"Bueno, Familia!"

Borrowing a jacket to be janitor twins with Wilmer here.
(Not to be confused with the Wilmer I help teach) Also,
that's definitely the face expressing a desire for a jacket like that.

If you’re a normal human being, you might not have heard about the Miss Universe beauty competition held last night in Las Vegas. The only reason I know about it is because Miss Colombia was crowned queen. And then, she wasn’t. Apparently Steve Harvey, the host of the pageant and owner of one of America’s finer mustaches (runner up next to Poppa Roske’s), said that Miss Colombia had won, when in fact, she had been the runner up. And instead of saying she got second, Harvey said she had won. It wasn’t until after two minutes of celebrating, sashaying and photo shots, that Harvey came back on stage and essentially said, “Holy shit, my bad guys.” Again, most of the world probably doesn’t care. But when you live in the country that got gipped, you find out right away when Colombia was almost on top of the world in something. The point is, where Steve Harvey is now assuredly fired, yours truly recently got promoted.

Oh, the awkwardness: Taking away the sash and crown
from a Colombian and giving it to a clearly uncomfortable
Philippine.

On one Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was walking in and out of two different classrooms filled with students taking their English final, answering any questions or clarifying any vocabulary for them. Near the end of the test, the classrooms were nearly empty, with just a few tortured souls trying to come up with anything that could resemble a legitimate answer (fat chance). It was then that one student poked his head in and told me that Vivianna wanted to talk to me. Vivanna is the vice-principal of our school, and whom Devon and I go to if we ever have questions, which is all too frequently. I found her outside a classroom full of soon to be sixth graders in the upcoming school year, which starts in January. She asked me if I could just watch them during an activity, as she had to step out and talk to some students quick. Still normal, I thought.

Shit just got real, folks.

After she finished her short meeting outside the classroom, she came back in and gathered the ever-wavering attention of the preteen horde. She asked, “Kids, do you remember me telling you we were going to meet a friend today?” To which I gave her a quizzical look of “Uhh, what the hell?” After introducing me, she got them started on another activity before asking me, “How would you like to teach sixth and seventh grade English classes?” In my fluster, all I could really manage was a thank you, and that I had been hoping to teach my own classes for a while.

The next day, I was at a computer in the monastery when Padre Nicolas, the school’s principal, approached and asked if Vivanna had told me yet that I would be teaching next year. I said yes, and thanked him for thinking I was ready. He then asked if I would be willing to stay the whole academic year. Since their academic year goes from January to December, this is how I’ve decided to stay in Colombia for a few more months than originally anticipated. But don’t worry, I’ll still be visiting home in June for a couple weeks during our semester break. I can’t let the annual Boundary Waters trip with Dan, Brian, Ari, and Matt be undone.   

So, how’d the job open up? Well, the teacher Devon was helping, Carolina, is not returning to the school, which opened up the spot to teach 10^th and 11^th. What ended up happening was that the other English teachers, Angel (6^th & 7^th) and Wilmer (8^th & 9^th, where I was helping) both moved up, leaving the 6^th and 7^th grade English teaching job open for me. Apparently, the school also thought Wilmer was a good enough teacher as well. So instead of helping Wilmer out, Devon is shifting down to help Angel with 8^th and 9^th grade, where I was.  

Playing tejo with other teachers on Friday night.
It's basically bean bags, but you have a clay incline that
you try to stick mini shot puts into from twenty feet.
Also, those white triangles are filled with gunpowder
and explode when hit. Oh, and you buy beer by the crate.
So, we're throwing weights across a room to explode
in clay while drinking beer. So South American.

So, the other reason there was a large gap between blog posts before last weeks Ecuador one was that I had been doing lesson planning with the other teachers. Yes, it took a lot of time, and balancing it with an online grad school class and trying to blog didn’t make for a restful week or two. But I couldn’t ask for a better school to work at. We were at the apartment of an English teaching couple watching football yesterday, and they mentioned that at their wealthier school, the kids don’t respect them and say things like, “I don’t need this class, I’m just going to take over my father’s company,” or “You’ll be working for me someday anyway.” On the opposite side of the spectrum is my school, where I can’t decide if my favorite times of the day are on the way to the classroom high-fiving kids as we go, in the classroom working with them and see their faces light up in understanding, or hanging out in the teachers lounge where all our desks are and getting to listen to teachers pick on each other.

One of my friends at the school – Sergio, the Phy Ed teacher – comes into the lounge every morning with a loud and exhausted sounding “Bueno, familia!” which, in this sense, basically means, sarcastically, “Well, family, another day of torture has arrived.” Yes, working at the school is exhausting. But people don’t work here for less pay for nothing. At the end of the year party for faculty and staff, the music teacher said that he’s glad we teachers are so close with one another, that we hang out outside of school and support one another. He said that that’s why the students grow up to be such good human beings; because they see how we treat each other, they know love. And if they know love, that’s how they will treat those around them. I'm pretty damn glad I get to work where I do, and that I get to be here longer.

J

Spanish word of the day: it took me forever to figure out what pesebre meant. In Chile, pebre is a sort of salsa made from chopped peppers, onion and tomatos that you spread over bread. But pesebre actually means nativity scene. So there are pesebres set up all over the monastery and all over Bogota. Now you know.

Song in my head lately: I’ve gone long enough without posting a female singer. When I was first getting into music over a decade ago, my sister, Molly, introduced me to a slew of bands I didn’t appreciate at the time but do now. One of them are the Wailin’ Jennys, a group of incredibly talented ladies who can all sing and play a host of different instruments. In Heaven When We're Home, if you can't appreciate the combination of the upright bass, guitar, and violin, along with voices that make you melt, then you probably quit reading my opinion on it a while ago.

Nothing to do with the blog post, except for enjoying
and taking advantage of my time here. Sergio's on the
far right, and the rest are his university friends that
we had just got done playing soccer with.