termales la quinta, march eight and nine, twothousandeight.

la quinta.


the termale.



most beautiful horse.



it really didn't do it justice.

eating grass like the vacas. delish.

in the waterfall. clothes on.

luis cooking potatos in the hotspring.

yeah em. love wins. (?)

scenery and vaquero.

muddy.

farmers in training.

love the punch.

back now in the lil' apto getting ready to work again tomorrow.

these next four days will be hectic getting ready for the amazon with 19 slightly wild grade 10 students. if you are coming with me on this trip, you cannot enter my classroom unless you have a) copied your passport one million times, b) gotten your yellow fever shot and have it documented on a REAL certificate, c) have had your parents sign your life away to me for 7 days in the brasilian jungle, notarized and fingerprinted. d) have collected all the proper material to make natural bug spray (including: strange soaps and menticol, something that smells like citronella and some weird pills you have to mush up)

i am not even joking.

but honestly. this is what my students come up with.

" you see, i got the fiebre amarilla last year in gorgona, so i don't need to show you the shot right?"

"my parents are away for 100 days. i can't do anything myself"

" which passport number do you need now and which later? why? how come? how do i know which is which ? where are they again? "
(yes, colombians have 2 different passport numbers, who in the eff knows why, maybe just to make things more complicated, but as a colleague of mine says, you are in the wrong place to be asking these kinds of questions. just because, ok?)
(also because my students seem to think i am an expert on colombian passports. right)

atleast this year is round 2 and with less kids, so i have it a little easier...

this week off was incredibol. i basically forgot how to speak english, read two books, slept and ate arepa huevo, hung out with sofia and incorporated, walked on the beach - yep. that's it.

there are some nutso pictures on facebook that make it seem like my vacation was 100% partytime. really that was like 2 nights of 7. most times i went to bed at 10. because i could!

it was so lovely of the restrepo's to have me at their beach house. basically it was paradise that included a lot of free things. and cheap REAL pearls for mum's birthday. (happy birthday!). hanging out with families makes me miss mine.

also, for those of you who don't know, my mum is basically a famous diva since for the last week she has been starring ( ie in the chorus) in la traviata at the NAC. let me copy you a message i received from my father.

"Hi there. Where are you? We are at the Chateau Laurier. you mother is lolling about in her Divaness after the opening night preformance of Latraviata last night. it was a great performance and your mother looked marvelous in both of her ballroom dance / party gown outfits. She was by far the best of the chorus performers with her beauty and stage presence! We had a group of glebites and others there including your aunt and uncle. We all went to Le Cafe after and stayed too late to make it to the cast party. "

i'm sorry. what kind of life is this?!?!

to boot, they are now getting ready for their 6 week trip to france, in order to eat cheese and "practice french".

moving on.

i am always excited to see my students again after holidays. they are so funny! when vacations start i am always relieved (releaved? sht!) to see them go and not have to deal with them for a long time, but then by the end i always miss them. my director calls me the oversympathetic teacher as a joke. not in a bad way though. or maybe it's in a bad way?

so, it's another two weeks of chaos, and then things settle in order to cement this curriculum work i'm doing, as well as get ready for numerous adventures in the near future, which include moving to bogotá in august, and cisv-ing around italy for 6 weeks this summer.

oh life, thanks for being you. seriously. i am feeling quite lucky and overly thankful. i am in a moment of real pleasure right now. here in mz for the last few months, enjoying my students, growing a lot as a teacher, going back to the amazon, just home from the caribbean and getting ready for great new things. sunned out and happy soy yo.

so, thanks. (knock on head)

love, erin.

you are what love is to me.

this weekend i got lost on a horse in paradise.

check out http://www.termaleslaquinta.net/

it turns out that my friend luismiguel's family owns it. and we got to go this w/e for a small retreat. and it was wondrous. we rode horses, sat in the hotsprings, cooked potatos at the fuente, milked cows, watched the sunset over the waterfall, played cards and mandolin, etc.

we also listened a lot to bluegrass chris thile, punchbrothers and nickel creek. you should check these groups out, i am kind of in love.

in other news on thursday i got a little cyst cut out of my face! it was tiny and nobigdeal. i asked the dermatologist if i could keep it. she thought i was crazy. then i wrapped it up and brought it to school to look at under the microscope. my kids and colleagues were sufficiently wierded/grossed out. it was all in all a great success.

now i have to wear some micropore tape on my face for awhile so i don't get a scar. it's kind of hardcore.

it has been interesting to observe this border and sovereignty conflict from the inside. maybe it is my surroundings and social groups but it really seems that uribe was diplomatic - in making a mistake by crossing into ecuadorian territory to attack the FARC camp but apologizing for it - what seems way more problematic is the fact that there were (or are) FARC camps in ecuador, and how defensive both countries became. some of the information found on reyes' computer is really suspect, and it is becoming more and more evident that chavez is funding the FARC and also likely hiding their leader, marulanda, inside venezuela.

despite not being an uribista in any way, i do applaud the way he acted during this uproar. it has won him a lot of points in colombia. something like 84% of voters are behind him? that is huge.

next week is semana santa and i am driving up to the coast with sofi and family.

my 9s just finished watching outbreAK! and now they are swearing in english, saying they learnt it from the movie. gawd.

i am only taking 19 kids to the amazon because of a trick that one of the grade 10 classes played on their new english teacher. it has been tough dealing with that for the past while in my class, since i was not part of this situation and i am now enforcing the consequence and i don't necessarily agree with it, however, you do what you gotta do. it is definitely less stressful taking less kids.

that's all.
will post pictures, because i'm into that.