Happy Birthday eStetson!

Stetson and I have been friends since I moved to Colombia two and a half years ago. He is a fellow Minnesota-born & Wisconsin-educated midwesterner with a similar passion for country music (and music in general), reading, movies, coffee and mocking other travelers who do not have their s*** together. While we have bonded over all these things as we became friends, it is really only in the past year or so that we have become close friends.

Stetson is a person I can always talk to about what is happening at school. He is an excellent teacher, and as the 9th grade science teacher, he gets all my former students from the previous year so of course we can talk about all of them. He is always professional at work and is a great person to bounce ideas off of. 

Stetson is also someone who is always equally down for a quiet Friday night at the movies as he is for a night out on the town. He is funny, sincere and genuine.  And in Colombia, where I am not surrounded by three little brothers for the first time in life, it is nice to have a guy friend around who feels like a little piece of Minnesota home :)

This past weekend was Stetson's 30th birthday! As someone who generally doesn't like to be the center of attention, naturally Kelsi and I found it essential to throw him a surprise birthday dinner.  We began with a somewhat-not-so-stealth attempt to distract him with a casual Saturday movie date to New Years Eve (LOVED IT!). While we go to the movies a lot with Stetson, we don't usually wear cute outfits, heels and jewelry so he probably knew something was up. We finished the movie with lots of awkward stalling by needing coffee, the ATM, a stop in Mundo $3,000 for Christmas gifts and a shopping date to buy Stetson a birthday tie before heading off to his (and our!) favorite restaurant in Cali, Platillos Voladores.

We blind folded him with the tie during the cab ride and led him into the restaurant where our friends were waiting to yell surprise. I don't think Stetson was necessarily in shock about where we ended up, but he seemed to have a great night celebrating his birthday, and that is all that matters. The wait staff even engaged in our birthday shenanigans by providing ridiculous birthday hats and "Happy Birthday" confetti on the table. 

Cheers to a fabulous 30th year Stets!

Surprise!

The crew ready to celebrate Stetson!

Birthday dessert & a birthday dance by the birthday boy!

Happy Birthday friend!!!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

When we first discovered that Kelsi's 29th birthday fell on a Friday we were pretty excited for some weekend festivities..... AND THEN we discovered it was also November 11, 2011 AKA 11-11-11. Whaaaaaaaat? Hello fantastic reason to have a ridiculous party in our apartment.  Lucky for us we were able to convince our friends that creating entirely new costumes just two weeks after Halloween was a completely necessary life-task AND I even got this guy to come down to visit and celebrate with us for the weekend. Lucky me ;)

Our friend Cassie also had a birthday on the lucky date, so we planned a joint party and asked everyone to come celebrate with their "favorite ladies from the 80s". Catchy, I know. I made it up, obvio. A weekend trip to centro for beverages and decorations, several shopping trips to various stores for miscellaneous costume pieces, and a condensed version of VH1's "Best of the 80s" later and we were ready to party! 

Kelsi and I made snacks beforehand - including salsa, guacamole, apple-berry fruit salsa, empanadas, and more. Cassie contributed with quite possibly the coolest cake that anyone I personally know has ever made - appropriately crafted in the shape of a Rubik's cube a la 80s fun. About 30 friends ended up attending our party filled with lots of ridiculous dance moves, hammocking on the patio, movies like Goonies playing in the background, and of course a celebration of the birthday girls at 11:11 PM on 11-11-11. Yes, it was fabulous. 

Here's how it looked...

 Michael & me! Didn't he do an amazing job pulling this outfit together??? And yes, he does own those sneakers for real. So there's that ;)

Birthday girl & me!

Ladies of the 80s in a range of workout gear, Madonna rock style and just general fabulousness that was the 80s. 

Rubik's Cube cake!!! So cool looking and tasted amazing! 

To say they got along is an understatement...I believe the phrase we they are using these days is "besties".  

Gentlemen of the 80s. 

Happy birthday Cassie and Kelsi!!!

Don't stop believin'....

Katie Visits Colombia!

When I hugged Katie goodbye and sent her on the way to the airport last Tuesday night I thought to myself how hard it will be to wait another 7-8 months to see her. While her and I became close friends during junior year of college, it has only really been since Katie left La Crosse to transfer to Milwaukee that we have become closest.    Our friendship began in a unique way that found us both crushing on the same boy. However, lucky for us it took all of 24 hours after our initial meeting to figure out that he wasn't worth anyone's time and we should just be friends instead. Three years later and she was visiting me in Colombia!

Her visit lasted a week and we had a chance to explore my city, Cali, at the front and back end of her time here. In between we traveled to the cities of Salento and Santa Rosa, but let's save that for another blog post.

Here is what went down in Cali...

Katie arrived on a Wednesday morning after flying all night, so she went straight to my apartment for a shower, nap and food. Luckily, Kelsi was coming home from a conference in Medellin and was there to let Katie in and take her on a lunch date!

I arrived home from school in the afternoon and we set out to explore the neighborhood of San Antonio. As one of Cali's oldest and prettiest neighborhoods, San Antonio is one of my favorite places to show people. The church is adorable, the houses are unique, the view from the church is stunning....aaaaand you know, my favorite coffee shop is there ;)

 Her first Colombian coffee at Macondo in San Antonio! So delicious.

After coffee we met up with my friends Cassie and David, who also had friends visiting, for dinner at Bourbon Street pub. Yes, we did go to a hamburger sports bar and watch baseball on Katie's first night in Colombia. So much for a cultural introduction. Oops? We ended the night with some other friends on their San Antonio rooftop before heading home early for our travels the next day! 

San Antonio rooftop get together :)

After our travels we arrived home with one day of vacation to spare, giving us some time to rest up and also spend time with Kelsi. Sunday night we got a chance to stop by the Festival Mundial de Salsa, a world salsa competition held every year in Cali. Salsa is such a pervasive part of Colombian culture and I love that Katie got to see some of the very best while she was here! 

Monday we explored the mall scene of Colombia while Katie found some souvenirs for friends & family and I introduced her to my two favorite Colombian chains, Juan Valdez Coffee and Crepes & Waffles. Coffee all around! We finished the day with a movie with friends. Katie was nice enough to go along with the whole movie idea even before I told her that no, the movie is not in Spanish, but rather English with Spanish subtitles. What a trooper! :)

 Juan Valdez lovin'.

On to Crepes & Waffles for more coffee...and crepes...and waffles, naturally.

Katie's time in Colombia finished with a day at my school. While going to work with anyone can get boring at times (spoiler alert: the life of a teacher isn't exactly fascinating), I absolutely love taking visitors to my school. I think it helps people see why I am here and why I like it enough to have stayed for three years so far. And it doesn't hurt that our school campus is absolutely gorgeous. And for how much of our lives we spend working, how much we really ever know about our friends' jobs? I think it's pretty cool when we can share something that in such a part of our lives with each other.

Katie and I outside my classroom!

Tuesday night I sent Katie back to the airport for another overnight flight to Chicago and each day since has been a bit of an adjustment to her not being here. Life is funny sometimes, how you meet these amazing people, connect with them over relationships, travel, interests, and yet you see them only a few times a year. I look back on the year Katie and I spent as friends in the same city and realize now that we were only beginning to scratch the surface of our friendship. I can't help but dream that life finds us living much closer to each other someday in the future...

Until then, thank goodness Katie likes travel and adventures as much as I do. Let's start planning a summer 2012 reunion....

Wedding Season: Weekend One

Remember when I flew home to Minnesota for a total of just under 56 hours after only twelve days in Colombia? I do.

And as insane as it sounds, I think it was one of my best ideas to date.

My friend Maria married her high school sweetheart, Johnny, last weekend and despite the plane rides, customs, fights with airline agents, terrible plane food and serious hours logged in Miami International, I am SO GLAD I went to the wedding. I can honestly say I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

My whole life, especially in college and since moving to Colombia, I have been a friend who makes time for my friends. It is one of the most important things for me. At the end of the day, no matter where we live I am going to make the effort to know about you, your life, and be there for you no matter what. For those true once-in-a-lifetime friends who have been so much a part of who I am today, there really isn't much that I wouldn't do. Therefore, there is no way I could imagine NOT being at Maria's wedding.

So fly home I did. The weekend included the wedding, a follow up morning-after brunch at Maria's parents' gorgeous home, dinner with my parents and catching up with friends. Anna, Andy, Michael and I had a great time at the wedding eating delicious food/cake, looking at the Minneapolis skyline from the Nicollet Island pavilion and dancing the night away. Maria is completely music centered and had spent months picking out music for happy hour and the reception and her hard work definitely paid off! I kind of want her to DJ my wedding some day.

My absolute favorite part of the night was watching her dance with Johnny to "Black and Yellow" while singing along to literally every word. There is just something fantastic about watching your childhood Midwestern girlfriend get down to "Black and Yellow" in a wedding dress. Another great part of the evening was the nice things that both Maria and her parents said to me about coming to the wedding - they were so grateful for my presence and it made me feel so special the entire night.

At the end of the weekend I left for the Minneapolis airport exhausted and blissfully happy for the new life Maria & Johnny have in front of them! I love them both so much and I am so glad for the chance to watch them celebrate their love for each other. May we all be just so lucky in love....

Ceremony at St. Patrick's Church in Edina, Minnesota

Anna and I at the reception at Nicollet Island in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Friends from 13 years old until forever... love these girls!

Maria & Johnny's First Dance

What would the end of the night be without stealing ties from boys? :)

At brunch the next morning with Catherine (left) and Maria (right).

To here's my to my fabulous friends, international travel and....doing the same thing in one week for another wedding! Hooray airline miles.

p.s. A million thank yous to my mom for picking me up from the airport, dropping me off, and playing DD the night of the wedding. You're the best :)

Futbol on the Brain

After watching the Copa del Rey during the "brewery tour" in Medellin, it seems as though soccer is everywhere in Colombia. I mean, more that it usually is given how much Colombians love them some soccer.

Yesterday, my students came into class for the last period of the day begging me to let us watch some of the semi-finals game for the soccer league in Spain, between Real Madrid and Barcelona. I said if we got through the lesson and they wanted to choose to do the homework at home rather than during work time, then maybe we could watch it. Sure enough, by 2:15 we were done with the lesson and so I said we could watch it. Within two minutes two of the boys in my class had the feed from the internet and we were watching the game live.

Now...when I say we were watching the game live, I mean my desktop computer screen was turned around to face the class and about 17 of the 20 students were crowded around the floor below. The coolest thing about watching soccer with students is seeing how into they are! And the girls just as much as the boys, which is cool since I am a pretty sports loving girl myself. :) They spent the next 15 minutes acting like soccer players watching other soccer players, so basically being overly dramatic about everything that happened on the field. Absolutely hysterical to observe.

I wish I had a picture of them all crowded around, but alas you will have to picture 17 eighth graders crowded together.

“Everyone has a "best friend" during each stage of life-only a precious few have the same one.”

We all know the "drill" when it comes to friendship. With a lot of people you become friends for a season or friends for a reason - you are friends at a time in your life when it fits or a time in life when you are mutually dependent on each other. We have work friends, college friends, high school friends, childhood friends, study abroad friends, friends from when I lived ______, and the list goes on.

Lucky girl that I am I have friends in all those categories. :) But I also have forever friends, sister friends, people I have known for years who are more like family than friends. Growing up with three brothers wasn't always easy, so at the age of five I sought out a best friend immediately upon entering kindergarten. Eighteen years, infinite sleepovers, late-night chats, birthdays, Christmas-Day-what-did-you-get-for-Christmas phone calls, play dates, Girl Scouts, break-ups, make-ups, notebooks of back-and-forth middle school conversations, travels together, travels apart, visitng each other at respective colleges, and coffee dates later and Ilse is still my best friend. There are things about us that make us drastically different and unique, but she forever remains my person.

...I wish I had digital copies of our elementary school days but this will have to do. Bright-eyed-18-year-olds ready to take on the world...and probably terrified of living more than 5 minutes apart from each other.

So we went to college, learned a lot, and came home the next summer ready to reunite.

Visiting Ilse at Madison during senior year of college - Capitol dome in the background!

My going away party in July 2009.

December 2010.

In one week Ilse leaves for Uganda, where she will embark on her life-long dream of being a Peace Corps volunteer. Fresh off a year working for Ameri Corps in Madison, Wisconsin, there is no better person suited to go out into the world and try to make it a better place. Ilse is going to be working in education, helping to train teachers in Uganda to better their education system. Her creativity and amazing ability to relate to people are going to serve her so well and I cannot wait to read all about it on her blog. So check it out, wish her luck and notice how cool her header looks. ;) Also you should probably just start reading along because she majored in creative writing so her entire blog is pretty much hysterical.

Ilse - Go to Africa knowing that you are SO loved by your family, friends and everyone who meets you. Live you dream with all of the incredible passion you have. Experience new things, new places, new people, and immerse yourself in the Peace Corps. Love every second of every day that you spend abroad and then hurry up and meet me in Minnesota we can have 26-year-old play dates. :) Love you lady!!

CHIVA (Or the time we went on a party bus through Cali)

This Friday we celebrated my friend Beatriz's birthday in true Colombian party style, with a chiva! A chiva is a bus without a roof and sides that only extend about 4 feet up. Seats ring around the perimeter of the chiva bus, leaving the middle open as a dance floor. The idea is that the bus drives around the city, playing music, while you hang out with all of your friends throughout the city. I have seen hundreds of chivas since arriving in Colombia, but this was my first time participating!

We left from our neighborhood around 10 pm, water bottles of drinks in hand, and drove around the city for about two hours before ending the night at a bar. Despite the typically maniac drivers in Cali, the chiva drove super slow, which was nice because you could really see things as we drove past. Basically we just danced on the bus to a ridiculous combination of reggaeton, salsa and Beatriz's homemade "Miami 1999" CD while intermittently being interrupted by the on-board DJ and the microphone he should not have been allowed to use.

In summary - we totally loved the chiva and the subsequent dancing at a bar afterwards! Definitely a good birthday celebration :)

Tara, Beatriz and Kelsi outside the chiva.

Kelsi and I on board!

Let the dancing begin!

Family in Colombia: Part Two

Back in Cali we spent time relaxing, resting and enjoying time in our (my) own place after staying in hotels and eating out in Cartagena. Dad and brother both really liked my apartment, although they probably wish I had bigger beds, but overall I think they were comfortable here.

Sunday night Joe and I made a long trip to the grocery store for food and home essentials since I hadn't been living in my apartment for three weeks! We found some delicious food, Joe got to experience grocery shopping in a foreign country and we headed home to make dinner. That night we relaxed and watch some Big Bang Theory. I brought back three seasons on DVD after Christmas and we all enjoyed watching the show, even my dad who doesn't typically like a lot of TV!

Monday we played tourist in the very un-touristy city of Cali and took a walk through the neighborhoods of San Antonio and El Penon. Of course we made a stop at El Gato, the famous at statue along the river in the center of Cali. Finally we headed to Pizza 1969 to meet up with some friends and drink delicious beer from the Tres Cordilleras micro-brewery in Medellin. Joe and dad got to meet my friends Tara, Angie, Caleb and Hana as we re-united after Christmas break.

Dad outside the Church of San Antonio.

Joe and I at El Gato.

On Tuesday the boys laid low at my apartment while I went to school for a teacher's only curriculum day. I think they enjoyed the time to relax, use my WI-FI (Dad), and catch up on Gossip Girl (yes Joe, the secret is out). That night we went present shopping for my mom and found her a gorgeous skirt with hand-painted flowers, then met up with Tara and Hana at Mister Wings for happy hour. I think my family was discovering quickly that teachers go to happy hour a lot. :)

2-for-1 Margaritas at Mister Wings

Wednesday morning I got them both out of bed and on the way to school by 6:15 AM, which they were not exactly loving, but they were excited to see my school. As with all new visitors, they were in awe at the gorgeous campus where I work and I enjoyed taking them around on a tour. Sometimes it is easy to take for granted this open-air, beautifully groomed place where I teach everyday and having them there reminded me just how awesome it is. They also met a few sections of my students which I think both parties enjoyed. My dad commented on how middle school students express the same traits regardless of where they live in the world, which I think it is a cool observation when you think about what a big place the world really is. Also, I think meeting my family helped my students view me more as a "real person" and not just their math teacher.

Dad and I outside my classroom.

Swinging for the fences as they overlook the baseball field!

Wednesday afternoon I sent them to the airport for the journey back to Minnesota! We had an awesome trip Joe & Dad - love you guys!!

Family in Colombia: Part One

After a year and a half in Colombia the fam finally came to visit!! ...well part of them anyway. Six family members abroad at one time might have been a bit much to handle, so my dad and oldest brother, Joe decided to come this January. Neither one of them have traveled outside of North America, so not much international travel experience, let alone travel to Colombia. Joe speaks some Spanish, based on what he remembers from high school, and my dad speaks none.

Needless to say, I did a lot of prep work for their trip and tried my best to explain the various steps along the way for their arrival. Thankfully, they arrived safe and sound in Cartagena, Colombia after a long day of travel from Minnesota. We spent four awesome days in the old city of Cartagena and then three more days in my home city of Cali. They were able to experience a lot of Colombian culture as well as get a taste of what my life is like here in Cali on a daily basis.

I loved being able to share everything about this awesome country with them and I think they both left with a better idea of why I have chosen to live and work here for an extended period of time. Even Joe said when he was leaving that he thought I made a good decision to take the job in Colombia! I couldn't agree more :)

Here is how we spent our time:

Day One - Joe's first trip to the Caribbean! We found a small, not-too-busy section of public beach for a mid-morning dip to ward off the heat of Cartagena.

There are vendors everyone trying to sell you things in Cartagena....to the point where it gets kind of annoying after some time in the city. These two men in particular really wanted my dad to buy a hat - he did end up buying a Panama style hat eventually, but not this day.

Church of St. Peter Claver, patron saint of a church in St. Paul where my dad and I sometimes go for mass when I am home.

The boys checking things out.

Joe in the Plaza de San Pedro Claver

A classic photo of Joe with a statue of a naked lady reclined by Colombian artist Fernando Botero.

My dad loving the toothpick that he found all by himself after I told him I couldn't remember the word for toothpick but forbid him from trying to ask for it at the bar in English. He was pretty proud. :)

Watching the sunset over the Caribbean.

Finishing off Day One with some Pizza en el Parque, where you order the pizza at a window and then they bring it to you in the park...propped up on a stool. Delicious!

Starting out Day Two with some caffeine at Juan Valdez.

Castillo de San Felipe - one of the grandest Spanish forts built in Spain's original colonies and home to a giant Colombian flag.

Family pic with the Colombian flag.

Street dancers at sunset in one of Cartagena's many plazas.

Starting out Day Three with the brother on Playa Blanca AKA White Beach full of turquoise waters and fine white sand!

One crazy boat ride and lots of waiting around later we were ready for some Coco Loco's - rum filled coconuts :)

Joe swimming away!

The perfect pit-stop on a trip back to Cali - Bogota Beer Company in the Bogota airport!

...chronicles of our time back in Cali to come shortly!