Barranquilla: the Beginning!

On August 6th, I flew into Barranquilla, the incredibly hot and humid city on the northern coast of Colombia, where I will be living and working for the next ten months. A lot goes on when you move to a new place, especially when that place is located in a foreign country -- new living arrangements, new job, new friendships, new climate, new foods, new methods of transportation, new accents in the language, etc. etc.!

My first day in Barranquilla, I went straight from the airport to la Universidad del Norte, the university I am now working at as an English Teaching Assistant. I toured the campus, met some of my coworkers, got the keys to my office (wow, that makes me feel grown up to have an office), and learned about what my duties would entail as a teaching assistant. Within UniNorte, I work at the Instituto de Idiomas (Language Institute), which offers language-learning programs not only in English, but also in German, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Mandarin. I love love LOVE working in such an international environment. I share my office with a Brazilian girl, our neighbor is from England, down the hall are two professors from Germany, and there are a couple other gringos from the U.S. as well. Of course, I work with Colombians, too!!

I couldn´t have been any luckier with how my living arrangement here played out. UniNorte had arranged for me to visit three different apartments on my first day in Barranquilla, and then I could choose the one I liked best for temporary housing until I found something on my own. But as it turns out, I won´t need to look further for another living arrangement - because where I am now fits me perfectly. I live with a Colombian woman, Sandra, who has become like an older sister, mother, teacher, and friend all in one. My Colombian "familia" includes not only Sandra, but her 12 year old daughter, Gaby, as well as her best friend, Pablo, who is 25 and hangs out with us in the apartment all the time.

Mi familia colombiana, just before enjoying ajiaco, a typical Colombian soup that Sandra had prepared for all of us!

My first day, Sandra and Pablo took me to the Colombian equivalent of a Super Walmart, so that we could buy some groceries. As we were walking through the alcohol section, Sandra and Pablo grabbed two cans of beer out of one of the fridges, and then asked if I wanted one, too. I replied with a "sure," thinking that the beer would be for later - but nope! They opened the cans right then and there, and we drank our beer as we continued grocery shopping!

Wait, WHAT!?!? You can drink beer from the store, as you shop, before paying for it? -- Claro que sí!!!! This is Barranquilla, Colombia! Salud!!!

What else is it like to live in Barranquilla?

My shower doesn´t have different temperature settings - there´s just one knob, for water. With 90 degree weather every single day of the year, there´s no point in taking a hot shower - you´d just get out sweating.

Traffic "rules" include honking as you approach an intersection or to warn pedestrians that you´ll run them over if they don´t move. If you´re not the driver, seat belts are optional, and sometimes, completely nonexistent: I have been in cars where, out of habit, I reach back to buckle up, and there is no belt to be found. People on the street will splash your car´s front window with soapy water and squeegy it off, hoping to earn some Colombian pesos, unless you vigorously wave your finger NO at them as they are approaching you. Of course, those who are moving throughout the city via donkey and cart don´t need to worry about that!

There´s really no such thing as a "quiet hour" or curfew in apartment buildings. There is always, always music playing, and if you hear a party going on, then the proper reaction would be: Why didn´t they invite me??? 

The mosquitoes love my gringa blood, and for some really odd reason, even more so from my right foot than from my left foot. Last week, I had one or more mosquito bites on every single toe on my right foot; this week, they decided to enjoy the skin on top of my right foot. My left foot? Eh, just a couple bites now and then...

When it rains here (which it does pretty much every day), it pours. And along with the downpours, come the arroyos: the rivers that pass through the streets because the drainage systems aren´t quick enough to catch up
to the heavy rains. The arroyos, when really, really bad, can sweep away cars, humans,or pretty much anything in their path. One day, Iris (fellow Fulbrighter here in Barranquilla) and I braved the rainy weather to go exploring, and crossed some arroyitos, or little arroyos. In order to cross one particular arroyo, which was deeper and running much faster than the arroyitos we had walked through before, a man wheeled us in a cart from one side of the street to the middle of the street, where a homemade bridge of simple wooden boards set across stone blocks, spanned the remainder of the street. I don´t intend on letting any arroyos swallow me whole while I am living in Barranquilla, so thank goodness for this man´s arroyo-crossing invention!!

Luckily, right now the skies are sunny and I don´t think I´ll have to battle any arroyos on my way out of work. More curiosities of mi vida Barranquillera to come!!

Here it is... EL BLOG.

To blog or not to blog? That was the question. And after telling many a-people that I probably would not start a blog, since I could easily picture myself starting one and then abandoning it later, here I am -- writing my first entry. There are too many things about Colombia that I feel I should share with the world, because, after all, as a Fulbrighter, part of my duty is to engage in a cross-cultural exchange. So, as I blog my adventures and experiences, I hope that you, too, can be part of this cross-cultural exchange (at least vicariously through me). Here it is...el blog! Vamos!

My first week in Colombia -- and first experience ever in South America -- was spent in Bogotá, where all of us Fulbright students, scholars, and ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) gathered for orientation. We learned about Colombia´s history and politics, its education system, and its culture, through various presentations that the Fulbright Commission in Colombia had arranged for us. Probably the best part of the orientation seminar was that we Fulbrighters were able to get to know each other a lot better, to the point that it felt bittersweet when we all had to go our separate ways to get to our respective cities in Colombia. We do, however, plan to visit one another in each of our cities, as well as reunite in my Colombian city, Barranquilla, during its famous festival: Carnaval!!!!!

Since I was so slow to start the whole blog thingamabob, I have spent almost two weeks in Colombia already, which means almost two weeks of catching up to do! So here are some random tidbits about my time in Bogotá that I´d like to share with you, and then some other day, I´ll write about my experiences in Barranquilla thus far...

in Bogotá....

1. The potholes. Walking around the city, one of the first things I noticed was all the potholes in the streets and sidewalks. Some look like they lead to China, and others are like an in-ground trash bin; some were caused by erosion over time, and others clearly were meant to be there, but with some sort of metal covering. Before, having solid cement under my feet was not something that came to mind when I thought of typical American priveledges, but after walking around Bogotá, I appreciate the municipal infrastructure of the American cities I have walked in to a much greater degree. (note: So far, I have not noticed the pothole problem in Barranquilla.)

2. The street vendors. On every street, vendors were selling fruits, Colombian junk foods, or cell phone minutes. Probably 90% of these vendors all had the same bright, multi-colored umbrella over their goods.

3. The national pride. I didn´t expect this (probably because of the bad rep that Colombia has in America), but there seems to be a strong sense of national pride in Colombia. There were Colombian flags flying all over the place in Bogotá. And this sounds silly, but I have never loved a flag so much. Colombia´s flag is simple, but beautiful: three bold stripes, yellow at the top, blue in the middle, and red at the bottom (and the yellow stripe is a little bit wider than the other two). After reading about the meaning behind the colors, I learned that the yellow represents the land and gold of Colombia, the blue, the seas that surround it, and the red, the blood shed in order to give Colombia its freedom from Spain. Since Spain´s flag is yellow and red, the blue stripe between the red and yellow ones on the Colombian flag also represents the ocean between the two countries. Qué linda!

4. The opinions on America. One day during our week in Bogotá, some of us ETAs went to Plaza Bolívar, which is located in the historical center of Bogotá. A few Colombian teenage girls, in their school uniforms, approached a couple of us female ETAs and asked us where we were from. When they found out that we were from the US, they practically screamed with excitement, and when they found out we spoke Spanish, they, again, were suuuper excited, and when they asked us our names, and we told them our names in our native American accents, they, once again, were incredibly excited. They kept calling us "lindas" (pretty) and "perfectas" (perfect). To put it simply, they seemed to adore us just because we were American. What had been just two or three girls quickly turned into a much bigger group of girls, some of which started telling us about their boy problems (and a couple of them were crying about these boy issues even...). Quite the spectacle. After we all took a picture together (and the girls loved this, too), they left, and a man who was selling beaded jewelry approached us. After we ETAs all refused him with a polite "No, thank you" in Spanish, he started to ask us why we were refusing him if we were from the US and people from the US had a lot of money. We tried explaining to him (again, very politely) that we couldn´t just throw money around, but he kept making incredibly snarky comments about how Americans don´t know Spanish (even though we were speaking in Spanish with him and told him that our entire group knew Spanish), and that they have an attitude that he doesn´t like... he was basically against us because we were American (and because we didn´t give him our money). He was the one with the attitude, as he left us with the remark, "America is the worst country in the world and you know it." So within two minutes, we went from a group of teenage girls who LOVED us because we were American, to a man who was disgusted with us because we were American. Having the identity of someone American definitely means something in other parts of the world. I imagine that I´ll encounter other experiences such as these during my time in Colombia.


But for now, that´s all I am going to leave you with! I´m about to meet with my academic coordinator here at my university in Barranquilla. Hasta luego....