Plans, Goals, and Time: How I got to Colombia

I’ve decided to document my time teaching English in Colombia at a bilingual school in Valledupar. This latest chapter of my life opened at the end of last year and the beginning of 2017 in a rushed state of post-drunken incoherence.

Literally.

I started the year hungover, weak, and exhausted on a plane to Bogotá. Although unable to process anything after my imprudent New Year’s Eve shenanigans, my mind was made up; in spite of all of the crippling self-doubt I’ve dealt with time and time again, I was going to do this, make this move, and live and work in another country. Ever since I graduated from UNO in 2014 (already nearly 3 years ago), I knew that was what I wanted. This was what I wanted.

Yet for all of my dreams and desires finally determined, nothing could have prepared me for what I’m living now. You see, dreams aren’t real; they’re manifestations, and reality is seldom as pretty as we wish for it to be. You tend to think about the excitement and fervor of being in a new place. Making friends, going on excursions, and eating all of the food. You don’t stop to think about the buffering period of adjustment and readjustment that you have to be put through and molded by first before reaching that satisfying point in the journey.

To give full context, I feel I should give a little background. When I first decided to teach in Colombia, I was desperate for a change. I felt like the past couple years since graduating I had just been spinning my wheels. Yes, I developed some very valuable experience, but patience and perspective of the value of waiting have never been strengths of mine. Worse, I kept getting hung up on different things – namely, boys and doubts about if I should continue grinding or go back to school. If it wasn’t financial difficulties and indecisiveness, it was some kind of relationship-related messy entanglement allowing me to make excuses about putting my real goals on hold.

Granted, those years had not passed by wasted nor had my struggles been in vain. I did gradually make it to the point I am at today – first by moving to California after graduating, getting my translation certificate like I wanted to do in 2015, working in two separate schools in a bilingual position – one of which was in LA, a city I developed a strange enough bond with to long for it only in my states of passing melancholy. It’s a fantastic place to explore, for sure, brimming with culture and depth beyond the plastered Hollywood stereotypes. However, it was ultimately a cold place to me. I didn’t make the connections I had hoped for. I felt alone and unfulfilled.

So in the throes of the last breakup and rebirth stage, I made a decision to finally get out while I had the chance.

Last March, I received an email from an acquaintance I had met the first time I visited Colombia in 2013. The trip had been short and strenuous – I had gone as a volunteer delegate with Witness for Peace to learn about environmental and social issues caused by coal-mining carried out by multinational corporations. I witnessed the displacement of indigenous Wayuu and Afro-Colombian communities from their ancestral land and the destruction of that land. The experience had moved me in a way I knew would be significant at some point down the road…

However, I hadn’t anticipated that it would lead me to going back to teach English. Even now, I’m still not entirely certain how I’ve ended up in teaching, except that it seems I’m not too terrible at it, as my past two years working with mainly elementary students has taught me. It fulfills a need to help and do something constructive that involves planning and creativity. But what I really want to do is work as a translator and interpreter for organizations like Witness for Peace, or at the very least use my skills to help communities that have struggled the most due to Capitalism, Neoliberalism, and US interference.

When I got the email about teaching English in Fonseca, La Guajira, I thought, well hell, maybe I can find a way to give back to the community there in some small way. And since teaching wasn’t the end game, I buzzed at the idea of finding other opportunities along the way.

Once my plans were made, months after the original email (which I had coincidentally received during my second trip to Colombia to visit a dear friend in Bogotá), I arranged to resign at my previous job at the Global Education Academy and try my hand at coming up with my own lesson plans and working independently.

Before I go on, I feel I should point out that my idealized vision of the whole English-program-in-La Guajira thing ended up being pretty remote from the reality. But you’ll find that’s a trend with me. Idealists, am I right?

But without making a long story longer, suffice it to say I learned a lot about what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it during October and November of last year. I discovered I had developed some decent teaching instincts, and though it was little time, resources were scarce, and people were flaky, I managed to teach my mainly True Beginner students something in that span of time (even if it was really just really basic vocab, class rules, and being able to introduce themselves and ask questions).

I was also greatly exposed to the Dark Side of Colombian culture. Or maybe the “Dark Side” is a bit harsh, but frankly culture shock, though mild considering my previous exposure to general Latin American culture, has not been nonexistent.*

In the coast, people tend to have their own folkways. There’ll be more on this later, but basically life is slower and people can be very noncommittal for any number of reasons. I’ve learned that it is not just my foreigner’s perspective that makes me feel frustrated by these things (as Colombians from other areas have complained to me about them, too), but that didn’t make it easier to do the whole independent teaching thing.

So when I found out about a stable job at a prestigious bilingual school – one that would put me in an ideal location to travel and explore the immense natural beauty of Colombia in my free time** – I jumped on it like white people on Wonder Bread and the latest recycled trends.

And for all of my fear that I wouldn’t be considered, I got the job on the same day I went in and was interviewed. As my own biggest critic, it often surprises me how often I prove myself wrong and come out better than I assume I will.

I went back to the US, spent 2 slow but much-needed weeks with my family and a few very rushed days with my friends in New Orleans. Before I knew it, January 10th was here, and I was walking across the school from my new home to my new campus, anxious to meet the other teachers and hoping to make a good impression.

Today marks 3 weeks since I’ve been living in Colombia, almost 2 weeks since I started working at el Colegio Bilingue. The first week was utterly exhausting.

When teacher’s say that your first year teaching is trial-and-error with mostly error and lots of improvising to solve problems, they weren’t kidding. Being an aide in a classroom is a very different experience from being a teacher – especially when your students are between the ages of 6 and 8. Add that you are contractually bound to speak to them only in English (even if you know they don’t understand you and need support) and you get really stressful times, times when you are just pure internal screaming.

Also, Valledupar is the land of eternal summer and the wile, wile West of Colombia. And my AC was broken. So I was literally sweating bullets, moving around in circles from one center to another at some points when I was alone with the students for over an hour at times trying to keep everything working, at least somewhat. Did I mention that I was supposed to have an aide?

Planning time was thwarted since the first week as well. My fellow Transition teacher is also the English Language Arts Coordinator, which means lots of meetings. Because time schedules seldom function or matter here, that means that either I end up planning alone (something I was not prepared to do last week but since have developed more confidence for after trial by fire) or we start planning and get interrupted by something else. Hoping this will teach me self-sufficiency and resilience, but it was upsetting to realize that so many things I felt had been guarantees simply were not present, leaving me severely overwhelmed. And hoarse.

There is just not enough time in the day for everything. But there is enough time in general to make things happen.

I’ll be keeping you updated on what other pearls of wisdom I learn (the hard way) about teaching and if I end up rage-quitting or getting fired for losing it on Samuelito or one of my other “estudiantes dificiles” (“difficult” here being a euphemism for spoiled little shitheads). Stay tuned and pray I recover my voice and learn how to write beautifully in cursive!

I’d also like to share stories and experiences, tips and advice with other ex-pats and English teachers, so if that is you – or you just have something to say or ask – please drop a comment!

*I’ll also be talking about how Latin American^TM culture is not a monolith for all the commonalities that can be found.
**Little did I know, “free time” is now a thing of the past until TBD (possibly, never).