My my, how sad and neglected this blog must feel! Well, finally I found the time for a final update before signing off for good.
So what has the last month offered? Well, I wrapped up work at UniBoyaca. We had a goodbye bbq with all the other profes in Paipa on a farm of a friend of a friend, a guy whio has travelled all over the world and has a remarkable resemblance in appearance and mannerisms to Captain Barbossa from"Pirates of the Carribean", who keeps horses and has a lovely little farm house. So that was a good time- lots of roasted chicken and plantains and potatoes and avocados. Then Mile and I went to Duitama to visit our wonderful friend Connie, who gave us acupuncture treatment in her clinic.
So let´s see, I wrapped up classes at the end of May, and went to San Gil for a couple of days, where I stayed with a couchsurfing contact, Andres, a really nice professor of electrical engineering who lives in a little cabin in the country surrounded by mango and orange trees and the most noble little black lab I´ve ever met who accompanied me every time I arrived or went to town. Of course, San Gil is lovely as always. i went on a tour of Cueva del Indio, a giant cave with vampire bats and a 5 meter jump at the end into a river where you swim out of the cave. I served as traslator to a vacationing family from Austin, TX. Then off to spend as many hours as possible at the waterfall of Juan Curi, which remains for me the most beautiful place on earth, swimming in clear pools surrounded by huge trees and orchids.
Then back to Tunja and quickly off again with Milena to the llanos. A great four days, although lots of time spent in buses. We enjoyed the heat, the humidity, the vast expansive views (finally a break from mountains- you can even see the sunset!!), and the most delicious grass fed beef you can imagine. We also ate amazing pinapples and learned that they don´t come from trees, but from a cactus-like plant on the ground. Who´d have thought? The only complaint- it has rained a lot the last night and the return bus ride to Tunja passed through some zones with lots of washed out highways way up in the mountains, which meant over 4 hours of extra delay waiting for them to repair and let us pass. But, small price to pay.
Then it was back to Tunja to clean up my apartment, pack up my things, say my last goodbyes, and off to Bogota for Milena´s visa date at the embassy. We were really nervous, but she got it!! Which means we can spend the summer together in Missouri. Hooray!
Then the final session with my wonderful Irish music friends in Bogota. And I wastesd two afternoons running around every corner of Bogota looking for an open Citibank to transfer my money to my US account. After a ridiculously complicated process, I finally finished, and then recieved a call two days later that the transaction was cancelled because we put one piece of information wrong. Ugggh!! F""king banks!! Oh well, I´ll figure that out when I get back to Bogota.
But where am I now??
Well, I just finished my first week on a farm in Manizales, in the coffee growing region of the country. It´s been nice. The farm is run by Cecilia, an older lady with lots of chutspa (no idea if that´s spelled right), her sister, and a few other campesinos who help out. It´s located way up in the mountains with a nice view of the city. They about 2 acres planted with coffee and bananas (all the bananas i can eat), along with other veggies, mandioca, corn, and animals. My main job has been taking care of the two goats (=delicious cheese!), and chickens, and other odd jobs like harvesting coffee, digging trenches so the rain doesn´t wash out the crops (there´s been several strong downpours), and climbing up the orange trees to pull off moss, orchids, bromelias, and other parasitic plants. That also meant destroying the housing on ants who like to build their nests there, and who have an amazingly strong bite for their size. That was entertaining, haha! Legs covered with little bites is a small price to pay, though, for fresh air, amazing views, delicious food, and lots of time in the afternoon to read in a hammock and play guitar.
So yeah, I could say a lot more, but you get the idea. Looking forward to another week in the mountains eating lots of bananas, and then the return jouney to Bogota and to the US. I can´t believe that 2 weeks from today I´ll be at my brother´s wedding in San Fransico. So soon! I can´t wait.
So, be well all! My blessings from this wonderful country Colombia, but also excitement to be back and see everyone soon!!
Until then...
(PS- all the typos are due to a crappy keyboard and spellcheck in Spanish).
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
wrapping up!!
Hey all!
Can´t say I´ve been as consistent as I should with the blog these last few weeks, but you get busy and . . .
Anyhow, things are good. Nothing earthshaking. Things are winding down at UniBoyacá. Tomorrow is my last day of class!! And then just a couple weeks of grading exams and tutorials, and I´m free!! My weekends are all booked up with day trips and plans. In June, with work all over, I´ll be doing a llanos tour with Milena, going to visit friends in Villavicencio and Villanueva, both lovely, hot, flat, humid places with lots of good rivers to swim in and tasty food to eat. A good break from Tunja, which has been rather cold in the last weeks. Last week the band gave our final concert at a high school at night with chilly breeze and zoop- yet another cold for me!! Number 4, i think? Oh well, one last round of coughing and nosebloing to wind down the year. That´ll make vacation and hot climates even more amazing. Plus, better to get sick now then on the farm in Manizales in june, right??
What have I been up to?? Well, lots of odds and ends. Finishing up gardening classes at Colegio Country. We planted spinach, lettuce, chard, and cilantro, which are starting to slowly pop out, and this last week we´ll do a cheese making workshop. MMM! Good thing I can get fresh milk close to my house.
A couple weeks ago a friend of Milena invited us to her farm in Moniquira for the sugar cane harvest. That was quite an experience: driving on a bumpy gravel round deep into a valley full of cane. Watching the working harvest with machetes, pile it onto mule trains and haul it back to the mill where they press it, pour the juice into giant cauldrons, and boil it until the bricks of brown sugar they call panela here.
I´ve been juggling the last Portuguese classes with French classes 4 hours on saturday afternoons. I enjoy it, but it´s a pretty long 4 hours. The teacher is cool. A young girl from Bordeaux. She was happy that Sarkozy went a la merde!! I like French and pronounce well, but I wont get to learn too much in five weeks. Just the basics like letters, numbers, greeting, and a few verb conjugations.
So I´m busy busy maing plans for travels, wrapping things up, preparing for my last big goodbye house party with live cumbia bands and all. I´ll send an update your way soon!! Stay tuned!!
Can´t say I´ve been as consistent as I should with the blog these last few weeks, but you get busy and . . .
Anyhow, things are good. Nothing earthshaking. Things are winding down at UniBoyacá. Tomorrow is my last day of class!! And then just a couple weeks of grading exams and tutorials, and I´m free!! My weekends are all booked up with day trips and plans. In June, with work all over, I´ll be doing a llanos tour with Milena, going to visit friends in Villavicencio and Villanueva, both lovely, hot, flat, humid places with lots of good rivers to swim in and tasty food to eat. A good break from Tunja, which has been rather cold in the last weeks. Last week the band gave our final concert at a high school at night with chilly breeze and zoop- yet another cold for me!! Number 4, i think? Oh well, one last round of coughing and nosebloing to wind down the year. That´ll make vacation and hot climates even more amazing. Plus, better to get sick now then on the farm in Manizales in june, right??
What have I been up to?? Well, lots of odds and ends. Finishing up gardening classes at Colegio Country. We planted spinach, lettuce, chard, and cilantro, which are starting to slowly pop out, and this last week we´ll do a cheese making workshop. MMM! Good thing I can get fresh milk close to my house.
A couple weeks ago a friend of Milena invited us to her farm in Moniquira for the sugar cane harvest. That was quite an experience: driving on a bumpy gravel round deep into a valley full of cane. Watching the working harvest with machetes, pile it onto mule trains and haul it back to the mill where they press it, pour the juice into giant cauldrons, and boil it until the bricks of brown sugar they call panela here.
I´ve been juggling the last Portuguese classes with French classes 4 hours on saturday afternoons. I enjoy it, but it´s a pretty long 4 hours. The teacher is cool. A young girl from Bordeaux. She was happy that Sarkozy went a la merde!! I like French and pronounce well, but I wont get to learn too much in five weeks. Just the basics like letters, numbers, greeting, and a few verb conjugations.
So I´m busy busy maing plans for travels, wrapping things up, preparing for my last big goodbye house party with live cumbia bands and all. I´ll send an update your way soon!! Stay tuned!!
Monday, April 23, 2012
a typical day in Tunja
new tatoooooooo!!
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Semana Santa and other ramblings!
Oops- a few more weeks have zoomed by and I haven´t done an update.
So what has Noah been up to these days? Let me try to remember everything.
I believe the last post was Iguaque, that lovely park in the mountains near Tunja. The next weekend we went with the exchangers to another site near Tunja, the "Desert" of the Candelaria, a famous monastery with Brazilian dominican monks. I was expecting a very austere setting complete with sand dunes, a tumbling piece of brush, and monks doing Gregorian chant. You know, something out of an old western in New Mexico. After walking a good way we arrived to find that it isn´t a desert at all, but a rather green strip of land in the middle of what might be considered desert, and while it has some lovely churches and adobe arquitecture, the monks are very normal, even boring, people, despite their cool robes, and that the whole operation is fairly commercial. They sell knicknacks and charge you for a tour of the courtyard and museum. And when we asked, one monk explained that it used to be a desert, but that the minks had greened it up with irrigation, and that, and I quote: "not all things are literal; it´s more of a spiritual desert." .... riiight.
But anyway, there is a nice river nearby where we reclined for a while and ate tasty arepas baked nearby. And then Milena and I hurriedly made the walk back to town in an hour in order to catch a bus so she wouldn´t miss her English lesson with a young student.
What else? Oh yeah, Saint Patrick{s day was quite epic. I went to Bogotá to play with the Shamrock Wings, the other Irish band in the city that are much more cool and laid back than Espiritu Celta. We played one at one bar riday, and another Saturday. Complete with two bagpipers (a German girl, and Felipe, resident Scottish culture nerd and quite a character, whose house I crashed at). There was the greatest dark beers the country has to offer on tap, and I also played a bluegrass set with a girl from Boston who i met through the band who sings really purty, and another girl from Boston (coincidentally) who is way cool, plays the irish fiddle and works for Witness for Peace. The two of us checked out the botanical garden and were excited to find huge demonstration gardens with all sorts of veggies in raised beds, water colletion systems, and fruit trees. Definitely going back there soon!
And then this last week was Semana Santa, Holy Week, which is taken more seriously here, complete with processions, endless prayer services, and a week of vacation! Woohoo! So Milena and I, both with colds, headed for warmer climates. There was a conference on English teaching in Pereira, inthe heart of the coffee producing region of Colombia, famous for beautiful rolling mountains and hills covered with plantain and coffee trees, and pretty colonial mansions. We stayed with Ancízar, a couchsurfing contact, and his fun family. While Milena went to conferences, I wandered around, and went to a workshop with Ancizar where i learned to play different drums used in traditional cumbia style (awesome!), and traded ideas with a great classical guitar player that hands around that foundation. The last day, we grabbed a bus up to an area an hour outside Pereira in the entrance to a big national park, but when we arrived it started puoring rain- and I mean pouring!! The rainy season is just starting here. We stopped to have lunch thinking we´d have to go back, but thankfully after an hour it cleared off and we hiked up and enjoyed beautiful mountains, first covered with little patches of farms, and then pure jungle with a big river running down and trees with cool vines and flowers.
Next stop was Cali, the third biggest city in the country in the Valley of Cauca, famous for sugar cane, world champion salsa dancers, and major drug cartels. We stayed with another couch contact, Angélica, a way cool Afro Colombia student of history (nerdy and well read like us!!). We talked a bunch in her apartment, soaking up the blazing heat of the city, wandered around the downtown, and ate typical food like chantaduro- a fruit that looks like a little pepper, but has flesh like a chestnut and tastes like a cooked carrot. Weird but yummy. The next day, we took a bus up into the mountains, follower the crystaline River Pance, where caleños take a break from the heat. We hiked up through jungle into a spot in the river with deeper pools, swam around and snacked, and then wandered down for another bumpy bus ride back to the city. Amazingly, we actually didn´t going out salsaing in Cali. A crime!! Thing is, there aren´t very many clubs open on Monday and Tuesday, and we were short on money, but we did go to a good slasa spot in Pereira, and we downloaded a buch of Angélica´s music to take back with us.
And now, after yet another long bumpy bus ride through mountains, we are back in Bogotá visiting Milena´s family. Today we lazed around, made tamales, and watched cheesy movies about jesus (a Semana Santa tradition), and tomorrow off to catch some street theatre from the huge festival going on right now in Bogotá, and then back to Tunja to rest and recharge for the last 2 months of work.
And that´s the news!! Good night and good luck.
So what has Noah been up to these days? Let me try to remember everything.
I believe the last post was Iguaque, that lovely park in the mountains near Tunja. The next weekend we went with the exchangers to another site near Tunja, the "Desert" of the Candelaria, a famous monastery with Brazilian dominican monks. I was expecting a very austere setting complete with sand dunes, a tumbling piece of brush, and monks doing Gregorian chant. You know, something out of an old western in New Mexico. After walking a good way we arrived to find that it isn´t a desert at all, but a rather green strip of land in the middle of what might be considered desert, and while it has some lovely churches and adobe arquitecture, the monks are very normal, even boring, people, despite their cool robes, and that the whole operation is fairly commercial. They sell knicknacks and charge you for a tour of the courtyard and museum. And when we asked, one monk explained that it used to be a desert, but that the minks had greened it up with irrigation, and that, and I quote: "not all things are literal; it´s more of a spiritual desert." .... riiight.
But anyway, there is a nice river nearby where we reclined for a while and ate tasty arepas baked nearby. And then Milena and I hurriedly made the walk back to town in an hour in order to catch a bus so she wouldn´t miss her English lesson with a young student.
What else? Oh yeah, Saint Patrick{s day was quite epic. I went to Bogotá to play with the Shamrock Wings, the other Irish band in the city that are much more cool and laid back than Espiritu Celta. We played one at one bar riday, and another Saturday. Complete with two bagpipers (a German girl, and Felipe, resident Scottish culture nerd and quite a character, whose house I crashed at). There was the greatest dark beers the country has to offer on tap, and I also played a bluegrass set with a girl from Boston who i met through the band who sings really purty, and another girl from Boston (coincidentally) who is way cool, plays the irish fiddle and works for Witness for Peace. The two of us checked out the botanical garden and were excited to find huge demonstration gardens with all sorts of veggies in raised beds, water colletion systems, and fruit trees. Definitely going back there soon!
And then this last week was Semana Santa, Holy Week, which is taken more seriously here, complete with processions, endless prayer services, and a week of vacation! Woohoo! So Milena and I, both with colds, headed for warmer climates. There was a conference on English teaching in Pereira, inthe heart of the coffee producing region of Colombia, famous for beautiful rolling mountains and hills covered with plantain and coffee trees, and pretty colonial mansions. We stayed with Ancízar, a couchsurfing contact, and his fun family. While Milena went to conferences, I wandered around, and went to a workshop with Ancizar where i learned to play different drums used in traditional cumbia style (awesome!), and traded ideas with a great classical guitar player that hands around that foundation. The last day, we grabbed a bus up to an area an hour outside Pereira in the entrance to a big national park, but when we arrived it started puoring rain- and I mean pouring!! The rainy season is just starting here. We stopped to have lunch thinking we´d have to go back, but thankfully after an hour it cleared off and we hiked up and enjoyed beautiful mountains, first covered with little patches of farms, and then pure jungle with a big river running down and trees with cool vines and flowers.
Next stop was Cali, the third biggest city in the country in the Valley of Cauca, famous for sugar cane, world champion salsa dancers, and major drug cartels. We stayed with another couch contact, Angélica, a way cool Afro Colombia student of history (nerdy and well read like us!!). We talked a bunch in her apartment, soaking up the blazing heat of the city, wandered around the downtown, and ate typical food like chantaduro- a fruit that looks like a little pepper, but has flesh like a chestnut and tastes like a cooked carrot. Weird but yummy. The next day, we took a bus up into the mountains, follower the crystaline River Pance, where caleños take a break from the heat. We hiked up through jungle into a spot in the river with deeper pools, swam around and snacked, and then wandered down for another bumpy bus ride back to the city. Amazingly, we actually didn´t going out salsaing in Cali. A crime!! Thing is, there aren´t very many clubs open on Monday and Tuesday, and we were short on money, but we did go to a good slasa spot in Pereira, and we downloaded a buch of Angélica´s music to take back with us.
And now, after yet another long bumpy bus ride through mountains, we are back in Bogotá visiting Milena´s family. Today we lazed around, made tamales, and watched cheesy movies about jesus (a Semana Santa tradition), and tomorrow off to catch some street theatre from the huge festival going on right now in Bogotá, and then back to Tunja to rest and recharge for the last 2 months of work.
And that´s the news!! Good night and good luck.
Monday, March 5, 2012
mi barrio
This is a nice shot from the hill behind my house. Having some mates with the Argentine exchangers. My house is near the whiote building right aove my head. Good perspective shot of day to day life in Tunja.
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