guess I'm making progress. Hope you're all doing well.