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!
