Grade 8 in Bogota

Here are a few pictures from the first day of school here in Bogota. One word: wonderful. What a great place. The kids seem to be really comfortable and happy.

This morning Andrea and I met the kids as they got off the busses in front of the school. They flooded into the school with the other 500 kids.

It was very cool and fun. We started the day with an all 8th Grade Assembly. Andrea went over the program with all of us. We then moved outside and worked through several excellent team building stations. Several of which were exact replicas of teambuilding and leadership exercises we did in the Army. After the team building exercises we did group reflections led by the American students. Several of us, myself included, had to recite Spanish tonguetwisters. Lots of giggling. Following this we went to snack where the kids got something to drink and tried an new fruit which is orange, has a brittle skin and is filled with sweet small seeds similar to a pomegranate. I loved them. Apparently the Colombians jokingly refer to the fruit pulp as “coal miner’s snot.” Awesome! Afterwards we trundled off to Spanish. I had my own chair in the middle of the class and was expected to participate as fully as all the other students. It was a blast. We did small group activities during which we had to develop five questions we do or might use in our daily routines. Everybody had to be prepared to answer the questions of every other group with full sentences. It was super. Next we followed Laura Barrera and Andrea to Laura’s classroom and began figuring out where we were with projects. And, if that wasn’t enough, we enjoyed an enormous lunch together and went off for a two hour block of PE.

My perspective on Colombia to date.

It is exciting and interesting. Bogota is incredibly alive and fun. On Sunday, I spent the day with Santiago and David driving through the mountains outside Bogota. We saw 200 year old haciendas, tumbledown villages, super modern housing developments and a million other small details that I can’t recount here. We met Andrea and her son Juan Manuel for some great food at Andres’s Carne de Res. Huge amount of fun. Following that we came out to school with David to check on some construction. Then we plunged back into town, picked up tickets for the Iberoamericano Stage and Theater Festival and had a cup of coffee at a Juan Valdez coffee shop. We picked up Andrea and a couple more of David’s friends and headed down to the Plaza de Toro for the final performance of the festival. It was Cirque de Soleilish and truly amazing and entertaining. All in all my initial impressions are incredibly positive and enthusiastic. These feelings have been reinforced by talking with four or five other American teachers here at the school.

Andy Johnson