What I've Learned

These are some random notes about what I've observed and learned about Colombia and comparisons and contrasts between Colombia and the U.S. while living here. (Many of these comments are generalizations.)

Some differences between the Colombian culture and the American 'culture':
1. Whether it's the business of education, customer service, physical fitness or engineering, it's much more important to fit in with your coworkers than to do a good job. In the states, if you are well-liked by the company and your coworkers but do a crappy job, you get fired; here you get a pay increase. As a result, many of the students and adults that I've met who have visited the United States think Americans are unsociable, unfriendly, and insincere (but have great service).

2. It's a sociable culture. Formal meetings are just a glorified place to catch up on gossip, with a little work thrown in for good measure. Oh, and punctuality doesn't exist in any context. No one arrives on time and nothing starts on time, not even movies in the theaters.

3. The Colombian students I've met and taught don't seem worry about the same things students in the states worry about. They don't trifle with such things as being offended if called a fag, or whether you passed or failed English. They worry about being kidnapped or car bombed. They worry about being caught in crossfire by shrapnel. But it's not as if they worry like the true definition of worrying. They live with it, it's part of their lives and their culture. It's like, in the states waking up every weekday morning and knowing that you have to be in rush hour to get to work. Now replace 'in rush hour' with 'among armed escorts'. Furthermore, I've been told that it's safer now than before. Five years ago, it wasn't even safe for you to travel from one city to another by vehicle. Imagine not having the freedom of getting into your car and traveling from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, or from Tucson to Phoenix, or from San Francisco to San Jose. It wasn't safe. At any turn in the highway, there could have been guerrillas with a makeshift blockade where you would have been robbed and (possibly) killed. And the reason why it is 'safe' now is because the government established safe routes for you to go, if you choose to go. Meaning there are national military groups stationed along highways. You turn on the news here and whiny little organizations like the ACLU don't even make it to broadcast, and their national news lasts 90 minutes. Living here has put some of the ridiculous little problems we hear about in the states into perspective.

4. I've learned that the spanish language is a more difficult language to learn than English. And I'm glad I learned most of my spanish here instead of other Central and South American countries. I've heard Chileans speak, Brazilians, Mexicans, etc and I can conclude that the Spanish here is much cleaner (if you will) than the Spanish in most other spanish-speaking countries.

5. My personal lifestyle has changed. Over the past 5 months, Andrea has been going to another part of Colombia to work during the week and has been returning on weekends. I've learned new and creative ways to save money, out of necessity mostly. Here are some examples: during the days I'm alone, I've managed to reduce my daily food expenses to about $2. (When Andrea is here, that number obviously goes up.) Breakfast never changes, a bowl of cereal, lunch is what $20 a month gets me at school (which is a lot) and I stuff myself, dinner is either four eggs sunnyside up with four pieces of bread and water or a half can of beans with a half cup of rice, sometimes a tortilla is thrown in as a burrito. Water bills are reduced by methods you don't want to ever want to know about. Electricity bills? candlelight dinners are not just for romantics anymore.

5a. As a supplement to item 5 listed, I'd like to take this opportunity to explain how I've become somewhat of a minimalist while living outside of the U.S. The apartments I've lived in have progressively gotten less and less decorated as the years go by. At this moment, I'm sitting at a 2.5 year old cheap, square wood-plank table which barely fits my 12 inch laptop, telephone and Nalgene bottle. It is accompanied by 6 matching wood-plank chairs (4 of which will fall apart very soon). There is no other furniture in the main living room. The walls are painted but bare. Dust shadows of what was hanged by the previous tenant still remain. A cheap mountain bike (Andrea's) stands against the wall facing opposite me. The kitchen has a small refrigerator (purchased), microwave (loaned to us), and an oven that actually works. The bedroom has a queen size bed frame with mattress (no box spring) and a wooden table for the TV (which is never on). The closet consists of my clothing, most of which is old. But the clothes that are new were gifts. There is a bathroom that has a shower stall with glass door (broken), toilet with a large rock in the tank (see item 5), and sink. The rent is 700,000 COP, which sounds like a lot but is only about $375 a month and is considered upper-middle class.

Some similarities between Colombia and the U.S.

1. The rich breed richer. Most of the students I have associated with have a ton of money and two parents working very long, hard days. Students see more of their live-in maids than their biological parents.

2. Both Colombia and the U.S. have presidents that are hated, they both have crime, corruption, pollution, big cities, small towns, pop culture, brand names, idiot drivers, idiot passengers, idiot mall-walkers, idiot sidewalk-walkers, idiot bicycle-riders; beautiful beaches, beautiful mountains, beautiful plains, virgin territory, deserts, snow-capped mountains (the one geographic difference is Colombia has jungle, which is spectacular); problems with education, poverty, drugs, kidnappings, gas prices; kids are insecurity, have absentee parents, and are spoiled rotten; there are underfunded governement programs, overfunded government programs, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Personal observations and advice.
1. Colombian women are some of the most attractive on the entire planet. Of the 20+ countries I've been to, the women of the Czech Republic and Colombia top out at numbers one and two (I'm not sure of the order, however).

2. If you're a teacher, stay away from family-run schools. If you apply to a school where the blood line runs from the principal to the substitute teachers, prepare yourself for being ostricized and treated unfairly.