Nómada [con] Rumbo

Dating and /Not/ Dating in Colombia

In honor of Valentine’s Day (and its wonderfully appropriate alternative: Galentine’s day, brought to us by the comedic genius of Parks & Rec), I’d like to recap some of my horrifyingly hilarious experiences I’ve had in the Colombian dating arena.

Many times, I was thrust into this game unwitting or unwillingly. You’ll soon see how that is possible by the powers of machismo, though I assure you, it should come as no surprise.

In Colombia, I think it’s fair for me to say that dating culture, in general, is quite toxic. This is because of some harmful stereotypes-made-real and culturally-accepted norms, ranging from no-means-yes and yes-means-anything-goes and lying (both benevolently and not) in order to maintain a certain facade within the relationship (which does almost inevitably lead to straight up infidelity).

I know it’s been said, but this is, of course, anecdotal. There may be no studies relaying just why it is or the frequency at which these sorts of things happen. However, that doesn’t diminish the fact that they do happen, and mostly it’s because of the dominant machista culture. I’ll go in to what machismo is via examples throughout the post.

Most recently, I was invited to go swimming with a guy I barely knew. I met him while hanging out with a friend and her friends (and their friends) the night before. Bear in mind: I had expected us to go to the pool in a group, which seems safe, am I right? But his intentions weren’t completely unclear either. That morning, he had sent me several texts that read very…flirtatious. But that’s normal here. What Colombian doesn’t call most women “mi vida,” “bebe,” “mi amor,” “princesa,” etc.? You would be surprised. However, the excessive amounts of winking and suggestive-face emojis clearly gave him away.

Now, I really wanted to go swimming. Just keep that in mind. So I said yes, why not? I mean, worst case scenario, he’s just very awkward, right? I have to shun a few untoward remarks, maybe. No big deal.

Wrong. You see, when men like you here, they don’t care if you are as stiff as a corpse. They will touch YOU. Now doesn’t that just have the word RAPE spelled all over it in big crimson letters. Sometimes I forget this, and the shock is real.

As soon as I got in the cab when he pulled up at my house, he put his arm around me. Strike one. He started to caress my shoulder in this utterly cringe-inducing way as he spoke at length about things he assumed I knew nothing about and made general smalltalk. I tried to pretend not to notice, attempting to keep things light and friendly. He kept getting closer and closer to me. I could feel my skin crawling, that sensation you get when there are tons of invisible ants all over you.

By the time we got to the pool, he was trying to hold my hand, not letting me more than a few inches from him. We would talk and laugh or carry on (conversation in all its forms is my ultimate defense mechanism when I am really uncomfortable), and then he leaned in and without any sort of preamble (other than some sort of throw-away “sultry” – in his mind – phrasing) tried kissing me, which landed on my chin. This happened several times. When it happened, I went rigid. I told him I barely knew him, the physical contact is too intense, it’s making me uncomfortable – I mean how much clearer could I be?

He pretended to care, said it was no problem, insisted on asking if I was comfortable and having a good time. But as soon as I dropped my guard, the same awkward dance would begin again.

He would look for pretexts to touch me. In the pool, he tried to lift me up and carry me around. On the balcony looking over the city’s valley and surrounding mountain peaks, while I was trying to admire the view, he cornered me and blocked my line of vision. He recited poetry to me, sang at me, basically wrapped his legs around me at one point.

Need I go on? It was absolutely obnoxious. Then he had the nerve, after I told him more than once that none of that was cool, to ask me if I would be interested in going out with him some more. To which a cocked my head to the side and coyly responded, “Wait, what? Since when was this a date? I’m just barely getting to know you. And no, I would not be and am not interested in going out with anyone at the moment. No offense.”

Why do I feel the need to tack on the disclaimers? “No offense.” I suppose it’s hard to reject men flatly when you’re in a situation in which you are forced to be around them alone. It’s not that I felt physically threatened by him, but it’s just uncomfortable. My instincts to be polite often get me in trouble, and more so in situations like this. I imagine on some level it’s because women are trained to be polite above all else. Which in no way backfires, of course…

This phenomena of touching the other person whether they express that they want it or not and assuming that it is okay to press boundaries is all too common.

Even with my ex, there were times I did not want to be intimate, and to be frank, he would ignore just how rigid and indifferent my body language was, or that my words expressed that I felt. Somehow, all of this behavior gets written off as normal here. Which has led me to having to fight to express myself and then feel ignored or written off when I say, hey, stop, that’s not what I’m into.

If you are going to date a guy here, as with any cultural context, you must recognize that everyone is different. No two people are alike. This might maintain you with at least a little bit of hope and optimism. However, there are some broad norms that become patterns for some underlying reason. Most of what I’m describing here is do to machismo.

To give you a textbook definition, machismo is a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity. Are you seeing the assumptive patterns here?

Another example of how toxic dating culture can be here is the constant feeding of the male ego. I’ve now had several encounters with men who literally do not shut up about themselves. They will start asking you questions – only to cut you off before you’ve even completed a sentence.

It starts with them asking a million questions in order to seem like they are actually interested in you. Like, “So, tell me about yourself. What do you like? Where are you from? What’s your passion in life?”

Your mind begins to work over the slew of questions. You begin, “Well, I’m not sure where to begin. I’m really passionate about–”

“Oh, so did I tell you I just started working at this company blahblahblah.”

It really is that bad. And they expect you to just go along with it. And god forbid you interrupt them, because I have seen more than one guy get indignant or simply ignore everything I have said because, hold on, he didn’t finish.

Entitlement. When he cares, it matters. When you are interested, it’s up to him. And generally speaking, whenever a guy gets hit by the urge to mess around here, he expects his demands to be met. As illustrated with my ex as well as the guy I barely met, women are expected to just bend over and take it. Your refusal or disapproval is easily ignored. But don’t expect him to be around when you need or want something.

Which leads me to the next point: vanity. On one hand, it can be nice to date someone that cares about his appearance and actually wants to look good for you. But the dark side of that is the problematic behavior that concern can generate. It manifests itself in more than just an obsession for one’s physical appearance, but general appraisal of everything related to oneself. In a word: ego. I have seen how the image of a person can be set before the person themself. Sometimes it manifests itself in insisting that you only post pictures in which they look perfect. Other times, its demanding that you change your image in order to suit their whims. In all cases, it is exhausting and superficial.

Another common occurrence is texting in order to “manage” you and maintain your interest. “Que haces” is the most common and literally repetitive question. Sometimes I’ve been asked what I am doing with no more than a few minutes in between, as if there were literally nothing else to say or talk about. There is a sense of micromanaging as a means of control here. If you don’t respond, you obviously are devoting your time to someone else or something that *gasp* may be more important than your pretendiente!

Then there is planning. This spontaneously can pop up on the whim of your lover, and the proposal may be more of a pointed “we are going to do…” or “I want to do…” and less of a “hey, I was wondering if you would like to…”

As an American, I was used to the latter, more courteous manner of suggesting activities. Most Americans aren’t that forward when they are just getting to know each other, at least, not the crowd I tend to run with. I have never experimented with Tinder, but I did have my fair share of okcupid dates, and aside from a few cocky bastards, very rarely was a date demanded rather than suggested, without some caveat to make sure the other person feels comfortable even considering it a date. We Americans, in my experience, are less determined to put a label on our relationships too early in the game. In my opinion, it avoids conflict but can lead to confusion once someone inevitably catches feels and wants to know where they stand.

Speaking of being American, thanks to being the minority in the small coastal city I live in, I have been blessed with the experience of being exotified. If I was insensitive or indifferent at some point to the struggle of women of other ethnicities in the states, I can safely say that I do understand how it must feel to be reduced to a label, a stereotype, and fetishized for it – and it’s awful. It sucks. It really makes you hate everything associated with that label. The comments are cringe-worthy. The “be my sexy English teacher” and “let me teach you how to dance” and “all gringas are easy” are a broken record that drives you madder and madder everytime it enters conversation – and believe me, if you meet a guy here and you are American, it will. I don’t think I will ever date anyone again that clearly had some romanticized or crude American-Pie-fueled image of me again.

But going back to Colombian culture, dating is a clearly established game. However, the rules are generally “don’t ask, don’t tell” when it comes to the sort of transparency that tells you if other people are in the picture or not. Exclusivity, I have realized, is not as much as a given as the fact that if you accept an invitation to go on a date, in the guy’s mind you are probably “dating” unless he says otherwise. Even if he’s also seeing several girls on the side. Or one “officially.”

I have still yet to meet a man here that will straight up tell me if he has a girlfriend when he expresses interest in me. Even if I meet him with another girl that is clearly somehow sentimentally or physically involved with him, there is often a lie, either implicit or explicit: no, it’s nothing serious, I’m into you.

I’m starting to develop a sixth sense for this shadiness. Now I won’t take a guy as seriously and will most likely just walk away if he even suggests having something serious too quickly, assuming that he has a girlfriend. This is because I have been led on or straight up duped into thinking a guy was single only to be told by others or find out clandestinely that there was another woman in the picture the whole time. For me, as someone that as a rule would never go for a guy that is committed to someone else, that is absolutely devastating.

Returning to the theme of machismo, I’ve realized that there is an implicit cultural acceptance for infidelity if the man is doing the cheating. It shows his “swagger”, his prowess, his…insecurity. I think the root is insecurity and the lack of genuine relationships. Because these same people that tend to be unfaithful and dishonest about it also assume and go nuts over the idea that their partner could do the same to them.

Once, I realized a guy was acting rather cold with me after showing so much interest every time we saw each other. I thought maybe I was overthinking it or projecting, but it came back to me that he actually lived with someone and was in a committed relationship. This never came up in any of our conversations. The only tip was the cold manner in which he texted me and the spontaneous attention whenever we would see each other.

There’s a certain feedback loop of men doing what they want because they want it and not considering the consequences. I think this is a direct symptom of machismo, which is all about the ability of men to do just that in order to assert their manliness. However, if a woman does the same, I need not even go into the litany of insults that exist in Spanish to describe her.

Infidelity is a man’s game here. And a game it is. These days, I don’t date, and if I do in the future, it will be with utmost detachment and caution.

Obviously, I am just a cynic that has seen some of the worst in dating in Colombia. Perhaps I’ll write a post in which I contradict all of this because some beautiful person comes and sweeps me off my feet. I highly doubt it though, as a lot of this is less to do with my personal experience and more to do with the broad echoes of the dull roar of the antiquated conquista attitude that remains embedded in dating culture here today.

A imagem pode conter: 1 pessoa, texto

On that note, I wish you all a Happy Valentine’s (or Galentine’s) day! Love yourselves first – then and only then can you appreciate and recognize the genuine love of others.

Versos de Colombia

I’ve decided to share the poems that I have written since living and being inspired by life in Colombia. Some days the inspiration is so great, I can’t help but sit and let flow poem after poem. They generally aren’t long, but I feel they are significant for where I am in my life and the person this experience has molded me into being.

Plus, come on, y’all. I’m practically 26. I’ve been telling people I’m 26 without meaning to because subconsciously I’m already there. I feel like in this year and a half I have grown and matured more than in all of my years before combined.

Okay, maybe that is a bit hyperbolic. But yes, I’ve really settled into myself. And that shift in perspective, the embrace of self and denial of anything that does not grow or nourish the self is due in large part to the simple decision I made to live and teach in Colombia.

I will put the Spanish and English versions for those that don’t speak Spanish, so you can hopefully really absorb the meaning.

Al mal Tiempo

Her voice
Like the arroyo washing back
A reassuring hush

Her eyes
Like half moons hidden
Beneath dreamy clouds

Her bones
Brittle yet stark like yue bark
Not easily bent

I see her
Sitting in her mecedora
Reading Catholic psalms
In her flowing, multihued manta

The strength of the Colombian-
Of the Wayuu-
Al mal tiempo, buena cara.

This first poem I wrote back when I was first living in Fonseca at the end of 2016. I stayed with an older woman of Wayuu-indigenous origins (though she is very much a part of that culture presently) who was the sister of the woman that inspired this poem. I was always struck by her straight back in the face of difficulties and hardship and her unwavering resolve. Just every part of her radiates strength that her fragile body would deny. The Wayuu are a strong people. Even though there were moments she could get under my skin, I’m so happy for the time I spent with her and her family.

El Abismo

No es que sea por rencor
Pero espero que sigas con ese ardor
Y ese salado sabor
Cuando mi nombre pasa por tu boca,
Por todas las lágrimas y sudor
Gastados en vano por tocar
El abismo más profundo de mi alma.

The Abyss

It’s not to be bitter,
But I hope you still feel the burn
And that salty taste
When my name passes through your mouth,
For all the tears and sweat
Spent in vain by touching
The deepest abyss of my soul.

Love has come knocking at my door, although the fruit of that love was far from savory. Sometimes, recontextualizing myself within this culture, understanding the way people play the game of relationships, was something I had to do in order to survive and remove myself from situations that did not serve me on my journey or help me love myself, but instead led me further astray and caused me to forget myself and what has always been important to me.

Dark times, toxic relationships, shifts that have challenged me in this journey and have inspired my verses as well. Sometimes the best way to phrase and manage the hurt people can cause you is via poetry. The end of my last relationship can be summed up as a…

Twisted Fairytale

In truth, the slate has been wiped clean.
He broke the chains of my denial
With his poor, decrepit tongue
Sugar-coated in lies and poisoned in seduction.
I could never live, could never know true
Desire, love, heartache
Again by that harsh sword-

I would rather fall on my sword
Than taste those bittersweet remedies
Again and fall beneath myself.

Thank my pride for the strength it provides;
Thank my love of self and other to realize-
I was never loved by that other and never
Would be or could be-
Thank my nerve to say enough is enough.

And most importantly, thank the signs
Held up by angels among me,
Those gentle voices that know
And eyes that have seen and stung
With tears so that mine would not-

Thank my friends who have taught me
My own self-worth, to trust my own inner voice,
For they are the true heroes in this sad story
Where I am both the damsel and the knight,
And happy endings are never what they seem.

So, with that epoch sealed, I decided to love myself. To love myself ferociously and passionately, secure in the knowledge that I am all I have got.

Narcissus

I would jump into a million lakes,
Head down, face first
Into my reflection,
If it means that I could love
Myself,
Alone; Forever.

Faithful

I made a promise
To never be unfaithful again
To the most important person
In my whole world,
The one I go to bed with
Every night:

Me.

In spite of the pain I experienced, the journey itself has been totally worth it. It has aided in my process of self-discovery and the affirmation of my self-worth and independent spirit. Since breaking up with my ex, I have traveled both outward and inward – to Tayrona, Santa Marta, Ocaña, climbed the beautiful Estoraques, and began planning my independent summer adventures throughout South and Central America. The breakup opened a floodgate of creativity for me that has led me to be more reflective and respect and recognize the beauty in all the things around me.

Continuum

Puedo verlos bailando,
La ondulación como olas
En un mar ámbar
E inquieto.

I can see them dancing,
The undulation like waves
In an amber, restless sea.

Taken outside of a club in Santa Marta during my get-away in early January

Acertijo

Mi Esencia
No se puede atrapar
En una mirada de miel
Y un cuerpo
De carne y hueso.
Soy tierra y fuego–
El mar y sus olas bailadoras–
Soy palabra y aire–
Soy–

Riddle

My Essence
Cannot be trapped
In a honey gaze
And a body made
Of meat and bone.
I’m earth and fire–
The sea and its dancing waves–
I’m word and air–
I am–

The idea here was to be phrased like a riddle. I start by going to the root of my meaning, my essence, that which makes me as a person. I was reflecting not too long ago on the selfie sensation, the need to post pictures of oneself and show the world our best face. I realized that who I am really isn’t contained by that image–in fact, it could never be contained by it because that image of decaying perfection is also impermanent.

So what am I? I am a human being. And human beings transcend the prisons their flesh holds them in. Our spirits and energies make us one with nature, and nature brings meaning to what we are. I suppose it’s something I’ve learned about myself, the view I have of myself as being now far less narrow and 2-dimensional.

There have been other scribblings and fragmented thoughts along the way, but these were the principle verses I have written here. I feel like they represent the metamorphosis – the starting and beginning again where I started from but a bit fuller and wholer, the whole cycle of self-growth – really well. Now, to add some more to the list.

Addendum: Favorite Quotes from 1984

Something I love to do when reading is underlining my favorite quotes. Sometimes they inspire big thoughts along the lines of their content, thoughts I would like to share.

Here are some of my favorite insights and quotes from 1984:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

Wow. What a fucking quote. These are the sorts of moments when you wonder what would have happened if someone had told Orwell to dial back and leave it on the cutting room floor. Frankly, every line and loop and contradiction does exactly what it’s supposed to do – it draws the reader into the maze of doublethink. It leads you to questioning: does this really happen? Are there people that do this now, that brainwash themselves in order to maintain tacit ties of loyalty to specific groups? I would say, the answer is a resounding yes. I think of my racist grandparents. (Prejudice in general seems rife with this “doublethink” business) Both would love to blame people of other ethnicities for their problems, for the troubles with the US economy, with crime and the dissolution of American moral values or what have you. Yet they love and respect several people that fit within the exact category they hold contempt for by justifying it within their heads, by effectively making concessions that contradict their absolutist mentality.

Now maybe it’s the absolutism of not questioning a very narrow set of beliefs which actually leads to these sorts of conundrums. Hmmm…

The book within the book holds a number of really compelling gems of text.

“…the object of waging war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”

How true that was, especially in the post Great War era. This statement still holds water today, as it is what our perpetual warring state is basically striving for from all angles (even in wars that have nothing to do with it).

“The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”

Imagine: War for war’s sake. But not just for war’s sake, but for the sake of turning a profit. Sound familiar? One of those things that makes Orwell’s writing stand the test of time – exhibit A!

“The older kind of Socialist, who had been trained to fight against something called ‘class privilege,’ assumed that what is not hereditary cannot be permanent. He did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been short-lived, whereas adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.”

The merge of religion and secular party doctrine made me realize how a party and a religious organization could serve the same purpose using the same tools to lull and buffer the masses, mostly by having them accept and inculcate beliefs which contradict themselves and go against the rational welfare of those same masses. As someone that leans towards socialism and radicalism, I totally reject this use of the term as anything other than an example of the perversion of the ideals the term “Socialism” represents by those who know full well that ain’t socialism. But the devil is in the details. That exact logical contradiction and confusion is what could make the masses rally around something that innately does not benefit more than a minority.

Furthermore, this shows the self-sustaining and preservationist attitude of capitalists, even as the system of capitalism is at times unpredictable and haphazard depending on the general economic boom of the moment. Regardless, it’s not about who holds the power but how they are able to obtain and maintain their position. Which is what makes charity and trickle-down thinking useless and most benevolent acts within this system ill-fatedly self-serving, no matter the intention.

“And the people under the sky were also very much the same – everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same – people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world. If there was hope, it lay in the proles!”

So much good. We are all the consumers, really. The proles described in the novel. The ones that have limited means of production yet are forced to do most of the labor, that go off and die in wars that mean nothing to them based on ideals that have been fed to or sometimes beat into them. And we are all the same. This system is not an isolated one. It has no borders. Yet we are taught to hate based on those imaginary divisions. And as long as we accept we are taught and hate, we fail to see just how same and united we are. And if we, the proles, realize how strong we are when we are united, we would bring an end to the very system that we feed, the one that oppresses us.

Class consciousness, people. This is straight out of Marx. And I quote:

“Where there is equality there can be sanity. Sooner or later, it would happen: strength would change into consciousness.”

“‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.'”

I feel this speaks for itself. The idea of re-writing the past to benefit the party that happens to hold power at the time is an old one. Orwell saw it happening in his day, and we can easily pick it out today. It starts with the way children’s history books frame things, always in favor of white, nationalist America, the victors of the World Wars and the sponsors of many others. Those who hold the power write the history books and tell the stories and control the media. They control the present and the past, and that’s what shapes our grim-looking future.

“‘We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.'”

Imagine a politician standing up to give their speech, to sway the masses and promote themselves and their world view as they often do–imagine them saying this. That would, of course, be cognitively dissonant as it would go against everything it means to be a politician. In effect, this is the ugly truth. Power is what those capable of obtaining it seek. It is one of the strongest drugs as it impacts an entire society.

“‘Reality is inside the skull. …Invisibility, levitation–anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature.”

Anti-intellectualism is another theme that appears in 1984. There’s a whole rant towards the end of the book, an argument between Winston and a powerful member of the party about the state of reality. If records are altered and nobody officially “remembers” an event, did it really happen? Does it really exist? Of course, Winston’s answer is yes, as is the answer of any rational person. But the answer of those controlling the masses via media and spreading lies to a subconscious level of acceptance is a self-assured “no.” The reality of people on a mass scale can be altered and led astray. However, as Winston asserts, that doesn’t make the facts any less apparent to a rational human being.

To quote outside of the book, the themes of 1984 call to mind the song “Savages” by Marina and the Diamonds and its description of the brutality of human nature. “I’m not afraid of God. I’m afraid of man,” she states in the bridge. The endless wars. The extremes we are able to go to in order to merely survive. And not only to survive, but to dominate that which we call home, the very Earth, with our every whim. This too is the essence of 1984. Bureaucracy, party-worship, roles that we play do not mask some of our most base features. It points to a fact which is often overlooked even though it has happened from culture to culture and throughout disparate contexts in history: we invented the gods to benefit us, not the other way around.

And yet, we are also rational beings capable of distinguishing logic from falsehood. Given the right amount of assessment, as Winston’s inability to suppress his own logical rejection of doublethink suggests, humans are able to understand innately and articulate via education and exposure the lies that are fed to them. That being said, one must first have the education and exposure to think critically. It is a learned rather than innate skill, so it is quite conceivable that a society that wishes to stamp critical thought out could simply try to mold generation across generation not to question anything, to focus on the world painted by the media and dressed up by celebrity.

Orwell had an incredible way of writing about these Political and Social Science themes. He made them both accessible to a casual, curious reader and completely analytical and inspiring for those familiar with the theories they are based around. His style is clear and concise yet layered with history and truth.

Do you have a favorite quote from one of Orwell’s works? I would love to hear it and discuss any analysis of it or the concepts discussed that it inspired as well.

A Book Review: 1984

Now, I realize this is supposedly a travel blog, or at least, like, a traveling teacher blog. But I’m rather proud of the fact that I finally finished reading a book in spite of my “busy schedule” (which, yes, I know is a sorry excuse for not being able to finish books most days, but bear with me). I also happen to be a literary enthusiast, albeit a lazy one. So, in short, my book review of 1984.

Let me just go ahead and admit it. I came late to the 1984 party. Most of my friends had to read it in high school. After finally reading it, at my 25 humble years, I must say it both makes a perfect and at once absolutely inappropriate book for a high school audience. On one hand, the concepts with which it deals are important and necessary for the budding highschooler intellect, and far be it from me to say that highschoolers aren’t capable of wrapping their heads around the irony of such party slogans as WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS ~~BLISS~~ STRENGTH. But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that as a result of the importance of exposing this often banned book to young people it almost gets cast off as just another YA classic must-read. Classic and must-read it is. YA, though? Far from it.

I want to start by saying I disagree with many reviews claiming that this is merely (or primarily) a bleak projection of the future (now-present/past). I say merely because just as this book has been pigeonholed a bit for its controversial political nature, I think it also has been reduced ideologically to a simple black-and-white warning.

More accurately, it is a sort of road map for how exactly totalitarian governments function and by what means it takes to subdue and stupefy an entire population. Does this happen in many forms today? Yes. Is it building into some dark-future climax of which 1984 is the inevitable result? Not likely, as this book proves that these sorts of horrendous thought-control (or brainwashing) systems have been at work in any number of governments for the past century, and beyond, if not on such an extreme and absolute scale. So, in that way, limiting it to a narrative revolving around fantasies of a specific futurescape is too narrow for what it was intended, while it also seems too narrow to define it strictly as a book speaking of the trials of its time in hyperbole.

Which is, of course, the exact balance that makes 1984 a timeless classic. (and TL;DR: Erich Fromm basically discusses this in depth in the excellent Afterword of my Signet Classics edition of the novel)

To steal from that afterword, “Orwell…is not a prophet of disaster. He wants to warn and awaken us.”

Moving on to my actual review. This book does an enormous amount of world building in a brief amount of time. It manages to maintain an absurd yet convincing projection of the sort of world that could exist if the systems already in place became powerful enough to subdue all rational thought.

1984 was published in 1949, and so, in that sense, was one of the earliest novels to discuss a specific image of society set in the not-so-distant future based around social ills that were novel and terrifying during its conception (even alluding to the threat of nuclear war, which at the time, had not happened yet, although the bombs were in their early test stages). As both dystopian and social science fiction, it takes the cake for its crisp, developed image of a world in which thinking about the very words freedom and equality is a crime punishable by torture and death because of its “unorthodox” nature. It basically carries the desire to make a group of people submit to their oppressor absolutely and willingly to a logical extreme which could and does in fact (if more subtly) happen. After all, who hasn’t met a strong right-wing nationalist that doesn’t tend to doublethink (meaning holding two contradicting beliefs, one based on rational, concrete fact and one on irrational, fear-driven vitriol and choosing to believe the other at all costs)? There’s a reason the language of this book has found its way in our modern lexicon.

And on that note, one of the most fascinating aspects of this novel for me as a linguist was its explanation of a language developed solely to limit the range of thought. This speaks to Orwell’s brilliance as a linguist and language enthusiast (fun fact: Orwell became fluent in Burmese while policing in Burma–Burmese!). It appears that “Politics and the English Language,” in which he talks about the use of language and writing to manipulate the masses, is going on my to-read list.

Logically, this concept plays a crucial role in 1984 as Orwell developed “Newspeak” for the novel in order to show how government establishments like his fictional Ingsoc* could use language in order to alter the thought patterns and thereby limit the perceptions and ability for critical thought of its citizens across the generations. Andrew N. Rubin sums it up thusly: “Orwell claimed that we should be attentive to how the use of language has limited our capacity for critical thought just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use.”

This “Newspeak” is not to be mistaken for “Netspeak”; however, I will say that there are some striking similarities which would lend them to comparison or unconscious association. The shortening and concision of words to convey basic meanings, not to mention the use of emojis in our current era to convey messages without words. Still, let’s not confuse ourselves: the purpose of netspeak has expanded and evolved outside of the rules of some militant single-party system and actually adds words to its vocabulary at an incredible rate and to serve a diverse number of purposes. Newspeak, on the other hand, was established and continuously developed by the party to eliminate “problematic, heretical/unorthodox” words from the English language, as a process of control rather than of free expression.

In the book, Orwell dedicates a whole appendix to this very subject, explaining 3 different types of vocabulary developed and implemented in written form using Newspeak and how it ties into the ideology of the Party. Linguistics, y’all. I’m in love.

Additional to language and vivid 3rd person accounts of the world that offer a window into how this world works, the government itself is fleshed-out via internal prose and the limited 3rd person perspective of the narrator who works within (and against) this system. It details an intricate layer of self-contradicting Ministries (of Peace (War), Love (torture), Truth (falsifications), and Plenty (rations)) and a Party-centered class system** that lend an otherwise distorted world its solidity and credibility – its relevance across time. The extreme nature of these manifestations proves how a society like the one Winston Smith lives in could come to exist and flourish. Plus, the irony can be appreciated by anyone aware of our own version of each ministry in the US (not to mention *cough* fake news).

The main character, Winston Smith, is not exactly your every man. In a way, that is what makes him so appealing. He is hapless, yes, and inevitably doomed (but don’t worry, if you’re like me and still late to this party, I won’t spoil that ending for you!). His crime? Loving to fornicate, keeping a journal, and possessing a smidge of human curiosity and rational thought. In every other way, he is exceedingly unextraordinary and even unlikeably, disturbingly human – paranoid, weak, and withdrawn. In a single word, grotesque. These traits create a relateable, truthful character trying to take some type of action in a cold, systematic world, so even though he’s not the sort of person I would generally root for, his perceptions and desires are real enough to bring me close enough to truly examine the twisted world he inhabits.

Relating back to why I don’t exactly consider this teen-appropriate***, the novel really takes you there as far as delivering on the violence of thought and action that living in a supremely fascist society would produce. On one hand, shocking details like that of the protagonist imagining raping and murdering a woman (that later becomes his quite unromantic love-interest) and scenes which expose the reader to torture in detail that even made me cringe seem like a lot to delve into without the right emotional maturity. But I suppose that’s what makes it a challenging and important read, and more so because these aspects highlight what a society of humans stripped of their humanity could look like – as well as the how and why.

1984 is not one of those books you can rank. Of course, we all have our preferences. But for the content, the message and how it is put across, the characterization, the writing style (crisp, sharp, and solid), and the linguistic and historical depth and analysis without being too pedantic – well, frankly, I give it 5/5 stars and approval as certainly not overrated. It continues to be relevant. And as long as the Capitalist machine functions, with bureaucracy and warfare in high demand, it will continue to be relevant, showing that it is not simply alien situations (relative to the “Western world”) like that of the Soviets, the Nazis, the WWII era Japanese and Chinese and North Korea which have sought to control and decimate its populations into mere bodies, party placeholders to uphold their regimes unknowing of the part they play in the machine.

Perhaps this work is so poignant because it holds up a mirror to the Imperial West and global warfare by placing it in a country called “Oceania,” including the United States and the United Kingdom. By bringing this system close to home and using a sort of parody and hyperbole, Orwell causes the Western reader to take a good, hard look at who the true enemies of “freedom” are and who they are not.

My final reflection left by this novel was this: if thought is so threatening for a totalitarian society, what would the world be like if those thoughts actually became actions? If we all exercised our freedom to express? Many of use sit from the convenience of our homes (myself included) mulling over the issues plaguing our world. Like Winston, we feel the limits of the society we live in and the enormity of the system we are up against – imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, the intersections of them all. In the end, also like Winston, we may try to fight back, but we do very little. Many joke by saying “Thinking isn’t a crime yet,” but the next logical step, just as Winston concluded with the proles is to turn those thoughts into actions. To mobilize. The last thing every human being is left with is the ability to think rationally. Let’s not forget to act on those thoughts, too.

*Newspeak for English Socialism, the idea produced to show an England following models witnessed in Stalinist “socialism” and more presently, in North Korea
**Three classes are strictly defined as unalterable but undefined along race, gender, or monetary lines: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the proles; each has different rules of conduct and luxuries, with the Inner Party having the greatest amount of luxuries and the greatest restrictions on conduct, and the proles having the fewest of both and being thought of as animals with no real power of class consciousness.
***Not to be a stiff; I read a ton of books in high school that were dark and gritty, but mostly its just that the themes are far darker than I personally would have expected to be relegated to this age group.

Anxiety and Working Abroad

Considering it’s the beginning of a new academic period, I feel reflecting on some of the struggles I’ve had with anxiety are quite apropos. I started this post last year, and since, I have made progress and even have some advice. That being said, and at risk of sounding cliche, this is a daily struggle.

For some time, perhaps my entire life, I have lived with all sorts of nagging fears I knew to be completely irrational. They’re the sort of feedback loop of kneejerk reactionary thoughts that have you literally rolling around in bed, tossing and turning for hours. Every time I’ve been under stress, that feedback loop tends to become deafening and even debilitating to my abilities to socialize and feel good about myself. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy living abroad and the challenges it has brought me, the anxiety is still there, like a constant rain cloud a la Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.

Disclaimer: I have never been diagnosed with General Anxiety. I don’t know if that makes my experience less legitimate or if I should avoid self-diagnosis, but it’s one of the few helpful frameworks I have for dealing with these types of feelings and experiences.

Before I knew anything about mental health, I thought of myself as simply defective. Why were things that seemed so normal for other people so damn hard for me? Why couldn’t I just go out and smile and talk to people when I lived somewhere new? Why was it so hard to acclimate to new situations, to feel stable under pressure, to cope with minor shake-ups? Why did I feel like I needed to hide away, to be invisible, to avoid some sort of terrible consequence that even I couldn’t fathom? Sometimes I still feel defective and angry with myself for being that way, despite realizing that it isn’t my fault.

Living with anxiety on its own is just hard. Being put into a new environment with strangers and rigorous expectations can be crushing.

My first year taught me how to cope with the over-stimulation I often get when my anxiety peaks. However, I still have a lot to learn.

As the holidays lurched to a close, it began to dawn on me just how unprepared I was. Impostor syndrome soon followed, and before I knew it, I was incapable of eating without my stomach tying itself into knots (fun fact: last year I realized the full link between stress/anxiety and my acid reflux/gastritis; my symptoms are mild when I am in a non-stressed, neutral state, however the peak had me thinking I had an ulcer last period and practically incapable of eating without suffering from extreme heartburn and cramps – the more you know).

I’m no stranger to this feeling; however, last year at this time, there were moments I thought it would actually fully impair my ability to teach. So, I developed coping methods. Some better than others, but they have served me well. Now, at the end of week two of classes with lots of projects and goals staring me in the face, I feel more centered than ever in spite of my strong bouts of momentary panic.

So without further ado, let me give you a rundown on some tricks I’ve learned (the hard way, of course) for managing anxiety and stress:

1. Me time. Me time, me time, me time.

When I leave the school and stop being forced to be around other people, I have come to realize there is zero guilt in absolutely indulging myself. That can be as simple as taking a long (*cold* – this is Coastal Colombia, after all) shower, painting my nails, laying around with phone in hand, and just generally doing nothing but soaking in the essence that is me. I can’t believe that ever made me feel guilty, I mean, seriously, how diluted was I to think the need to constantly be around others and not “missing out” didn’t just add to my anxiety. But boy, does it ever. So now, I embrace a night in or a solo date getting ice cream (or better yet, a smoothie from Cosecha’s) or a meal at the mall conveniently located at walking distance from my house. Nothing resets me more in the midst of exhaustion from a demanding work environment than bringing my gaze inward and treating myself.

2. Explore more.

I’m not talking full-blown trips (though that is related, but I have chosen to separate the two in my mind for reasons). It could be as simple, if the place is new to you (as Valledupar was to me), as looking up a restaurant containing your favorite type of food and making a plan to go check it out. Many times when I have been lonely and overwhelmed, I have taken it upon myself to arm my own plans to go walking and bathing in the local river, to checking out different art galleries downtown, to just soaking in the little things around me and letting myself meander along and get lost in the new place I now feel I can call home.

3. The arts are your friend – even if you think you aren’t an “artist.”

Whatever your interests, art heals. Performing for others has always amplified my anxiety, it’s true. But jamming with others, now that’s something I can get behind. It doesn’t have to be making music though. Writing – a poem, short story, song, journal entry – whatever floats your boat can really help with those stressful days when other, more pressing matters just don’t seem doable. It also helps process thoughts and alleviates my anxiety in that way so that I feel less overwhelmed and burdened. Something I picked up back when I lived in Los Angeles and still do to this day is light sketching. I am by no means super talented, but that really doesn’t matter when engaging in the arts as an act of survival and a means of distracting from or channeling intrusive, anxious thoughts and energy. This could also include enjoying a good film or getting lost in a book. Creativity is the key.

4. Traveling, and doing so with as little baggage as possible.

Now, this was a hurdle I’ve had to overcome that also challenges me because it generates anxiety initially. But I love to travel. Truth be told, a lot of things I love cause my anxiety to peak in an uncomfortable way, but I’ve found if I can power through it, the feeling after the fact of satisfaction really outweighs the knots in my stomach caused at the outset. One of my favorite things about Colombia is the ability to explore the country on a budget, to just take off at pretty much any time and go almost anywhere on the bus. Is this difficult? Yes, sometimes it is, especially if you are the planning every pit stop type, but it has helped with the restless spurts I get with my hectic, demanding work schedule which often makes me feel like life revolves around work (and thus has me “missing out”). Of course, there’s no reason it has to be that way! It just takes effort to plan (minimally) and take off.

5. Don’t be afraid to talk to (relative) strangers.

I’m still not a huge advocate of approaching random people or inviting them into your house. I mean, friendliness is good, but reserves aren’t all bad either. But I’ve found that feeling down and anxious can lead one to perpetuating a cycle brought about by projecting onto and avoiding others. Then we sort of craft a negative reality removed from the perceptions and perceived criticisms of others which could even enhance that sense of loneliness and unease. So one way to combat the anxiety that causes it to simply talk to people. If there’s a topic or a question, hiding it away does no good. It can be hard, but when the moment comes, I have learned to embrace even the same conversation a million different times and ways with the taxista. These casual exchanges can sometimes lead to friendships or at least interesting encounters that can improve your whole day. Having an open mind doesn’t hurt, and I think being less guarded has actually helped a lot with my anxiety as a whole.

6. Ask for help.

I think this may be the biggest lesson the last few years have taught me. I recently started going to a therapist to learn more about myself and how to process my own experiences and difficulties related to anxiety and depression. All of my friends and family that know have been so encouraging. It’s true that we all have suffered in some way, and frankly I think everyone could benefit from therapy. But also asking for help in general can be so difficult when dealing with anxiety because, at least for me, it makes me feel like something of a burden upon others. Paying someone to shoulder part of that burden by simply listening and providing insight, strategies, and feedback is so nice. But if that is too much, reaching out to friends and family, as hard as it can be (especially if you’re like me and have too much pride at times) is so very worth it. That’s how we know we aren’t truly alone.

7. Be present.

Don’t forget to breathe. Live in the moment. Let the anxiety settle on you like a restless, weary traveler – it’ll be gone before you know it. It just takes time. Those days have happened to me plenty often, the days when I feel like I’m buzzing or overheating and boiling over like a pressure cooker left on too long. Those are the days when it’s important to unplug and focus on the now. Mindfulness and stoicism have been some of my saving graces that I have been working on ever since I moved to California. Here in Colombia, it continues to help me maintain my balance when I feel tossed about by life’s unpredictable, fickle nature. Yoga, meditation, journaling – all are tools I would highly recommend. Just breathe.

Hopefully this list will continue to grow, as I truthfully, as I predicted, this experience has drawn the anxiety out of me and drain me. It has been an immense challenge at times – between the personal and the professional struggles I have faced and my own worries about the future – for me to follow this advice and remain present and in my element despite being pushed out of my comfort zone. But I will say, it has been worth it. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

Please share your own experiences with anxiety in the comments. Anybody else living abroad who has had that utterly horrifying, restless feeling of not knowing what they’re truly doing with their life? Finding it hard to do simple, mundane things or to ask for help in a new environment? Trust me, I’ve been there, and I’m all for giving (and receiving) advice and tips.

Especially those that don’t involve simply downing a bottle of aguardiente until you forget what country you’re from, not to mention your anxieties. (You can file that under the list of unhealthy coping methods I would kinda-sorta-not-really recommend when dealing with these situations – you know, only when the situation calls for it, of course)

Tiny Victories

To be honest, I meant to post this back in February. A lot has happened in my life in the past 3 months since starting this post, but because I feel it is important and may even serve as inspiration for other frustrated teachers working abroad, I decided it was worth finishing and sharing. Better late than never!

Over the past months, I’ve basically been exposed to a baptism-by-fire-esque melee of first-year teaching obstacles. It hasn’t been easy, but I can say that I’m happy to note the little things that have gone right among the long, interminable list of failures. Or, perhaps failures is too strong a word–dismaying mishaps? These seemingly minuscule events that keep me getting up and dressing myself each morning are what I like to call “Tiny Victories.” In the end, they have added up to be far more significant than any of the broader struggles I’ve faced.

Here is my short, (non)exhaustive list of things that have gone right this year:

1. Seeing the difficult ones make progress (even if it seems slow and daunting with much backsliding and daily struggles).

Samuel, one of my “difficult” students has stopped running out of the classroom. This is by no means to say that he is now behaving and participating in class like most of the other students, but for Samuel, it will have to be enough…for now. EDIT: these incidences have now ceased along with most of his formerly daily outbursts. Today I met with his mom and got to tell her personally how proud I was of Samu’s progress and maturity. Sure, he still has trouble staying engaged in class and avoiding his caprichos but I have to say he is one of my success stories from this year. It’s not always a power struggle, I’ve found.

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2. Finishing a lesson on time / good time management days where I’m able to stay on track.

My lessons have come together, and I finish tasks on schedule. This one was HUGE but gradual, because it turns out time management is not always innate. Eventually I developed a good sense of time without even looking at the clock. This has done wonders for keeping class running smoothly. Some days run smoother than others, which makes this one a prototypical Tiny Victory.

3. Witnessing students using and engaging with the language in and out of class.

My students are listening and speaking English – sometimes without prompting! Sometimes they even pester me during recess to tell me or ask me things in English. It’s adorably endearing – a true testament to the fact that my effort to immerse them and actually teach something organically has, in fact, been working. The listening part is a huge improvement considering when I started I could barely get them to even look at me while I spoke, much less actively listen and participate.

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4. Being able to take everything in stride.

I’ve gained a general increased confidence, in spite of the exhaustion and occasional confusion that weighs me down. I no longer am obsessing over the little things. If I get through all of the days activities, as I have done on most days, at least I have something positive to take away from it.

5. Seeing the little sprouts pop up from the seeds I’ve been planting from day one.

There are days when my difficult students repeat little things that I’ve taught them. For example one of my really frustrating, stubborn guys often comes out reminding other classmates of the importance of “making good decisions.” I’ve given a lot of motivational talks about how each student needs to control her or himself. Most of these talks boil down to thinking about the consequences of bad decisions and how to distinguish between good choices and bad choices. Pretty important stuff at this age.

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6. Anytime a student shows they actually care about/like the content of my classes. Seriously.

Also smaller things, like walking in line and hearing a normally quiet student repeating phrases I often use as attention getters under her breath really have made even my toughest discipline days more manageable. The best part is how silly these phrases are and how cute my students look as they say them. Most of them are sing-song, and extremely catchy. For example, when I want to get the students thinking and paying attention before asking a reading comprehension question, I semi-sing, “I have a question,” to which they reply, “What is your question?” Others are sillier like “Hocus pocus, everybody focus,” but it turns out the kids love them – and, yes, they work. As a small cliff note, I fully admit to plagiarizing and borrowing these tactics from more experienced teachers I have observed. Applying what you observe and seeing the results is the best.

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7. When the big stress factors turn out okay.

I successfully conducted some parent-centered events where I basically had to coach children to speak in English in front of a crowd. That was no small feat, but I experienced more than a few “minor” tiny victories during both English Speaking Cultures Fair and the Science Fair. But perhaps the most satisfying part was the children actually enjoyed it. And learned something.

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8. Days when I know I have the help I need.

I also got a great co-teacher, which was in a way a victory in itself as we have a good chemistry and since then, the little things have become far more manageable and less like the constant, gradual build up of explosive stress and pressure that I was feeling for the first month and a half.

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Now, I take everything in stride. I don’t let myself get as angry and frustrated or take things as personally as I once did. Score for learning how to use my own energy wisely! That’s a tiny victory in and of itself considering that there are rarely “perfect” days (in fact, I am now completely convinced these are myths on par with those of the Greeks). And that’s all thanks to focusing on the daily tiny victories!

I think this post shows how formerly “tiny” victories add up to be Long-term Successes. All you need is the right combination of passion, interest, patience, and persistence. So if you are a struggling new teacher going through the whole baptism by fire or awaiting to go through it in the coming year, all I can say is keep going! Your work will pay off in the end, even if it means accepting that nothing will ever be perfect.

Things I’ve been doing that haven’t been working: a blog post about being sick and teaching

I just wrapped up my second week of teaching while sick, and let me just say, it was not easy. Maybe this is common sense, but being around children (often who are also sick) and coughing up phlegm/having a nose that is constantly running are not ideal situations to be in.

So without further ado, let me introduce you to a list of ~~all the mistakes I’ve made as a newbie teacher~~ what not to do, especially when you’re sick while teaching.

Do not scream. No matter what.

I know, I know, it sounds like the tag to a horror movie more than advice on working in a classroom (while sick). But no matter how badly you want to yell at your students, take a deep breath, recollect and find a way to stop the action and get their attention without screaming.

If you must scream, find a way to do it with as little exertion as possible. Maybe into a pillow before you go to sleep as your nightly ritual.

Well, unless you are working with kids that literally will ignore you no matter what language you speak to them, no matter what tone you use, no matter if you change their color on the behavior chart or take away their recess. But you know. Do the healthy (professional) thing and hold it in.

2. Do not come up with complicated or at least somewhat challenging lessons/activities. You will be disappointed.

Less is more – the mantra of all teachers on top of their game. The mantra of champions. The longer you spend explaining things to the tykes slowly wiggling away from you on the rug, the less they are going to retain what you say. And if you say anything, it needs to be short, sweet, and to the point. Oh, and running around having to explain each complicated but what you thought would be “stimulating” activity is just…not rewarding.

Again, less is more.

3. Do not drink cold water, no matter how much you want to.

Oh, the heat. Oh, the sweat, the unquenchable thirst. But I have learned the hard way that no matter how much you think drinking cold water is the right thing to do on a hot day, if you are sick and congested, it will only make matters worse. The change in temperature from hot to cold disturbs the vocal cords. They cringe and shrivel, leaving you with a very weak voice. As opposed to the mannish, rasping boom that being congested boarding on hoarse will grant you. Word to the wise: it’s not worth the damage.

4. Avoid talking to parents. In fact, just avoid talking outside of the classroom. Smiles and grunts are more honest and straightforward anyway.

I mean, who needs communication with your children’s parents anyway? It will only make your already complicated, demanding job more complicated and demanding. And besides, you sound like a squeaky door opening and closing when you attempt to speak anyway, which leads to looks of false-sympathy and possible chagrin. Your coworkers, nosy parents, and the school gossip are also not worth breaking the vow of silence.

5. No expectations. Disappointment is easier to stomach that way.

Goals are good and healthy for your students. You should always have a goal posted and a plan to reach said objective. However, if your students (or at least half of them) continue to fail to meet that objective, it is better to just let them instead of wringing your hands, tearing your hair out, and asking them what in the world is going through their little heads. (I seriously did this a couple times this week out of frustration. Spoiler alert: it solved nothing.) Just hope for the best, and plan for the worst. The adage never lets you down. Expecting to move mountains with tiny sand-castle shovels is just not realistic.

6. Don’t lose your cool. This goes with the not screaming thing, but can be much, much harder.

Especially if you routinely feel like the unstoppable force that meets the unmovable object. Or vice versa. Sometimes classroom management plans fail. The class falls behind and is late. Things get messy, but even if things are going badly, just let them happen. Observe. Then act. Don’t stress and make yourself sicker. It’s not worth it. Plus, students don’t respect a teacher that loses their cool. Although, yes, it is difficult to determine what these students do respect, and you think that repeating yourself or speaking louder should be enough, but let’s be honest…

7. Don’t repeat yourself ad nauseum or sweat the small things. You will get sicker.

There is a time and a place for sweating the small things. It can improve behavior, and consistency is key. But is it really necessary to call out every little misbehavior that you see? Every whisper or rolled eye or scissor fight? No, no it is not. You should address the behavior according to your classroom management consequence plan (so move them down and praise the students that are following directions), but the economy of words is never as vital to bear in mind as when you are struggling to speak without your voice squeaking. If the students can’t accomplish the task properly the first time, take into account what may have went wrong, guide steadily but in a detached manner, but…well, you’ll sweat regardless. It’ll just be more do to the heat than the strain of constant repetitions at an steadily increasing, strained volume.

8. Don’t forget you’re living in the context of another culture – machismo and all.

Culture shock is part of the process, and while you seldom predict that it will come in the form of having to manage several students who insist on striking each other to solve their problems, you also must find a reasonable solution for the problems which cause them to resort to self-defense in the first place. (And consider the lessons built into their culture and society. Such as parents actively encouraging their children to take matters into their own hands, especially if they’re boys.) That includes a reasonable set of consequences that you must uphold, no matter how much they growl and roll their eyes. If, at the tender age of 7, they are already obsessed with showing how manly and macho they are, do not be alarmed. They are simply reacting to the cultural demands put on them.

These are just some of many mistakes I have made that I must say, no matter how frustrated you become or convinced it’s the only way to establish control, you shouldn’t do, especially while sick. Because it will just lead to more regrets and slower recovery time overall. Oh, and on that note, don’t share much space with your sick students if you can avoid it, especially while they’re eating.

More than an advice blog, I think this is my big cry for help and advice. Seasoned teachers, please tell me what I am doing wrong. Or better yet, tell me what I could or should do to handle the group of students that I have and recover from new-teacher-itis. My students are uniquely difficult for several reasons I will save for another post (mostly related to a mixture of undiagnosed learning and behavioral disorders – I mean, seriously, I have at least three students that will hit their classmates, in front of me, no matter what consequences are set – perhaps because the school itself does not have a policy for dealing with).

All this being said, I do have an idea of the moments things went right and what I was doing. So I am going to try to take my failures in stride, the general struggle with the ups and downs of “training” my students. It’s important to breathe, step back, and regroup, I’ve found. Reevaluate, reflect, and refresh. Start the new day with a clean slate on a positive note. And so far I’ve still been able to accomplish that much at least. Oh, and my room’s AC is finally working. That helps too.

For now, it’s just the general trial and error that is making me feel so incompetent. That, and this damn coughing sickness that makes me feel so tired. And a very unsupportive, non-constructive administration. But hopefully this week I will start seeing some more of those Tiny Victories I will talk about in another post. Stay tuned.

P.S.: Pardon my lag. I’m currently juggling an online TEFL certification course as well as all of these exhausting school responsibilities, but I promise that once the course ends in the next couple weeks, I will dedicate a lot more time to the blog. Well, assuming anyone cares.

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).