perils of a tall blonde.

it has been a challenging yet lovely casi two weeks since i last posted.

i have been having minor heart attacks daily since about tuesday last week, when my director told me that unfortunately he couldn´t allow my principal to come with me on the amazon field trip in april. my principal is organizing the entire thing, since i have no clue what is going on... and now my director is pulling a fast one on me. righto! i speak perfectly in spanish, i am a native colombian, this is not my first year teaching and of cOURSE i´ve taken 28 kids on an international field trip in south america before. no problem.
the situation seems to have sorted itself out slightly. i am going with brendon, who taught my 10s in his first year at granadino and who is teaching 7/8 science. he is great and i know we will have a super time, however, he is not colombian, nor is he the principal who has organized the entire trip. it seems slightly absurd to me.. i´m honestly not sure if my director thinks i´m superwoman or something. If more than 20 kids sign up, then we will take a third, colombian, teacher. i am pushing for that for ultimate security.

anyway, because we are heading 5 hours down the river into brasil from leticia, colombia, i needed to get a brasilian visa. colombians don´t need visas but canadians do. SO. the school paid for my trip to bogotá to ´get a visa´.
i headed off saturday morning really early because i wanted to maximize my time in the lovely city.. and also because juanca and alice (pronounced a-lee-chay.. she´s italian) were having the birthday party of a lifetime!
it was up at juanca´s mountain house in sesquilé , about half an hour away from bogotá. there were atleast 80 people there, lots of delicious food and a party that rocked from 1pm ish (i arrived at three with a crew of cisvers in a van we had rented) until all hours of the night. i don´t exactly remember the goings on, but i know that at midnight alice came to find me, and i had mysteriously gone to bed, pyjamas on, clothes folded neatly, in their bed. oops! i guess i had had enough.. and had proceeded with a really ingrained bedtime routine.
on sunday i woke up rested and happy in the mountain air, and i spent the day with my two heroes in the sunshine.
we headed back to bogotá on sunday night, ate at a delish pizza place ( brie cheese, arugula and proscuitto?? unheard of) and crashed early.
on monday morning i woke up and headed to the brasilian embassy. besides a minor incident on the transmilenio(ugh), i enjoyed a lovely day with ali, going to the botero museum and her favourite little bistro in candelaria called quartetto. awesome. on monday night a group of us headed to wok!, this incredible chain of restaurants that only exist in bogotá. sushi! red thai curry! and it tasted like the real thing. ooooh it was such a treat. i mean, i love tipicos in manizales.. but fresh sushi and real curry? the big city life is tempting me.
on tuesday i returned to the brasilian embassy to pick up my visa, and headed back to manizales in the late afternoon.
getting back to school was a bit of a shocker... exam period was monday, tuesday and wednesday and my 9s had written on tuesday and were so furious at me for not being there. ´but ms erin it was soooooo hard...´whine whine. only 8 of them got over 70%. yep, i guess it was hard. but did you ever consider maybe studying? or paying attention in class? right.
my tens wrote on wednesday, with me there, and only 5 of them got over 70%. this exam i KNEW was really hard, and i had set it that way on purpose.. and it has kicked them into shape and today was miraculous with them.. re-doing all the questions for recuperation marks and planning out our next quarter together so we can learn stuff better!
tonight we are ordering delicious pizza and cuddling on the couch.
join us, i miss you faces..

lots of love.