aguinaldo y luces!!

Hello hello all!
My apologies for breaking my every-two-weeks posting promise. The last month hasn´t been quite as eventful as before since classes have been over for quite a while and activity in general dwindles in Tunja as all the students go back to their hometowns. Despite exams ending already three weeks ago, only today was my last day at work, since they wanted me there to help with working on new curriculum and doing classes with the professors, but that´s fairly laid back work. The other bummer is that Milena has been in Bogotá working at a call center, and so we´ve just had weekends together the past few weeks.
But I´ve been keeping busy. During the weeks I´ve had a lot of time to catch up on reading, including finishing "The Shock Doctrine", which was excellent and scandalous and I highly recommend it for any serious understanding of Neoliberalism, plus a Márquez novel, and various others. I´ve also been doing a lot of hiking around the hills near Tunja, which afford great views and fresh air, and planning my trip to the Coast!!! That´s right after passing Christmas with Milena´s family: off to Bucaramanga for paragliding and rivers, to Valledupar, the heart of traditional music, and to Santa Marta and La Guajira, on the Carribean coast with beautiful beaches, scubadiving, and tons of strongly preserved indigenous communities of the Cogui, Araucos, Wayuu, etc. So looking forward to that, and I´ll be posting exclusive coverage right here, haha!
Other than that, it´s Christmas, and around Boyacá that means all the cute little colonial towns go crazy with Christmas lights and have big music festivals called Aguinaldos where the play salsa and cumbia and celebrate. I´m actaully off to the kick-off concert of Tunja´s aguinaldo in a few minutes. Last weekend Milena and I traveled around some of the prettiest little towns to see all the cathedrals and streets lit up with all kinds of lights, eat special cakes and pastries and custards typical for Christmastime, and dance, of course. Hopefully I´ll be uploading some of the photos, which really describe the environment much better than I can right now.
Oh, and last week I had a Fulbright conference for several days in Bogotá with the other ETA´s, which was actually not a waste of time; they gave us a lot of useful courses on teaching techniques and it was nice to catch up with people and hear about their different experiences (it really made me appreciate how relatively nice my university has been to me, giving me a lot of autonomy and respect). Plus they had us in the schmooziest hotel in the city, based on Italian architecture and with a view of the presidential palace, not to mention the delicious food. So, can´t complain there, hehe.
Well, that´s pretty much what´s good with me now. Off to Bogotá again tomorrow to see Milena and play music and travel to some little nearby towns. Mostly just gearing up for travels at this point. Hope this fidns you all well! Happy Holidays!! Smooches!

us at the Lago de Tota!!

from Camelot to Carnaval!!

Two more weeks have flown by and much to tell! Let´s start with the weekend before last. The Celtic music group was set to have their big Samhain costume party that my friend Magda had told me about, so Milena and I put together costumes (her Snow White, me a sort of pirate) and caught a bus Friday afternoon. We arrived and caught the transmilenio downtown. Unfortunately, I managed to confuse the address (not Carrera 16, but Calle 16), which resulted in us getting of in the middle of a very shady part of downtown, realizing our error, and luckily catching a taxi which took us all the way back to the place where it actually was. We arrived at the bar, a nice spacious place with a high ceiling, and there were all the Amigos de Celtismo people, playing music, with masses of amazingly-costumed people dancing. It was quite the event. Not just music, but a tightrope act, a reenactment with several big guys dressed in full armor and chain mail with helmets and wooden swords (further proof that by statistical necessity, with 9 million people, even in Bogotá there have to be a few reenactment nerds like me 7 years ago). Anyway, lots of fun. There was even a toast with homemade mead, although I have to say it was awfully sweet and needed more fermentation, but tasty. We finally headed home with Magda after the best costume was declared (a guy dressed up as the Faun from Pan´s Laberynth complete with big furry legs and hooves).
The next day, we had lunch with Will, walked around the Universidad Nacional, which is like the UPTC with it´s graffiti, Che Guevara murals, and hippies playing music on every corner, but even bigger and an odd oasis just blocks from the huge main drags in Bogotá. Then we went to visit Milena´s family and watch V is for Vendetta, which is really excellent, and had caught my interest because a lot of the protestors against the Ley 30 wear the Guy Fawkes mask.
By the way- an update on the Ley 30. So, you remeber all the public universties have been on strike for over a month. And even at UniBoyacá, a private school with very conservative rectors, we had a huge march alongside the uptcistas, which involved walking all the way from the university to the main plaza, encircling the plaza holding hands, and chanting lots of great slogans insulting political leaders and demanding public education. On the way back there were some problems with police forcefully removing students from the main avenue so cars could pass, but it stayed largely peaceful. By the way, I won´t specify my role in the march just in case some government person might read this (:
Anyway, the latest is that President Santos has offered to withdraw the reform and redo it with the participation of student leaders. It´s still not 100% and so the strike hasn´t been lifted, but it looks like classes might begin again at the públicas as soon as next week. Still, it´s a bummer because final exams could be as late as right before Christmas.
As for me, classes are over, and i just have 2 weeks of hanging out in the office, helping students prepare exams and final projects, so life is good.
Speaking of exams, I presented my final for dance class last wednesday with the samba group. Suffice it to say it was awesome. The girls rented dresses and carnaval masks and we guys danced shirtless, which was met with enthusiam by my students, haha. Anyway, it went really well, the theatre was packed and screaming, and we danced well, just a little bit uncoordinated. Whoof, and 2 minutes of samba steps leaving you gasping for breath, let me tell you!
Other than that, things have been good. On Sunday, Milena, the students from Chiapas, and I went to the Lago de Tota, a huge mountain lake a couple hours from Tunja. It was a chilly cloudy day, but I swam anyway, and almost turned purple (the water is warm, but when you get out the breeze is icy). We hiked around, ate roasted chicken and mangos, and I rode a horse that got excited and almost threw me until I got control- yikes!
Also, I´ve had two little parties in my house with the exchange students, one when the Mexicans made chiles rellenos (peppers stuffed with meat and onions and spices and fried with cornmeal breading), and then yesterday the girl from Portugal made feijoada (bean stew with pig feet, peppers, and onions) and Milena made masato (a drink made with fermented rice and pinapple, mmm!) The last party with the Mexicans and the other exchange-ers will be this saturday, because their semester is over and soon they´ll be headed back home :(
Ok, that´s what´s new for now. Work is almost over and soon I´ll be thinking about travels. Hasta la próxima!!

jammin' witchu!!

Helloo hello!!

It's been a wild couple of weeks. Lots of stress and fun and not enough sleep, haha. Let's see, let's start with last weekend. I went with Milena to Bogota to the wedding of one of her best friends who was marrying a French guy. We arrived early in the morning at the notary for a funny bilingual ceremony, with an old Colombian man reading in very slow broken French for the groom and his mother. The reception that evening was a lot of fun though, lots of dancing and delicious free food and booze. We spent the weekend with Milena's mother and two brothers, feeling a little trapped in the apartment since it was raining and her mom was in a funky mood the last day, but it was nice anyhow.

Then this week. Uff, lot's of activity. Let's see, wednesday was a crazy day because we had a concert with the band in a little rural high school at 9 in the morning. So we left super early, loading the gear into a rickety old bus and chugging along country roads. The fellows in the band for some reason thought that rum was a good idea and so there we were singing and drinking and dancing in the bus early in the morning. We get to the little school and set up to play outside in the middle of the basketball court, surrounded by curious little kids in uniforms who probably had never seen a gringo before, so i got lots of cute questions. We played a set and then headed back, this time dancing in the aisles with the windows open and reggaeton blasting and got back by lunchtime. Then came Thursday. A day for the ages. First, it was the day of my much anticipated concert on American folk music at the university. It went well. A good turnout, an interview from the TV station. I played about 15 songs on banjo and guitar, singing, and with some accompaniment from people in the band. I had slides with lyrics and pictures of the artists, from Doc Watson, to Woody Guthrie, to Tony Rice, etc, and gave explanations of the stories behind each song.

Then it was going straight from the show back to my apartment to prepare for the Halloween party, and an epic one it was. I dressed up a Bacchus, the god of the grape harvest and debauchery in general, complete with a leaf crown, toga, and a wild fennel staff. Milena dressed as a gypsy. About 40 friends showed up, exchange students, students of mine, friends form the band and with such diverse costumes as a shark, a zombie, a preist, a lady cop, etc. One guy was supposed to bring his sound system, but didn't show, so with the band we ended up playing a great acoustic set. Luckily Rafa and Jenny from the band are walking jukeboxes and played one song after another, vallenatos, cumbias, rancheras. So hours of dancing and toasts and good fun and I actually was able to get everyone on their way by 1 am so my poor neighbors could sleep. But a great time. Above is a photo.

Then I had to get up super early the next morning to be a judge at the annual English song contest. That involved 5 hours of listening to dozens of high school students sing American pop songs, mostly with pretty decent English pronunciation, but most of them pretty out of tune. So lots of cringing and sighing and saying, "hmm, too bad, she had good style and whatnot, but oof, pretty out of tune" with the other judges. But the organizers treated us to a tasty lunch and they presented me with a certificate of appreciation with my name spelled Noam Mayers, so that was pretty good compensation.

Ok, that's all the adventures to date. Stay tuned!! Love from Tunja!

Whew! Another 2 weeks has flown by, and that means a new blog post. Certainly an enjoyable couple of weeks. Lots of work, giving classes, ton of students in office hours now that things are getting down to the line. Only 3 weeks more of class after this week- unbelievable!!
But let`s see, besides work, what`s good? Last weekend I finally went to hot springs in Paipa with Milena. Funny because it`s just like a standard public swimming pool, except the water is hot and mineral-ey. Uff, it was really nice. A break from the ever-chilly weather here. We went at night, which was really nice because you have stars and the moon overhead and steam rising all around you. Magical, except for the screaming children, haha. Hmm, so that was over a week ago. What else? THings are getting really heavy here with the reform of the Ley 30, which basically is a law that would open up public universities in Colombia to private investors (not a novelty in the US, of course, where Monsanto, Anheiser-Busch, Exxon, etc. have their way in higher ed), and allows creation of for-profit universities. It`s a big deal here where they have real public education accesible cheaply to anyone who qualifies in entrance exams, and where they rightly recognize it as a first step toward privatizing education. For a couple months now there`s been protests, marches, scuffles, police gassing students, and so forth at the UPTC, the big public u in Tunja. But now things are really stepped up. General strikes, and organizers even coming to UniBoyacá, and possibility of some forums and events here in private university-land. So that`s exciting, but also frustrating. For example, I haven`t been to Portuguese class in 3 weeks because of off and on strikes.
This weekend was really fun. It was a 3 day weekend and I went with Milena, her best friend, and the 3 English Assistants (and 1 French one) at the UPTC to Villavicencio. That is the principal city of the llano oriental (eastern plains) of Colombia. The climate is delicious: 90 degrees and a rain shower almost every afternoon. There you have distinct folk music with harp and a fast beat, mounds of free-range beef cooked over fires, and beautiful rivers and dense tropical vegetation. You also have in many sectors guerrillas, especially a few years ago. But much further east than Villavicencio. We spent 3 great days. A veeeery long trip from Bogota (6 hours instead of the normal 2) because of intense traffic because of the holliday and because the world finals of rodeos were going on. On Saturday we went to a zoo of sorts where we saw anacondas, tucans, and squirrel monkeys (simply the cutest animal ever invented), some in cages, and other wild males from the nearby jungle who come attracted by the females calls. That night we tried to go out dancing, but with so many people there for the rodeo, all the best clubs were absolutely packed. The next day we went swimming in a place where the river comes down from the hills and they made a sort of natural swimming pool, but surrounded by a restaurant and tables. The water was really nice and we followed the river up into the jungle which was gorgeous: the banks were covered with peace lilies, and a family of those squirrel monkeys were playing in the trees above. We ate delicious smoked fish and got sunburned. That night we went out early and got into an excellent salsa club, where we danced for hours until exhaustion. The picture is from there. Then it was early to rise the next morning to beat the traffic back to Bogotá and chilly weather.
SO that`s the latest. The next couple of weeks will also be action packed. I`m preparing to give a big concert of American traditional music at the university next week, plus a big Haloween party in my apartment next Friday, a dinner with my coworkers this Thursday (making pesto pasta!!), a wedding of Milena`s best friend in Bogotá this Saturday, and so on. Uff! But life is great, even if it flies by. Love you all! Hope your great as well. Thinking of fall in the US makes me homesick, but I have a Garrison Keilor book, and hopefully more good reading books soon when mom`s package arrives! Hasta la próxima!

Hey all!!
Well, it´s about time I write some new news. What`s new?? Hmm, ufff, well keeping plenty busy with classes, preparing the samba coreography in my dance class, pulling out my hair trying to organize students to do the sqauredance presentation, which in the talent show tomorrow. Man, will I be relieved when that`s over!! I think it`ll be great in the end, me playing banjo and a friend on fiddle and 8 dancers. I definetely am looking forward to a relaxing weeked. The plan: to go to the hot springs with Milena and some other friends and to a winery, both in a nearby town.
But let`s talk about this last weekend- action packed!! I went to Bogotá with the principal motive of meeting up with and playing tunes with the group of celtic music called Espiritu Celta, based in Bogotá. I arrived Saturday afternoon at the Irish Pub in the Zona- T, an upscale restaurant anbd commercial area. The pub is beautiful, old wood, antique Guiness adds, good dark beer, what one might hope for in an Irish pub. But it was packed and they had us play over in a cramped corner and iffy sound competing with loud revelers. But we played some good tunes, I sang a few, and the group is great. They have a bagpiper, a bodhran, an excellent fiddler, and guitarrist. Really top knotch and know their stuff- and all just Colombians who like Irish music. Go figure!! Anyway, that night I stayed with Magda, my friend who was in Columbia last year with Centro Latino. She lives with her brothers and sisters in an awesome flat on the 18th floor with a great view of downtown Bogotá. The morning I went with her family to Palo Quemado, a huuuuuuge covered market with literally every tropical fruit, vegetable, sauce, meat, cheese, spice, whatever you can imagine. They made me try everything, from cocunuts to maracuya, a crazy mango-watermelon hybrid, fresh soft cheese, etc. etc. We got back to the house stuffed with fruits and much more, but then straight to a Pacific-style restaurant where against my protests they served me a huge plate of sauteed fish, rice with coconut (sooooo good), salad, soup, and juice made of a fruit called borojó, which tastes kind of like apple cider with cinnamon. Everything was delicious it was hard to stand up afterward. Then what? To a huge festival of culture with music, artesans, and of course, more food and drinks to try. I met up with another big tall plae ETA friend, and the two of us where quite the spectacle with people asking for photos with us, including some really sweet middle aged women that barely came up to our belly buttons. So we tried chicha (fermented corn), sabajon de feijoa (a creamy licour), and other things i can`t recall. Walking around help, but still, serious stomach trauma. And an uncomfortable feeling being so overnourished and then driving through neighborhoods and passing bone-thin prostitutes and beggars with amputated arms. Thus is Bogotá- all the extreme class contrasts together.
That night was another session with Espiritu Celta, this time in another Irish Pub in another neighborhood with much more room and all the fans present. What a night!! It was fantastic!! Playing songs with the fans dancing and singing along. All accented by tasty micro-brew porter. I caught a bus back to Tunja by 9 and arrived late, exhausted, and satisfied.
And that`s all the news that`s fit to print. Below I added a silly picture with Milena (far left) and a friend at a part a couple weeks ago. Love yall!!

el fogón paisa

Hey hey!
Two more weeks gone by and many exciting things to recount. I really realized this last week how much I´ve fulfilled my prophecy of getting involved in too many activities. Let´s do some accounting: so besides the teaching and the clubs and the band (which dis 2 shows last week), I am doing the following: preparing 8 students to do a square dance, the Texas Star, for a talent show where I will be the caller, and play banjo accompanied by a friend on violin. I´m starting to take intermediate Portuguese at the UPTC, which is a real headache producer considering how similar but yet no similar it is too Spanish. I´m going to be the judge for a talent show this Friday, and then again in a couple of weeks. I´m hoping to start a composting project on the campus. Whew! The list goes on. But being overcommited is generally more fun than the alternative. There´s, as you see, lots of activity at the University- September is like April in the US in the sense that everyone does every event then, whether film festivals, business fairs, concerts, etc. etc.
Three weeks with Milena and things are going really well, when we´re able to see each other. We went to a lake in a town near here last week, strolled around, I bought her a butterfly necklace cus she likes butterflies, and we ate roasted chicked with spicy sauce, yuca, potatoes, and plenty of fried plantains (Oh how I adore them!). So very happy in that sense. But we didn´t see much much of each other over the weekend because i went to Medellín.
Ah, so let´s talk about that. Quite the action packed trip. First, between Medellín and Bogotá is a very large mountain range. Before airplanes and highways, it was cheaper to ship things from London to Bogotá than to Medellín. The ride started eeeearly Friday morning, and consisted of 11 hours of winding back and forth on very thin mountain roads, looking out on breathtaking misty valleys, tropical cloud forest, farms with banana trees, little pastel huts. Stopping for lunch in the heat of the day in a tiny town to eat fried fish and guanabana with milk (which is the most delicious substance ever invented- a creamy coconut-pineapple tasting wonder). I was on a mission to arrive on time for the Calle 13 and Choc Quib Town show. I rolled in finally at 7 pm to the valley of Medellín, headed strait for the stadium with my packpack, and fortunately met up with my ETA friends in Medellín right outside. In we went, way up into the rafters of a packed stadium with excited young people and shouting beer and hotdog vendors climbing between the aisles. Both shows were great. The only problem is that we were high up and with so many enthusiastic people screaming every lyric, it sounded like a wall of noise. But plenty of dancing.
The next day, my only full day to explore Medellín, was action packed as well. First we went to Parque Explora, an interactive science museum very similar to the Exploratorium in San Fran. Medellin is definitely the most beautiful big city I´ve ever seen. Brick highrises speckled between a panorama of green mountains, humidity, and tropical heat. The metro affords a great view of the city. We then headed to a huge book fair in the botanical gardens, although there was a lot of music and childrens activities, and food going on, so the books didn´t get much attention. There i met up with Daniel, a friend of a friend from Medellín, who is a really cool guy. He´s a vegan, studied agroecology, and knows all about sustainable stuff going on all over the country. We walked around and then went to his mother´s birthday party where I met his extended family and was treated to rum and ice cream and live musicians. From there, I went straight to the soccer arena with the other ETAs to catch a Nacional game (that´s the local team). We got great seats, in a more expensive section with a view of the cheapest section where the huge hordes of local fans where, who basically spent 2 hours waving banners screaming songs, accompanied by a brass band and drum line, and screaming valgarities at the referees. In the end, Nacional lost 2-1, but no one seemed less festive.
Then comes the most absurd, magical part of the night. We stopped at a cantina right outside the stadium and ordered a few beers. I knew I would be leaving for another all-day bus ride veeeery early in the morning, so I wasn´t looking for too much trouble, but the people I was with felt otherwise. For a while we sat talking and observing several interesting characters, owners of the cantina, including a very prodigious middle ages black woman with a drink stand who was blasting salsa and reggaeton. I mentioned that it would be awesome to ask her to dance. The hilarious thing about the night was watching how- as we ordered another round of beer, and then rum (which I didn´t partake in), and more rum- how everything we joked about turned into reality. Before we knew it, the tables were pulled aside and we were all dancing: us youngsters with the owners, with mother and two young daughters, with several women with small children who very possibly were off-duty prostitues, with a table of shady older men all dressed in regalia of Nacional from the game. It was quite a spectacle, not to say that I didn´t learn some great dance moves from the older generation. Finally, after hours of dancing, after hours of listening to drunken old men yell their life stories into our ears, and dancing with everyone in the place, and having police ask us questions, we finally stumbled back to my friends apartment for a few precious hours of sleep.
The next morning, a repeat of Friday- long hours looking out into green mountains and flinching as the bus lurched around corners, and finally back to the chaos of Bogotá and at midnight to my beloved bed in Tunja.
And that´s all the news that´s fit to print. Good night!

you give-a me fever!!

Hello all!
Whew! Much has transpired since the last time I had time to write a post. Mostly good. Last week was notable for two main reasons: one, I got really sick with a cough. Two, I fell in love. Haha, not entirely unrelated events. I met my new girlfriend Milena in a bowling arena, of all places. She studies English and Spanish lit at the UPTC, she lived in Cincinatti for two years, and we just really felt a strong connection from the beginning (she´s the one in the middle of the picture below). Several poems have already been created by both of us. Unfortunately, things like that lead one to irrational actions such as drinking and talking for hours in the cold of a Tunja night. But I´m finally getting better. The cough is still strong, but now I´m all congested, so that shows I´m progressing, haha.
What else? Not too much. The band played our first concert in front of the freshman class of the university, as the second picture shows. It actually went really great. I sang two songs: a bluegrass song called ¨the Cookoo¨and ¨How far is Heaven¨by Los Lonely Boys. We´ve got more shows coming up soon. Things are really busy in classes. We already are preparing for midterm exams- I can´t believe it! This weekend several English teacher friends came from Bogotá and slept in my apartment. We went to the big salsa concert for the festival on Saturday night and danced in the light rain in the stadium, and the next day we went to Villa de Leyva to a farm with huge waterfalls that we really nice to wade into. So, good times. Busy, and of course every scrap of spare time is now generally spent with Milena. You forget how much time a relationship takes up! But obviously time very well spent.
So that´s all for now. Off to grade exams. Talk to yall soon!

una vaina loca . . .

Ahh, what an entertaining week. (Note: I´m actually trying to be true to my intention to write a brief entry in this blog every week). Where do I start?
Well, Tuesday was fun for a couple of reasons. Let´s start with personal hygiene. So, remember how my university is private and rather uptight about appearances and all. So, Tuesday evening I`m about to leave the office and they call me over the office of a psychologist in the department who wanted to meet me. Ok, sure, we chat. She asks me about the states. Then she closes the door and says she needs to talk with me about a private matter. What? Um, ok. "So, Noah," she says, "some people in the office have noticed that you have a strong body odor. And, you know, that is a cultural thing that can make people uncomfortable . . ." Sound familiar anyone?? Haha. So, anyway, apparently my smell was stronger than I realized. So, not wanting to inconvenience anyone, I´ve starting using milk of magnesium and patchouli, which is keeping me smelling very sweet, not the slightest hint of actual human smell. Hopefully that will do the trick and the don´t make me conform to the Colombian male norm of bathing with cologne and drying off with axe spray.
Another entertaining tidbit. Later that night, I get a call from this guy claiming to be the boyfriend of a girl I´d gone out with and telling me I´d better not get any ideas. I told him, relax. Turns out, he was an ex-boyfriend who was drunk and had found her phone with messages from me and broke it. Sigh, so that was a rude awakening that making a lot of friends can also mean making enemies. It´s all good so far, though. He apparently lives in another town, so hopefully I wont find him waiting on my doorstep some night.
What else? Then, another note about being the only gringo in town and having over 500 students. It can be great, but sometimes inconvenient. No keeping a low profile, and no turning down when the guys on the corner invite you for drinks. Even if it´s 2 pm on a thursday and you have class soon. "Oh, come on Noah, have a beer. Just one . . . no come on, just three. oh, you don´t really have to go to class". Ay yi yi!
The weekend was a nice break, though. First I went to Bogotá for Salsa al Parque. Unfortunately, it was raining off and on, and so many people!! So not much room to dance and umbrellas blocking the view. But the music was great. Then on Saturday, I met up with my friend Kay, from Bogotá, who I met in Argentina. She has an amazing farm that she is converting into an eco-tourism retreat. Man, I had no idea how beautiful it would be!! Up on a mountain, overlooking a huge lake, surrounded by pines and native forest. A waterfall, a meadow. Siggh. So I spent the night there with a german friend, and then we helped the next day prepairing for a detoxification workshop Kay was holding there. Eating sweet avocados, roasted chicken, yuca bread. Ahhhh.
So I had the chance for some rejuvination to begin what promises to be a raging few weeks. The Festival Internacional de Cultura here in Tunja starts this weekend, with Willie Colon and Ruben Blades, among other performers. I´m practicing with the university band, readying for our first gig on Sept. 1st, and starting a modern dance class. Whew! Life is good. Or at least busy! Hasta la próxima, parcero!!

photos (or feaux toes)

lanzando!!!!

So, a new country, a new blog. I think I will be writing shorter, more regular posts than the other famous blog, noahinmendoza, since I have a much stabler situation here in Tunja. I even get free internet access at my department office in the university (yeah, and I´ve got a desk and everything). Easier than the every-other-week internet access with farmwork in the Southern Cone.
SO what can I tell you?? Well, let´s start with Tunja. It is a pretty little city of about 150,000 two hours north of Bogotá way up in the mountains. It´s the coldest place in Colombia which means it´s a shocking 45 degrees at night and usually around 70 during the day. All year round. The sun goes down at 6:30 pm. All year round. Why? Because we´re in the tropics! SO the weather is pretty nice, except for the occasional torrential downpour. And when it´s sunny you better wear a hat because it`s strong sun. I´ve had a nose burned to a crisp since I got here. The city is full of colonial churches and brick high rises in a valley surrounded by green mountains, and in which every square metre of grass, even along the main drag, is occupied by someone´s cow. The food is pretty great: for starters, there´s the tropical fruit. Papayas, mangos, pineapples, and then the ones I´d never heard of like tomate de árbol (flavor of tomato mixed with orange), and guanabana (like coconut and pinapple mixed), among others. Other than than, it´s lots of rice, lentils, chicken, eggs, beans, broth, potatoes. You can get a really filling lunch for $2 of the aforementioned, and then eat a light dinner. Maybe an arepa (like a cornmeal pancacke).

Now, what have I been up to? Well, first and foremost are my responsibilities as an English teaching assistant at the University of Boyacá. It´s a private school of about 4,000 students with very technical majors like medicine, business, ingeneering, law, and where everyone has to take English. Since I am the only native speaker at the university and the level of English is very low here, even among the professors, they have basically divided me up between all the classes of English 2 and up, 17 classes of 1 hour per week. This means I have almost half of the students in the university in class, which is fun, but makes for a lot of embarrassing, " Oh, did I have you in class? Yeah, sure, I remember you!" moments. My role is basically to help with reading, pronunciation, etc. I also give a 2 hour English club and 1 hour conversation club once a week, which is fun because we just listen to music or read a poem, or whatever I want and then practice speaking. There are very few people who can do more than form basic sentences, and I generally use more Spanish than English, but I like that anyway, and I think peoples levels will improve quickly. I really like my coworkers. They are 5 Colombian 20-somethings, all very cool and laid back and not exactly professorial. We have a good time.

The universtiy is private, and so it has a more stifiling atmosphere. The campus is 2 blocks surrounded by wire fencing and you have to pass through security every time you go in and out. Needless to say, it is very different from the feel of the huge public university down the road, the UPTC, which has 25,000 students and is complete with Che Guevara murals, guitar-players, clouds of marijuana smoke, etc. My fellow fulbrighter, Kailey, is teaching there, along with a Brit, and girls from Jamaica, from France, from Germany, and China, all teaching their respective languages. They are a good crew, we´ve already had a Jamaican independence party, complete with jerk and rum. Back to my university- the benefit is my classes have already been on for 2 weeks and start on time. At the UPTC they are still hiring teachers for some classes. That´s the beauty of public education bureaucracy. I am excited because I already starting practicing with the university band, playing guitar, singing, percussion, etc. We´re preparing some pop, cumbia, vallenato, and hopefully some US songs I´ve been preparing. There are 6 of us, including some really cool, talented kids. We will be performing and going to music festivals, so I really couldnçt ask for better. This week I will trying out some dance classes at the university.

What else?? Lots of fun to be had in Colombia. Of course, going out dancing regularly. Besides my colleagues and students at the university, I also have a great group of exchange students from Mexico, Peru, and Argentina to go out with. My salsa steps are improving, although of course it´s still hard to look smooth next to Colombians who all flawlessly execute turns and flashy steps as though it were as easy as falling off a log. But little by little . . . Also the World Cup for players under 20 has been going on in Colombia for the past 3 weeks, which has everybody wild. Although Colombia finally lost to Mexico in the quarterfinals on Saturday, so the craziness has subsided a little bit. When that´s all over, the season of the local soccer team, Boyacá Chicó begin here in Tunja. I´ve already bought a jersey and me and the guy from England are planning on going to all the games because it seems really fun to be two random gringos going crazy over a second-rate municipal soccer team, and whatever, any sport is so much better to watch live.

This weekend was the Festival de Cometas, the kite festival, in Villa de Leyva, a beautiful little hippy town with colonial architecture about an hour to the west of here. I went with the Mexicans and a friend and fellow fulbrighter from Bogotá, Katy. It was fun. Some people who can really make kites do crazy things, although I was a little disappointed because I had the impression there would be more live music, but after Colombia lost the game, the night in the plaza turned to hard drinking and not a whole lot else. So we went dancing in a normal salsa bar and the next day watched some more kites and then visited the Pozos Azules, a set of 7 little blue holes that you aren´t supposed to swim in but we did anyway and it was wonderful. The picture in the truck with Katy is on the way to the pozos. THe other is with the exchange students in a town near Tunja.

Ok, that´s the long and the short of it. Hope it was fun reading, and hope you all are well in other lands. Write soon!