In the afternoon our - Jeroen and me- classes started. It is a two week course about restoration. Because the teacher is Italian, she speaks really slow and clear Spanish, unlike all the Colombians here. So I understood a lot! We’re with about 25-30 people in our class and they’re really nice!
We visited the train station of Picaleña with the class to see our case study. It was beautiful but it was a ruin. About 4 families live there and they were refugees of another part of Colombia. It was really dangerous to live there; I was allowed on the first floor and I was actually afraid that I would fall through the floor!
The class was split up in four groups and each group investigated something else: materials, drawings, social context and history.
That weekend was a quiet one; we visited Ibagué, did shopping and Sunday was a baby shower in our house. Not a baby of one of us, it was the baby shower of the daughter of Doña Marleny, our land lady. There were chairs throughout the whole street and you could hear the music two blocks further. There was one man who was fantastic; a small black man about 70 years old, big belly, a hat,… He danced the whole evening! And really good!
Week two of the course we worked in our groups and got ready for the presentation of Friday. The presentation was really nice and formal. After the presentation we – the whole class- went for a drink.
The weekend after that was three days because Monday was a holiday. We had an extra day off! (Well, we don’t really have that many days “on” so.. ) Friday we went with the whole group of IAESTE – an international organization – to a club of someone’s sister. And Saturday we went with the same group on a chiva and after that to Tereque, a famous bar in Ibagué. A chiva is a bus with less chairs than normal and with loud music. So while the bus is driving, everybody is partying. A nice experience, but I prefer a club that doesn’t move!
During the day – Saturday – there was an international meeting with presentations from different nationalities and a couple of little concerts and traditional dances.
Sunday we went to see the waterfalls of Payandé. Beautiful. Extremely hot, but the water was cold, so perfect combination. We were with a lot of nationalities; from Colombia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Mexico, Portugal, Poland, China, …
Funny was that there were a couple of people wanted to take pictures of me and Marie-Laure. Our fifteen minutes of fame!
The week after that was a calm week; Jeroen and I are making a book; A kind of report of the two weeks and our reflections of it. I’m reading the book of our teacher, but it’s going very slowly because it is in Spanish. But I will succeed..
