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Published: December 1st 2010
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Sorry for the delay. These blogs are honestly becoming a chore to write... anyway.
Being in an apartment full of americans and canadians, thanksgiving was a pretty big event in the household. The idea was that everyone prepares one dish and the end result is a giant table full of food with a lot of guests. I must say that I liked it. After some deliberation, everyone picked what they liked/could make as an addition to the table. I took the easy street and decided to do stir fried vegetables. The kitchen, on the day before and on the day of the dinner, was pretty hard to move through as there were so many people cutting, cooking, boiling etc etc. I went out the morning of the dinner and bought groceries, and chopped them out throughout the afternoon. It seemed like there would be about 20-25 people coming in so it was quite a bit of ingredients. I finished just before people started arriving and had a little time to relax and enjoy a glass of box wine. On the table we had, a turkey (which was hard to find), chicken, mashed potatoes (which werent cooked), a gravy and a
few more items i cant recall. The dinner was great with a lot of people stopping by whom i didnt know but had the pleasure of meeting. We also decided to go down the cheap road in terms of alcohol and bought boxed wine, which australians will know, is bottom of the barrell. There were a few colombians that came, friends of other volunteers, including one fellow whose hobby was juggling/contact juggling. We were treated to a bit of a show, and i only put up what i though to be the most interesting but he just as easily does 5 balls. Later in the evening, people started leaving and only a few hardened veterans remained at the table around a box of rum, me being one of them. The night ended about 4 hours before we had to wake up for the field trip without any dramas though. It was worth it though!
The next day was the last day of school for the soacha kids and we were taking them to the scientific center named Maloka. The program coordinator woke me up at about 7:30 because I would not respond to my alarm. Needless to say, I
was not very enthusiastic to go but had no choice as I already agreed. The 2 hour busride did not allow for much sleep but listening to music, breathing the disgusting polluted air, and watching the city prepare for the weekend was quite an experience especially under such a fragile state of mind. We arrived at the school at about 10 with an hour to spare before the field trip buses came. We prepared the kids and spent a little time playing with them while we waited. It was a group of 23 of the nicest kids so it made life a lot easier. The bus trip there was through some of the worst roads i have seen a bus try to pass but we got there without any fatalities. We arrived there and had to wait another 45 mins until a guide came to give us the tour. There were some other older kids there belonging to another school also waiting for their tour. In the time we were waiting one of our boys, who I dubbed casanova, managed to chat up and steal a kiss from 2 girls who were at least 5 years older. I need to
take notes from this guy...
The tour was great, there was a lot of bits on prehistory (evolution), some physics concepts, some astrology. All the good stuff that kids need but is often tainted with creationist garbage. Part of the tour was a 3d movie about whales and dolphins which was funny to watch as the kids kept reaching out and trying to grab the projections (some of them had never seen an elevator let alone a 3d whale). The climax for me was a giant static electricity generator which got the hair standing on a few of the kids. Later, another current creating generator gave all the kids a nice shock (like that on trick pens). It was all in good fun and no one got hurt.
The trip back to the school was again through some horrible roads and we arrived somewhere around 6. One of the other colombian volunteers had a a car and gave us a lift back to town (another 2 hours), accumulating to an 11 hour day with a pretty severe hangover.
On the car ride back we got to talk a little to our colombian friend and he outlined some of the rules
of colombia to us (roughly):
- dont worry about anything. everything will always be ok
- dont worry about money, because nobody has it anyway
- dont worry about appointments, manyana (meaning tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes :-)
That so far kind of sums up colombia for me. I really like it here.
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