hello dear friends and family. here i am, in colombia...good to be here, finally! we got in on friday afternoon, relaxed a bit at the mcc office, and had dinner with all our host families. we were all pretty tired and went home after that for a good night's rest. we had to wake up at 3:45 friday morning to get to the airport in time, so we were definitely exhausted by evening.
saturday we woke up and the three english speaking females - myself, jordan and miriam - had a short meeting with our spanish instructor. she wanted to hear us talk a little bit and get a sense for where we might begin, etc. she hates my accent...as does everyone i meet who speaks spanish. they are all trying to help me get into the habit of saying s's where they are, but it is so drilled into my mind that you don't pronounce it that way. it is frustrating. i learned my spanish in the campo of the dominican republic on sst and they speak a sort of "hick" spanish. words are cut off, and they don't really pronounce s's much. classes start tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes. it is interesting, because i definitely have the most abroad/language immersion experienc,e but the other two girls have studied spanish. so our strengths are very different. my grammer and vocabulary is way behind theirs, but i speak very naturally and fast...i just say things wrong. haha. as far as class stuff goes, however, i'm definitely the farthest behind. not worried...if i'm behind it means my learning curve will be the quickest.
the rest of the day saturday was spent learning the transportation system in bogota, seeing a few of the sights, and just learning how to get around - what bogota looks like. very helpful.
i will be living in the old apartment of janna hunter-bowman. she's a gc grad who's been down here for like 8 years. many of you may know her. she and her husband, jess, moved a week ago or so and diana (colombian participant) and i will be living in their old apt. at the moment, however, it is not ready. they think we'll be able to move in in about a week. until then, we have been staying with the angel's...any of you who have been in colombia might know them. they're great and in many ways it would be really nice to stay. i like host families. i like the relationships you develop with them and such. having your own space is definitely nice, too, so i'm trying to just look at the upside. two of the girls will be staying with the angel's the whole time, and my apt. is really close, so i hope i'll still be able to spend a good amount of time visiting with them. at this point, i'll just be glad to stop living out of a suitcase when we move out.
we live in the "mennonite barrio" and it is within walking distance to the mcc office and to one of the mennonite churches, and the mennonite seminary, where i'll be taking two classes once a week. so i'm really excited that i can walk most places. its about a half our walk.
my schedule looks something like this:
tuesday and thursday morning from 730 to 1030 i have spanish language classes...at the mcc office. just meeting with clara (instructor) and the other two girls.
monday nights i have a class at the seminary on eclesiology, and wednesday nights i have another class on conflict resolution. i'm so excited about these classes. all in spanish, so will definitely challenge me, but i'm really looking forward to them. we'll see how it goes tonight! i'm only auditing becaus ei have to leave the 3rd of may, and the class goes through 8th of june. so thats sad. but maybe good?? :)
a few days a week we eat together as a group for lunch - the main meal here - and other times we're free. then every afternoon from 130 or 2 until around 5 we are together, doing all sorts of things. this week will be a lot of basics - stuff about mcc colombia, how our program works, financial stuff, etc. after that we'll be having more conversations about theoretical stuff, which i'm looking forward to. the few formal conversations we've been able to have about such stuff has been really interesting so far. its nice to be back into somewhat of an academic schedule again.
there's a lot of free time, too, which will be spent seeing the city, doing homework, and hanging out i guess. i hope to really spend a lot of time working on my language, reading, etc. a lot of places to see in this enormous city, also.
i gotta run...shower and then walking to mcc for lunch and our first meetings of being mccers in colombia. ha. i love the emails. keep them coming.
don't have any picts. of colombia to show you yet, but here are a few of our days in bolivia since you havent' seen many yet. first two at the waterfalls. third at moro moro i think. i forget what i put up. at the last two at the sending/blessing service we had in bolivia at the end of the week.
i love you all and miss you so much. hope to hear from you soon!