Proud to be an American! Wishing i was Colombian...

Wow, what a profound weekend. I had an amazing expierence with the YMCA in Camp Bochica that while it is still fresh in memories feels like it could have a life changing impact. The ICCP (International Camp Counsler Program) of Colombia invited to me to join them at Camp Bochica as the delegate for the United States, to help inform particpants of what to expect culturally and to provide work related information. The dream of traveling for a citizen of the United States takes a few things, money, a passport, time, and some courage. If you have the money and time all you need is a plane ticket, and presto, here is your travel visa sir. For a citizen of Colombia it is much more than that, it´s not a vacation, it´s a dream, one that takes sacrafice, hard work, preserverance, and above all us more courage than one can imagine. It starts with a dream, to see the United States, the home of New York, Converse tennis shoes, Miami, the Rocky Mountains and Mickey Mouse. Than it takes a year of sacrifice, volunteering, not to mention the countless hours of work and studying English or course. Heaven forbid one should travel to the US with out perfect English, but dont worry if the Eiffel tower is on the agenda, Americans dont need to speak French... blah! With the Peso essentialy worth on half the value of the US dollar, it means Colombians have to work twice as hard and long and sacrafice twice as much for that plane ticket, could you imagine if the already expensive international flights doubled? How often would you go to the private resort in Mexico? That´s what i thought, it makes Daytona look better and better. Several cities send particpants ever single year, and ever single year there is a talent show to represent each cities unique and individual culture. AMAZING! The culture of Colombia is on display and the hertige is strong and proud. And different for ever city, i thought about what i would do for Kalamazoo, or Michigan, loose my job, play X-Box, gain wheight and where jeans and a white T-Shirt? Sorry Michigan, you know i love you, and i wouldnt let anybody that wasnt from there say that. I wish you could have seen some of these presentaions, you would have been as amazed as i am with the memories still ringing inbetween my ears 3 days later. And yet, of the 82 qualified, hardworking, amazing applicants we had, only 78 recieved Visas, 4 particpants where told no, you can not travel to the US, by the United States of America´s Embassy, located in Bogotá, Colombia. No, your hard work is not enough, no, your university is not good enough, no, your second cousins uncles brother in laws babysitters boyfriends aunt once talked to a Guerilla, No, No, No, No, denied. This is not to live in the U.S., this is for a 10 week job, with children, to enhance and share culture and enrich lives, no, no, no, denied. And, what did this four people do? They didnt hang their heads, they didn´t weap as they saw 78 of their friends achieve their goal, they didn´t curse the U.S. and call them dirty names. They lifted up their head´s, fought back the welt in the through, traveled to work training with the partners they sweat with, they bleed with, they laughed and cried with. And when they got to Camp Bochica, one this was consistent with everybody, they are proud to be Colombian. Proud of their culture, country, their famalies, their lives... The preserverance and determenation of these young men and women make you appreciate how lucky the American life is. Just like a fish does not see the water in which it seems, the American does not see the privaledge in which they live. I am proud to be an American, proud of everything that we have built, proud of the life that we live, but it took a country where people live and die with only this pride, to make me realize it. God bless Colombia, God bless Colombians, and to my fellow Americans, please understand how much God has already blessed us...

My First Fairly Scary Expierence

Today i left my work an hour early, i was in the classroom and i think the class got cancelled because no one informed me, or maybe they where somewhere else, i am not sure. So, i left around noon, decided to try to beat the rain and get a little extra volunteering done. When i left i heard all these comotion and didnt know where it was coming from, until i got to the street. Upon arrival i saw a large march walking south bound on 7A, towards Candelaria, mostly young people, waving Colombian flags, and i thought to myself how cool, its like a presidental march, so i walked across the one lane of traffic and joined the march, naturally. People where shouting up to people on balconies that where showing support, ¨come join us, come join us¨and people where running from apartments down in to the street to join, how cool, my first Colombian presidental rally, i heard them many times from the window when i heard people yelling DOWN WITH URIBE. It was all fun and games, and than it started to get a little more serious. About 10% of the population where young men, with cloaks, bandanas, and masks over their faces. And i saw one of them run up to the Citi bank, which i was planning on using, and start spraying some jargon on the front window, the crowd started whistling and the boys packed up their pant and ran because cops where approaching. I man that actually needed to use the services just walked by the young men spraying the paint as if they where just pigeons nodding their heads while saunteering around the sidewalk for crumbs. So than the same boys, directly in front of me, and carrying gigantic sticks like baseballs mind you, started yelling at two lonely police in the median, the police advanced the young men proved overpowering the police actually backed down! I walked by another building, this one most have been more important, because the entire stairway was protected by police, standing shoulder to shoulder across the entire building. About 40 cops in all, and dressed head to toe in this black bullet proof material, they looked like robocop, you could have shot these dudes in the belly with a desert eagle and it would not have made them even move their feet. Than after 38 police at the end their was two cops that most have been short on the SWAT budget, because they where dressed in these old army green pull over vests, that had been used before, the evidence was in the holes where former police had been shot. Needles to say, the last two cops, looked the most frightend. Wow, this is what i was thinking, wow. Then we got to a skywalk, so people could cross the road, because 7A is a busy street, the young man in front of the rally ran to the top and started waving his Colombian flag, everybody went crazy, and naturally so did I. After that he was followed up by two other young men, who than unrolled a homemade American Flag, hug it off the crosswalk, let it on fire, and watched it burn. The crowd scream even later. At this moment it accured to me, this isn´t a Anti-Uribe Rally, this is an anti U.S.A. rally, my immediate reaction, looking around me and being in the center of this mob, was, SHIT. My next thought was dont open your mouth, dont open your mouth, dont open your mouth, and my third thought was, cross the street and watch with a buffer of three lanes of heavy traffic. I did just that, running to the other side, when i got to the other side i saw the police move in on the boys that i had mentioned, the ones with the grafitti and sticks, and the boys started waving their sticks and one pulled out a homemade nailbomb in a Pony pop bottle, the cops backed down. Again i thought to myself holy moly, i need to work on my spanish a little more so next time i join the right rally. Peace from Bogotà.

Sorry its been so long, i have been very busy with traveling and my spanish class coming to in an end, here is some photos to check out of the recent trip, it is worth noting this are all in Manizales, i will have stories and more photos in the following days.

Back From Vacation

I am back! It feels good to be back in Bogota, for the last week i have been traveling around the coffee region of Colombia (it consists of Manizales, Pereira, and Armenia with Ibague being the city on the way out) and it has been absoultely beautiful, an amazing trip. I am staying in a hotel for a week, one that doesnt have internet, so i will only be able to write some short posts and thoughts about the trip for now but this weekend, maybe sunday night, i will go in to more detail and post some pictures as well. Today i am going to talk about the bus ride from Bogota to Manizales. The ticket was 42.000 Colombian Pesos, or 21 dollars, for a seven hour bus ride through the mountains, wait until you see the pictures! Some really breathtaking views, but also some scary moments. The trip takes you up, down, and over several mountains before you reach your destination. At some points you are up so high that you can look out the bus, and the only thing between you and a 1000 meter drop is a 12 inch curb. Plus some of the curves are literally 180 degrees, and you can have curves like that back to back to back, with the bus driver pushing the bus as hard and as fast as they can. Needless to say, i get a little car sick on these rides. If there is a car, or a jeep full of people hanging off of it, and it is going to slow, the bus driver will pass the other car infront of you, even if it is in on a double yellow, around a corner, with 20 feet of visibility, next to a cliff that would mean certain death if the bus where to drive off. And buses do fall off, there is proof in the guardrails that are smashed over, off, broke in half, and hangning off of cliffs. You literally drive through clouds, with visibility only being 50 feet at some points. It can be a long seven hours, but we only saw two freight trucks tipped over... finally ariving to Manizales was a wecloming site. The national tree of Colombia is the wax palm, which is a beautiful tree that grows very very very tall, with a small bush of palm frons at the very top. The tree only grows at high altitudes, in arrid climates, with mild weather. i got to see so many wax palms on this bus ride, which is something i have wanted to do since i came Colombia. In areas where the trees where thick you just had to look for long white trunks growing out of the trees and you could see the palms towering above the pines, in other areas the hills where bare, dressed only in grass with isoloated Wax Palms, standing very tall, erect, and proud, almost as if they where puffing out their chest and standing up straight for a yearbook photo. Gorgeous, but the drive is something i don´t really want to have to make again, i was pale, sweating, and had a barf bag handy for almost three hours straight.

On a completly unrealated note, i want to talk about the price of beauty here in Colombia. Women take a lot of pride in the way they look and dress before they leave the house for the day. Tall boots with heels is the primary look that many of the ladies here strive to achieve, it is almost a standard look for 20 and up... way up. It rains a lot in Bogota, and a lot of the buildings have tile floors inside, making them very slippery, including the stairs. Today when i was exiting my first class i saw a young lady laying at the bottom of the stairs, crying, holding her ankle, with about 6 people crowded around here. After asking if I could help, which i couldn´t really because medical assistance had been called and most of the people on the scene spoke no English, i figured out what happend. Apparently the young lady was walking down the stairs, with her highheeled boots, slipped and tumbled to the bottom. In the process she either sprained, or broke her ankle, it was tough to tell. The price of looking good landed this poor girl on crutches, it was a sad situation, i wish her the best, but it was a pathetic sight.

Lastly, yesterday was opening day! The 2010 baseball season is officially underway and i couldn´t be more excited. A lot of the experts are brushing us off this year (us being the Detroit Tigers), because of to much youth, lack of expierence, and a poor offence. It is true, we need a lot out of Laird and Everett, looking forward to improvments at those positions in the near future, but we have chance. That is what spring is all about, baseball and the hope for something grand. Dreams are dreamt big this time of year and i wish my team, the Detroit Tigers, great luck and hope for lots of sucess for the 2010 campaign, go Tigers!

FORGIVE GRAMMER AND SPELLING TODAY I DIDNT HAVE TIME TO PROOF READ JUST TIME TO WRITE AND POST