Days 6-11 - Catching up on lost time

Days 6-11 were June 15th-20th. There wasn´t a (Iḿ using a Spanish keyboard from the hotel I am currently staying in, so there is no apostrophe-only the accent mark!) whole lot of interesting things that occurred during these days sincefor the majority of them, we were taking classes from around 9:30am-5pm. Also, I had a lot of homework, got tired easily due to my anemia, and started to get sick. As a result, I chose rest over posting on my blog every single day! We got to tour a private (which I think may have been presbyterian) all-girls school one day as well as a public school designed for students that want to be teachers. Each class level had a large age range since Colombia does not believe in passing students who have not met all the requirements. As at all of the schools in Colombia, the students wore uniforms. Many of the uniform options were sweatpants and a shirt. I felt so bad for the students playing outside in the hot Barranquillans sun whose shirts were completely drenched in sweat! I guess they dont believe in gym shorts? The classrooms in both schools pretty much all had air conditioning. I sat in on an English class in the public school. I only got to see part of it and I was confused as to how to the project they were working on had anything to do with what was being taught, but the few children that spoke had pretty good English, so I guess theyre doing something right! Some other students sat in on a history class in which the lecture, coincidentally, happened to be over when the US stole Panama from Colombia in order to build the Panama Canal, which got real awkward real quickly for the American students observing. We also toured another school, el Colegio Americano, which was a presbyterian school. One side was a high school, and the other side was a university. The classroom we sat in to hear a lecture of one of the schoolś teachers was absolutely gorgeous and they had a smartboard! In this time period, I saw two movies: terremoto - La falla de San Andrés (aka "San Andreas") and Una Espía Despistada (aka "Spy"). The first I really enjoyed. It was in 3D and I think Iḿ not that big of a fan of 3D movies...or maybe it was jsut the fact that we were in the 6th row. It was super stressful, but I didn enjoy it. Us white people ended up laughing more since there were some jokes that just didnt translate (we saw it in English with Spanish subtitles) and it bugged me since some of the things were not translated more literally instead of being in the way that it was intended to mean. The second was dubbed in Spanish and had no subtitles. Really, the only reason we saw it was cause it was the only movie that we wouldnt have to wait several hours for and we all wanted to see a movie since they were half priced on Wednesdays. I was pretty sure that it was rated R, but at the other mall, I remembered seeing that it was "recommeded for 12 and older" so I figured it culdnt be too bad. There were defintiely some things I didnt catch and it was hard to follow along with the distraction of the lips not matching up with the sound. However, Im pretty sure I missed a lot of vulgarity that I did not need to hear/understand anyway. There was however, some male genitalia (sorry mom, haha). All of us students were thoroughly mad. None of us were expecting that and none of us appreciated the movie. The worst part was there were some very young children (like age 7-ish) sitting behind us with their parents and they all seemed thoroughly content and approving of the movie. The weird thing was that one of the other students had seen in it in the US and said that she didnt remember it being that vulgar and she certainly did not see any nudity - that she would have remembeed. Perhaps South America is more tolerant and the nudity was just in the Spanish version? I dont know, but one thingś for sure...weŕe not going to chance it with any rated R movies again! We went to a Carribbean Museum which was cool since they had a portion of objects that were distinctly Colombian (some of which were old) and we were allowed to touch them and pick them up!

Words/slang common to the coasal region of Colombia

That same day, one of my professors ended up taking me and another student home so that we didnt have to take a taxi. That day I started to show the first signs of getting sick and right once I got home, I started to get ready to head over to a nearby store to buy some medicine...until I realized my wallet (with all the Colombian money that I currently had, my credit and debit cards, and my driverś license.) I began crying cause I could not think of where my wallet could possibly be. The only place that seemed to make sense was in the shuttle we rented to take us to the museum. There was a chance that I could get it back since we knew exactly which shuttle was in and had a way to contact the company. However, it was not there. It ended up being in the car of Profesora Lucila, the woman that took me home. Why it was not in my burse, I have no idea since I had no reason to take it out, but I was just happy that I was able to get it back with everything in it! Iḿ definitely making an effort to be more aware since I wont always be that lucky! There was one restaurant that we went to during this time that was a bit nicer than what we were used to but that, according to our professor, is not considered "fancy." There, I ordered filet mignon. Iḿ pretty sure it wasnt actually filet mignon cuase it looked nothing like it but it was still the best steak Ive ever had. Last Friday (June 19th), we went to a restaurant that was supposed to be super upscale. It was on the 26th floor of a hotel, and we had a view of all of the city. In my opinion, it really wasn´t that great of food, considering it must have been expensive. I preferred the place that had filet mignon! Shortly into the night, a band started playing and eventually dancing began (which only began cause people from our group began dancing). It was kinda awkward cause there really was not a dance floor. Basically it was as if we were dancing in any other normal restaurant in which dancing does not normally occur. But, the other guest ended up dancing as well and it was fun.

The back seat of the taxi that we fit 5 people into!