Happy Halloween!

Halloween is such a crazy day at school! The kids eat candy all day and just can't sit still. But I've had a nap and I'm ready to celebrate all over again. I went to school today dressed as an orange crayon, I hot glued the costume together last night and borrowed an orange cone from the PE department to wear on my head. But that costume is wrecked now, plus it's a bit too bulky for dancing, so for the costume party tonight I'm going to go as Lois Lane to match Brad's Superman costume. I will post pictures soon.

La Troja

Last night Amber hosted a birthday party for Ana Lucia, the head of human resources at the school. She does everything for us, so we celebrated her birthday in a big way. By the end of the night Brad was the last guy left with four girls who wanted to go dancing. So, we all headed to La Troja, a salsa bar near our house. If you know Brad you know he doesn't dance (even though he was in swing choir in high school) but it's okay because he had a bigger role last night: he was our patron. Before we could even sit at a table the men were asking for dances, but here they don't just ask the lady, they also ask the guy that the lady is with, which for all four females was Brad. Brad really embraced this role, sitting at the table, drinking his beer, sizing up the men and nodding his head. It was a good night. Colombians are fantastic dancers, it's fun to just sit and watch. But really, I couldn't sit for long because Brad didn't refuse a single offer.

Medellin

Medellin, home of the late Pablo Escobar, was once the murder capital of the world, but is now the safest big city in Latin America. It's full of great restaurants, museums, parks, public artwork and has a perfect climate, between 60 and 70 degrees year round. We loved it.

Day One
We got to Medellin on Thursday night after a ridiculously terrifying flight from Barranquilla. The plane was scheduled to make a stop in Monteria, a town halfway between Barranquilla and Medellin. In order to get to the Monteria airport we had to descend through a thunderstorm. It was only after the landing gear was down that the pilot discovered the airport was closed, so there we went, right back through the storm. I could see lightning out of the window and the plane was shaking all over the place. Brad had a white-knuckle grip on the chair beside me and I just shut my eyes and sent out telepathic love to all my family.

Once we got to Medellin we were ready for a drink, so we picked up a bottle of wine and relaxed a bit in the apartment, then headed to Parque Lleras, Medellin's nighttime hotspot for dinner.

Day Two
On Friday we hit up the Museo Antioqueno, Colombia's second largest museum. Outside there is a sculpture garden of Colombia's favorite artist: Botero. People really love these statues, you can see the wearing on them from where they've been rubbed, patted and sat on. Inside we weren't allowed to take pictures, something I didn't realize until after I got scolded by a museum worker. But I did manage to get one picture.






Everybody that walked past this lady touched her butt. Moms would even lift their kids up to patt her as they walked by.

I got in BIG trouble to bring you this picture. Right beside the museum there's a whole long row of men with old typewriters and they all seemed to have customers.

This statue is in Parque San Antonio. In 1995 it was damaged by a bomb that also killed 23 people.



Mangos

Friday night Brad and I went to Mangos, Medellin's hottest night club. Everyone of our friends who had been to Medellin before told us we had to check it out and we weren't disspointed. We went during Oktoberfest, which meant way too much free beer.

Mangos is famous for two things: little people and beautiful women. We saw lots of both.

This is going to be Brad's facebook picture for a long time.
I think this is supposed to be President Uribe. I support his message.




Day Three

After Mangos we were moving pretty slow, so our only big activity for the day was riding the city's metro system. Medellin's metro is impressive. The tracks are elevated and run diagonally through the city. There is even a cable car that runs up the mountains surrounding the city. In Medellin the poor neighborhoods are on the slopes of the mountains, and we got a pretty good view of everything when we passed right over top of them.

Day Four

On Sunday we did the Vuelta a Oriente, which is a tour around the mountain towns east of Medellin. We didn't take the actual tour, we just hopped on a bus and did it ourselves. The first bus we got on passed our stop and I didn't realize it until about 10 minutes down the road. The bus driver was apologetic, but said the only thing to do was hop off and wait by the side of the road for another bus. So that's what we did. Moments after getting off the bus it started to rain, so we thought we would speed things up and walked toward town. There we were walking along a busy road without a shoulder and I kept thinking, "If Mom knew I was doing this she'd kill me." But things got even better when a Jeep pulled up and we both hopped on, Brad rode hanging on to the back for extra adventure. Turns out the driver wasn't a murderer or a pervert and we arrived in town, El Penol, just as it started to downpour. We took shelter in a restaurant full of Colombian cowboys and waited out the rain.

After the storm died down we took a taxi and a bus to El Carmen de Viboral, which is famous for its ceramics. It's a tiny town and it's full of beautiful ceramics. It was hard to know what to buy, I wanted everything, but there was the issue of carrying it and from there getting it back to Iowa, so I settled on a 6 piece coffee set.

The big destination of the day was the restaurant Queareparaenamorarte, where our man Anthony Bourdain ate on his visit to Medellin. It took two buses to get there, but it was worth it. The name of the restaurant means, what can I do to make you fall in love with me?, and apparently all they had to do was serve us a big plate of sausage because we are in love.

El Penol locals
Carmen de Viboral




Cooking sancocho in Carmen de Viboral





Tony had this dish too, he liked the black chorizo best. We liked the middle one.

school

We have spent all week in professional development, which means sitting in the computer lab in child-sized wooden chairs listening to a lady with a thick southern accent talk about test scores. Sixteen hours we've been doing this.
It makes me really miss the students. Even though they're naughty and loud and most of the time annoying, they're still the best part of this job. Here are some of the highlights of the year so far:

Short Story with a Twist:
One day the best hair cutter in Colombia that recieved a lot of famous people. That day he recieved Miss Colombia in his barbershop and she told him to make her hair the best hair style to concursate for Miss Universe. The man made her the style she wanted but Ms. Colombia was surprised when she saw the mistake the man had made because he thought that he was the best and didn't force too much so he made her bald and lost his famousity.

The owners of the world, most intelligent, richest are geeks. Betas the alcoholic, drunk, dumn at school, good at beer, you could see them always with girls. The Beta wanted to set up a trick to the geeks.
So they went to the Geeks House and they robed the system security. The #1 piece of geeks. Later of Geeks saw that the system security wasn't there so they go to the Beta's house. There was a dance party. Geeks told the invited people to the Geek's House that they will be enought beer for everyone. Betas didn't have more beer and all the invited people went to the Geek's House.
PS: Beer in this story is non-alchoholic.

Plan to Kidnap Ms. Straw
Fernando will invite Mrs. Straw to his house to eat some cookies. Juan Carlos and Silvana will be waiting for her, and when the 4 of them are in the elevator the lights will go off and we will put Mrs. Straw in a sack and spread some sleeping powder and block her mind and she will automatically satart to sleep. We will take her to the atick and she will stay there. We will take film of Mrs. Straw and send them to Mr. Paul and ask him for ten million dollars...we hope he has them.

Acrostic Introduction Poem:
Dancing happy boy
Anoying to Mrs. Straw
Never sad
Your best friend

Reads non-fiction
I'm 14 years old
Camilo is my brother
KCP is my school
Yesterday I ate Pizza

Birthday

My 26th birthday was a success. I got a real bottle of Chanel No. 5 (hated to part with the fake plasticy one), enough money for a plane ticket to Medellin (thank you Mom, Dad, Chris, Sherry, Grandpa and Grandma), a bunch of candy from the students (I told them I accepted chocolate, jewelry and cash, and some of them must have thought it was a requirement, whoops!) and the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen (Yay Brad!) We also went out for a delicious sushi dinner, which is so far not troubling my stomach. Thanks for all the birthday wishes! It was a great day.