My compañeros and I made an observation our first weekend out together: Colombians dance with their feet; Americans dance with their hands. It’s true. While most every Colombian I’ve met has mastered salsa, vallenato, reggaeton, and who knows what else, Americans alternate between fist-pumping, arm waving, and—most pathetically—snapping.
My compañeros, along with many others I’ve encountered in Medellín, have attempted to coax my shy, arrhythmic self onto the dance floor. None has been more persistent than my host mom. Our second night here, she asked me if I liked to rumba. She and Vicki, her next-door-neighbor and co-conspirator, were making jewelry together in their workshop as they do most nights. I answered in the negative, insisting that I was not capaz to dance in any way.
This response was met with frowns and exclamations to the contrary. Before I knew it I was dancing with Margarita, who was counting out the quick moving steps to me as I tried to follow. She and Vicky laughed at my clumsy mirror of their fluid movements. But they kept with me. And every night since that I’ve walked into the taller and found the radio on, I’ve found myself dancing once again. These in-house salsa workshops have taught me what dancing here is really about: having fun.
Browne
Elysia
Jack
Kate: How to cheer up in Carlos E. Restrepo and beyond
Even in the City of Eternal Spring, I sometimes need a pick-me-up. What might get you down?
- A particularly heavy visit with my cogestora
- Breaking your harddrive
- One too many hours seated, like a Zombie, going through footage
- Nacional losing
- Nacional tying
- Nacional winning, and not getting a wink of sleep as bombas from the tienda beneath your bedroom window soar into the sky and cars screech past in celebration.
- Not getting to go into the field
- The George Zimmerman trial
- Okay the news in general, all the time, what gets made a spectacle of, and worse yet what goes uncovered.
- Phone calls in Spanish and/or the sinking feeling that you have no idea what you just agreed to. “Cierto? – Si, si es perfecto…” I think?
- Diarrhea
- Family illness
- Jota being gone (He doesn’t even go here!)
- Ryan getting two Yatzhee’s in one game
- No one wants to fund your Smellstagram or glow-in-the-dark toilet paper ideas. Still. (Note: I said ‘em first here.)
- FOMO (this one stems from a particularly good problem: having too many fun things to do!)
- Girls braiding your hair.
I have a new team of stylists including Ellie, new friends
from the PBM program, and Camila from my community visits - Finally finding a chocolate chip cookie in a haven of hipsterness
- Brownie ice cream from Frutti Jhon
- Learning how to play Yatzhee from the master herself, Vicky!
- Jugo.
- Obleos and Mazamorra while in the field.
- My host family.
The fam watching the last Nacional v Santa Fe game. - Abrazos y besos.
- Lounging around with your host family on a lazy Saturday.
- A FestiPicnic. With your wonderful compañera (many thanks Juliana!) and her wonderful family.
- Puerto Candelaria: Live jazz, blues, latin music.
- ‘Tomar algo’-ing at the bookstore in Carlos E. Restrepo.
- A dinner date: skyping your parents eating dinner while you eat dinner (Thanks, Gloria for setting this up! I love you lots!)
- Giving in to making a fool of yourself
Linguistically, musically, and in your physical appearance.
(When you’re explaining Boston winters, snow, and snuggling in bed, esconderse ≠ escoger.
When you’re at the Exito, addressing a craving, hummus ≠ mantequilla de garbanzas. And hummus still ≠ mantequilla de garbanzas at the next Exito.
And I don’t have cuatro meses left. No matter how hard I wish cuatro meses ≠ cuatro semanas.)
Nicholas
Living in a different country can sometimes wear on your senses; not that this is such a terrible thing, though when this happens, as it does to most people, it’s a good idea to take a step back and do something to relax your mind. The Colombian culture here is extremely astute to facial expressions, and if you aren’t animo, or wearing an animated facial expression, when in the presence of a Colombian that you know, there might be a cultural miscommunication. For this reason, I’ve taken it upon myself to read books, in order to recharge my mind to keep myself as awake and animated as possible. A revolutionary idea, I know; who would have ever thought I would have time to read a book here in Medellín, when there is so much to do, see, hear, and smell?! So here I was, one morning, my mind weary from the mental exertion of trying to be paisa, to speak Spanish at every opportunity. I decided that after a tour around Carlos E Restrepo with Jota as our guide that I would find a quiet place to read my book. Jota lead us to a tree that he and the neighborhood call “Caucho,” or rubber tree. Apparently you could harvest rubber from the tree! So cool! And it was a behemoth, one of the most extravagant trees I’ve seen to date. It had a central trunk that broke off into a few other secondary trunks, like the body of a Hydra from the Greek mythologies, and grew skyward to create a canopy, from which branches, like vines, hung limply to the ground. It was something out of Tarzan. The tree appeared to have bangs. I thought with a smile, “it’s perfect.” So shortly thereafter, Jack and I decided to have a go at climbing the giant caucho to read our books, his Game of Thrones and mine The Great Gatsby (I feel like I was the only person who never read this in high school, so I felt the need to catch myself up). At first we couldn’t get up, because the tree was positioned on the cusp of a steep hill that initially scared us away from scaling the backside of the tree that was actually easier to climb. So for a few minutes we tried the front, and were rewarded by thoroughly dirtying our clothes with bark residue and mud. It had rained the night before, so that didn’t help matters. At last, we decided to try the hill-side of the tree, and though it seemed scarier, there were far more prudent grip placements on the tree of which we could take advantage. I went first, and climbed to the highest, flattest spot I could find in the tree, in which I could peacefully and comfortably read.
Nikita
In my short time here, I have learned that these vibrant, resilient people of Medellín use such seemingly insignificant things, along with hope, determination, and desire, to sustain their livelihoods.
Ryan
Vaib
