Bienvenidos from Colombia

Well.. here we are! Welcome to Colombia. It has been an exciting but tiring first day (or has it been two days... I am so tired I can't quite figure out what day it is or how long we have been here). So.. we headed out on Friday from Bonney Lake around 4:00pm. We drove down to Portland and met at Janis's house. Janis is a consultant from "The Math Learning Center" and she is the one who organized the trip along with Thom who works for the ESD with bilingual education.

There are ten teachers from White River plus we met up with two teachers from Waluke (close to Royal City where I grew up!), and also a teacher from Camas. We headed out with Janis and her husband, we rode in their big truck and pulled a huge trailer full of luggage. When we arrived at the airport, the porter said he had never quite seen anything like it! It took quite awhile for all of us to check in to the airline and get our bags x-rayed. Everything went smoothly and we got on the plane and left on time at 12:35 am (Sat. I guess it was). We tried to sleep on the plane to Houston. This was my first time to Texas! Didn't get to see much except the airport. They had a Starbucks though, thank God! Then we left about 15min. late and headed for Panama City. I slept some on the plane that leg but we were pretty exhausted when we got there. We had a 6 hour wait. We had time to eat and take a walk. I had a hard time getting any good photos, but I was a bit shocked by all the "dead" airplanes that were sitting around.

Can you tell we have been up all night?? Lisa, Dalese and Kelly took a little nap. Off we went again, changing airlines to COPA and off to Medellin (pronounced -Meda Jean who knew??) We arrived there and had our immigration forms filled out. I only had to try it three times before I got it right, ugh. Off the plane we met a security officer with a dog and a gun, a bit shocking but he was friendly. Downstairs we went through immigration, only took about 10 min. and then we were off to find our bags and stand in line AGAIN for customs. That took about 30 minutes, I was first through..

and it was EASY! This is me after 24 hours of travel... yikes!! I needed a shower and a bed.

We were met by other teachers from the school and a big sign..

like we were celebrities. We hopped on the bus with our luggage and headed off to our hostel. Janis made the bus driver stop at a outlook on the way for a beautiful view of the city.

I didn't realize how big it is. Around 4 million people live in Medellin, about the same number as ALL of Washington state. The elevation is 4,905 feet. The school we worked at each day was about 3,000 feet higher up the hill. Wow.

We made it to the "San Lorenza de Ana Hostel" late and went to bed. Well, we tried to sleep and it was a little difficult. I think I slept maybe 5 hours. We woke up at 6 am. to have breakfast and get on the bus at 7 am and get to the school by 8 am. The bus trip up the hill takes about 40 minutes. Today was Sunday so it was easier as everyone had a weekend. Lots of bike riders on the rode which was funny as the hill was SOOOO steep, no way would I ride up that hill. Colombians are very healthy people. I have seen very few overweight people and hardly any smoking. Of course they have maids to do the laundry, housework, etc. so I guess they have time to exercise. We arrived at the school (Colombus School, it is private) and went to the gym for a brief session with the other teacher participating in the institute.

Here we are in the gym getting ready for the first day (Dalese, Kelly, Holly, Me, Maribel and Irene). We were very celebrated and they are so appreciative that we are here to help them with teaching math. We had time to set up in our classrooms. I have a teacher helper who speaks Spanish to help me. Her name is Veronica. We will be doing Number Corner and also some Geometry. Lunch was very good. The food is different, but not in a bad way. I had fruit for breakfast with hot chocolate (real chocolate!) and also scrambled eggs. For lunch we had chicken, rice, and fries that were more like shredded potato chips. We also have lots of pastries after meals and for snacks. They are big on snacks here. Thank goodness. At 3:00 we headed over to the public school (Las Palmas).

Wow! What a different sort of experience. The school rooms are fairly small, all concrete walls and ceiling. The desks are chairs with a small desktop attached, adult size. There is a small whiteboard in the front of each room. The school houses all grades K-adult. So, one room might have 1st grade in the morning until lunch, then those kids go home and the 6th graders use the room until afternoon. After those kids leave, the adults have evening classes. They do not have supplies... We headed out to dinner.

A picture of all of us from White River (front l to r): Christy, Holly, and Ashley with Janis (the math rep who brought us here) (back l to r): Dalese, Lisa, Kelly, Trina, Mikki, Me and Dora

We shared dinner with Gloria, the principal of the elementary classes at the Colombus School. She lives in a nice apartment building and we had dinner on a large terrace in her building that the residents can use for parties. We had wine and live singing (latin music). We ate lasagna (not really very Italian tasting though) and strawberry salad that was very good. For dessert, make your own sundaes and their ice cream is like gelato, yummy! We all had a good time. Here we are back at the hostel and it is time for bed.. I am very tired so will sleep now. Up again at 6 am!