A lesson in mojitos...another day in the Colombian school system.

It was a normal Friday. Work from 6:30 to 11:30am then go home and get the weekend started. Nancy, the Colombian English teacher, approached me on the way to class.

“Oh today there is a change. We are having a girl studying to be a chef come and teach them how to make a recipe.”

Great. Great because it was Friday and that was much more interesting than what we were going to do – write about personal opinions on beauty and practice choreography for an English Day presentation. And that's fun. And interesting. And it means I can just sit there all day and be a member of the audience.

“Yes we will learn how to make cocktails. Mojitos…”

I had a laundry list of questions but I let it slide.

“…without alcohol of course.”

“You say ‘of course’ like it’s obvious,” I said. She laughed her confused laugh that she thinks I can’t differentiate from her normal laugh, even though I can tell the difference 100% of the time. We kept walking.

Daniela is the older sister of one of the tenth graders. Like her sister, Juliana, she speaks English abnormally well for Colombia. She explained the origins and preparation in English, which most of the girls definitely didn’t understand, but they still watched her every move and tried to follow along the best they could.

She poured a Colombian version of sprite into the glass.

“Usually this would be with rum, and you can also replace the soda with beer,” she said. “But because we are in school, we will only use soda.”

“It’s better with beer!” a girl named Isabela yelled from the back of the room.

Daniela finished by garnishing the glass and passing it around for the girls to try.

Nancy explained the next assignment to them. Get in groups and choose a recipe to present to the class in English.

“Remember, NO ALCOHOL,” she told them in Spanish. “We are in school. No alcohol.” I was sitting in the middle of the room among all the girls, watching the presentation for fifth time that day.

“Really just even that you have to tell them that…” I said out loud, but basically to myself.

A couple of months ago they had a mandatory safety check of their first aid kits in all of the classrooms. In one of the classrooms Nancy pulled out a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and handed it to the class representative.

“Get rid of this,” she said and the girl left the room. I was confused.

“Isn’t that kind of an important component to a first aid kit? Like if someone has a cut?” I asked.

“No, they cannot have it. They are teenagers. They’ll try to drink it.” I laughed. She didn’t laugh. Uhhh, well it’s not really… We stared at each other. “It has happened before.”

The mojito made its way to the back of the room. Isabela walked up to the front while taking a drink.

“This is so bad. So bad. It’s better with beer,” she said. She held it out to me.

“No thanks, I don’t like mint.”

“Good. It’s bad. It needs beer.”

“Beer and rum. Just beer and rum?”

“Yes. Beer and rum. Better with beer and rum.” She handed off the glass and got her things to leave.

Daniela packed up her stuff and cleared off the table while Nancy and I shuffled the girls out of the room to go to lunch.

“I think next week they can start presenting their recipes?” Nancy said.

“Yeah maybe next Friday?” I replied.

“I will tell Daniela and see if she can come back to watch.” She walked away.

Another day in the Colombian school system.

Oh, right, nevermind. "Gringa" is fine.

Usually once a week, I eat lunch in my school's cafeteria. I use the term cafeteria as lightly as possible because in fact, it is four tables designated for the teachers and about six designated for the students, all situated around the school's entryway. The food, unlike the cardboard pizza and half rotten apples that were typical in my own school days, is actually not that bad. It's nothing I crave or would go out of my way to eat, but sufficient when I need something quickly.

Last week I sat down at one of the tables and leaned in to confirm my lunch order. I had never seen the woman on the other side of the window before. She was updating the list of who was eating to keep track of payments.

"Como te llamas?" I whipped my head around and looked at her.

"Como?"

It's the most rudimentary question that everyone learns in their first week of high school Spanish class. But I had never, in the entire seven months that I'd been eating in the cafeteria, been asked what my name is. She asked me again, motioning to the paper.

"Como te llamas?"

"Shelby."

She hit me back the same way.

"Como!!?" Edilma, who often times can't remember if my name is Chelsea or Shelby, despite the fact that I've been to her house several times for lunch and talk to her every day at school, happened to be standing nearby.

"CHELVY," She very loudly spoke in the direction of the cafeteria worker. She doesn't know any English and can't make the 'sh' sound. Not uncommon here. "CHELVY. S-H-E. SI. CHELVY. S-H-E-L-B-Y."

The woman tried to follow along. S-H-E-L-D...

"NO. NO. CON 'B'."

S-H-E-L-P...

Whatever. Close enough.

I sat down and ate my lunch. I got up afterward to pay, as I don't like to keep a running tab that will come back to haunt me at the end of the month. I hadn't been paying attention, but she'd abandoned all attempts at writing my name and instead just wrote "gringa." Foreign girl.

But that's the thing: this isn't rude or even uncommon whatsoever here.

I can only imagine if a group of people went to a restaurant in the United States and the server labeled their table "MEXICANS" or "BLACK" or "CHINA". It would be a viral news story. There would be threats of lawsuits.

It's not rude because it's just what you are. Or even if it's NOT what you are, it's close enough for them.

They know I used to live in Korea and still every time they see any of my pictures from Korea, the reaction is usually "Oh, China!"

"No, like it's actually a completely differ...nevermind, yeah, China." Some battles become not worth fighting after awhile.

There's a girl in one of my classes who looks like at some point in her family history their could be some type of Asian mixed into her genes and the girls literally call her "La China." Anyone who is slightly darker than the average person is "Negra" or "Negro" regardless of whether or not they are even actually black.

When I first got here, this was REALLY jarring. But I'm from America, the land of being offended. Even when something isn't offensive, we make it that way. Now I see huge benefits to taking the power of insult out of words.

One of the girls motioned me over the other day.

"Do people in the United States think all Latin people are Mexican? That we're all the same?" I took a deep breath.

"Yeah, honestly there are some people who think that. That everything south of the U.S. is all the same as Mexico. But not everyone." I was trying to gauge her reaction. She didn't look particularly bothered. Or really even bothered at all.

"Okay and do you like Colombian guys or are they ugly?" I laughed and gave her the same vague answer I give every other day when this comes up.

"Depends on the exact person." The bell rang at just the right time. I grabbed my things and went to the cafeteria to buy breakfast. Mona, everyone's favorite cafeteria worker was zipping back and forth around the kitchen when she saw me. She doesn't know my name because she literally could not care less what it is.

"Gringa! Hola! Como estas?!"

...Like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs

“I love seeing teachers outside of school. It’s like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs.”-Mean Girls, 2004

I was 13 years old when I sat in my hometown’s theater seeing Mean Girls for the first of what would become about 1000 times. It was like the 2000s teen girl’s bible. It hasn’t been THAT long since I was in school and, yeah, seeing your teacher at the grocery store shopping or out to dinner with their family was weird. It was so easy to forget that they had a life outside of 8:05 to 3:20 when school was in session. At the time, I was a seventh grader who wore too much makeup and spent all my time instant messaging friends and looking at clothes online. I never once thought I would assume the opposite role.

I was just a little younger then than my own students are now.

It’s happened three times now. Me, being a dog, walking on my hind legs. The first time, I was taking a casual Sunday afternoon stroll around my neighborhood, just minding my own business. One of my students was leaving basketball practice near my house right as I happened to be walking bythe sports complex. We had a pleasant and pretty awkward short conversation before going our separate ways. No big deal.

The second time, I was in a small town about an hour outside the city with a couple of friends. We were sitting up on a lookout point admiring a river and the bridge built across it when suddenly a girl in sunglasses knelt down about 8 inches from my face.

“Hola!” She pulled off her sunglasses, unsure if I recognized her. I did. A quiet girl who’s never exactly an eager volunteer in class, but never a problem either. She joined her family a few yards away for a mini photoshoot. Then a couple of minutes later she waved me over so her mom could take a picture of us in front of the bridge. A pretty strange coincidence to see her there, but still a positive interaction. Here we are:

But the most recent time? Now that’s the stuff nightmares are made of. It’s no accident that I live about an hour away from the school by public transportation, or thirtyish minutes by car. It can make for a rough commute, but outside of working hours, I have a huge safety net for maximum work-life balance. Once I leave the school, all responsibilities are out of sight and out of mind.

Each year, Medellin has the “Feria de las Flores,” a week-long flower festival. To kick-off the festival, there’s a big party a couple of minutes from my house. It was Friday, so yeah, I went. Music and dancing. Beer and Colombia’s own aguardiente, alcoholic licorice in a bottle.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. After the aguardiente started flowing, the Spanish soon started flowing much more easily as well. And since I was practicing speaking Spanish, it was educational. Basically the same thing as being at home studying. I was the only American in the group, which is pretty rare when going out. Spanish can make me uncomfortable because it means doing something I’m not particularly good at. So I like putting myself into situations where I don’t have a choice but to be forced to practice.

Everything was good. Everything was normal.

“Oh! Sheeeeeelby!” I heard from behind me. No. No. Nope.

I froze before turning halfway around and going white as a ghost.  I looked at the guy next to me. No.

“Oh my God, a group of my students,” I mumbled to him. It wasn’t just one or two of them either, more like six. I needed to remove the look of complete horror from my face.

“HEY GIRLS!” I forgot how to control the volume of my voice.

It was the overly fake greeting you give to someone you absolutely hate. They are actually a very sweet group of girls, I just hated that of all the millions of places they could be on this Earth, in that moment they had to be standing in front of me. They had just arrived, probably dropped off by their parents because none of them are old enough to drive.

I gave a couple of awkward hugs, trying not to breathe when I got too close, in an attempt to conceal the aguardiente on my breath. After some “how are you?” exchanges in Spanish, one of them took a brief scan of the circle of people in which I had been standing, all of whom happened to be Colombian.

“Helloooo!” she said to the group, ready to welcome everyone to her country.

“Umm…de Colombia,” was all I could manage to get out while shaking my head. She shrugged, already over it. We all stared at each other for a few very long seconds. They pointed toward the stage at the other side.

“Okay, bye Shelby!” They disappeared into the crowd. I turned back into my circle of people.

“My students are here. I’m at a party with my students. My 14-year-old students are here, at this party that I’m at. My life is actually over. Please pour me another drink.”

Old New Beginnings

I live in Medellin, Colombia. The most common response is “Why?” in a very, very confused manner. I don’t have an answer. One day at the end of last year I had a thought that maybe I’d like to go to South America, maybe to Colombia, maybe eventually in the nearish future. Less than three months later, I was on a flight to Bogota.

Unlike some people assume, I’m not dodging bullets on the street and fending off knife attacks around every corner. Which, to be fair, that is kind of what I too assumed I would be doing when I stepped off the plane in Bogota last January. And I was sure that I would be kidnapped and it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. I was unwilling to admit it at the time, but I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. Colombia is still shedding its infamous reputation. I discovered most of my fears could be attributed to my own ignorance. I had never been anywhere near Colombia before, and all I had to goon was what I had heard. At one time, Medellin was considered the most dangerous city in the world. That’s not the case anymore. Of course there are still precautions to be taken.

Luckily, I received a lot of advice, or rather, mandatory instructions, on how to stay safe:

-DO NOT hail a taxi off the street. You’ll be kidnapped and killed.

-DO NOT take an overnight bus. Bandits will intercept it and you’ll be robbed and killed.

-DO NOT go to *name of poorer neighborhood where at some point in time something bad has happened*. You’ll definitely be killed.

-DO NOT have your cell phone out while walking down the street or while in public. It will be stolen, and for the sake of consistency, you’ll probably be killed.

Last January, I was as vigilant (read: paranoid and scared)as they come. But it’s been 7 months and I’ve loosened up a little…or well, a lot. So I’ve done these things once or twice, or every day in some cases.

Now, to be fair, I do know an unsettling amount of people who have had things, usually phones, stolen here. It hasn’t happened to me(yet…?...?). But all of the instances I’ve heard about were from pickpockets, which seems less traumatic than being robbed with a knife to your throat. Either way, I guess having something stolen is an unfortunate inconvenience.

And the other stuff, yeah. There are some neighborhoods that I’m definitely not trying to go to, especially alone and being the person that I am. Overnight buses do have a reputation for robberies, but the ones I’ve taken have been fine. And taxis. I don’t know. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve stepped into 2016 and finally started using Uber, but I’ve taken dozens by myself, and even more with other people, without any concerns.

But since I’m being as authentic as possible in keeping up with Colombian time and starting to document my experiences after being here for seven months, it’s impossible to sum up. Nothing about any aspect of life here is at all what I was expecting. In some ways it’s much better, in others it’s worse. But every good moment and bad moment have made it what it is, a really bizarrely wonderful experience.