The School

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I visited the school I'm working at less than 24 hours after arriving in Colombia, which was about a month ago, and snapped some photos while there. Those pics have been idling on my computer since then, so I figured I should finally show them to you!

The school has a beautiful open-concept design, which I later learned is very common throughout Colombia (and presumably many other summer-year-round countries). It makes sense, just something I hadn't thought of. Note: we do get a fair amount of rain here, but as you can see in the above photo, the hallways are well-covered, and this coverage extends throughout the school, making it possible to reach any room (except the (outdoor, but covered) gym, if memory serves) without getting wet.

The spiky white stuff you see here is the roof of the cafeteria, where the two Lovely Ladies of Lunch (as I dubbed them mere seconds ago) serve their wonderful creations. Note: I don't know what they actually serve for lunch during the school year, but they some tasty food during training, so I can't imagine it isn't delicious.

Edit: I started writing this a couple weeks ago, and I have now figured out the lunch situation, but it deserves its own post - I'll try to snap some pics soon.

I liked this archway-rock face view that you first saw in the last picture, so I snapped a close-up. This rock face snakes along much of the back of the school, and there are some places where it's kind of tempting to try to jump across. Kind of a lot.

As you can probably guess, this was one of the days in which we got some rain. However, if my month of experience is any indication, the rain is always short-lived; no all-day drizzles, but so far no torrential downpours either. Usually a fairly short, volumetrically-average shower.

A view of the beautiful courtyard in front of the kindergarten/grade 1 wing (the far end).

This is the aforementioned open gym. Larger assemblies are held here, including last week's birthday celebration which E wrote about. (By the way, at said assembly, I dressed up like revolutionary Antonio Nariño, in a costume hastily thrown together out of construction paper by my class. I'll try to get a picture...)

The person you see stretching is a teacher, warming up for our regular Friday practice in preparation for the big teacher soccer tournament in Bogotá.

Here's a shot of the terrain just past the gym, which is the the North bookend of the school. All I remember from the north end of my high school was the smoking pit.