Back From Bogota

Bogota has 8 million people. Do you have any idea what that looks and feels like? It´s completely insane. Our flight took off on Tuesday after school. It was a great day for the kids. They all had passed their multiplication tests in 2 minutes or less, we had just finished the first book in the series of Unfortunate Events, and the kids had earned enough marbles for a party. So, I decided to make it a day-long event and have a ¨Pajama jammy jam¨, where the kids could wear their pajamas to school and we´d watch the movie with Jim Carrey. They were so excited that morning; it was hilarious. They all came with their sleeping bags, stuffed animals, etc. and packed to the limits with snacks, sodas, candy, and tons of other stuff. We watched the movie in the morning, played some games, and then came back to class for a pizza party and dance competition...they totally sucked, but one kid HAD to win. Then they had Spanish, and it was great because they were super-hyper and the Spanish teacher, who I´m not crazy about, got a little taste of her own medicine. I did nothing to discourage their bad behavior. Anyway, that afternoon, we played some math games, and all took turns trying on the crown. I think I was the prettiest.

We left right from school to the airport. My friend Don, who is about 46 and from Teluride, CO, and I had a place together, but since we waited so long to book our room, we got stuck way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. The hostel itself was fine. It was owned by a nice couple in their 40´s or early 50´s, but we were really far away from everyone and everything else.

The conference itself was at Colegio Nueva Granada, which was a great campus, and seemed like a great place to work. I have to admit that when I got to Bogota, I thought to myself that I had made a mistake. My first impression of Bogota was that I loved it because it was so much bigger and crazier. After a few days of the weather, though, my decision had changed. No place can beat Medellin´s weather. Anyway, the conference was great. I went to two day-long presentations, one on cooperative learning, the other on brain-based learning. I was the typical ass-kiss in the classes, asking lots of questions and basically being the teacher´s pet. I think I annoyed some people, but they can go to hell. I was curious.

The third day, I decided to sleep in as I had been out pretty late the night before. I get this text message from Sarah, who I have this extreme love-hate relationship with, saying I had won something in the raffle of over 900 people. When they called my name, everyone in the auditorium was looking for me, but I was at home in bed. She said Barbara, my principal, looked pissed, especially since two other teachers from the school had also won something and were M.I.A. Isn´t that just my luck? The one time I win something, I´m not there, and not only that, I actually end up getting unlucky because of my luck. I think that´s the definiton of irony.

After learning that I was in trouble, I got up and went to the conference. Even though I knew I would be getting there just as it was ending, I figured it would be better to at least be seen there. Everyone, of course, had to tell me how much shit I was in, how pissed Barbara was, etc, but I don´t really care. At this point, I don´t think she could fire me if she wanted to. Well, she of course could, but I have my parents in my back pocket, so that would be a tough thing for her to do. As my friend Larry says, I like to start fires and watch them burn. I don´t think Barbara knows what to do with me. I´ll bet she thinks I´m more trouble than I´m worth!

Part of this indignant attitude definitely stems from the environment at this school among the employees, namely the elementary teachers. This is where I start my rant, and this is why I came back two days early from my so-called ¨vacation.¨

On Friday, after the conference, a couple of us (the less dramatic of the teachers) went to TGI Fridays, which was downtown, for lunch. There, I met this girl named Shannon who works in Cartagena. I´ll get back to that later. We had lunch, and then Don and I headed into El Centro, the busiest part of the city. I went to the Museo de Oro, or Gold Museum, which was pretty neat. Everyone else had already been there, so I ducked in by myself. I went down to the basement to start my tour, and there was this group of Colombian kids, probably middle school aged. One of them walks by me and says, ¨What´s your name?¨ Now, I knew enough to know that none of them really spoke English, but this was the class clown. I replied to him, ¨My name is Benjamin. What´s yours? ¨ He introduces himself, and then I ask him if he really speaks English, and at this point, I look around and realize that I am completely surrounded by all of his classmates, who are staring at me like a freak-show. I am completely engulfed by these kids, so I entertain them for a couple of minutes, trying to explain who I am and what I am doing there, but after a while it gets really uncomfortable so I bail. A bunch of them follow me for a few minutes, calling my name, but eventually leave me alone. That was entertaining. From there, Don and I stroll through the streets before returning to the hotel to relax a little before the big night out (not like I hadn´t been out every night prior, but this WAS Friday). I decided to go out with Jeff and his old co-workers for dinner. You could call this the gay man convention, becuase every guy there with the exception of Jeff and I, and his ANGRY friend, who I will also get back to in a minute, was not just gay, but FLAMING gay. They were all really great guys, but Jeff had said earlier in the day that we may all end up at a ¨club¨ (if you know what I´m talking about) and I asked myself why this particular group would end up at a place like that, and it just seemed ridiculous to me to stay with them all night. What made it easier was when Jeff´s friend completely went off on the waitress and restaurant owner when his salmon sandwich wasn´t to his liking. Everyone at the table was mortified, even me, who usually is the one creating the scene. I started text messaging Sarah, Liz (who teaches 4th with me, and despite being a total BITCH, I really enjoy) and the third in this trio, Mandy (who has been trying to find my blog for sometime now since I won´t tell her where it is). Mandy, if you are reading this, congratulations! I also suppose that you will be expecting me to talk trash on you, but I won´t do it, because you are one of the few people at the school who I really like, so there. These three girls are finishing dinner and are supposed to be going to a hip-hop club, which is good for me because it´s the one type of club I feel at home at because I can actually dance and sing along with the music. I leave the restaurant and head over to meet them.

When I meet up with them, Sarah, immediately after seeing me, says, ¨Oh, your shirt´s unucked. I guess you finally learned how to loosen up.¨ This was followed by, ¨It looks a little baggy on you. The line on the shirt should be on your shoulders.¨ These two comments were quicky responded to with a, well, I´ll let you guess. That was it for us. We were now ¨mad¨ at each other. Immediate awkwardness. Mandy tries to intervene, but I´m too irritated to play along. I am so tired of the constant drama and shit-talking that goes on around here that I could throw up. This school is full of back-stabbing. One day, a person will pretend to be your friend, the next day you´ll hear a rumor about them talking behind your back. It´s brutal, and it gets really old. People say it´s just like high school here, but I honestly don´t remember high school being this dramatic. I guess if I had gone more often, I would have related better. Anyway, we get into a cab and head to this seedy part of town where we stick out even more than normal. We go into this club, that was more like a dungeon than anything else, where all these 18-21 year old Colombians are grinding on each other and doing coke off the counter tops. We stayed there for a while, but I wanted to leave. I grabbed this girl, Nicole, who was with us and we headed into the trendy part of town where I had spent a majority of my time previously. The other girls wanted to know where we were going, but I was tired of the herd-behavior, which consists of a series of decisions and indecisiveness all at the same time. We get to this club, and meet up with the same teachers who we had eaten lunch with. And there, among them, is Shannon, who I promised I´d get back to. This girl and I completely hit it off, but like I said, she lives in Cartagena, which isn´t close or cheap to get to. We all danced for a while, and then retreated back to the bar. I bought her a drink and proceeded to tell her that if we worked together, we´d be together. I really liked her. She had, or has rather, a great personality and is really good looking. Plus, she´s a lot of fun to be around and has tons of positive energy. Obviously, it´s not meant to be, but if I´m ever in Cartagena...

The next day, Saturday, I get up and look over at Don, and say, ¨I want to go home.¨ At this point, I couldn´t take one more day of the constant drama, plus I was spending TONS of money. He looks at me with relief, and basically says his dream just came true. He couldn´t wait to get home for all the same reasons. I called the airline, which had a great guy who spoke English, and they changed our tickets so that we could leave that night, free of charge. We decided to go to El Centro once again so that we could ride the Metrocable which goes up to the top of the mountain to an old church called Montserrat, plus it has a great view of the city. Too bad that we decided to wear short-sleeve shirts, especially since once we got up there, it started pouring. We looked like absolute idiots. We stayed up there for about 5 minutes and then headed down. We went to a restaurant, Bogota Brewing Company, and had a pitcher and lunch to kill some time before returning to the airport.

When we finished, we jumped into a cab and told him that we wanted to go to two places, both relatively far away, but he agreed. Afterall, this kind of cab fare doesn´t come around too often. Immediately, we had a bad feeling about this guy. I thought I smelled booze when I got in. He wasn´t dangerous or anything like that, just an idiot. He got us completely lost. He had absolutely no idea where he was going. Don and I start to panic a little because we really want to get home. This guy is stopping everyone on the street asking them if they know where our hotel is, and of course nobody does. We spend about 30 minutes before finally getting there and continuing our adventure to the airport. As we´re pulling in, I watch as he passes an entire terminal, but figure he knows where he´s going. We get to the next terminal, get out, and go wait in line to check in. As we´re finishing up, he rattles something to us about where to go, what to do, and we just nod our heads and smile, pretending to understand. We get to the security check-point and go through all the motions, and everything seems fine. We get to our gate, and absolutely nobody is there. We show our tickets to another attendant, and she tells us to go somewhere else. We get there, and there are a few people, but there should be a ton more. We ask another attendant, who tells us we´re in the right place and that we should just wait. Finally, a voice comes over the speaker, instructing us to walk down these stairs and go wait on the tarmac. Now it´s about 15 minutes until our flight, but we figure it´s not a big deal as just about every flight in this country, and ours, is late. This woman is sitting there with a walkie-talkie and she is telling us to wait there. We try to explain to her that our flight is due to leave soon, and she just continues to tell us to wait. Finally, a bus comes and picks us up. We proceed to drive through the maintenance department of the airport, which seems really strange to both of us, but we assume they know what they´re doing. When the bus stops, we get out and follow the others into an area that says, ¨Connections.¨ The woman there tells us that it´s 5:40 and that our plane has left. Let´s just say that we were shocked and furious. We had been waiting in the international terminal, the wrong one, for the last 2 hours and nobody had told us, even though we had showed our tickets to about 5 people who could have helped us. We end up waiting for another 2 hours for the next flight. When we get to Medellin, guess what? NO BAGS!!! Just the perfect ending to an otherwise perfect trip.

This morning, I got up and rode the metro to the other end of town to ride our own Metrocable to the top of the barrios. I got to see exactly why this city has 2.5 million people. Those barrios are dense! I have some good pictures of Bogota as well as Medellin that I´ll ask Kelly to post on Tuesday, when school resumes.

Well, my tale has come to an end. My hands hurt from all the typing, but it´s been good to vent. Thanks for reading.

Ben