it´s you and me, music.

was reminded today from a westcoastal music and tea package about my love affair with shad k. if you have not heard him, check out his songs at shadk.com. i saw him open for common last february and oh i WISH i had bought an album then. laura can you get me a copy?

WARNING: ENTRY ABOUT DISSECTION. DO NOT READ ON OR LOOK AT PICTURES IF YOU MIGHT FAINT.

strange and yet excellent day.
i planned an excursion for my 10th graders to the university of caldas this morning. being a new teacher and also not the most experienced dissector of all (remember fainting in 200? right) i was feeling hesitant about doing a mammalian dissection just me and my students. so we called up the uni and they offered to have us for a morning to dissect a fetal cow. these fetuses come from mummy cows who have been killed for meat, so i was happy to be learning from them rather than them just being thrown away.
i was excited to take part in the dissection with my students. the guy who led us through the process (and gave my kids an awesome lecture beforehand about the beauty of life and life processes) is a prof in the veterinary department. he was incredibly passionate about what he did (what i caught from the rapid spanish was that he studied fetal development in mammals for his PHD) and really challenged my students to think about what constitutes life. cool beans.
then we moved on to the dissection which was just so different than anything that i am used to. to set the scene, we were in a large sort of farmlike room with tables to put sick animals on. there was a horse, a puma and a dog, all being worked on (draining blood, preserving the samples, etc) and an ENTIRE crossection of a pig. also bones, skulls, dental anatomy.. kind of all over the place. at the back there was a room with SO many specimens, unprotected, just sort of waiting to be treated or preserved.. really sort of creepy. there was also a room full of bones.
it was an odd, odd place.
so, this lovely passionate man started to show my kids these cow fetuses. he did an awesome anatomy lesson, let all the kids touch them, and then began to open one to study the inner organs. it didn´t bother me all that much, it was just so haphazard (is that how you spell that word?). he would remove organ after organ after system, naming the parts and showing them to the kids and passing them around. i found this really wierd, i think just because the norm is to keep the specimen as intact as possible. these parts were just sort of discarded on the table.. and people moved on. so weird! i was so used to ´´putting things back´´ and disposing of the specimen as a whole.. not in its parts. out of respect for something that was alive, or atleast could have been.
anyway since this whole activity was happening in spanish and i didn´t know what to expect, i kind of had to let go of it all.. let them do things the way that is normal here. also, i was dealing with a phew woozie kids. and figuring out how i was going to debrief this whole thing.
afterwards, we thanked our lovely passionate PHD man with a box of chocolates and a card (i feel so bad at this point for not remembering his name.. yikes) and the kids boarded the bus to go back to school. all in all the kids definitely learned a lot, it is always great to have a hands on experience especially with someone who knows so much about the topic. tomorrow i am having them write a reflection and hopefully a discussion about the activity.. and maybe the respect for life thing will come up on its own. i hope so, since we have done some interesting ethical activities on dissection before we even started them.

so THAT was the adventure of a fetal cow dissection! want to see some pics?
no they aren´t THAT graphic.

ok, next entry actually about life. only 1.5 weeks until weeklong breakie break!


smart boys.


the group. horse. yikes. right, i´m in colombia.


neat picture of the brain. it really is an incredible and beautiful organ, in serious.

i said please, please don´t insist.

after school on a tuesday. rocking out. no meeting. kids said they would stay for extra help but did not pull through. time to write something down.

had a real moment on sunday of missing winter life in kingston. weird, i know. i was sitting at a café, it was rainy and chilly and i closed my eyes for a second to think, and ended up in a daydream about tea in the kitchen of 454. i miss the crispy snow and creamy earl gray. and of course the unbeatable company.

in other news - wait for it - feb. 28th marked the last official day that our director worked for granadino. yep, he´s gone. big changes in store. it was a long time coming. not sure what else i should write here about it.. it´s been a big deal at school. to tell you the truth i was a bit let down that he didn´t actually get to return from his international hiring trip to work. the highschool students were ready to revolute, if that is a word. that would have been interesting.

now our lovely business director is in charge. i am completely unaware of what is going with the new international hires, or when we will get a new director. i have been so focused on my own little classroom that this stuff has gone over my head a bit. we will see.

cisv has been a challenge as well. we are trying so hard to send a delegation to norway, but cisv colombia has LOTS of fees that travellers have to pay before they even pay for their ticket or program fees. i don´t really have to deal with family things, since my spanish is not up to par, but diego has been having ethical dilemma after ethical dilemma. how can we ask people to pay THAT much for something? talking about cisv is easy, but then telling people about the cost is almost embarassing. it has become so exclusive that the ideals of cisv are lost.. and the 2% of the manizaleño population that can actually afford it only see it as a travel organization, and aren´t willing to work on development when they return from their experiences.
as a canadian i feel, again, like i´ve lived in a box - cisv is older and better developed in canada, still expensive, but there are opportunities for subsidies and less debilitating membership fees. it is hard to understand for me where all this money that we are asking for is even going. also, cisv canada is doing great things outside of international programs. i guess it all takes time. maybe it was the idealist in me that thought it would be easy to just start and it work out great.
at this point diego is composing a letter to bogotá to address our struggling chapter´s concerns about the cost and the exclusivity of the organization. who knows what will happen next.

ski hard all you marchbreakers out there. and sarah! see you in a few weeks i can´t even wait. serioso.

musical advice: los angeles waltz - razorlight. no hay pa´ mas - lucas arnau.