welp! it's monday already!
Which means, I have been here over a week now! Yiikes! The time seemed to fly, yet it feels like I have been here a lot longer. Today was not that exciting, I'm sorry to report. A busy day at school filled with work time in the classroom and meeting about teacher goals, expectations, evaluations, and assessments....blech. ;) I was semi-productive in my room though. I have all the backgrounds and borders up on my bulletin boards....no work on the actual contents of those boards yet :( Still missing a reading group table and some chairs. The hunt will become serious by the end of the week.
After school, I still had my productive hat on and was going to go for a swim workout...turns out the pool was closed, so instead I came back and chatted with my dear amiga Alice, and creeped you all on facebook.
The truly upsetting part of my day.....today was my last day the school would be providing us lunch. Which means, I have to cook even moooore now...yikes. My bright idea of the day was to cut up mystery fruit #3 to take for lunch with me. Turns out I am 95% sure it is a mango, and that I am 100% sure I do not know how to cut a mango. I will have mango shreds with my peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich tomorrow :)
The best news of the day, I finally met my roommate! She just got back from a six week excursion all over South America...the lady has got to be nuts. She is super nice, and has a wonderful Australian accent. She teaches third grade at The Columbus School. She did inform me that our oven can be temperamental and that I did everything right....it just sometimes doesn't work. She also says, we have a maid who tells us what the mystery fruit are, and she lets us know if something we thought was a fruit is indeed a vegetable. This sounds like a very important person that I need in my life right now.
Anywho! I have nooo idea how this post got to be so long. Actually, it's probably because I started to write this because I needed a break from reading about The Reading Workshop. Now I must go back to being on task.
much love
aimee
Monday, July 29, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
fotos nuevos
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| trees outside my building |
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| isn't it pretty? |
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| that is the view of my building from the pool |
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| typical meal...only thing I can cook so far...and the beans were NOT cooked. |
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| this is a building formally owned by Escobar used for money laundering! it's huge right!? |
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| this is in the center of Santa Fe a preview of the flower parade |
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| this is the mall....enough said. |
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| view leaving Santa Fe |
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| this is the meal that almost killed me like 3x.... |
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| this is the devil itself. |
adventures around every corner!
This weekend has been filled with adventures! The simplest things in the states seem to be so difficult for me to figure out here. Friday night was our last dinner out together, the school was treating all the newly hired teachers. We ate at Ay Caramba! in Parque Lleras, it has deeelicious food. After dinner, most of the new teachers went out to a bar. There was dancing, aguardiente (a local alcohol that tastes like black licorice), and lots of fun. However, getting a taxi home was soo stressful! Every Colombian says you cannot just hail a cab from the street, you have to call a company and ask for one to come pick you up. There is something in Colombia called the Millionaire's Tour, that is when the cab driver holds you at gun point, takes you to an ATM and makes you get out all your money. Yiiiikes! So, because of this you must aaalways call ahead. But when you're in the center of the nightlife and theirs cabs everywhere and you have to find your specific cab, makes things difficult. Anywho, I shared a cab with another teacher, Amy (crazy right!), because you also canNOT ride alone in a taxi at night. So many rules, which makes getting around difficult when you're living alone. But Friday night I got home safe and sound and lived to see another day :)
Saturday, I was tiiiiired all day! I think all the activity and stress from the week finally caught up to me. I lounged by the pool, read one of the books that my class will be reading (The Tale of Despereaux, I'm sooo excited they're reading this!) and took many naps. I then went grocery shopping, where the man bagging my groceries decided that I was going to marry a Colombian man and stay here forever. I laughed, a lot. Colombian men are short, I told him. The next adventure came while I was trying to make dinner. I waaanted to bake a pizza because I had just bought all the ingredients that I needed....wasn't so easy. Apparently I have to lite my oven....took me awhile to figure that out. Then when I managed to lite it, it went out everytime I took my hand off the liter. After many failed attempts, I finally gave up. Then I had the bright idea to just cook it on the stove top....I could toast pita bread, heat up the veggies and sauce together then cook it in a pan. However, when I added the veggies to the oil on the pan, it practically erupted with fire!! It was terrifying! I thought the whooole place was going to burn down. I did manage to control the fire and cook my makeshift pizza. It was all a very stressful experience. I won't be trying to bake anything anytime soon, to say the least.
Lastly, Sunday, this been my least stressful day so far :) definitely my favorite. Every Sunday Medellín closes off a main street Av. Poblado for Ciclovia (sp?). It is an awesome event! It is closed off for people to walk, bike, run, rollerblade, whatever their hearts desire. I went walking...my body is sooore, and fatigued. I'm deciding to blame the altitude instead of just being out of shape :) On my walk I was able to explore the area a bit more, went up and down, ran into some other teachers, walked with them a bit. And then I haad to stop at Juan Valdez (the starbucks of Colombia), and then hit the mall (Santa Fé). Magically I did not buy aaaany clothes! Crazy I know. I did however pick up a water bottle and some ice cream :) The worst part though, I found allll of my favorite stores from Spain here!! Good thing Santa Fé is about a 20min walk from my house, so I can´t go there alllll the time.
This been a very leeeengthy post, and for that I apologize. I think sooome people might appreciate knowing my every move and experience for awhile (Cathy). For those of you with iphones please keep imessaging me! I love hearing from everyone, and those of you without, there is an app called What´s App? which allows you to text for free to anyone, it's amazing!
This is all I've got so far, I might go lounge by the pool for awhile now :)
much love
aimee
pictures to follow :)
Saturday, I was tiiiiired all day! I think all the activity and stress from the week finally caught up to me. I lounged by the pool, read one of the books that my class will be reading (The Tale of Despereaux, I'm sooo excited they're reading this!) and took many naps. I then went grocery shopping, where the man bagging my groceries decided that I was going to marry a Colombian man and stay here forever. I laughed, a lot. Colombian men are short, I told him. The next adventure came while I was trying to make dinner. I waaanted to bake a pizza because I had just bought all the ingredients that I needed....wasn't so easy. Apparently I have to lite my oven....took me awhile to figure that out. Then when I managed to lite it, it went out everytime I took my hand off the liter. After many failed attempts, I finally gave up. Then I had the bright idea to just cook it on the stove top....I could toast pita bread, heat up the veggies and sauce together then cook it in a pan. However, when I added the veggies to the oil on the pan, it practically erupted with fire!! It was terrifying! I thought the whooole place was going to burn down. I did manage to control the fire and cook my makeshift pizza. It was all a very stressful experience. I won't be trying to bake anything anytime soon, to say the least.
Lastly, Sunday, this been my least stressful day so far :) definitely my favorite. Every Sunday Medellín closes off a main street Av. Poblado for Ciclovia (sp?). It is an awesome event! It is closed off for people to walk, bike, run, rollerblade, whatever their hearts desire. I went walking...my body is sooore, and fatigued. I'm deciding to blame the altitude instead of just being out of shape :) On my walk I was able to explore the area a bit more, went up and down, ran into some other teachers, walked with them a bit. And then I haad to stop at Juan Valdez (the starbucks of Colombia), and then hit the mall (Santa Fé). Magically I did not buy aaaany clothes! Crazy I know. I did however pick up a water bottle and some ice cream :) The worst part though, I found allll of my favorite stores from Spain here!! Good thing Santa Fé is about a 20min walk from my house, so I can´t go there alllll the time.
This been a very leeeengthy post, and for that I apologize. I think sooome people might appreciate knowing my every move and experience for awhile (Cathy). For those of you with iphones please keep imessaging me! I love hearing from everyone, and those of you without, there is an app called What´s App? which allows you to text for free to anyone, it's amazing!
This is all I've got so far, I might go lounge by the pool for awhile now :)
much love
aimee
pictures to follow :)
Más fotos
These are photos I took from Carlos my phone :)
You just peel back the scary white skin and suck out the slimy eye lookin' things....it was delicious once I closed my eyes!
1st airport meal....all this for a mere $15
Pretty views
Security :))
This is where I sit and wait for the bus to pick me up at 7am!!
Buñuelo y empanada
1st coffee in colombia!
I can't get enough of my view :)
Mystery fruit #1
I miss my bike! I could've gotten some serious training in with all these mountains around
Mystery fruit #2 (this time a friend showed me how to eat this one)
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
photos!
as promised to many people...piiiictures!
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| dining area |
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| sitting area with an aaamazing view. |
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| work area-right across from dining |
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| my bathroom |
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| bedroom...with allll my suitcases |
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| closet |
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| patio |
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| tried to get a clear picture of the view and kind of failed |
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| view from my patio to ground level...that's a little mini golf course |
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| view from the school's campus |
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| outside my classroom! |
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| reading area |
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| closet with storage, wash area |
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| 5th grade wing, I'm all the way at the end |
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| upper elementary play ground |
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| inside the closet |
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| start of our city tour of Medellín |
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| our tour guide, women of medellin rub this guy´s man business for good luck finding eternal love... |
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| poor guy is not packing a lot... |
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| this is a free service the city offers, they show documentaries on the side of the planetariums building and then people can watch from this building which is like a fine arts building.... parque de los deseos i believe is what it´s called |
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| lookout point over the city |
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| our awesome tour guide...he said ladies cannot trust paisa men (men from medellin) |
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| i just thought this was awesome |
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| 1st cerveza!! |
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| daylight photo of the outside from the opposite side. i live in the building in the middle on the 18th floor |
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