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.

i´m out here in the sand.

two interesting AND funny stories.

i am making a ´collection of gums´ as my students call it. i started it two days ago. if i catch a kid chewing gum in class, they have to put their piece of gum on this fluoroscent pink bristol board that says ´gum collection´. then i write their name next to their piece of gum. disGUSting!
i told the students that once they have 3 pieces of gum on the poster, they will get a consequence of the classes´ choosing. one kid suggested that they eat all the gum that is on the paper. rough!!! this has been going on for only a few classes, and already i have a collection of 20 chewed pieces. and now the kids are starting to make them into patterns when they are asked to put it on the piece of paper. it´s so sick, honestly. but my kids think it is so disgusting and funny, so i hope by the time someone gets to three pieces and has a gross consequence the gum chewing will stop.
anyway. it´s creative i guess. but gross.

i learned a new reading game called popcorn with my grade 10s yesterday. i gave them an interesting article on amphibians being good environmental indicators, read the first page aloud to catch their interest, and then left them to it. one student says to me ´no, ms erin, that is not how reading works. when your voice is tired, all you have to say is ´popcorn, someone else´and they will keep on reading´. ok. popcorn, juan fernando. and juan fernando reads two paragraphs and then repeats ´popcorn, miguel´. and the out-loud reading continues.
it is so funny that my 15 and 16 year old kids wanted to keep on reading aloud to each other. eventually i began to work on some other things, and the kids kept on reading with the occasional ´popcorn, juliana´. hilarious. and all on their own.
well trained. not by me that is for sure!

at the end of class, pedro says to me. ´hey, we were super cuisiosos today, huh?´. there is no good translation for the word cuisioso. it means on task and careful and responsible and diligent, pretty much.

and i said yes, you were.

i´m alright, by the way.

oooooh you make me safe, now.

sorry sorry sorry. it has been a long pause, again. i can never seem to find the time or energy to write during the week at school, since usually all i am thinking about is lesson plans and marking. they would be riveting entries, i´m sure...
also, the internet in the apto has been less than dependable and our faithful dial up connection has possibly become slOWER... i´m really not sure how that is possible, but it takes about 20 minutes to do anything. but i am spending the time now. it´s sunday at almost 630.

i have had another lovely weekend, at a birthday party last night where we all slept over in tents in the rain, and then it was sunny all day so we stayed to hang out. real nice.
however, one of my closest friends decided not to come to the party, for matters of the heart.. he has fallen head over for a lovely colombiana who unfortunately has a less-than-cool boyfriend that she keeps breaking up with and then getting back together with(they were both at the party last night). she is leading my friend on and keeping him as some sort of backup plan, i don´t think realizing how much she is messing him up, and this saga has been going on for months. it is a tough situation, and i find at times that i don´t know what to TELL him about it, or how to be a supportive friend. he always wants to talk about it and sometimes i am lost for words, because it is just such a crappy situation. so please send some advice my way.. if you have any.

otherwise back to the grind tomorrow. hopefully my kids will be better behaved this week. it has been challenging getting them back on the learning bandwagon after so much class time disruption, the end of a quarter and the beginning of another one, parent teacher interviews and recuperation projects.

anyone have any ideas about how to get kids to stop chewing gum in class without doing mouth checks every time they walk in the door? there is gum all over my furniture. sick.

in other news: maegan and i somehow got our hands on a copy of alias season one. we started last week, no subtitles, pure adrenaline. oooooh it´s good.

hiking in quindio. ooooosh.

party people in the house.

carmen, alejandro y yo

hoo wee

anama and the korean.


haaaaaaahaaha

ana maria and me
this is so funny, more than half my pictures have me doing something stupid in them. this never happens! what a great party.

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.