26 February 2012

How you may be treated when you come visit me in Cartagena! :)

President Juan Manuel Santos at the Film Festival opening.
As my college friend John can attest, you will be treated EXTREMELY well when you come visit me in Cartagena.

First, I'll make sure that your hotel room has a bathroom so large that everything echoes off the tiles. And you'll certainly need a second bathroom of that very same size in that very same hotel room just in case there's a problem with the first one.

Then of course I'll make sure that Isabella Rossellini & dreamboat Gael Garcia Bernal are staying in your hotel. I'll make sure that Gael wanders around the garden lobby a couple of times while we're sitting there having a drink, too, just so we can admire him. Juan Manuel Santos (the President of Colombia as we all know) will have lunch at the very same restaurant as you and he will speak that night at the opening of the Film Festival. You'll be sitting a mere 100 feet from him, as you can tell from the perfect photo above.

You'll want to be sure to invite me to the exclusive International Film Festival of Cartagena party, because with my excellent Spanish I'll order drinks for you. The vodka on the rocks you asked me to order for you will come with juice in it. Your next drink, which you really want to be a Johnny Walker (& which was requested of the waiter), will be a vodka on the rocks. But at least without juice!! You try again for a Johnny Walker only to be told by the waiter, with the help of my excellent Spanish, that they don't have any, so another vodka on the rocks it is. Finally you go up to the bar yourself & use your own excellent English & sign language and return with a Johnny Walker.  (As a side note, there was never any error in the drink orders I made for myself. Also in my defense, the great salsa music was very loud so hard to hear anyone talking, much less ordering drinks! :)

As compensation for my poor ordering abilities, I'll score for you a mojito popsicle.

And if you complain about anything, those torture instruments from the Spanish Inquisition come in handy…..
In the Museum of the Inquisition

In front of John's hotel in the old city
Of course, it helps if you a US film producer invited by the Colombian government to get this kind of treatment when you visit, but I'll certainly do my best....! :)

Hasta pronto?!

19 February 2012

Teacher, Teacher!

That's what they call me: "Teacher." A student wants to ask a question: "Teacher, what does this mean?"; they see me in the hallway: "Good morning, Teacher!"; they see me on the street, "Hi, Teacher!" When I was doing my course in San Francisco learning how to be an English language teacher, many of the students there also called me "Teacher", but I thought it was because there were so many student teachers who changed every day and they couldn't remember our names. Of course now I realize that for most of those students, that's how they would address a teacher in their home countries. Here in Colombia it's customary to call your teacher, whether high school or college/university, simply "Profesor" (for a male) or "Profesora" (female), or "Profe" for short, so English language students will just translate that and call their teachers "Teacher." As we're teaching US culture as well as the English language, on the first day of class I told the students that in the US in a school like this they would likely call the teacher by his or her first name and they are welcome to call me "Barbara", but very few actually do.

I'm getting used to the "Teacher" moniker, although sometimes I wish I could call them "Student" because there are so many & it's hard remembering everyone's names! And many of the students' names are not "typical" Spanish names like Carlos, Maria, Sergio, Juana, etc.; there has been a trend in the past it seems (from the ages of the students) 20-30 years in Colombia to name kids with "different" (often taken from another language) sounding names, the famous example is "Usnavy" as a name, ie, U.S. Navy & pronounced "Oosnavie." I don't have anyone by that name in my class, but it gives you an idea. "Lady", often spelled "Leidy" or made plural and with an addition, such as "Misleidis" or "Yusleidis" is another example of how a word in another language has been taken and made into a name. Or there are different spellings of "foreign" names, such as Deisy, Jhonathan, or Brayan, or brand names (Westinghouse, Freixenet) become first names.

Beyond trying to learn names (which I've successfully done in my current classes, but class groups change every four weeks), the first two weeks of classes have gone fine! I'm teaching two beginner classes and one advanced; with the beginner classes I sometimes use Spanish but not with the advanced. So in one respect, teaching English is not that great for my own Spanish learning, but I'm learning more and more each day about teaching and about the English language. In a truly geeky way (that my mother and friends Dave, Lisa, and Maureen, among others, will especially appreciate), I love learning all the "whys" of English grammar as I prepare for classes, figuring out the answers to students' questions, using various resources and my Spanish knowledge to try to anticipate what their questions will be, and I hope to fascinate you all with these details someday when you come visit or when I next visit you!! :)
The Centro Colombo Americano is the white building on the left with the US & Colombian flags. The old city wall is straight ahead and the Caribbean Sea just beyond that!

This coming week is the Cartagena International Film Festival here, the most important film festival for Latin America. A Hamilton College friend has been invited to participate so I look forward to seeing him & getting an insider's view of the Festival!

More photos of the Centro Colombo Americano in Cartagena here.

02 February 2012

A trip to Panama makes me official!


Downtown Panama City
I now have a Colombian work visa stamped in my passport allowing me to work as an English teacher at the Centro Colombo Americano in Cartagena—woo hoo!! Despite all of my travels, I’ve never had a work visa for another country, so it's kind of exciting.

View from the old town to downtown.
Getting the work visa involved leaving the country in order to apply at a Colombian consulate for the “permission” to enter Colombia as a worker. I went to Panama City, Panama, for this as it’s about the closest place I could go, plus it would give me the opportunity to see the canal. It’s less than an hour flight from Cartagena to Panama if going non-stop, although on the return I had to go via Bogota which made it a 5 hour trip.
Went for a jog here along with the Panamanians!
I didn’t see a lot of Panama City, although the area around the Colombian consulate is under a lot of construction as they’re building a new metro. There is a downtown area with lots of modern skyscrapers which I only saw from a distance. Panama City has an old walled town similar to Cartagena’s as well as a nice area for running, walking, biking, roller blading that stretches along the bay front.
 
The Queen Elizabeth on her way through the canal!
The closest section of the canal, the Miraflores locks, is about a 25 minute cab ride from downtown; there’s also a museum there as well as a restaurant that overlooks the locks. I didn't expect to see signs warning of crocodiles on the sidewalks as we neared the area where the locks are...but didn't see any of the reptiles around! I--unknowingly--timed my visit perfectly to see the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship coming through the locks as I sat down for an early dinner. The 100 year old locks are quite impressive although of course already out of date as there are many boats larger in size than “Panamax” (the maximum size of ship which can use the canal). Panama is building a set of parallel locks to be opened in 2014 which will accommodate the “Post-Panamax” supertankers and larger modern container ships. (For those of you wanting to know more about the canal, click here!)
 
No, not even tempted :)
Due to our occupying or managing, depending on your viewpoint, the canal, I did note U.S. influence in Panama City. The U.S. dollar is the currency in use—you go to an ATM & withdraw US dollars, prices are in US dollars, your credit card is charged in US dollars, etc. There are “Bolivars”, Panamanian coins (no bills), but they are the shape, size & value of US coins (penny, nickel, dime, quarter) in order to be of equal use in vending machines, stores, etc. U.S. coins are also widely in circulation. In addition, tax is charged on top of purchase prices, which I don’t think I’ve seen that in any other country I’ve been to; in other countries normally the tax is included in the purchase price you see--no charges tacked on at the cash register. In grocery stores you can get a lot of U.S. products which are not as easily found, in my limited experience, in other Latin American countries I’ve visited. Something very different I saw in one Panamanian grocery store was that they were offering free samples of liquor to promote a certain brand -- that’s something that perhaps should be spread more widely?!
 
Now that I have my work visa, I can officially start my teaching job. The next month-long class cycle starts this coming Monday the 6th. I get my teaching assignment (schedule, number of classes & levels) Friday night, giving me the weekend to prepare. Cross your fingers for me!

All of my Panama photos can be found here.