Silvestre and Jango

          Last weekend I found myself at a Silvestre Dangond concert, which probably means zilch to anyone reading this because if English is your first language, chances are you don’t listen to Vallenato. Literally, “born of the valley,” vallenato is a Colombian genre of campesino folk music that became more popular after the infusion of the European accordion, which is now a staple of modern vallenato music. Anyhoo, some of the more popular vallenato singers are Carlos Vives and Diomedes Diaz. But probably the most recently popular guy is Silvestre, who happened to be in town a couple weeks ago. His 2015 hit, Materialista, is probably my favorite song down here, and I wasn’t about to miss out on his show. However, acquiring tickets proved to be a trial and a half, including a trip to one mall whose tickets were sold out, getting to the other mall, needing to wait for the salesman to get back from lunch, finding out the cheapest tickets were gone and needed to buy 80 dollar tickets, making the hour trip back to the monastery, only to have the salesman call me and tell me he gave me the wrong voucher, requiring me to return, making what would have been an hour-long trip into a tour of nigh on 5 hours). Was it really worth it? Hell, yes. Vallenato concerts are infamous for starting late and going later, and Silvestre didn’t disappoint, as the openers didn’t even finish until midnight. So until well after 3am, Tatiana and I, half asleep, danced and sang and somehow survived the night after not forking over the hefty cash needed to buy any refreshment at the concert. The bitter sweetness of that evening can’t be overlooked, however, as it was our last hoorah together before Tatiana left last Thursday to pursue her acting career in Mexico. But what a way to go out! I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Silvestre Dangond with Juancho de la Espriella on accordion. 

Living in a large city has its drawbacks. I’m no longer a short walk away from the shafts of sunlight breaking through the pine curtain of the Arboretum, the water down my shower drain is always some shade of diesel thanks to the garbling tailpipes of supply trucks, and petty theft seems to be lurking around just about every corner (There have been a string of muggings reported recently from our students as they cross the railroad to get to school in the mornings, and Alex was telling me how a neighbor who he could always count on to help him with any handyman job was stabbed just the other day up in the Codito hills). But despite all those fun things, there are actually quite a few advantages to the urban life. One plus is that Bogota is a setting off point for South America. I’ve been able to reconnect with Zach and Serina we met hiking to Machu Picchu, Leroy and Jess who we met outside our hostel in Cusco when they asked to take a picture of them, Californian Adam met at a restaurant in Cusco, Jaime on his way to the states from Viña del Mar, and Stephen who I met camping in Chile and is also now teaching English here in Bogota. But you are also always meeting someone new. In my case, there’s Omar who taught himself English with a dictionary and a selection of classic British literature, Plinio from the Amazons region who went from steering canoes to driving the monastery van, or John Freddy whose family has a boa constrictor that they found one morning with a trespasser inside of her. The list here goes on and on, some with more exciting stories than others.

         But equally as exciting is meeting a Bogota resident while traveling outside the city. I’m always trying to meet new people to hear their stories, practice my Spanish, and expand my circle outside of monastery and school (though those are indeed some dear circles). A weeklong trip down to southern Colombia back in January with my friend from the states, Amber, is how I met one of my best Colombian friends. From the start, Tatiana’s family became like my own. She had graduated college the year before and started acting in Mexico before coming back home and doing some traveling of her native country, like in Mocoa where we met. She was scheduled back in Mexico this May, and decided to reconnect with friends and family while traveling instead of getting a temporary job in the months between. Her younger sister, Valentina, had just graduated high school and was taking a gap year, most of which will be spent with cousins in New York. This means they both had a lot of time, which they randomly and generously used to hang out with a strange gringo dude.

What quickly became a tradition was going to a movie on Wednesday nights, which are around 1 US dollar those particular evenings. What filled in the weeks were going to plays, dancing, hiking the surrounding mountains on the weekends, or game nights at her folks’ place, where their mom and I would trade tiles to try to fend off Valentina’s Rummy prowess. Tatiana taught me how to dance, how to make arepas, and how to better navigate through this often-crazy city. But some of the more indelible memories were made simply just trudging around Bogota running errands, like when we got soaked by a bus speeding through a nearby puddle and I found out she liked Frank Sinatra, or when we’d run into someone she knew (which felt like every outing) and I could see from the joy on their faces that she had affected them as similarly as she did me.

Jango during the first week.

       

  If I haven’t made Tatiana’s generosity clear, I should probably point out that she devoted over a month of her time back here in Bogota to taking care of a sick puppy she rescued from the streets. Severely underfed, this little dude could also barely walk thanks to some mange that left him with little hair on his legs to protect him from Bogota’s chilling evenings. So she did what every other human says they would do but doesn’t act on: for a month she fed and bathed Jango, named for how tough he was through everything. She also made sure he had positive experiences with other dogs and humans, since he had probably only known rejection and spite. 

Jango after a month, eventually adopted by
a family who lives in the country with
plenty of room to roam.

We took him to the park often to try to get him to play with other dogs. We would bring Limón along as well, the family dog, to show Jango the ropes of fetch, public urination, and other animal practices of which I proudly claim to be an expert on. One such occasion brought us to a dog mall, which was exactly as absurd as it sounds. Apparently, every so often, you can bring your dog to this strip mall sort of set up geared specifically to your canine pets, replete with toys, accessories, and other smelly friends to make. It didn’t take us long, however, to realize that our little scrapper mutt might have been a little out of his league amongst the show dogs whose owners actually frequent that sort of stupidity.  

         Tatiana’s character is assuredly in part thanks to her parents, Beto (short for Alberto) and Betty, who were always trying to feed me and let me crash on their couch on numerous occasions. One moment I hope to never forget was Tatiana’s going away karaoke party the other Saturday. While, Betty made the rounds with beer and snacks seemingly every five minutes, Beto was filming everything (and I mean the whole night) with hilarious commentary and in-your-face angles that I thought only Michael Roske was capable of. He was also the unofficial master of karaoke ceremonies for most of the night, making sure there was always someone screeching into the microphone. And at the end of the evening when the majority of the gang was filing out and saying goodbyes, I could still hear someone singing. I looked back and there was Beto, half asleep, singing some soft Spanish ballad to himself, knowing that if the night ended, that brought his daughter’s departure one day closer. So, naturally, I grabbed two beers and went over to finish the song with him.

The world is full of good people. But I found it surprising that such a good person stumbled into my life and made such a positive impact in such a short amount of time. Tatiana understands most of my blogs. But, just in case:

Otra vez, gracias por todo lo que hiciste por mi. No me pegues (muerdes) en diciembre solo porque escribí un blog sobre ti. Ya te había dicho lo que siento, así que solo voy a seguir escribiendo en español para que los amigos y familiares que no hablan el idioma tengan que poner mas y mas en sus traductores muajaja best teacher.

Just as Bogota can be a setting off point, I hope it will also be a reconnecting point one day.

Smiling remains a challenge for me. As does taking a good picture
remains a challenge for my Colombian phone.

Spanish word of the day: I feel like I included a decent amount of Spanish in this post, but we’ll add in cachorro, which means puppy.

Song in my head lately: This one’s easy, considering the concert, and that I’ve been looking forward to including this song for months now. I have almost all of Silvestre’s Materialista memorized, gunna pull it out at the next karaoke. Also, Silvestre is the dude in the interesting robin hood cape. The other dude is Nicky Jam, famous in his own right.

On Being Crippled Me

During my senior year of high-school, our AP English teacher – Mr. Menard – gave us the traditional writing assignment of describing something that identified us. For example, a red-headed buddy of mine, Joe Griffin, titled his piece "On Being Ginger Me," and wrote about the undoubtedly profound ups and downs of having red hair in today's world (I know this because he wrote his essay right before class on notebook paper, and I somehow ended up with it, vowing to gift it to him at his wedding. Joe, if you're reading this, I still have it, and plan on carrying through with my plan!) Anyway, amidst the identity crisis that is adolescence, I was stumped. My solution was to turn to another "crisis" in my life at that time. It was the beginning of my senior year, and I had a stress fracture in my left foot (cue Daniel Day-Lewis), sitting me out for essentially all of my senior year. So in arrogantly dramatic fashion befitting only a teen athlete whose life is sports, I titled my piece "On Being Crippled Me" and described the subtle depression creeping into my life as I was ending my high school career on the sidelines. But the truth is, while my various instances on crutches have indeed been the darker moments of my life, they are probably the reason why I consider myself a pretty positive person. Because in the end, feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to make things better. That, and someone else has always got it worse, so count your blessings, suck it up, rub some dirt on it, etc. Ultimately, I concluded my masterpiece writing assignment by claiming that temporary immobility did not, in fact, define who I was as a person, and that the other advantages - dare I say blessings - in my life at that point were near innumerable.

Well, that got melodramatic real quick. Don't feel bad if you rolled your eyes or even skipped that part. The intended segue is that I was back on crutches again this past week. And, like most stories ending in crutches, it's not a glorious memory like parkour gone wrong or an accident with a rusty bear trap would be. I was playing soccer with Alex and some of his friends from high school, and we had just agreed to add ten more minutes to the second half. Not because we were young, spry, and energetic, but because the opportunity to play on a full sized field in a huge city is a privilege that doesn't come often. My team was on the attack, and I was racing a crowd towards the loose ball in the box. Another in on the chase was a hefty teammate approaching two hundred pounds. He attempted to slide tackle the ball to just tap it in while I got a nice shove into his legs from the goalie in his own attempt to stop the ball. I ended up tripping over my leviathanic teammate after his tree trunk legs slid into my feet, in a graceful sequence I'm sure rivaled the beauty of a swan's dance. My first two thoughts after pathetically crumpling in a dog pile of has-beens on the field were a) confusion as to why this mammoth decided to launch himself at the ball given his size and proximity to other forms of life, as well as b) wow, my foot hurts. After the game, I gave up going out for drinks with the guys, which should give those who know me best a good measure of how much my foot was hurting.

The dream team.

I couldn't be sure what exactly happened, but seeing as I'd broken that foot before, I wanted to be. The next day I headed to La Clinica Santa Fe, one of the best hospitals in the city, with Brother Jorge, the monastery medic. They took X-Rays, which determined that my left foot had merely suffered a bad sprain. They wrapped it in a soft cast, which was basically every layer of a normal cast except for the hardened shell. My instructions from the signed hospital documents told me I couldn't take the cast off for a week. The next sentence proceeded to direct me to ice my foot every six hours. Faced with such contradictory remedies, I looked to Jorge, who was shaking his head and holding back from laughing as if to say, Welcome to Colombian healthcare. It was then that St. Cloud Orthopedics crossed my mind. I've seen worse, I thought to myself.

I wasn't strictly told to keep all weight off during that week. But, given my unease with the hospital's diagnosis (I say hospital instead of doctor since I talked with around five different people) and considering I couldn't fit any shoe on over the cast, I decided to play it safe and just crutch it for the week.

Getting picked on, as always. 2011, foot.

If you've never experienced the joys of using crutches to walk, imagine needing to use your shoulders and arms to walk instead of your much stronger legs, which makes every short walk a workout that leaves you panting and sweating upon arrival. Also, depending on the quality of the padding on your crutches, you could end up with blisters on your hands and bruises on your sides. Besides blisters and aches, walking on crutches gets you two other things I despise: attention and pity. The sequence of what people do when they see someone they know on crutches is comically predictable. As soon as their eyes slot machine their way up from assessing the the situation with a level of scrutiny no doubt challenging that of Gregory House, they invariably ask how it happened. You then end up spending a majority of your waking hours recounting the ever so glorious tale of maimery until the majority of those you see on the day-to-day are familiar with your riveting memoir. I sound spiteful when, in reality, people are just trying to be nice.

Another way people show their kindness is in their pity. Holding doors, patiently waiting at the top of the stairs, or plastering themselves against hallway walls to leave you space, the fun really never ends. As nice as it is to not have to worry about spilling an aluminum lunch tray with cafeteria food carried by a dude who looks like cafeteria food as he tries to balance on two aluminum sticks, the level of helplessness and ineptitude reaches heights normally reserved for infants. Again, my complaints are not at others’ kindness, but rather at my own situation in those moments.

Adorable puppies help anything. 2013, knee.

Working with kids helps alleviate the self-pity and attention, mostly because they are so into their own lives and dramas that they don’t care. Some of the younger ones are also so unaware of personal space to begin with that it becomes comical when I need more of it to simply maneuver essentially four legs. It should be known that I get mobbed by 10 year olds every morning, asking questions they should know the answers to, asking others they shouldn’t know the answers to. Frequently, I simply weave my way through them while firing some sassy remarks back and forth. But ‘weave’ is not in a crutch’s vocabulary, so I end up standing there and enjoying the kids’ faces as they realize I can’t get past without a Mosesian parting of these tiny Colombian seas.

Overall, crutches suck. I don’t like the attention or pity that comes with physical ineptitude, preferring my more clandestine and numerous mental ineptitudes. It made for a long week, especially trying to command forty kids’ attention when my mobility was limited. But I am now off the crutches, walking almost normally, with some in-house physical therapy to keep me on my toes (HA).

"Hey, we won our basketball game today.
No thanks to you!" 2016, foot.

I’d like to think that Colombian sass had a lot to do with my positive spirits this time around. What followed the “How did it happen” question was usually another comment that was more along the lines of, “So, when are we going dancing?” or “I’ll race you to lunch!” Of particular mirth to my coworkers, since they’ve now seen me dance on multiple occasions, was to sarcastically claim that I’d already learned to dance the Patacumbia, which is a kind of Cumbia dance that essentially does look like you have hurt one foot and are hopping around on the other. Such wry, sometimes cruel humor is a favorite of mine, and is much preferred to the babying often received, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Even the kids got in on it. As I was leaving the school one day, scampering through the light rain that was beginning, the kids on the basketball team yelled after me, “Corre, Forrest!!"

Spanish word of the day: Medical terminology! Yeso means 'cast', while hueso means 'bone'. Also, muleta means 'crutch', not to be confused with maleta, meaning 'bag' or baggage. Spanish continues to fascinate me.

Song in my head lately: Carlos Vives wrote La Tierra del Olvido a while back, but recently collaborated with most of Colombia's other famous singing corps to create this phenomenal collaboration video. While I haven't been to a lot of the locations shown, this will probably always remind me of Colombia and its awesome people. 

Lessons From the First Trimester

Attractive...

I sprang out of bed on Friday morning and slipped into my awaiting collared shirt and skinny black jeans that double as dress pants. My attempt to put the hair in a bun was about as fruitless as always as I have yet to master the art, leaving loose strands flying behind me. In any case, the parents coming to the parent-teacher conferences that day would be far more distracted by the tie I chose than unkempt hair. I was wearing the M&M’s tie absconded from my father long ago, the one that all my kids love to see. I started a tradition of all the male teachers wearing ties on Mondays (lunes de corbata), and some kids in my sixth grade homeroom wanted me to wear it for conferences. So picture all the teachers awaiting students and their parents to welcome them into our classrooms, everyone looking spiffed to the nines in their suits and slicked hair. Now picture a kid, taller than everyone else, with armpit-length hair scrunched into a bun that makes ten year old girls in his own classes scoff, a lime green dress shirt that was most recently used as part of a pea pod costume, and a tie with anthropomorphized chocolate candies making various faces at the admirer. Then, try to imagine parents taking him seriously when he tells them that their children are either failing or excelling in his classes. Yeah, that image disturbs me, too. But that’s how I spent my Friday, as we completed the first trimester of the school year. Ten months into my full time in Colombia while completing a third of my tenure as an in-over-my-head English teacher has made me reflect and self-evaluate: Just how mediocrely am I doing this job?

The best news has nothing to do with my performance, to no one’s surprise. Our homeroom, 6B, had the best GPA of all twelve homerooms at the school throughout the first trimester. On top of that, one of our sixth graders had the highest average in the entire school, dethroning an eighth grader who had been at the top since I started working at this school. I could understand to a certain degree the argument that a homeroom’s performance reflects their directors’ dedication to instilling work ethic and study habits, but that doesn’t mean I fully believe it. My thing has always just been to try to get kids to see that learning is fun and if you can get good grades along the way, icing on the cake.

After one trimester attempting to reign in nigh on forty hormonal energizer bunnies with perpetual morning breath and no sense of personal space, I could go on and on about each little lesson I’ve learned. But it would probably make more sense for all parties if I simply said that, in teaching, every %$*&ing detail matters. Other than the material I’m teaching, I think I have two main goals each day. 

Insert terrible "train of thought" pun here.

The first goal is to minimize distractions. Any moment you have the rapt attention of forty pairs of ears and eyes is precious and fleeting, and any time that I feel I’m being listened to more than usual is when I try to hammer home the most important parts of the lesson to maximize retention rate in the huge sponge that is the prepubescent brain. But the smallest distraction can shatter that crystal, perfect moment, be it a pencil case falling off a desk and shooting pens and erasers in all directions, some kid thinking a quiet moment gives him permission to break it, or the teacher losing his train of thought, making it impossible to find the station in his own mind, much less the minds of his students.

One way to complete this goal is to achieve the second goal of arriving to class and conducting oneself in a way that attracts attention. How a teacher enters the classroom often dictates the mood of the class for the next hour. In high school our World History teacher, Mr. Nydeen, would often come to class overly excited and expressive. In college, Aric Putnam would walk into the room like he owned the goddam place and would sit on the desk like your best friend sits on your couch, waiting for your mom to make you two nachos as you watch the game. One approach is so physically expressive that, as a student, your attention spans are constantly stimulated by every hand gesture, facial expression, or voice inclination. The other helps to calm students down and make them feel comfortable when they need to think hard and distractions need to be minimized. I’ve found I’ve used both of these techniques in various situations, whether I want them to be excited about an incredibly boring grammatical lesson or whether I just need them to calm the hell down.

The little rascals.

In the end, I’ve found that most problems I’ve had in class are the result of class size. Growing up, I never had a class with more than 25 students in it, probably including college. I teach four different groups of kids here, each group having no less than 36 mouths that are usually found open and seeking attention through noise. One group in particular, 7A, has been exceedingly trying so far. It often takes minutes to get them to stop talking before starting class, and if anything out of the ordinary happens, everyone bursts into laughter, increasing the decibel level as well as the chances that any kid thinks it's loud enough for them to chat with their friend next door (hence, the goal of trying to minimize distractions). Personally, I’m a pretty patient dude, and can handle noise and distraction. But it hurts to see kids afraid to participate because if they say something wrong, everyone laughs. Also, because we waste more time getting everybody on the same page (often, literally) they tend to be further behind than their 7B counterparts, a problem that reared its head in the 7^th grade trimester exams (where 7A’s average was significantly lower than 7B’s).

En resumen: Things I feel I’m doing right include having a positive attitude, not taking disruptions or distractions personally, and being decently organized. Areas I need to improve are discipline and creativity in a classroom void of resources,  where I need to find ways to get as many kids involved in the same activity without causing too much distraction or noise for those yet to participate.

In essence, what I’m saying is that teachers are always learning. There is no mountaintop to reach nor finish line where you can look back and tell yourself you’ve reached the status of “great teacher” and proceed to rest on your laurels. Technology improves, pop culture changes, history advances. All of these things need to be incorporated into the plans of even the most experienced teachers. Seeing as I’m nowhere near one of those, I have to think about those as well as find out which damn classroom I’m even supposed to be in on a Thursday.

Always wear a lifejacket kids. Especially with
maestro JJ, because he will tip your boat.

Spanish word of the day: We got a twofer today! I’ve always enjoyed how similar the verbs sentarse, meaning to sit, and sentirse, meaning to feel are. I’m no linguist, and I have done zero research on this, but I’d like to imagine that they’re so similar because one needs to be sitting down to truly think, to really feel. Think about it, when someone needs to tell you something important, you’re asked to sit down. Or when someone needs comforting and gets hugged by someone, that comforting usually happens when both parties are seated. Food for thought!

Song in my head: Though his songs can easily send me into a funk, Dallas Green is one of my favorite artists, with creative hammer on's that add a bittersweet frolic to his melancholy songs. Body in a Box is one such song.