Kicked in the Nuts

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Most Fridays, the teachers at school get a soccer game going after school. I've participated three times so far - the first time was just teachers, 5 on 5, the second time was a bigger game, teachers vs. janitors, 7 on 7 on an expanded "pitch" (more of a court), and today was the third match, this time teachers vs. students from grades 10 and 12, 6 on 6.

(Today's match also happened to be much earlier than usual, because of a school-wide power outage (not the first time this year) which started around 8:30, and by the time it was back on at 12:30, the students had gone home early.)

I look forward to these matches every week - as most of you probably know, I love to play sports, and this is the only regularly scheduled sport I've got going on right now. One week I even stayed like half an hour after school in expectation, only to discover everyone else had left.

Now, in week 1 I was pretty bad. I mean, I'm a decent athlete, but I don't play soccer very often - I don't think I had played in 2 or 3 years, and when I have played it's usually been smaller games, like 2 on 2 or 3 on 3, with friends who are equally inexperienced.

Let me tell you, Colombians are great at soccer! I'm sure that doesn't come as a surprise, but it really is amazing how every single kid here (I am not exaggerating, at least with respect to the boys in my grade 8 classes, all of whom I've seen play) knows the game quite well, and even though you're always bound to find a spectrum of athleticism and coordination, every kid somehow makes it work and is pretty darn good.

So when it came time to lace 'em up in game 1, I quickly discovered that being able to run fast and kick the ball hard have almost nothing to do with playing soccer. I lacked that inate sense of the game that one only gains through experience.

By game 3 (today), though, I made some progress. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement - of our team's 10 goals, I scored 4 and assisted 2. Of course, what that actually means is that, on four separate occasions, I happened to be standing in front of the net when the ball magically appeared at my foot, and two other times I accidentally tripped over the ball, causing it to somehow ricochet in the general direction of a teammate, who made some amazing play and scored.

I really do notice the improvement, though. Especially in the area of not making idiotic mistakes and losing the ball because of accidentally kicking the air instead of the ball and then pulling a cartoon-feet-up-in-the-air fall.

I still have a long way to go, though. There are lots of skills I can't perform, and instincts I haven't developed. For example, today there was a ball that found its way into the air and was coming down near where I was. Taking the ball on the body and then subsequently gaining control of it is one skill I've developed somewhat reasonably, so this is what I attempted to do.

Unfortunately, the choice of what part of the body to block the ball with is not an instinct I have, apparently. You know what's coming. I went to stop the ball's flight with my crotchal region, while an opponent simultaneously went for the mid-air kick. The good news: I got to the ball before he did. The bad news: He got to the balls before I did. It was hard, and it was not in the least off-center. Kicked in the nuts!

This kid knows what I'm talking about.

Colombiana Part I

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This was one of my first ideas for a blog post when I started Colombia Blogging, and I thought it would become a frequent feature - a random collection of little differences I've noticed. It's not that there aren't tons of them, I guess I just a) keep forgetting to write them down, b) incorporate them into other posts or c) in certain area, like public transportation and technology, there are so many little differences that I'm going to eventually make them their own posts. Anyway, on a Monday after 7 days of intense Taganga Blogging, I didn't feel like putting much thought into the old Xlog, so I turned to a half-finished post. Here's hoping I can think of enough to finish the rest.

Without further ado, 10 peculiarities of Colombia! Or, at least, 10 things that seem peculiar after living in Canada for 22 years.

• In baseball broadcasts, they write a player's game-record backwards! I just saw "Melky Cabrera - Esta Noche - 3-0". 3 hits in no at bats... nice work, Melky.

• The website of the Colombian soccer league (which is called Copa Mustang, or Mustang Cup, sponsored by Mustang cigarettes - there are a couple interesting differences here, first that a major sports championship is named after a corporate sponsor, as opposed to the World Series or Stanley Cup, though I guess golf has the whole corporate sponsor thing going too, so it's not a huge difference, but secondly that the corporate sponsor is a tobacco company) requires you to enter your age. Apparently, you must be 18+ to view the standings, stats, etc... I have no idea why.

• The 2-L coke bottles are bigger! That sentence doesn't make any sense. The 2-L coke bottles are not bigger. There aren't any 2-L coke bottles. There are 2.5-L coke bottles though.

• Speaking of pop, apple pop is pretty common (it's red... other than that, no word on what type of apple is used). I've had apple pop before, it's just a lot more common here.

• There are a lot of mimes here. Or maybe there's just one who I see every day because he's always at the same intersection between my house and the bus stop. Also, there was one at school day for World Peace Day (umm, because if you can't talk, you can't fight?). But they're not really mimes: they have this weird little squeaky thing that sounds like a super fast forwarded voice, so they pretend to talk and then squeak instead. I've had a couple of squeaking conversations which have probably been better understood by both parties than most of my actual conversations around here.

• As I've blogged about before, there is no shortage of huge Wal-Mart like superstores (there are 2 in the mall 3 blocks from my apartment), and this is where I did most of my initial shopping, but as I've gotten to know the city better, I've discovered that there are smaller general stores, called tiendas, everywhere. And the great thing about tiendas (not that I've taken advantage of it) is that you can order anything for delivery, for about 3 bucks.

• The question of whether Colombia is significantly cheaper than Canada is trickier than you might think. Certain things, like rent (in my part of the city at least), utilities, fast food restaurants, and some groceries, are about the same, while others, like transportation, other groceries, and street food, are way cheaper.

• E already blogged about this, but you can pay bills at supermarkets.

• I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to you, but there is a most definite lack of recycling. You see it every now and then in modern-ish buildings, but there isn't any at my building, at the school, and certainly not on the street.

• Related to the last one, there is definitely no garbage limit (at my building, when you have garbage to rid yourself of, you just take it out to a huge dumpster outside which isn't even part of the building - just a public dumpster I guess), but despite this ability to put as much as you want in the designated garbage bins, there's still trash lying everywhere.

Okay, that's 10 I think! Sorry for the lack of witty commentary on most of these. I used my entire wit quota for the day during class today when I turned my triangle-shaped ruler into a gun and pretend-shot all my kids as they came in. It was awesome.

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.

Notes From Friday

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I usually try to focus these blog posts on a single topic/story, but sometimes there are just a few tidbits here and there I want to pass along. So, without further ado, here are some of said tidbits.

*****

I've mentioned this once before, but it was just a quick aside buried deep in a mostly-unrelated story, so I thought I'd mention it again: last week, a teacher band was formed for the purpose of playing at the school's first mass. I played (play? Not sure what our future is yet...) drums in said band. I'm telling you this because my colleague E wrote a blog post about the mass, so check it out! And check out the rest of her blog while you're at it!

*****

Another reason I wanted to mention the teacher band is because one of its members is a new friend of mine, and he's involved in both of the other two tidbits of today's post. This new friend's xlog-name is M, and he plays electric guitar and bass in the teacher band. He's one of the two music teachers at school.

And last night, M and I almost got arrested!

Okay, not really. But we could have been, because we were doing something illegal. Namely: we were men and we were outside.

I'm serious! This sounds like something you might read on Ian's Blog (I am just linking all over the place today), but in Colombia? What's the deal?

Apparently, last night was some sort of women's night in Barranquilla. At first I thought this meant men couldn't go to bars, but in actuality it was much more wide-spread than that; we weren't even allowed to be on the street! Obviously, I had a lot of questions about this, but M didn't know much more than I. This is not a regular event; last night was the first one, ever. M's understanding was that it was some sort of social experiment to see if nightlife-related violence was reduced, but he also brought up the very good (and also hilarious) point that of course nightlife-related violence would be reduced, since nightlife-related violence is usually alcohol-fueled, and without men, who would be buying the women drinks?

Anyway, last night M and I went over to J's apartment for the evening (if you don't feel like clicking the link, J is a displaced Canadian who I met on the bus this week. I also found out last night I am J's 3rd replacement at my school - meaning he taught the same classes as me 3 teachers ago), and even though it was only about a 10 minute walk (more like 25 on the way back...), we were terrified! Okay, we weren't terrified. What were they gonna do? Give us a stern lecture? I would have just pulled the gringo card, and I would have got out of even that. (by the way, maybe this is common knowledge, but I just found out last night that gringo refers specifically to Americans, so I'm not one - as someone who is often, and wrongly, referred to as a gringo, J was sure to make this point very clear.)

*****

Before venturing out into the wild unknown of no-men-allowed Barranquilla, M and I had been hanging out at my apartment. I had invited M over because we take the same bus and we were thirsty, and I had drinks.

We were thirsty because yesterday after school the teachers had a Friday soccer game, which I believe is a regular thing (there was one 2 weeks ago which I had to miss because I had to go get my blood taken or some other moving-related administrative thing (by the way, I'm O negative, which I already knew, but I guess they won't let you just tell them your blood type), and then last week it was raining), though I didn't find out until yesterday that these Friday matches aren't so much games as training sessions (they're effectively the same thing, I guess it's just the motivation that's different).

Training sessions for what, you ask? Well, as I just found out yesterday (I found out a lot of things yesterday) the teachers are going to a soccer tournament soon. It's a tournament for all Colombian SACS Schools - SACS is some kind of accreditation that allows students to receive both a Colombian and American high school diploma, and my school just got accredited last year.

So anyway, there's this SACS soccer tournament in October. As far as I know, that's all it is. Maybe there's some sort of educational conference component to it, but I haven't heard about that. Oh yeah, and the tournament is in Bogotá! I don't know yet if I'll get to go, since, as mentioned, I just found out about it yesterday, but that would be amazing, obviously.

*****

One last note: yesterday I got my Cedula, which is the Colombian everything card - it's like a combination driver's license/SIN card/probably everything else? The most important result of this is I can now open a bank account and consequently receive a pay cheque. Things are coming up Dave.