Bogota Week Ten

Hmm for the second week in a row that's a weird place to break it, but I can't help it. Its the way this system of mine works. I slept for about 3 hours and then got up early and hiked down the finca mountain, along the motorway, down another road and to the junction for buses to Medellin. Was a bit worried I may not make it back for my course and I was a bit stupid, because I was taking risks and not getting enough sleep before I started it. One of the other trainees Rachel had been in Medellin and Blue that weekend but we did not know each other then so there is no real recollection. I took a bus to Medellin, had to wait ages for a bus back to Bogota and then sat in for yet another long bus ride. I was quite knackered at this point, but for some strange reason I decided it was a good idea to watch Dance Flick and GI Joe again. I now had dodgy bowels as well. I had missed reading the course outline, because I was stupid and I went to McDonalds and then to sleep. Was really nervous for the course in the morning.



I wrote 'D-Day as I start my course today.' Rare for the nerves to get to me. I was up early and really nervous. Praveen was trying to reassure me that I would be fine. I think he had had woman number five over the weekend I was away. Also Manuel was breaking bits of the apartment and blaming them on me and Praveen. The drunken landlady pointed out that I was not actually there and she had known Praveen for ages. We did a lot of admin. It was not as intense as I was fearing, but it was still going to be a solid slog. We had to learn Welsh on the first day. Bore da. Thats for you Tim. It was to experience what its like to learn a language you have absolutely no familiarity with. We were introduced to the students and I wrote that one of them was very good looking. Foreshadowing again lol. All the students for elementary seem nice people. I had to make a lesson plan on the first night for my first teaching session. I wrote it should be challenging. The groups ended up being horribly unbalanced. We had Leonardo (10 years experience) and Ekhaterina (6 years experience) who helped our group of six all the way through. Our group posted 7 Above Standards, 7 Almost Above Standards and 0 Below Standards (which is very rare). The other group got 2 Above Standards, a few Almost Above Standards and 3 Below Standards. Admittedly Ekhaterina posted 4 of those Above Standards but still.



I slept very very badly. I was cripplingly nervous. Don't remember the last time my nerves got hold of me like that. We went through the morning sessions including charades, which I love. Its a good learning curve. Had my first teaching session. I followed Leonardo and he just blew them out of the water. Fuck. Following that shot me to pieces and my first ten minutes were a disaster. The following ten I brought it back a bit, but it was definitely the worst performance. I would end up graduating with the 3rd best marks, but there and then I was 12th from 12. Apparently I had the biggest improvement ark of all the teachers, but then if you start with the worst lesson of 12 teachers and deliver maybe the best lesson to finish the course, you can't really get much wider. I passed with a standard. I think we get allowances for the first one. I spoke to Gloria again. Argentina qualified thank god and so did Honduras which is nice for Wilson Palacios the Spurs boy. I got some needed sleep and passed on Praveen's invitation to go to Quiebra Canto.

I did not have to teach on the thursday which was good. I missed my stop for calle 76 as I was not paying attention and went all the way to calle 127 before I could come back again. Damn transmilenion, but I think this time it was my fault for daydreaming. It almost made me late. I needed the loo and they had the world's tiniest toilet. What the hell is that? Only later did I find out that they taught kids at weekends. I had assumed they built it for Colombians in general and I thought they are smaller, but not that small. Had my morning classes and then observed the other teachers. This was kind of my week for the next few weeks. Up at 6am and work until 11pm and then sleep. Jesus. Life as an actual teacher will hopefully be a lot easier. We prepped a questionaire for one of our assignments. I spoke to Luisa and Fernando after class about going for drinks on friday and then I spent the rest of the evening planning my lesson.

Up early to work on the last few parts. I taught my lesson. It went better. I think it was to do with food and I ran out of time and had to drop loads of things. Timing, instructions, ICQ's (Instruction checking questions), grading language and planning coherent thematic lessons were my weakest areas. I managed to eradicate them all in the end, but the dogged bastard that is instruction giving clung on until the very last lesson before I killed the bastard. Not actually sure its dead. I just said very little in my last lesson. Ah yes I got them playing pictionary and drawing their breakfasts. Even got Eduar to teach a bit of the lesson (he was the best of my students). We went for drinks after class and after a tough first week I drank for the first time in ages. Now I am back on the road I have to be careful to not fall back into the trap of drinking every night. It was fucking Heineken. What a way to break a drought. I ended up flirting with Lina (the good looking student) that night. Her and Fernando joined us and we all spoke mainly Spanish. Leonardo said I was more latin than English and it will be hard for me to readjust back into England afterwards. Most felt I spoke too fast in Spanish as well. It was a fun night until the end. Pilar (one of the profs) cornered Lina in the toilets and accused her of being on the course just to pull a professor and that she had kissed me. This was not true. Then Fernando made Anita cry (I had to go and check if she was ok) and then we ended up with a phantom bill. I mean it is 33,000 Pesos for 1.5 litres of Heineken. 11 pounds. You could get at least 2.5 litres in London for that price and I normally pay 2,200 pesos for a half litre in my local. I hate the zona rosa. Its like a small slice of Medellin's plastic people in Bogota. Somehow we had a bill for 600,000 pesos. Lina ended up paying 120,000 including 50,000 for Fernando even though he had drunk nothing from our jars. I paid 70,000. There was 160,000 left behind by other people. That makes 350,000 from just a few people. There were about another 10 people there. Everyone reckons they paid between 50,000 and 70,000. That leaves a lot of unaccounted for money. If I was not trying to sort out the other two problems from above I would have turned my maths teaching ability to the bill. Fuck me. Everyone in this internet cafe is always smoking. Bastards. Someone went home very rich and the rest of us paid a ridiculous amount of money for Heineken. Lina went home insulted, Fernando went home pissed off. Everyone else scattered and I had no phone credit so I could not join Praveen etc. Instead I went home and nearly killed myself and my landlady. I had come in and put some eggs on the stove. Then I fell asleep. They cooked for one hour before they eventually shot out of the pan like cannonballs and hit three different areas of the kitchen. Did not know they could do that. Meanwhile the bottom of the metal pot had melted through and released a stream of carbon monoxide in the flat. It would have killed me if the landlady had not woken up. She claims she had a premonition in her dreams. Thank God she's mental. She continued to tell me stories all saturday of people who had died from carbon monoxide, but I just kept laughing imagining the rocket launcher eggs.

Spurs won 2-1 away to Portsmouth. Good result considering Defoe got himself stupidly sent off. We were still hanging around the top 4 at this point and still are at this moment. I went to the Arabic place for lunch. Some Bogota band was shooting a music video in the streets but we just scooted on by. I met drunken Cesar for drinks with Praveen. It was Alice's birthday and Praveen's leaving do. I was about to lose another good friend after Gloria had gone. It was a fun night. Someone had brought along balloons and we were playing with them in the club. I met Praveen's quasi costena girlfriend. Lina could not make it. This guy called Danny from Valledupar got everyone dancing and was impressed with my spazzy hip hop dancing. Oh yeah we had gone to Candelario as I forgot to mention that. Afterwards a big bunch of us went back to Danny's rooftop apartment. Really cool place. He seemed like a nice enough guy. David came back to our flat after some 24 hour food hunting in the shitty sandwich place on calle 19. He fell asleep in the chair around 6am and everyone went to bed before he left.

I got up at 3pm as I needed to sleep off the night before and went to McDonalds with Praveen. We met Cesar the tramp (I had forgotten to give him his clothes the week before because it was a thunderstorm) and Praveen's girlfriend. Cesar said he was off to Villavicencio so I gave him 12,000 for bus fair. Me and Praveen gave him clothes, toothpaste, a razor, mouthwash, socks and shampoo so he could tidy himself up. He was smart enough to work. He guessed I was capricorn from my eyes. Scary stuff. I was hoping he would kick start his life and it did not cost us much to give him a shot. Then we all went to have dinner with Alice near her place for her birthday. I had met a few of her friends the night before. A cool Colombian guy, a German girl and a Japanese guy named Katzo. I had to translate a lot for Praveen and his girlfriend as they had no common language except for body language. The dinner was nice and then we took a taxi back to the flat and I did some work. I assume it was on one of the assignments but I don't really remember. Maybe I just read a bit.