List

Fruit-producing trees in our backyard:

Lime
Avocado
Coffee
Zapote (dark skinned citrus fruit)
Mango

Casa San Miguel

We feel as if we are playing grown-up, as our house here is far larger than our home in Bellingham, and much more glamorous. All houses and apartments here are gated, and we share our gate with a neighboring house (the owners of which own this house and are the parents of the school’s HR manager). Passing through the gate, we arrive at our front door. There is a small open foyer with a gate leading outside and a wooden door leading to the house. Inside, we have a master bedroom with full bathroom that together are about half the size of our Bellingham home. There are three additional bedrooms, though at this time one is set up as a TV room and the other is mostly empty. There is a small living room and a small dining room. The kitchen has vaulted ceilings and is quite spacious, with two refrigerators, expansive cabinets, and gas range and oven, and washing machine. Off the kitchen is yet another bedroom and bath, intended for a live-in maid – for us it is storage. Also in the kitchen is 10x10 ft. area that has no ceiling or roof over it and is open to the air. It has a drain in the floor and is currently used to hang dry clothing. We are not sure what it’s intended use is, but when it rains , the rain will fall right into our house and out through the drain in the floor. No need to go outside to check the weather. Spanish tile throughout the house, windows that open wide, skylights in the kitchen and hallways, and beautifully furnished and decorated.

Exiting the back of the house we find an open air veranda spanning the entire width of the house (for those of you who know our Bellingham house, this is about the same size as our living, dining, kitchen and mudroom all put together). The veranda overlooks our yard/garden, which fall down the hillside. The yard is completely fenced, either by chain link and heavy vegetation, or 5 foot cement walls topped with chain link fence. Running behind the wall at the bottom of our yard is a small creek. Though we cannot see it, the sound of the water drowns out most of the city sounds, and it is easy to forget that we live in the middle of a city of 3 million.

Welcome to the next two years of the rest of your life

Late last night, we finally arrived in Medellin. Customs was relatively uneventful and easy, as the school had arranged for school staff to come into the baggage claim area to collect and organize our luggage. Henley is not a fan of flying, and was letting his prerogative to be known to everyone. So, while the rest of the luggage was being unloaded, Heather was able to have Henley’s papers approved and we quickly extricated the dog from his kennel. Our pup was accompanied on the flight by another dog - Millie from New Hampshire. They seem to be hitting it off and have become the unofficial mascots of our group of new teachers.

After collecting our luggage, we proceeded to the exit gate, which was manned by one woman and one man. The woman took our “nothing to declare” form and directed us to push a button by the gate. Heather pressed the button and a green light flashed. This meant that we could walk through and be on our way. Apparently, the button occasionally results in a red light, in which case the man would search through your bags. No one in our group was searched, and we exited the airport.

Four busetas were waiting for us to take us to our apartments. We were divided into two groups, with people being loaded onto two of the buses and bags loaded onto two corresponding buses.

The airport is located in the high hills above the city, near the school. (Medellin proper sits at about 5000 ft, whereas the school and airport are at approximately 8000 ft elevation). On our way down the mountain we took a brief drive-by tour of the school. Unfortunately, it was too dark to make much of anything out. However, as we proceeded down the hill we were able to see the lights of the city far below. Medellin sits in a north-south river valley between two parallel mountain ranges. El Poblado, the municipality where the majority of the teachers live, is on the hillside west of the river. One by one, the bus stopped at apartments and dropped off teachers. For me there was a sense of déjà vu as I was reminded of my first night in Japan 14 years ago – dark night and bright city lights, tired and disoriented, nervous and excited.

Heather and I were the last to be dropped off and so we were able to tour everyone else’s apartments. We had expected the cost of living to be low here and knew that our money would stretch, but no one was prepared for these apartments. Most single teachers are paired with one or two others, but they share massive three and four bedroom apartments. One trio was delivered to a two story suite with three bedrooms, private bathrooms, kitchen, living room, TV room, and veranda on the first floor, and a master bedroom with accompanying bathroom and veranda on the second floor! Another couple was in disbelief of their three bedroom apartment with sun room and two different verandas over looking the city. One veranda was larger than half of our house in Bellingham. We all felt like we were on the opening episode of MTV’s Real World, ohhs and ahhs and screams of excitement all around.

Finally we arrived at our house. I have never lived at a house that had its own name, but this one does…

And they're off!

We are in the middle of a blur. After eating at our favorite Bellingham breakfast spot Sunday morning (the Little Cheerful), we left town and headed to H's parents in Anacortes. Whoosh! S's parents stopped by, we said goodbye, then to sleep. Wake up at 2:30 am, load four over packed suitcases, four gigantic carry-ons, and one confused dog into the truck, and drive to Sea-Tac airport. Whoosh!

The dog had to fly a different airlines since ours did not have climate controlled cargo holds. He was scheduled to leave 30 minutes after us, so Heather's father took the pup on a walk and put him on the plane after we left. Whoosh!

Our itinerary took up through Dallas on the way to Miami. While waiting for our delayed connection in Dallas, we met a future co-worker who was also on the same flight. When we arrived in Miami, we picked up Henley (aka the confused dog), took 2 full taxis to the hotel and started meeting people. Whoosh!

So we are now in Miami, ready to fly to Medellin tomorrow afternoon. The school has four representatives here to provide a mini-orientation. They are all great, excited, and amazingly helpful. We feel very lucky to have such an supportive group of people meeting us. Today we had meetings in the morning, where we met most of the other new hires. I believe that there are about 24 of us. Most are probably about 25-35 years in age, with an average of maybe 3-5 years of teaching experience. In that last regard, I am a bit odd because I will be a first-year teacher this year (there are 2 other first-years). After introductions, we had mini-seminars on culture shock, living in Medellin and Colombia in general, and an introduction to the school. Whoosh!

Afterwards, we went to the kennel to visit Henley, and then went with another couple to South Beach for some swimming. Alas, it is hot here, and so we came back to the hotel and crashed for 4 hours - the best sleep I've had in weeks.

So tomorrow we are off. Now that we have left home, we are really excited to get to our new home and start learning the ropes. I'm not sure when our next post will be, but as soon as we get internet access we'll let you know what we are up to next.

Whoosh!

T minus seven days

I woke up a couple of days ago in a new house. Or, at least it seems like a new house. With only a week until blast-off, we have been franticly sorting, packing, and storing pieces of our home so that we can leave. Heather's father and his truck helped us move all of the big stuff to a storage unit, and we are now trying to find a place for the rest of our stuff. It is in these times that one realizes how much junk one accumulates.
Four of the six rooms in our house are completely devoid of furniture. We have moved the bed to our storage unit, and so we are now sleeping on the futon that doubles as a couch during the day. Today, we got some help from family and packed the kitchen (luckily, we have meals scheduled with friends every night up until the day we leave, so we don't actually have to cook here).
In the meantime, we are trying to get the four suitcases allotted to us by the airlines under 50 lbs each so that we can avoid paying extra fees. This is proving to be a challenge and we will most likely be carrying a fifth suitcase, along with VERY large carry-ons.
With all of this going on, we are very much looking forward to boarding that plane next Monday morning, with all of this behind us, ready to start again anew.

The management can now be contacted at...

Our e-mail will shortly be changing to shknoflick@yahoo.com. For the next two weeks, we will still be able to access our Earthlink address, but after that, it's all Yahoo. FYI, our address will probably change again once we are situated in Colombia. Stay tuned for further information as it occurs...