Catchy and Interesting Title

Colombia is a country that lives outdoors... even when you are indoors. The windows are always open, and there are lots and lots of them, and it's certainly not uncommon for walls to be missing. Actually, most of the classrooms at Colegio Bolivar only have three walls. The weather never turns cold or uncomfortable so this totally works. Anyway, living that open to the outside world invites in lots of dirt and dust and the pic above is my feet after several hours of walking around my apartment. I know, it seems gross but that's how it is here.... no rugs either. Jordan and I have adopted an evening ritual of washing our feet in the sink.
As requested by Aunt Bev and a couple of others, here is a shot of my new hair. Also pictured here are a couple of my students trying to look cool. I think this is actually the only time that I haven't seen them smiling, but when one is in grade 8 one must keep up appearances.

Parent Teacher Conferences - New Hair

Hi all,

Well last week I had the pleasure of meeting with almost 90 sets of parents over two days. It sounds a little scary, mainly because a lot of them don't speak any english but the kids come along too so they act as little translators. I've also picked up enought Spanish that I would be able to tell if they weren't translating things properly. I also got the kids to fill out this sheet talking about how the year has been going so far and setting goals that they had to go through with their folks. It was actually a really rewarding experience and I got to see where a lot of the kids get their particular mannerisms from... Also, when Colombians greet they kiss on the cheek (unless it's a Male-Male meeting which is a hand shake; not surprising because Colombia is pretty homophobic) so on Wed, Thurs I got about 300 kisses. I also finally got over not being able to kiss my students on the cheek. Believe me, this was HARD to do. Coming from Ontario where you DON'T TOUCH THE STUDENTS it's very different going to kissing 13 year old girls on the cheek in front of their parents.
So last week I only taught on two days because we were coming back from a long weekend.

This weekend Jordan and I went to school on BOTH Saturday and Sunday which makes us either the most dedicated teachers in the whole school, or part of the first year teacher group... I can't remember which. I ended up spending most of the time sending email so if you received an unexpected email this weekend you know why;) I slept on the upper balcony in the hammock on both friday and satuday night. Sooooo nice. I would do it every night if I didn't have to move my alarm each time.

I shaved my head on Saturday night on a whim. I didn't bic it (ie. actually use a razor) but I used Jordan's electric clippers and got it down under a 1/2 cm. I haven't had it this short since grade 11 when I joined the senior basketball team, but it is long enough to cover the small scar on the back of my head. Most of the teachers didn't react but the kids were all shocked (in a really humourous way). In Colombia, when you cut off a lot of hair at once they say you 'fell off the bus'. I guess it's the equivalent of saying in Canada that people with frizzy hair stuck their finger in an electrical socket..... except that theirs makes WAY less sense. So all day the kids were telling me how I fell off the bus.

Well, it's time to work on a project for the kids tommorow. Keep posting comments. I love to read them.

Love Matt

Villa de Leva

This is the fossil of a huge (head and neck as long as me) underwater predator. This one is actually a baby! They found this fossil and just built the museum around it. Villa de Leva used to be an ocean bed millions of years ago and there are tons of fossils to be found EVERYWHERE! You can basically just go walking and find some. People also build fancy walls out of them and sell them outside the museum. I bought a small one that is a round rock but splits open.
This is the main square in the town of Villa de Leva. It is the second largest cobblestone square in the world. There is a cool mountain behind it but you can't really see it because of the clouds.
I wish this one wasn't sideways.... I know how to fix it but I have to move it to my laptop first. Bascially, I found my first beer vending machine and felt the need to send home a pic to those in LCBO land. SUCKERS! I can buy beer from an airport vending machine! Colombia Rocks!!
Again, sorry this one is sideways. Yes, you are seeing right. This is an enormous penis. There is this huge park of giant stone phallis' built by the people pre-colombian people. They also have a huge calendar made of standing stones. It was really cool (feel free to insert your own penis joke at this point).

I'm back!

Ok, here is our student council bake sale, conducted on Sports Day as a fundraising event. We sold EVERYTHING so it must have been a success. Bonnie and I are the advisors for Middle School Student Council.
This is what I live for right here. Friday basketball!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every friday right after school I get together with a bunch of teachers, most from Bolivar but some from other schools, and play basketball for about three hours. The guy who is dribbling in the picture (Matt Shannon) is really big into basketball and has taken me to play in a Cali neighborhood before.
This is one of two bulldogs (this is the mother of a mother-daughter combination) that belong to our neighbors in the apartment building. Whenever the two doors are open Amilia (shown here) and Sarah just march right in like they own the place and hang out or fall asleep or chase our basketball around the apartment. It's great! It's like having two dogs without having to feed them or send them somewhere else when we travel. The downside so far, Amelia let a HUGE pee go on our kitchen floor one night when we were cooking dinner and Sarah pushed one of our plant pots over and broke it. But Jordan and I heartily agree that it's a small price to pay to have to company of cute dogs.
Here is the Canadian Thanksgiving party. Can you spot the Canadian in this picture?
Here is the aftermath of the bash. Still some Canadian flavour but a lot messier.


Ok, I'm trying to post a bunch of pictures but I'm having some trouble putting them where I want them. The Canadiana pics don't want to go in with the Canadian Thanksgiving message so I'm just going to slap a bunch of them together and try to write underneath what each of them is for.

Here goes...

Off to Villa de Leva

Running on 4 hours sleep...

Well, when 2:30 rolls around whether I'm done my reports or not I' m taking off to Villa de Leva. Many people have said "that's my favourite place that I've been to in Colombia" so it promises to be lots and LOTS of fun. I'll keep you posted and hopefully put up some marvellous pics when I get back.

Matt

After Canadiana Blues (ie Report card time)

Hi all,

Sorry if I don't write on communicate in any way over the next little while. Part of it is due to the fact that report cards are due this week. Basically I need to write up one general comment for each student, come up with a mark for each of three different objectives and write a comment for each of those objectives for 90 kids before Thursday ends. I'm also trying to mark all the stuff that remains so I actually HAVE a mark to put on said report cards..... So basically I'm not going to be sleeping on Wednesday night. Well, hopefully the parents will be busy reading all the comments from English, Math and History and won't notice that mine don't make any sort of sense.

The other reason that I may not call anyone for a little while is that I just got my first phone bill today which was 400,000 pesos (about $200) and I realized that I'm paying about a dollar a minute to call Canada from here. So guess what you're all getting for Christmas? That's right! International Phone cards!

The Canadian Thanksgiving party was a roaring success this Saturday. We had about 30 people come by and eat, drink and be merry. We also had some lovely decorative donations such as Canada post cards, Canada pencils, Canada pins, and three huge flags. I also put together a playlist of mp3 CD's (to those not very tech savy, it's like a normal CD but holds 200 songs) so we had about 9 hours of Canadian music (from Arrogant Worms and Blue Rodeo to... I don't know... something that starts with zed). Of course all of our American friends didn't know who the Hip were so I had to tell them the story of how I almost ended up frisking the Tragically Hip on their way into Alfies pub back when I was a student constable. Sorry that there are no pictures from the bash up yet, I keep forgetting to bring the cable from home. Basically, just picture a mountain of food and lots of people laughing. Oh yeah, we played snapdragon too, which consists of filling a pan with fruit and brandy, lighting it on fire and trying to pluck the fruit out (I think that I mentioned this before). It was very well received, especially by Bonnie who told me that in her family they used to play it with raisins in the dish. I dubbed that "extreme snapdragon".

After this whole report cards thing blows over we have a long weekend so I'm really looking forward to that. I'm going with Jordan, Jeff, Scott, and Sonia to a place called Ville del Leva which is near Bogota. It's supposed to be really interesting and they purportedly have a small museum that is build around a large dinosaur skeleton. For anyone who knows me well, you know how my ears perk up at the sound of the word MUSEUM.

Ok, I've gotta go to a Spanish lesson. Bye for now:)

Love Matt

Canadiana!!!

This weekend (in honour of Canadian Thanksgiving) Jordan and I are planning a Canadiana party!!! I've already started collecting Canadian music, flags, stuffed moose and beaver etc. Looks like it's going to be lot of fun.

We had originally planned to dress up as a pair of hosers (a la Bob and Doug McKenzie) but we're having trouble finding adequete toques etc.... oh well. The backup plan is to make togas out of canadian flags.

Wish us luck in the planning process!

Love Matt

Award winning jokes, Dancing, and Earthquakes

Hi all,

Well, less than 12 hours till a new school week starts! I'm currently working at school but I'm listening to the arrogant worms which makes that better. I'm still holding out hope that I will be able to see them in concert some night. They're coming to Saint Paul MN in October but sadly I'll still be here in Colombia and it's a long drive to Saint Paul from here. It's been a fun weekend. Here's the recap......

Friday
I went to a place called Theatro Magico in the evening with a bunch of other teachers from school. It's basically like a cooking show without any cameras. You sit in this little audience looking down on this chef who shows you everything that he's using to make the food and talks about it as he makes everything. He also told lots (and lots) of dirty jokes and had a pepper grinder as a prize for the best joke of the night told by an audience member. I ended up telling the "Speaking Spanish" joke (most of my fort pals will have heard me tell this one) and ended up winning! Not really fair I know because I've had lots of voyageur feast practice.... but I really wanted that pepper grinder! The whole thing was in english (the chef did a special show for us) but I'm sure that I would have enjoyed it in spanish as well, just understood a lot less.

Saturday
Saturday I was lucky enough to get a call from Liz Massi (was this on Saturday Liz? I can't remember for sure.) and she claims that using international phone cards are really easy so I'm expecting a flurry of calls from all of my numerous friends and admirerers any time now. In the evening Scott, Sonia, Regan, Jodi and I went to an electronica place in the north end of town. Basically in Cali you've got the:
1) Only Salsa places
2) Salsa and Merenge places
3) Reggaetone places
4) Electronica places
5) and a very few 'others'
I was actually amazed to see that Calenians dance to electronica a little too much like they dance to salsa which just ends up looking weird so for the first time since I've been here I was catupulted from being the worst dancer in the club to the best dancer in the club. It was really nice to go dance my butt off because I haven't done it in a while. When we were leaving there was this SUPER deep pothole outside and a truck got completely stuck in it when one wheel went right down in. So a bunch of people sauntered over and just lifted it out and it went on its way.....

Sunday
I finished reading 'A storm of swords' by George RR Martin and am already salivating over the next book 'A feast for crows'. Sadly it doesn't come out till Mid November, otherwise I would have strongly considered having someone Fed-Ex me a copy. (If anyone is now thinking about getting me this book for a Christmas present, don't even think about it unless you want to give it to me a week early because I plan on starting in on it was soon as I get home).

Now I'm just hanging out at school avoiding doing real work. Must get to it eventually I suppose. About two hours my classroom started to shake a little bit for about 5 seconds! My first earthquake (that I rememer that is... there was that SUPER tiny one in Kingston a few years back that everyone slept through). I would have enjoyed if it had lasted a little longer but I'll take what I can get. Apparently they have a smallish one every few years in Cali but this wasn't much more than a blip on the radar.

Well, I'm off for now. Things to do (and maybe some sleep soon).

Love Matt

Check it OUT!!!

This is an awesome dinner that I had the other night. It's made by one of the workers at the school adn it's chicken, veggies, and other good stuff all wrapped up in a bannanna leaf! YUM!
Ok, I found this think in my room last week. You can't really tell here but this thing was HUGE; about as big as my open hand (and I have very big hands). It just hung out in my bedroom for most of the day and then I spent about another day trying to catch it to put it outside.

Turns out I'm "The Natural"

Hey maybe I should take "The Natural" as my new nickname! You know, like

Matt "The Natural" Roy! I could maybe even go into wrestling with a name like that:)

Or maybe I could stop procrastinating by doing online quizzes...... hmmmm..... nope that doesn't sound likely.

Your Seduction Style: The Natural

You don't really try to seduce people... it just seems to happen.Fun loving and free spirited, you bring out the inner child in people.You are spontaneous, sincere, and unpretentious - a hard combo to find!People drop their guard around you, and find themselves falling fast.

What Is Your Seduction Style?