i just finished my spanish lesson with one of the english teachers at my school and as i was about to leave he stops me and tells me if he could ask a favor of me. of course i said i would love to. ok good cuz now this isnt certain yet but im going to ask the english coordinator if you could help us english teachers out. - now i was getting excited because it dealt with english- ok cool ya i would love to help you guys. cool well heres the thing we do this week called immersion week where we go to our farm and we only speak english are you interested?- is this guy serious?- ya sure ill help out- in a calm tone but really on the inside im screaming because im so happy- ok cool ill let you know.
so as it turned out i was able to go so i went to school on monday as usual dressed in full uniform and every thing we didnt really do too much that day which was nice, but the next day was the day i was really looking forward to. so i wake up tuesday at 5 10 as usual and then i take my shower im not taking as many cold showers as i once did but i assure you even still i would never take a shower as cold as these back in the states. and then now is where things switch up a bit, i put on a v neck pants and my toms. No uniform for me anymore! do you realize how liberating that was for me? no belt no real shoes no socks no polo, i finally felt like i had individuality again. it was amazing and then i picked up a small bag put some fruit and my swimsuit in it- cuz it was water polo day after school- and then ate some b fast and was on my way to school. when i arrived at school i took my daily morning nap because i arrive at 630 but school doesnt start until 7 so i just sleep or read my bible. and then at seven i said hi to my homeroom teacher and then i peaced out of there and went to the auditorium and i left my spanish behind. we then watched a video, in english, about all these different countries, because that was the theme of the week, it started of with this guy from ireland playing bagpipes and then giving a tour of the county where he lived. i felt like i was listening to Mr. McKeon so it was a very nostalgic way to start off the day, and then we went on to other countries. but then we arrived at the farm and pause- a thats right my school owns a farm here in the next city over what the heck thats crazy right or is it just me whos blown away by this? anyway play- then it was pretty much the same every day in this schedule: listen to presentations, teach a ridiculous game in english- one time i had to have everyone in this one team yodel for 30 secs. now that was hilarious, then eat all the delicious food the kids made according to their country typical food, then listen to them talk about their day. now if thats not as relaxing as a vacation i dont know what is. all the while my classmates were toiling over math, chem, english, spanish work... suckers. and the best part is that i had absolutely no work to make up i asked my homeroom teacher if i need to ask my teachers for any of the work we were doing this week and she told me her phrase that she tells me every week ¨no te preocupes¨ dont worry about it. fantastic. so that was my first week of vacation.
second week:
this week was an actual week for vacation in school which was nice, why did we have it? i dont really know which made it all the better because it was like a unexpected gift and those are always good. so i went for that week we went to lago calima which is a lake and it was amazing. so that tuesday we are getting ready to leave and my host cousin and his friend show up because theyre coming with us, and we start to pack everything up and i realize that were packing everything into one car. i was thinking that since there are two families going we would use two cars... i thought wrong. turns out my aunt and uncle were coming the next day so all 4 of us good sized teenagers had to cram ourselves into the back seat. as you can imagine it was not the most comfy ride. but finally we arrive at this club right on the beach of this lake and pretty much they said ¨go¨ so this whole place is pretty much open to us there was a huge kitchen, ping pong table (which i made much use of), couches facing the water and a trail to walk. and later on we had a boat. so as you might imagine i had a really good time there because it was pretty much a place where you can pretty much read wherever you go. unfortunately i was without LOTR so i had to settle with a thinking book: miracles by CS Lewis. and wow it really requires a lot of brain power i was literally tired when i finished a chapter. But on the good side i read a lot of my bible so i read pretty much all of ecclesiasties which i discovered is one of the coolest books ive read in the OT it was super fun to read all this wisdom stuff because i figured that this is stuff that non christians cant write off just because its in the bible, who can argue with ¨there is nothing better for a person that that he should est and drink and find enjoyment in his toil,¨ or ¨the more words the more vanity and what is the advantage to man¨ all of it is legit stuff. and as i said before i made good use of the ping pong table. you see there wasnt much to do there to entertain yourself for a long time, except for of course the ping pong table. so my host bro and i literally played for hours each day, except for the day when we broke the ball that was sad, because then we had to find other things to do, namely sleeping. so we finally went out on the boat to go water skiing, (thank you aunt caren and uncle john for teaching me because i would have looked like a fool), and first i happy just to be doing something really physical, and then i was even more happy when i found out that it didnt bother my knee. i had a lot of fun with it. and i didnt fall too many times though i did have some pretty bad ones. hmmm what else from that vacation... i dont know but it was nice to relax and get away from the city, its really loud here...
so after we got home on that friday i pretty much did nothing my bro went on a date, my parents went on a date... till three in the morning! craziness! they love to dance just like everyone else here, and the party life here goes laaatte. so i stayed home relaxed my super sore muscules from the water skiing and watched some bourne identity with choco milk. good night by my standards. the next day was when the fun really started to happen because we picked up some of the other foreign exchange students from colombia. so that night some of the guys met at my house and we all just hung out telling jokes and making fun of one anothers country. it was a good bonding time for all of us dudes. i got a lot of crap for liking root beer that night. you see root beer doesnt exist in europe like it does in the states. for europeans they just drink beer, , and at my house were some students that were proud of their nations beer so when they got on the topic of root beer i was all alone because i said that i liked it. they all got angry because they thought root beer was trying to be a beer, so after hours of me trying to explain to them that it isnt a beer whatsoever and that it just has the word beer in the name, we came to a mutual agreement disagreeing on our opinions: i will love rootbeer, they will hate it because of the name. later that night we were seranaded by a guitar player and a dude from denmark asked a lot of pretty girls to take a picture with us, now that man has guts... or no shame in being a foreigner. the next day we woke up early and got ready for a tour of cali, it was fun fitting all of us in a van, and unsurprisingly we naturally separated into boys and girl sections. so heres the run down of the demographic of our group: 2 american woop, 3 danes (denmark), 1 austrian (not australlian), 1 taiwanese, 1 belguim...ite?, 5 germans holy crap, and 1 estonian. -Pause estonian? wheres estonia? no one knows and we gave him a hard time everywhere we went, we would of felt bad if he didnt agree with us. and after the tour we went to my g pas ecological reserve, that place with a water fall. so we get there and the first activity we want to do is go to the water fall so we start off and it was a lovely hike, and we had a good time, and then we arrive at the waterfall and i was funny because our guide told us to go into the waterfall but of course we all forgot our swim suits so a danish guy and I said screw it and threw off our shoes and shirts and made our way to the water, thankfully others followed so i wasnt just me and this other guy. and we climb up on this rock and were chillin in the water for a while and then i felt like i should leave so i start heading down the rock, now is where things got interesting, so because we were in the presence of water and rock you can imagine that there was some algae build up on some of the rock so im heading down and im almost and the bottom when suddenly i notice that im looking at my foot, and then i notice that im not touching the ground anymore... poop. so i hit the ground hard and then i start to slide down the rocks. this would have been really fun if wat follows didnt happen. as i was sliding down these rocks the was another rock planted at a 90 degree angle on the path where my hand was sliding... it did not end well. my hand caught on this rock that was jutting out but i continued to slide when i finally came to a halt. i was happy to see i reached the end however something didnt feel too right. i look down at my right hand and i have my answer. i jump up screaming ¨oh! oh! oh my goodness! shoot! goodness gracious!¨ i think my lack of swearing made everyone believe that i thought that my slide down was cool, but their opinions were quickly changed when i raise my hand and they saw that my right index finger was at a100 degree angle... not good. i was half thinking of just pulling on it right there like they do in the movies, but then i realized that the people who do that are action heroes, and i am obviously not an action heroe, so i settled with elevating my finger above my head and high-tailing it back to the building. so this 35 min hike was cut down to a 10 min trek back home. when i arrived my fam knew that something wasnt good and i showed them my finger and some of the rotarians at the table gave a gag so i had to do my best to hide it. and then i went to the hospital where they basically tortured me in the x ray room, gave me an IV for the pain, but turned it of and forgot to put it back on before they fixed my finger, and they fixed it by warning me quickly in spanish and then yanking on it, didnt really warn me at all, and then turned the IV back on and put a splint of my finger that is very dirty at the moment. i returned to the reserve and chilled with all the other students, even risked playing a little ping pong. and we hung out late that night, by american standards not colombian. the next day we went to meet the rotary president OF THE WORLD - i thought that needed some emphasis- so ya this was quite the honor and the students at my table enjoyed this time... by making napkin art. and then we all said goodbye and parted for our rightful cities, and started school the next day.
as you could guess from my two weeks of all of this i was not willing to go back to school in the least, but i did with much reluctancy, and was greeted with much boredom... nothing really happened this last week except for the fact the TTT arrived from my bro back home so i can finally read again - TTT= the two towers- so im very happy about that unfortunately im reading it too fast ill be done with it soon enough.
ok so sorry that i wrote so much and that it was put off for a long time im going to blame it on my broken finger when it really was my procrastination sorry. until later.
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