Week 3

Be proud. I'm updating twice in one week. Why, you ask, well let me tell you a story about Colombia...
In Nashville they get snowdays, in Colombia we get days off for strikes. Apparently it's a normal thing here for workers to scream huge strikes when they aren't happy. There was one either Monday or Tuesday this week (I don't remember), it was the transportation workers so bus drivers and taxi drivers went on strike. There was another group scheduled to have a strike today. The US embassy has been in contact with ECA informing us the plans of the strike and they said they would let us know if it would be bad enough for school to be cancelled. Cuz when they strike, they close streets and stop traffic, which would make it hard for us to get to school. Until yesterday (Wednesday) everything seemed fine. Until they found out the transportation workers who went on strike earlier were not pleased with the outcome of their strike and decided to strike with the other group today. The transportation company that ECA uses to bus students and teachers told the school that when transportation is incolved, it can get dangerous and violent. If they see other transportation workers transporting people they could feel betrayed and attack the vehicle. For this reason, 10 minutes before school let out yesterday, they announced that we would not have school today. The bursts of screams heard yesterday was hilarious. You could tell where people were going from class to class announcing it. That's hard as a teacher because secretly all day I had been praying for no school today so when I found out I wanted to jump and scream with them, but you can't. Especially not with my class. They have enough energy for the whole school. We had an all teacher meeting after the students left to talk about what that meant for us. The elementary school principle was the only one there yesterday so she led the meeting and explained everything I just explained. Today is going to be a workday for teachers, we could decide whether we wanted to stay home or go to school to work. However, she also explained that foreigners should keep a low profile today because when tensions are higtened we tend to become an easy target.
So that's why I'm here, sitting on my bed drinking my coffee writing this post. There could be violence in Bogota right now, but that's pretty far south compared to where I live and I'm not planning on leaving this apartment at all today. I'm safe and happy and about to write some lesson plans. Also, spring break starts tomorrow!!! Pretty excited for my adventures, here's a sneak peak: Google Villa de Leyva, and Prado. That's gonna be my week 😀
Happy st. Patrick's day! ☕(why isn't there a shamrock emoji on Samsung?)Read more