the land of cows, salsa dancing, and not much running water

Hello all,

I must apologize for my lack of blog writing as of late. I know most of you don´t care, but my auntie Helga was already bugging me to write some more ;) So...what has happened since I last wrote..well a lot. I had my first day volunteering with the kids last Thursday, which I discovered takes a lot of energy, especially seeing as we work 10 hour days! The older kids come to the centre in the morning and arrive at 7:30. We help them finish their homework and take them to the park and do different activities with them. Then the kids leave while we get ready for the lunch program. At least 75 kids come for lunch everyday, and there´s not enough room in the house for all of them to eat at the same time, so they come in shifts. It´s a pretty crazy busy time, but it´s not much different from my serving jobs back home, so it´s alright. At 1:30 we get to sit down for half an hour and eat the same lunch as the kids ate. At 2pm the younger kids come, and we do pretty much the same activities with them. On my first day both classes made a banner welcoming me to the centre, and all the kids asked me questions like what´s your favourite colour, what´s your favourite fruit, do you have a boyfriend, what are your parents names, etc. etc. The funny thing was that both of the classes asked, out of all these questions, which one is your favourite question? I thought that was hilarious, but at the time I didn´t know what to say, but now I realize that that was probably my favourite question. Everyday here is a little different which is nice, but they are just a bit too long. Today was the day when a dance teacher comes in and teaches the kids how to salsa and meringue (did I spell that right or is that just the sugary dessert?), so we got to join in which was a lot of fun. These kids can really dance, but a lot of their dancing is pretty scandalous, especially for kids, but I guess that´s the culture here! I was kind of shocked watching one of the little girls dancing today because I wouldn´t even dance like that! Not that I can dance anyway, heh. But Jimena, the dance teacher is offering to teach us, and I think I´ll probably take some lessons from her which I´d really love to do. I also started taking Spanish lessons yesterday with Anders, one of the other volunteers. We´ve had 2 classes so far, an hour each, and they´re going pretty well. Kind of basic stuff that we already know, but it will get more intense so I´m looking forward to that. Our teacher´s name is Fanny, hehe. I´m such a child. So anyway, yesterday was a good day. First of all, when we were at the park with the kids, I was looking the wrong way apparently, and as I turned my head I got smacked in the face with a basketball. And I was wearing sunglasses so they got squished into my head which was lovely...I think I have a bruise on my nose now. Oh, and today someone threw a CD in the park and it hit my shoulder and cut it a little bit. People don´t really care about throwing garbage in the garbage cans over here, so for some reason the kids like to find CDs on the ground and just throw them into the air, so I was the lucky recipient of one of those throws. But anyway, more happened in the park yesterday. While the kids were playing futbol, otherwise known as soccer, I noticed a herd of cows entering the park and heading in our direction. Some of them were bulls and had pretty big horns, and they just started walking directly towards us. As they got closer one of the little girls screamed and mass chaos erupted. I looked around and there were children everywhere, running away up into the hills, and cows and bulls scattered throughout everyone, it was actually one of the funniest things I´ve ever seen. But they were super tame, and I actually touched one of them. They climbed up into the hills, and awhile later I saw a chubby young boy with a stick herding them together to bring them back home. So strange, it´s just a different world down here. Some of the things are just so funny, like I haven´t showered in 3 days because everytime I try there´s no water. And it´s so hot down here, that a shower is definitely needed at least once a day! So hopefully if I get up at 6:30 tomorrow morning the water will be working. One of my favourite things about being here is being surrounded by Colombian culture. Everytime the kids enter the centre to come for class or for lunch, and everytime they leave they come over and give the teachers a kiss on the cheek and say hola profe, or ciao profe, and it´s the sweetest thing in the world! The kids are so cute, even though sometimes they are so frustrating because they don´t listen and get a little crazy, and I don´t have the vocabulary yet to discipline them properly in Spanish. But these greetings make up for most of the bad things they do...usually :) One thing about being here that I don´t enjoy too much is that I´m one of the only white girls that I´ve seen anywhere, and everywhere I go people just turn their heads and stare like I´m from another planet or something. It´s so annoying, but at least they don´t whistle and cat call as much as in Guatemala. There´s a new volunteer here now. Her name is Juliette and she´s 37 and from Florida. And she´s hilarious. It´s so nice to have another girl here that I can speak English with, and I get to translate for her a lot because she doesn´t know very much Spanish. But she´ll only be here for 2 weeks so I hope another girl comes soon. But things are going really well here for the most part. A friend of the volunteer coordinator for this program contacted Anders and I this past weekend, and he´s a white guy from Australia/Austria and speaks English obviously. So he took us out into the city so we could get away from the centre for awhile which was really nice. He´s lived here in Ibague for 2 years now and is fluent in Spanish, so he has been showing us around a bit. Saturday night we went for drinks with him and a couple of his Colombian friends, and on Sunday he took us to La Martinica which is pretty much a hiking trail up a mountain. It took a couple hours, but when we got to the top we could look out over the whole city and it was beautiful. Then we went back to the mall and went to see Valentine´s Day and then out for supper with a few people. Ya, so this wasn´t the most exciting blog but I had a lot to write, and hopefully some of you will find parts of it interesting. At least I know my family is reading, heh. Hopefully the next one won´t be as long...so ciao for now!