I am sorry for the short entry last night, but I am ready to attempt summing up my last 9 days in this wonderful country... Last weekend was wonderful. On Saturday I woke up early and sacrificed paragliding on a beautiful day in order to take a day-trip by myself. I took a bus to Rionegro, a small yet bustling town about an hour from Medellin. The town was cute, the bus ride was pretty, and the people were nice; However, I have been to more interesting and beautiful places. Marie, if you read this, I went into a church in [View Full Entry]

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WOW, I have a week to sum up here, and that is too difficult. SOOOO this time I will let the pictures do most of the story telling. and the uploading of pictures took almost two hours so im spent. i will write more tomorrow when I am good and depressed that it is my last day. [View Full Entry]

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Wednesdays at the foundation are slower because the kids have clases de valores throughout the day. During some down-time, I had somewhat of an awakening. I have constantly been thinking about how these children need motivation to come to class, behave well, and learn some English. My state of my mind was on a grand scale, thinking that the kids need to see new places, understand that there are opportunities, and hear success stories about children who used to live at the foundation (not stories like Marisol gets murdered while back out on the streets). Suddenly, FINALLY, I thought about it [View Full Entry]

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Colombia! Last year when a group of travelers I met told me I had to go to Colombia I let out a small laugh and said something like, "What for? To sample the coffee and get kidnapped"? "No", they said, "You really need to go to Colombia". "All right, whatever" I said, "Next year I'll go to Colombia". And boy am I glad I came, after being here for nearly four weeks I'm not to sure where to start; how about with one of the most beautiful national parks I have been to. Parque Nacional Tayrona The Caribbean coast of Colombia [View Full Entry]

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Picture time again! The pictures of the children are at that place I had mentioned in my last blog, the game box. The pictures of artwork, that I took until I got yelled at, are of some of my favorite paintings at the Museo de Antioquia. The museum was alright, nothing to go crazy about. The first floor was all really boring and old portraits. I have never seen so many portraits in one section of a museum and I quickly left. After that there was a lot of old, very religious works. The more modern stuff was more interesting to [View Full Entry]

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I have the better part of a week to talk about, so I will go through and describe some of the more important highlights... Funny Story: My first story still makes me laugh out loud as I am walking down the street by myself and thinking about it. An important thing to keep in mind as I tell this story is that the students we are teaching hardly know ANY words in English. OK? VERY few. To begin: Sascha and I were leading a lesson with 4 or 5 of the older kids while Ari took a few of them elsewhere. [View Full Entry]

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I am in love with Antioquia. Ok, first I will begin with Friday. Friday was mine and Sascha's first day teaching by ourselves. We taught the older kids in the morning, organized and planned our behinds off, and then we each had really long one on one lessons in the afternoon. I worked with Luisa, who is a wonderfully kind and cooperative 13 year-old with striking green eyes that you cannot help but get drawn into. During this lesson, I would say that Luisa taught me as much Spanish as I taught her English, and we developed a trust and a [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday, one volunteer and I, Jennifer, spent the first half the day with two girls, Marcela and Leidy. They are two of the three girls I mentioned in an earlier blog whose mother was selling gum by the park the other day. They are absolutely adorable and we had a great time teaching them and playing with them. Not know Spanish very well isn't too bad because the children are the most patient and will probably teach me the most. I am teaching them English anyway, so it works out rather nicely. Except when I say yes to something without fully [View Full Entry]

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Today was my first official day working at the foundation, and it was an interesting one. Most of the children are away on holiday, so less than half have been there for over a week. They will slowly trickle back in until Sunday, then it will be back to almost 60. It is so interesting how this foundation works. A lot of the children have parents who are dead, and a lot have parents who are addicted to drugs and on the streets. Some do have parents and/or family that they return to for holidays if they want to, but I [View Full Entry]

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I have spent 24 hours in Medellin and I am SO MUCH happier than I ever expected to be. For starters, the airport is a 40 minute drive up and over a mountain, and the city of Medellin is already at an altitude of 5000 feet, so you can imagine how beautiful the scene is and how fresh the air feels. The city is HUGE and covers a large valley in between some of the andean mountains. In the airplane from Panama City, despite how tired I was, I could not stop staring at the scenery. I watched the patchwork farms [View Full Entry]

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