Week 20 photos!

Day 134: Fruit seller outside the supermarket. I can't get over the street vendors here, only because they're so prevalent here and so unseen in the states.



Day 135: Beach day at Tagonga! Lauren and me chilling, a beer commercial and Lauren consuming ALL THE FOOD.







Day 136: These yellow flowers that appear after the first big rain, exist for a day and then DISAPPEAR until next year.



Day 137: Staff meeting and annual plans. Lauren and I both feel like this:



Day 138: Artsy shot of me in a hammock.



Day 139: Santa Marta at night. It's bizarre but a lot of places don't even heat up until after 10pm. There are people all about, there's even a park open all night and people just wander around going from club to club and from restaurant to bar.



Day 140: The first rain of the season. Thank god. The heat has gotten so oppressive. It's like trying to walk in an oven, it just doesn't work. There's no doing it.

The rain calms the heat for a while, until you're just left with the aftermath, which turns the heat into humidity. Then you beg for rain again.

Meanwhile, the mosquitoes are loving it.

Week 19 photos!

Day 127: My new fan! Bought for 40,000 pesos. It is LOUD. It drowns out the ocean. I don't use it.



Day 128:

Instead of garbage trucks, we have these guys that go through the city picking up dog poop and leaves and trash. Because trash pickup is a relatively new thing here, people still have a tendency to just leave trash wherever they want to, sometimes in bags, often not.



Day 129: The other side of Rodadero. You can kind of see Torres de Magogo, aka: where everything I owned got stolen.



Day 130: Gabby! Gabby is Edna and Andrew's kid. She and I made a lot of those little handheld toys that tell the future.



Day 131: It is mango season, which means all the mango trees are dropping mangoes. You'll hear a loud thump on the ground and be glad it missed your head.

True story. The other day, I was walking back to my classroom at recess and I saw Juan doing yard duty. He was watching kids play with something and he said, "Below the head, guys."

I walked past him and he said, "Your kids are playing with a mango."

"Do you want me to take care of it?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I think they're trying to kill each other."



Day 132: Paola, Lauren and me at the teacher's day meal. Teacher's day is a real day here - the kids give you food and everything. Moreover, we got a halfday and drove up to Minka and had a nice meal. This is at the waterfall close to the farm.

The school chose to rent one bus, which was INSANE because the place was up in the mountains on a dirt road. It was the bumpiest road of my life and Lauren and I both agreed no more trips to Minka.



Day 133: This is Rodadero. Tourists in the foreground, coal ship in the background.

Week 18 photos!

Day 120: Beans here are impossible to find. You find things that aren't just black or pinto beans. It's kind of depressingly hard to make any sort of Mexican food here.

This is the closest any of us have gotten to pinto beans.



Day 121: Who is Joaco Gutierrez? I don't know, but this graffiti is all over town and it reminds me of Who is John Galt?



Day 122: Sunset! The sunsets here are always so pretty and always different.



Day 123: Birthday dinner! We went out to a nice seafood place. It was delicious!



Day 124: Army convoy on the way home.



Day 125: Lauren and me doing the obligatory "two girls with arm out" photo.



Day 126: This is San Andrecito in Santa Marta centro. We can find any sort of electronics here - it's a typical black market where everything is for sale from washing machines to cameras and everything is negotiable. 40,000 actually can be talked down to 20,000.

Week 18 photos!

Day 120: Beans here are impossible to find. You find things that aren't just black or pinto beans. It's kind of depressingly hard to make any sort of Mexican food here.

This is the closest any of us have gotten to pinto beans.



Day 121: Who is Joaco Gutierrez? I don't know, but this graffiti is all over town and it reminds me of Who is John Galt?



Day 122: Sunset! The sunsets here are always so pretty and always different.



Day 123: Birthday dinner! We went out to a nice seafood place. It was delicious!



Day 124: Army convoy on the way home.



Day 125: Lauren and me doing the obligatory "two girls with arm out" photo.



Day 126: This is San Andrecito in Santa Marta centro. We can find any sort of electronics here - it's a typical black market where everything is for sale from washing machines to cameras and everything is negotiable. 40,000 actually can be talked down to 20,000.

Week 17 photos!

Day 114: This is an epitome of what life is like on the coast: fresh fish and lots of beer. The picture was taken at Olympica, the supermarket near our house.



Day 115: A picture of middle school/high school. The main building is two stories and every year, they build new portables to house the students. However, the portables are always built... badly. Lucas' had a small crack that turned into a big crack that turned into the wall separating from the roof.



Day 116: I don't think horses, donkeys and burros on the freeway will ever get not interesting.



Day 117: My kiddos hyped up for the worst planned field trip I've ever been on. I had to deal with screaming/singing kids on the bus and I was thinking, "Well, as long as they stay in their seats." Luckily, they're scared enough of me that bottoms stayed in seats.



Day 118: Potato skins and Pina Coladas at Pizza Loca. Pizza loca is where you can find all the "American" style foods - Mexican, Pizza, etc. It's not the right cheese, not the right texture, but it's so close that sometimes you're willing to pay 30,000 pesos for a pizza if it reminds you of going to the local pizza parlor.

On the other hand, Pizza Loca is where people go to Be Seen, so people are always really dressed up there. It's hilarious to see people wearing really nice clothes to get pizza. Santa Marta is weird.



Day 119: We finally got around to visiting "Playa Blanca". It's only accessible by boat, but it's just around the corner from Rodadero (if you look at the background, you can see some of Rodadero in the distance). It's beautiful. Stunning view, bath temperature water, and white, white sand.

However, as soon as we stepped off the boat, people were trying to sell us things. First overpriced food, then overpriced snorkel lessons (hahahahaha. SNORKEL LESSONS, right? Lessons which went from 35,000 to 25,000 to 15,000 which was the "lowest price he could offer". We weren't even bargaining, he just kept lowering the price) then kitch. And they were all SO PUSHY. I've never been anywhere here where people were this pushy.

Despite that, Lauren, Paola and I had a great time. I swam in the water and napped on the beach.

Week 16 photos!

Day 107: This is my second day in the Amazon. We climbed up a 35 meter tree into the canopy of the Amazon. It was BEAUTIFUL. And a really intense experience.



Day 108: This is me pirana fishing! You will notice I am standing on a log that is floating in the water where there are prianas! They were vicious! I almost caught 2- they were all the way out of the water and then they fell back in. :(



Day 109: Reasons I am more baddass than anyone: I slept in that. It is a Colombian military hammock. There were KILLER MOSQUITOES outside. The mosquitoes could seriously kill you.



Day 110: Me with the guy who guards the jungle. Until 2 years ago, he was a poacher.



Day 111: Crow-parrot birds in Puerto Narino.



Day 112: Isla de los micos! You got to feed the monkeys here, where they were trained to come to humans for food. These monkeys were amazingly cute.



Day 113: Brazil! I walked in, then walked out. There wasn't much to see.

Week 15 photos!

So, I was about a month off in terms of uploading photos - I'm trying to fix that now.

Day 99: This is San Andrecito at night. It's where you buy a lot of cheap black market things in the Rodadero. I'm thinking of buying my next sunscreen from here. At night it's lit up gorgeously and lined with juice and arepa stands.



Day 100: Saw these plates at Exito and thought of Mom's mosaics.



Day 101: More adventures in odd religious iconography. This is the Virgin Mary at school - right outside my window actually.



Day 102: Fruit salad for dinner!



Day 103: Our pool! It is deliciously cold!



Day 104: The Troncal - essentially a two lane freeway.



Day 105: I will get a better photo, but these are the people holding signs that say, "Apartamentos/Dias" which means they are advertising apartments for days. They rent them to tourists.



Day 106: This is a worm-thing that lives inside tree bark. It was edible and tasted kind of like olive oil. The thing was, it BITES you, so you have to bite off its head quickly.