Another Week of Teaching and Touring

Last week, I continued to take new students into my cultural workshops and office hours. As usual, I climbed and descended between moments of near-ecstatic satisfaction for being able to swap cultural comprehensions with my students, and moments of utter frustration for feeling under-equipped to meet unconventional challenges. For example, I have at least two students who I happen to believe have learning disabilities, because they simply DO NOT demonstrate the ability to focus. I can tell these two particular fellows the same translation, or explain the same grammatical structure literally four times in a row, and find them unable to reproduce even 50% of what I just emphasized. Compounding such individual setbacks, though, is the fact that many students in my department demonstrate poor command of study skills! Not many things drive me crazier than students who show no interest in hitting the books outside of clas. As I've regrettably noticed in other Latin American locations, the major difficulty here is stirring a desire to create proper environments for independent learning. I repeatedly urge my students to conceputalize English as a Second Language as bodybuilding: it is not a process that can be developed one day and then forgotten the next, but rather one that demands continuous and repeated exercise and practice. That is to say, learning English is not, in light of the children's fable, like riding a bicycle: people do forget and tongue muscle memory does contract over time. As such, I constantly remind my students to employ foreign language learning's four fundamental pillars: Listening, Speaking, Writing, and Reading. But I'm said to say at least half of my students exhibit no evidence of exercising these areas on their own. In attempt to sympathize with them, I jump and kick and scream that I am in their same boat: though I have been learning Spanish for over ten years, I still must create environments for exercise in the language every day that I wake in Colombia. I do this by watching the news in Spanish, reading in Spanish, bobbing my head to salsa, bachata, and reggaeton lyrics each walk to work, and looking goofy as I audibly practice my rr, the Spanish letter that represents the tongue-rolling sound that has plagued me for a decade, in between volleyball serves. The basic point is, if these students are unwilling to simulate foreign language immersion environments on their own terms, then they will never achieve native-level fluency in English. Of that I am certain.

But to further tangle this ball of yarn, some students are even more non-traditional than others. Imagine teaching ESL to a student who is blind. Tutoring one such student, who is, as could be expected, struggling to expand her English vocabulary, has become one of my tasks at the UPB. What a tough but rewarding challenge. My tutora has requested highly patient additional help with this young lady, whom I will refer to using the alias Veronica. I am assisting Veronica's English vocabulary development in one-hour blocks during my morning office hours. Putting in any more time at once would be simply exhausting: when working with Veronica, the teacher must painstakingly speak very slowly and loudly, over-enunciating words and sifting through sentences by disintegrating into the smallest units possible, focusing on meaning in word-by-word fashion. This is an exercise in patience. Revising Braille-transcribed short essays with a student that has to rally without an important sense, well, at times seems to make no sense. Sometimes I ask myself, shouldn't special conditions be set up to allow this student to graduate from the Education faculty without having to struggle through the hardship of learning a language she can't see!? But with time, I've considered that maybe Veronica's absence of sight has made her other senses sharper. For instance, when given the chance to express herself outside of the classroom, in more personalized settings, Veronica has already demonstrated that her pronunciation skills surpass those of many of her perfectly sighted peers. So, allowing Veronica to hold onto my shoulder as I guide her across campus to her class that follows our tutoring sessions, I've decided that this is a more than worthy and fulfilling service endeavor. In spite of the Braille and the need for explanations in "Tarzan English," we will succeed.


Midway through the week, I caught a nice break. Raul, Sonya, Sonya's friend, Eliza, visiting from Massachusetts, and I headed over to Barrio San Javier to visit some pitbull puppies and have a lunch amablemente cooked by Laura, an adopted grandmother figure to Raul. The sun was shining high and us three gringos were out and about, looking conspicuous in our shades, wandering a neighborhood in which maybe 10 years ago, locals might have said outsiders would surely die by stray gunfire. (Though it so happens that San Javier is now one focal point of the City of Medellín's deliberate urban rebirth effort, and will soon be the site of a state of the art public park complex, designed to integrate demographics by spurring new exploration of the area by the rich.) We enjoyed a lovingly prepared feast of rice, beans, deep fried pork chicharrones, fried eggs, and a special treat, mazamorra de maíz, or a sort of soaked corn and milk pudding, usually served with guava jelly. Stuffed, I rode the Metro back to work tired and daydreaming about Solombia, a peaceful country where there is a government mandated post-cholesterol-overload 1 pm siesta each day...


Outside of the world of teaching ESL, my involvement in Latin America's political atmosphere was dominated by nail-biting anticipation of the general elections in the region's behemoth, Brazil. Throughout the week, it was next to impossible to escape a saturation of coverage about the big voting day, Sunday, the 3rd, across all major Colombian news networks. (Of course, I was not complaining.) As I continue to envision my tripod of networking, diplomacy, investments, and service work unfold across Brazil, Colombia, and the United States, I can't really imagine a more exciting time to be in South America than the moment at which my fellow Brasileiros go to the polls. (Unfortunately, I was unable to fulfill my democratic duty myself as an absentee because I had missed the slim registration window offered by our Consulates, the deadlines of which were, as I learned from my Auntie Giovanna, months ago... Oh snap!) Nonetheless, naturally, the event had me extremely pumped, so I started to dig through articles of Dinero, BBC, and the Financial Times, searching for data and analysis. My weeklong exhilaration culminated Friday when I delivered a lecture to the UPB Model Organization of American States team about one of world's hot-button issues in 2010: my birth country's political and economic evolution and emergence as an expected Global Power. Though my 9-slide Powerpoint presentation was designed to be delivered in 20 minutes, because my audience was, of course, curious and brimming with insight to add, my talk turned into a one-hour interactive debate. The teammates, other advisers, and I discussed an array of the factors that have contributed to the hype surrounding Brazil in the news today: the country's macroeconomic development statistics, its recent economic policy history, its new record-breakingly expensive Atlantic Ocean oil exploration, its strengthening companies, and the conceptual significance of its new geopolitical influence as a member of the "BRIC" nations. Indeed, my colleagues and advisees are so talkative about these matters because the tightening of relations between Brazil and Colombia, especially with regard to security and economic development, is a matter of unfolding intrigue. I'm expecting that this presentation and my participation on the UPB MOAS team will help build a compelling story to be told in grad school admission interviews...


By Sunday, I suppose the glamour of the Brazilian election had worn off in my head a bit... I wound up opting against staying at home glued to CNN, NTN 24, and Caracol News all day, preferring to head out for some regional sightseeing. (Given the ensuing "too-close-to-call" nature of the Brazilian election results, and the need for a run-off on October 31st, I guess I can safely say this was a sound decision.) One of my private tutorees, Carlos Andres, had offered about a week beforehand to drive a couple of buddies and I, along with his 10-year-old daughter, out to Santa Fe de Antioquia, a little regional village with a much warmer climate and a whole lot more cobblestone than Medellín. By noon, my amig@s Raul and Carolina and I hopped in Carlos' Chevy for a spin up the hill and out of the Department of Antioquia's rather more bustling capital. The drive to Santa Fe is about 1.5 hours to the northwest of Medellín, up into the mountains and then down a grand descent into a valley that I estimate is 1000 meters closer than Medellín to sea level. WHEW! Best believe that altitude difference made for one hell of a climate change! While the rains of this year's constant "La Niña" storm were assuredly hammering our beloved so-called "City of Eternal Spring" to the southwest, it was a hot and muggy 85 degrees or so in Santa Fe. But as I had already heard from many, the town, population roughly 25,000, sparkled with with small-time artisans, charming barbecued steak restaurants, Catholic monuments, narrow streets and colorful colonial-looking architecture, was certainly worth a look. After lunch, the highlight of the day's outing came about mid-afternoon. Carlos drove the five of us down to the Río Cauca, or Cauca River, which cuts the declining valley running from South to North. There we beheld a famous footbridge that crosses the river. Sweating intensely under the antioqueño sun, Raul, Carolina, and I climbed to a vista point above the western point of the bridge, finally reaching a perch right next to a statue of La Virgen, Christ's mother, to reap a 180-degree panorama. No problem! After a 3 pm beverage to cool off (I promise we had no choice!), it was back to Medellín to settle down for another week of work.

Conspicuous gringos: Sonya, Eliza, and I in San Javier, apparently too lazy after an enormous lunch to take off our shades and assimilate... Hmmm... Does this put us at risk?

A lesson on counting words: teaching how to differentiate and when to use "a lot," "many," "several," and "some."

Look alive, UPB whippersnappers!

"Somebody give me TWO examples, please."

Now this is an odd display the Business Faculty put up in my building to, I believe, depict the Financial Crisis...

Carolina and I, jamming to some good ol' Hip Hop tunes in the back of Carlos Andres' dune buggy, on the drive north to Santa Fe de Antioquia

Enjoying some of the more antique architecture in Santa Fe's main plaza

Raul and I doing what we do best: outstretching arms in enjoyment of a new smell in the air...

This fountain adorns the central town square in Santa Fe de Antioquia...

...I'm dubbing it Antioquia's Fountain of Youth...

...Because sweating in that climate, youthful is surely how I felt! I think Raul would agree.

Carolina claims that sticking to my Colombian diet of minimum two bananas per day, and climbing so enthusiastically up to this Río de Cauca vista point, I must from now on be referred to as "Monkey Boy." Okay, fine, just add it to my list of half a dozen other Brazilian nicknames.

La Virgen, or Christ's mother, holding baby You Know Who, atop the Río de Cauca vista perch... Maybe this warrants a good moment to stop and pray... Or at least to stop and savor Mother Nature's gifts!

From right to left: Carolina, Carlos Andres, Carlos' daughter Ana, and myself, all enjoying a stroll after a mid-afternoon refresco, somewhere near the Cauca River