Tomorrow I start my first of day Spanish classes at Universidad de la Sabana. It's a different program than I was looking at last time I wrote, but I think the change is for the best. La Sabana is just north of Bogotá, in Chía, and I'll be taking classes there Monday through Friday mornings for the next eight weeks. I'm a little nervous now, but also excited to meet the other students. I'll let you know how that goes.
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A picture of Susana and me, finally. We're in an Irish pub
called Irish Pub (what else?). It was pretty bizarre. |
In the past week or so since I last posted a lot has happened, but the most important thing is that I feel a lot more comfortable here. I've been getting closer to my host-mom Totó and my host-sister Susana, who are both really wonderful people and easy to get along with. I've also met a lot of my extended host-family, some of whom live within a block of the apartment. They've all been so warm and welcoming, and it's really nice to feel like part of a big family. On Thursday I baked cakes with an aunt who lives down the street, and yesterday I met the grandparents, who call me Sarita and asked me if I was German (they told me that Germans always speak good Spanish, so it was probably my favorite compliment I've received so far).
Some of the highlights of the past week have been visiting the school founded by Totó, Colegio San Diego (which is very close to la Sabana), getting to know some of Susana's friends, and lunch with the grandparents yesterday (which ended with the best coffee ice cream I've ever had). I also visited a couple museums, and you can see some pictures on the Flickr account I made today: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarakittleson/
One of the things that immediately struck me about Bogotá was the driving (when not stuck in a traffic jam it feels a lot like riding a rollercoaster), but lately I've been surprised by the creative ways the city controls the traffic. Bogotá is a huge city with a lot of cars and just a few major streets, so there is a lot of traffic and a lot of pollution. Enter the pico y placa system, where each day of the work week cars with license plates ending in certain numbers are not allowed on the roads, encouraging (or really forcing) people to carpool. Beyond pico y placa, Thursday was a día sin carro, meaning no private vehicles were allowed on the roads between 6:30 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. For a country that has had trouble enforcing rule by law in the recent past, I think these are pretty amazing programs. And they work. On Thursday the streets were empty of everything except buses and taxis (who must have had a field day). I know a couple American cities that could really benefit from these kinds of controls.
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Part of a mural with circles cut out of coca leaves,
the raw material for the cocaine that funds
guerrilla groups like the FARC. |
I've also been having lots of good dinner conversations. One day Susana and her mom gave me their opinions on politics and the guerrilla groups who are responsible for a lot of Colombia's bad reputation. While the general opinion is that things have been getting radically better for a long time, there are still some parts of Colombia that are seriously dangerous, and everyone knows someone who's been affected by the violence (for instance, two close friends of my host parents were kidnapped by the guerrillas). A friend of mine who will be in Chile soon was telling me how Chileans seem to identify strongly with the socialist politics of the '70s, whereas my host family referred to the guerrilla occupation of Bogotá in 1985 as a very long time ago. Seems like Latin American politics are rarely boring, although people might wish they were. But not all our dinner conversations are that heavy. One night we spent a long time comparing the names of characters from The Simpsons in English and Spanish. I tried really hard to explain Mayor Quimby's accent, but it turns out "he sounds like a Kennedy" doesn't mean a lot to Colombians and I'm not that great at explaining Irish-American politician stereotypes in Spanish. Oh well, I guess you can't have everything.
