Sunday, July 29, 2012

Directions


I’m sitting in Juan Valdez in the historic center of Cartagena.  Juan Valdez is the Colombian equivalent of Starbucks.  It’s expensive and elegant and most of the people here aren’t from Cartagena.  Cartagena.  I first came to this city a year and a half ago as a Peace Corps volunteer and I left it 6 months ago in order to experience life in another part of Colombia.  And now I’m back to the coast.  It’s strange the turns life takes.  Sometimes all we want is to get from point A to point B and each detour is incredibly frustrating.  But often, in the middle of it all, we don’t realize that point B is really point F and it’s necessary for us to pass through points B, C, and E in order to learn what we’ll need to know when we actually get to point F.  That’s how I’m choosing to see it anyway…

In May I decided that I didn’t want to stay in Bucaramanga until the end of the year.  In my often overly dramatic mind: I couldn’t.  Although I had made some great friendships there, the city itself and the culture seemed too American to me.  Almost everyone I knew had the same routine: work from morning to evening, go home, watch TV and take care of household stuff, go to sleep, and repeat it again the next day. Sound familiar?  That’s life, right?  Maybe it is.  But I don’t want that to be MY life…

So on June 15th I traveled to Cartagena (a 12-hour bus ride from Bucaramanga) to apply for jobs here before traveling to the States to visit my family.  Taking a motor-taxi around the city, I stopped by every bilingual school to present myself to the administration and give them my resume.  Previously I had sent out dozens of emails to these schools, but hadn’t received any reply from them.  I’ve discovered that in Colombia, emails are very easily ignored.  So without having scheduled any interviews, I googled the schools’ addresses, showed up in my nicest top and skirt and asked to speak with the coordinator.  I repeated that process 3 days later in Barranquilla.

I was definitely torn between the two cities.  Cartagena has something happening every day for the week.  There’s always a group of people that get-together in the center or in neighborhoods close-by.  I doubt that there’s another city in Colombia with such a great atmosphere.  And it’s centered around the tourism.  Every day, week, month new people arrive in the city and are anxious to meet locals and experience the best aspects of the city.  Some stay for days, others for weeks, and others never leave.  The locals and tourists are equally happy to be in each other’s company and share about their lives and experiences. But in Cartagena those are the divisions: local and tourist.  And because of my light-Scotch-Irish features, even if I lived here for 20 years, I’d always be placed into the latter group.  I’m a foreigner, it’s true.  But a foreigner who lives and works here is quite different from one who’s here for the week or weekend.  I’m a foreigner, not a tourist.  So, as much as I LOVE this city, I feel like the city itself pushes me away even while it embraces me.  So in August I’ll be moving to Barranquilla.  The school where I’ve chosen to work is called the British International School (Colegio Britanico Internacional). It’s a very elite school located at the north end of the city.  I'll be teaching math, social studies, and English.

About the city:
Barranquilla is the 4th largest city in Colombia (after Bogotá, Medellin, and Cali) and is located 2 hours east of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.  Although it’s known for having the largest Carnival outside of Rio de Janiero, tourists rarely visit the city during the rest of the year.  It’s more organized and has better transportation than other cities on the coast, but it doesn’t have the same charm and magic of Cartagena.  Two days ago I traveled to Barranquilla to find a room to rent there.  School starts on August 8th, so I’m planning on arriving a few days before to get situated.  I found a room in a nice apartment building in the north end of town that will be close to my work and to the university where I’ll start studying in August.  About that…

Last year I began to consider the possibility of getting my Master’s degree here in Colombia.  I had visited the campus in Barranquilla and I had begun to imagine myself studying there.  I looked into the application process and saw that applications were accepted in November for programs that begin in January.  That was last winter.  My plan since then has been to apply this November and start classes in January 2013.  On July 11th I sent an email to the coordinator of the Master’s in Psychology program at the university asking him which books he would recommend as preparation for the Master’s.  I mentioned in my email that I wanted to begin the Master’s program in January.  He responded that the Master’s in Psychology would start in August, and that they were about to close the admissions process.  I was devastated.  It was too late and now I’d have to wait 2 years before the next program opens.  Nevertheless, the coordinator asked me to send him my resume to see if I could be a potential candidate.  The next day I traveled to Barranquilla for an interview.  Five days later they notified me that I had been accepted into the program.  Classes start next month.  Yikes.  If I hadn’t sent that email about the books, I would never have known that the program starts in August.  In November I would have learned that I had missed the application deadline (by months!).  It’s a miracle that it all worked out. 

So that’s it.  My life has taken another turn and yet it seems like all the pieces are falling into place.  It’s so tempting to keep squinting at the road I’m on, trying to figure out where it will lead me.  But who knows?  Maybe life is meant to be taken one step at a time.