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!