extreme backpack tricks. and please shut the FRONT door.

this is an entry about gr. 10

today we were working on earthworm posters with my first class, when three of the most, let´s say, unfocused boys in my class began playing with their backpacks. usually this would not fly, however, we only had 5 more minutes left of class and everyone had pretty much wrapped up their work.
anyway these boys are wild, and i like them so much. one of them says ´greeeaaaat´ just like borat, and he doesn´t even know who borat is. Another has said such ridiculous things as ´ms, when you were gone, i realized how much i love you´ or during his presentation on sponges (the lower invertebrates) he brought in a spongebob squarepants toy to demonstrate, along with his partner who had actually made a REAL model of a REAL sponge, all the parts of this marine invertebrate. the other made a poster about the california condor which looks like a grade 3 art project.. i will post a picture of it. it is on my wall. anyway. they are great boys. and they also want to buy a piranha. still waiting here.

so the extreme backpack tricks olympics began in my class this afternoon, 5 minutes before lunch. we had kids flipping backpacks with one move from between their legs to on their backs, we had balancing backpacks, we had a timed contest to see how many times you could flip your backpack around in 30 seconds..
it was pretty ridiculous. i wish i that i could show you!

and then the other gr. 10 class piles in after lunch... they are writing a test this period, and i am standing at the front of the room waiting for them to settle so i can explain the procedures...
when i hear.
oye, chicos, shut the FRONT door! (please if you don´t get this, just ask stevenowen, i pretty much fainted)

then i proceeded to tell them about ¨mother FATher!!¨
maybe not the most professional move but i really couldn´t pass up the opportunity. and it´s not actually swearing, they are 16 anyway.

oh i love these kids. they honestly make me laugh every day.


this is some of them getting ready for colombian day back in october, including the borat talker. and the condor poster.

something quiet.

here´s to a lazy sunday.

´two no six no twelve BAKER´S DOZEN. i told you that i´m crazy for these cupcakes cousin´ hahaha. watched that on SNL on saturday night. what a great sketch, oh i love andy samberg. if you haven´t seen it, search SNL lazy sunday on youtube... the best.

anyway.!

sometimes it´s nice to sit around and pretend to do work all day. i have a lot to do, still, but i managed only to set one test (i have one more to set, and lots of marking) today. it was nice. i read and slept and went out to get groceries. kind of like a normal sunday at home.

it´s funny, sometimes i feel like i´m living in this alternate world where i don´t really have to do ´real´things. my job is lots of work, of course, but most of my free time i spend doing crazy things. today was one of the first days that i didn´t do much, by choice... and weird how this day could have been the same had i spent it in canada.

i am going back to canada in three weeks, which is also sort of a weird thought. it will be so nice to see my family and friends, have a great party, hang out in the snow... but i think i will spend a lot of my time thinking about what´s going on here. it´s funny how your life can switch over to something completely different so quickly.

before home time i have to finish up invertebrates with my grade 10s, start genetics and a science fair project on plants with my 9s, help out with a talent show, spend time with important people, decide what to bring back to canada/ what i need to bring back to colombia, aaaaaaaaaaaand... generally wrap up before a 4 week break from school. maybe clean my bodega, it´s a disaster.

countdown to partY : 25 days! weeeeeeeeee!

oh, well that´s okay.

oh how the time flies when you are having too much fun or having another life crises. yikes!

i have missed the boat on lots of great blog posts..
i have been very busy needless to say. sometimes i feel like the only thing i do anymore is make lists of things i have to do. so here, fittingly, is a list of things that need to be mentioned here.

1. i went to CANal (CISV Colombia´s national meeting) which was a great success. it was lovely to experience another totally different national association, to hang out with old friends and new friends, to stay up all night sitting around playing guitar, and lastly to run a workshop on chapter development in SPANISH. yes i did that. woo wee!
2. i got sick. of course. i hadn´t slept for about three days, and then it took me maybe two days to come down with a brutal virus. my dad thought i had malaria, good thing i slept for 5 days and things seemed to clear up.
3. i lost my computer. yep. biggy dumb dumb strikes again.
i was coming home early from school since i was running a deliriously high fever and had just about fainted in my class, and just got out of the taxi without realizing that i had left my comp bag in the backseat. oh eff. i made about a million calls but to no avail, i cried for an hour and then got over it. i am lucky now that i have some available cash, and that all my stuff was backed up. so i am now typing on a brand new compie, a lil´acer straight from bogota. que buenissimo. pero malo tambien..
4. i turned 24! woowee!
here are some pictures from the events.

hooo weee a cake!

brett

ximena and steph

and unfortunately i don´t have pictures from the saturday night fiasco, but we had a great time out dancing and it was a lovely birthday weekend
5. binational games!
granadino hosted the annual binational games this year from nov.15-18. we had 11 bilingual schools (hence binational) come to granadino and play soccer, volleyball, basketball, tennis and golf. it was wild.
about half my students were on teams or helping with the event, which meant that the other half were ´in class´ with me.. but by in class i mean running all over watching the games and cheering for our teams. anyway, lots of highchool students around from all over colombia, lots of great sports, and lots of music and cheering. a super week!

i think that about sums it up. i am tired now from teaching two days in a row (haha, it feels like it hasn´t happened in ages!) and this weekend we have yet another long weekend.. i think i will actually do some work.

bryan adams on the ra-di-o

riding the bus home yesterday, when the lovely beginning of 'everything i do, i do it for you' by my favourite canadian artist bryan adams comes on the radio. yessss! so i start the classic line 'look into my eeeeyes, you will seeee.." but alas i was way off. who would have known.
" sabes que si, todo lo que hago, lo hago por tiiii"
yes it's true. the b-dogg was singing in spanish. did you know they do that here? there are lots of classics that have been translated into spanish for the pleasure of latin listeners, for example
" chiquitita you and i knoooow " - "chiquitita sabes porqueee??" ( and that is not even a direct translation. weird)
but this was the first canadian rock star, actually singing his hit in spanish.
excellent.

boo.!

remember when we dressed up like really hot bingo ladies at this time last year? i misssssssss you gals.

i would like to draw your attention to a not so recent post on 430 blogshow's blog (ie carlson and friends)
i haven't been up to date reading friend's blogs, and a few days ago i came across this lovely post.
thanks carlsbad, you are so poetic...
and here's the post:

Stop it, I'm hilarious.


Jen: Carlsbad! You're a bull!
Me [charging]: *snort**snort*
Jen: Oooolaaayyy!

An Ode to House Frontenac:
frontenac oh frontenac
those funny girls of frontenac
you had an uncommon knack
for causing us to always crap
our underwear with laugh-attacks
frontenac oh frontenac
not one of kingston's cul-de-sacs
while listening to ratatat
with the dishwasher over-stacked
drinking tea at dawn's crack
sans a farmer's almanac
frontenac oh frontenac
you were all completely whack
i sure do miss that dear old shack
and if something here is found to lack,
it won't be love, only tact

sorry this has taken so long.

october break
Monday - Friday
Isla San Andres, Colombia.

i left melgar early on monday morning, and took the bus to pereira. the bus was full, so the bus driver invited me to sit in the front with him.. which was super! the roads in colombia are soooooo windy, so my stomach was happy to be sitting in the very front for 6 hours through the andes.
i got in to pereira, met the peeps and proceeded to wait awhile for our delayed flight to san andres (supposedly this is normal: flights are always delayed) i think our plane arrived into pereira at the time we were supposed to be leaving. the turn around was pretty quick though, and then we were off flying into the carribean night... sigh.
we arrived on the island at around 12, got to our really nice hotel, explored, swam in the pools even though we weren't allowed to, hung out at the discotheque with NOBODY there (it's the low season, and it was a monday night) and ended up going to bed way too late.
we slept late and had a beachy, pina colada day on tuesday.
here is a picture of me handstanding in the ocean.


on wednesday morning we rented a jeep for 10 bucks. i was the only one who knew how to drive stick and also had my licence on me, so yep, i was on.
hilarity.
the island was really beautiful, the ocean was the brightest blue and everywhere you looked you could see booeys, where people were diving off the coast.
we stopped at an isolated beach and hung out for awhile. brett made a funny friend who gave him these beautiful shells.
we returned sunned-out to the hotel, napped (this was definitely a daily thing.. yes vacation!) showered, ate, and surprise! christopher called. he was on the island, and was flying from san andres to costa rica on monday. so we hopped an expensive cab ride into town, and went out for a really wild night of salsa, reggae and rum.
oh the island life.
i think that evening we ended up on the beach very late, with a bunch of law students from bogota that we had befriended. i danced for most of the night without shoes, and ended up losing my flipflops to a boy named jorge andres. anyway, i located his and still have them... oops.
we tried to go to their hotel, since they were staying downtown and were planning to continue partying until all hours of the night... but the hotel seemed less than pleased with their group(i think maybe because they had broken a bunch of rules all week, had disturbed all the other families staying there, jumped in the corals head first, that kind of stupid stuff. law students everywhere are the same... crazy.) so they wouldn't let us all in. fair enough. it was time to go home anyway.
thursday was a slow day, but steph and i got up and headed downtown to look around, eat pizza and hang out on the beach down there. i collected some pieces of dead coral for my class.
and then friday was our last day on the island.. we went to the spA! (yesss facials) and hung out by the pool. we got home to manizales really late at night on friday, since our flight (of course) coming from san andres was delayed until 10, and we had to drive 1.5 hours to get home from pereira...

all in all, i spent most of my time in san andres either swimming, lying in the sun, dancing, or napping. and drinking delicious margaritas. i am really good at all of those things.

it was perfect. i couldn't believe i was coming back to a JOB... what?!? I totally forgot about it while i was away.

here are some more candid moments.