despedida.

despedida de lara, grade 4


grade 4s dancing

grad.

cool masks guys

grad party. nacho kathleen and me.

despedida de deb y german.

german and the musicians.

snacks.


saxophone. saxaphone? saxiphone? saxephone.

just awkward. nelson and me.

paula, erin and the musicians.

isa and me

it has been a long and emotional rollercoaster filled few weeks. uhuh. not to say that it hasn´t been lovely, it has. but trying and interesting and revealing as well!

i am at work today, but there are hardly any teachers around and of course no students. the last day of school was thursday. sigh of relief. i made it through and a) i´m not dead and b) my kids hopefully learned atleast one thing.

i of course have piles of papers to sort through and curriculum documents to re-write which is why i am in today. also, i´m not coming back until august 13th, which is 1.5 weeks late. yeah, good idea to put in some time now.

it feels funny around here. i guess maybe because there is constant change in staff, people are more used to it than i am. so many staff are off on new adventures and it´s sort of interesting to watch them go... i keep on finding myself saying "man, you are going to have a great life!" which is sort of awkward. haha.

we are getting ready to move too. of course kathleen is all packed and organized and i haven´t even started. i´m too much for her. it´s a good thing we will have our own spaces next year.

it´s been interesting to have the graduating class this year too... their grad ceremony and party party UP was last weekend. the 35 of them have been together for so long. and most of them are heading to bogotá to study there, but still, to leave here for them must be really strange. i am just so excited for what they have coming at uni. they are going to learn so much and grow up and have great adventures. but weird to have gotten to know them for a year and now they are off into the world. fly, little ones!

the saddest despedida will be when deb and german leave for canada next week. we had a super party for them on saturday.

for those of you keeping up with my dramatic life. there has still been no word. YET. ...?!

the same as i love you you´ll always love me too.

just thought that might make you laugh.

this weekend to bogotá for an AIM meeting, only three more weeks until summer vacation.

ps, it´s raining everyday. i am jealous of you canadian bbq ers.

being far away.

late last night i received tragic news: that one of my compañeras from university, emma bailey, had been killed in a car accident on monday, driving to london from wales with her best friend kelly who was visiting her from ottawa.

this kind of news never comes or settles easily. right now i am still trying to piece together in my head that this really happened. being so far away from that world makes it seem somewhat unreal.

my heart goes out to her close friends and family. i am devastated for their loss. i wish i could be closer in order to support my good friends that knew her well.

if anything this makes us realize how fragile life is, really. i mean, everyone says that but no one actually feels it until a tragedy like this unfolds. 23 is too too young, she had so much more to do here. and every SINGLE day we need to tell the people we love that we love them, because really you never know.

the thing that makes me so scared about it is that it really was anyone. it could be anybody. it could be carolynn, sarah, katie, kendra, my brothers, alex... whoever. and i´m so far away.

so there was not much sleep last night, and not a lot of food being eaten. erin´s classic symptoms of shock and sadness.

i am thinking so much about all the people that i love today.

and of course i am sending so much love and positive energy to emma´s close friends and family. she will be dearly, dearly missed.

perspectives from a grade 9.

WHY IS BAD TO LIE

1. It is bad to lie because when lieing I am conning myself.
2. It is bad to lie because people will think very bad about you and your repuation will start to go down.
3. It is bad to lie because when doing it, it is not showing education.
4. It is bad to lie because I give a bad image to other people of me.
5. It is bad to lie because people will not believe me in the future.
6. It is bad to lie because people will not want to be with the lieyer any more.
7. It is bad to lie because some people will hate you.
8. It is bad to lie because when lieing to other peson is the same to lie to you, to myself.
9. It is bad to lie because sometimes people will think very bad about you and maybe you aren´t.
10. It is bad to lie because you will recieve a chastise after doing it.
11. It is bad to lie because most of the time you lie, people will know you are lieing.

(yes,i knew that he was lying)

In conclusion I think that lieing is not a good way to take problems away, it is better to confront them an accept the error that you count. It is better to not be because your friends and the people that you live with will think very good abou you and you will have a very good reputation.

Ms. Erin, I am sorry of lieing to you, I don´t want you to think bad things of me, that was just an error.

- signature.

(thanks to one of my special students who thought he could get away with lying, and quite obviously, to my very face. that is gutsy. oh this letter makes me laugh.)
(and why 11 reasons? not sure.)

teacher band!

today after school is the first practice for a genius initiative that ruben the music teacher and i came up with. teacher´s rock band. yessir.
so, obviously, the most important part of making a band is coming up with a cool name.

please leave your suggestions below.

i am going to play simple guitar chords and jump around like a rockstar. pretty much i can´t wait to be sort of like sarah harmer.



i think i can do it.

5.1 on the richter!

not joking,
we´re in earthquake country.

early tuesday morning an earthquake struck manizales around 4 am.
30 seconds of severe shaking later, it settled and we were ok.

i survived my first REAL earthquake!

the funny thing is that most people seemed relatively non-plussed. it was the only thing i talked about yesterday, pretty much.

put on your amazonicas.

it´s wednesday morning and i am getting back into the swing of things at school after a life-changing weeklong trip to the brasilian amazon with my grade 10s. yesterday we had parent teacher interviews, and today i am spending the day actually teaching before the madness of ´congreso de literatura´ begins tomorrow, this incredible congress that the spanish department puts on every year. the students are all busy decorating and at the moment we have a big SHIP outside in the courtyard, as well as about a thousand yellow butterfly cutouts hung up (from one hundred years of solitude). cool beans.

we left for amazon at 4am saturday the 14th of april. if you had the pleasure of talking to me the week before amazon, i was pretty much the most stressed out i´ve ever been. taking 25 kids over the brasilian/colombian land border and spending a week in the middle of the jungle? and i´m in charge? i was crying most nights, let´s be honest.
but 4am on saturday rolled around, and we piled on a bus to pereira, caught our flight to bogota and then to leticia, crossed the border into tabatinga, and took a boat 5 hours down the amazonriver and then the jabarí, where reserva palmarí is located.
maybe it was my lack of excitement in general for being responsible for 25 16 year olds in brasil, but en serio, the experience shocked me to the core. the amazon and reserva palmarí are possibly the most magical places i have had the pleasure of visiting.
we spent mornings on the river fishing for pirañas, swimming with pink dolphins, kayaking through essentially a water jungle, hiking to mud baths, canoeing in traditional amazonian canoes and getting bitten by every kind of bug imaginable.
the afternoons: canopy climbing and ziplines through the forest, walks to the surrounding communities, making artesanias and natural tattoos, boating to nearby lagoons, going to an indigenous community called marubos to try rapé and venomo de rana.
the evenings: one afternoon we hiked an hour into the jungle and camped there in hammocks, with a campfire and spirit of the forest spooky tales. at about minight, maybe 8 of us walked into the woods about 15 minutes, turned our headlamps off, joined hands and made our way back to the campsite in pitch black. the glowing worms and mushrooms, the incredible sounds of the nighttime jungle, and the ability to really FEEL the path with your feet and know whether or not you were going the right way. undescribable.
we spent another night sleeping on a platform 60m up in the canopy. it rained all night, and it was pretty effing hilarious.
we went nighthunting for crocodiles.
we played a severely out of tune guitar and sang at the reserva.
we became incredibly close with the guides and staff at palmarí. we were truly welcomed into their entirely different lives for the time that we were there. the experiences shared with them were so valuable to me and the students.. being able to closely relate with someone who lives their life completely differently from what you know..
anyway. here are a few shots. check out the bookface account for some more.
i want to go back.