Signing Off

Well, folks. This is it. I leave for the United States Wednesday, and tomorrow is my last day with access to a computer for a week or so. I've decided not to continue writing while I'm in the US. Just too many other projects that I want to be able to focus on. I will be back mid to late September with entries from France most likely, so it's not really good bye, just see you later.

Speaking of good-byes, I had a giant round of them two weekends ago when a lot of us in Fulbright got together, rented a country house a few hours from Medellin, and hang out. It was one of the most fabulous weekends in Colombia yet. Good times were had by all. There were much merry-making and fun, and I'm glad that it was my last trip in Colombia. Highlights included a day trip to El Peñon, a swarm-of-locus-like invasion of bugs which some helpful, neighborly toads came by and cleaned up for us, monkeys dancing on power lines, and a game of King's Cup in which I realized I have incredibly poor reaction time. Also, there was wine. It was the first time I had wine in about a year. It was delicious.

But really, that was just the beginning. This whole week has been about good-byes, and I realize how much I hate them. It always feels like you're leaving something unsaid or undone. The good-bye never feels real until years later when you look back and realize that you never did see them again and you probably never will. Until then, it's just another see you later, like the end of any other day.

I prefer to just disappear, and really, it's what I would do if I had my way, but I know that other people want to say good-bye, that sometimes they need to, and so I do my best. But for me, that's life. People are here today and then, suddenly, they're not. Sometimes you get to say good-bye and sometimes you don't. It doesn't make too much difference: There's always something left unfinished. There's always something you wish you said or learned or experienced. Even here, even now, there are reasons I wish I were staying in Colombia. Are they enough to keep me from leaving? No, but I have them all the same. There were still things to explore, about the country, about myself, but the tragedy in life, at least for someone with my sort of outlook on it, is that you can't experience it all in one go. You do your best, and when it's over, it's over and you just hope you did it as completely as you could. Do it completely, burn it up, leave no trace.

So, to those of you who have been faithful readers, how do I say good bye to some of you?

The Good-Byes Have Started

Like really in your face...

Well, last weekend I took a trip to Manizales to say good bye to one of my friends here, Julián. He's the one Colombian person that I felt like I really connected with and a good deal of why I believe that paisas are the best Colombian regions and cultures. In most areas, Colombians tend to be very-in-your-face: loud, brash, intrusive. Julián was none of these things. He's the only person in the country I've met that I could describe as gentle and kind. Most of my encounters with Colombians, especially caleños leaves me viewing them as bulls in an emotional china shop: very clumsy and brash, which I think comes from not really considering how their actions or words might impact someone before they say or do whatever they probably shouldn't say or do. It's a kind of ignorance. I don't mean that in the sense that they're stupid, but more that they are unaware. It's that kind of ignorance that brings bliss, which I suppose answers why they're considered to be one of the happiest countries in the world.

Julián, on the other hand, exhibited all the characteristics I value in a person: intelligence, thoughtfulness, tranquility, humor, playfulness. He was a reminder of all the good things in Colombian culture: hospitality, curiosity, and national pride. Colombians are generally very proud of their culture, but instead of his pride leading him to think that it was some unique snowflake whose dimensions I would never fully grasp, it lead him to want to share it with me as much as he could, through typical dishes he would make me and bits of history and background he would share with me here and there as something came up. I only had the opportunity to visit it him twice since the time that we met back in my tour of the coffee region, but every time I made it out there, he brought me back from he edge when I was dangerously close to writing the whole country off. So when he messaged me and asked if I wanted to come visit for the holiday, I took him up on the offer.

The weekend was a super fun time. Friday night, we went to a kind of cutre gay bar and got drunk as hell on the open bar. (Yes, I know. I'm kind of mixing Spanish words with talking about Colombia, but that's how I do.) The music was shitty and we kept telling each other that, but we danced to it anyway because it was better than the alternative. On Saturday, we took a nighttime trip to the hot springs just outside the city and chilled out while some boxing match was on. Although Facebook and all its munchkins kept trying to tell me it was the event to see, we never figured out what the big deal was. Sunday I returned to Cali, but before I had to make the five-hour journey back home, we went to ride horses. While he got up on that horse like he had been born on it and was riding all-around, it and my first time and took me a little bit to feel comfortable. I was on the back of a powerful living animal with its own brain and everything, and I find that nerve wracking. Unfortunately, I think the horse could smell my fear and was not willing to work with me in an equal partnership of mutual understanding. This became clear whenever I tried to steer him out of the pin to go along a path and he kept shaking his head and making sounds and occasionally spitting out grass. (Rude!) He felt lazy, and I can respect that. But it was only going to be for like fifteen minutes. So when Julián asked if we should keep the horses past the thirty minutes we originally asked for, I said no, and we went back to his house to eat.

Speaking of which, he's a fantastic cook.

Listen, basically you need to know this and only this: Julián is Colombia's gem, a veritable diamond in the rough, which is why it was hard when I realized I would be saying good bye to him within a few hours. I don't leave until June 3 from Colombia, and this was happening on May 3, a whole month beforehand. I didn't realize the process of saying good-bye would start so soon, but here I was, in the middle of it and with the person that I would find the hardest to say goodbye to because I might never see him again. Sure, there's others I'll have to say good bye to. (I'm looking at you, fellow Fulbrighters! Especially you Caitlin Strawder!) But it's well within the realm of possibilities that I'll see a lot of them again. The chances of me ever setting foot in Colombia after I leave is very minimal. Though not impossible, I can't think of why I'd come back. I definitely don't want to live here, and I think my bitter experiences are going to repel me from visiting for vacation. After all, would a vampire go to the Vatican for its vacation? You see my point.

So how did I handle this very difficult moment? I just said good bye and went off to the bus station. I'm not sure how to really deal with good byes other than to say them, but I'm always left wishing I had said something I didn't, even if I don't know what that was. So that's it, first and probably hardest good bye down.

Why I Haven't Been Writing

Dramatic reenactment of me finding my computer

Well, all, if you follow this blog regularly, you'll notice that lately I haven't been writing. There's a couple reasons for that. The main one is that my computer is dead. I woke up one day and it wouldn't turn on. I thought perhaps it was just the adapter, which had been blinking and acting weird over the last few days. I took it to the computer store to test a new adapter, and it wouldn't turn on. Then I brought it to a repair shop. After several visits and phone calls, they finally told me that it was unrepairable. That there was a short circuit on the mother board, and if you know anything about computer hardware, you know that is like certain death for a computer. Finito. Nothing's bringing poor Kwami back. I can only imagine what his last moments could have been like. Gasping for breath, feeling a throbbing in his processor, thinking "this can't just be heartburn" before he closed his eyes for good. He's up in the sky now, with Alan Turig and Ada Lovelace.

My computer being dead also means that I can't travel or do much of anything except stay home and study languages and watch South Park on my cell phone. I have to save what's left of my last month a stipend to buy a computer for job searching when I get back to the US. Oh, and also those translations of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's poems that keep getting shelved for one reason or another. That's kind of an important goal for Indiana too. On the bright side, I'm getting a lot of Japanese practice in, and my Coursera courses are getting a lot of attention.

Bonjour, mes petits. Je suis venu pour vous enseigner anglais.
Hello, little ones. I've come to teach you English.

But suffice it to say, if I can't go out into the world, I don't really have too much of interest to write about, and truth be told, I'm pretty sure I'm over Colombia and more excited for things to come anyway. I found out a few weeks back that I was accepted into the Teaching Assistant Program in France, and so sometime in mid- to late September, I'll be going to France. I don't have too many details yet, but I know I will be in the académie of Nantes and that I'll be teaching in a primary school (or potentially schools, plural, despite only working an official 12 hours a week). And I'm pretty excited about that. Word's still out on whether I'll blog about France or in the Midwestern interim. It really just depends on how well I can balance commitments that I should start putting first, like making money so I can travel while I'm in France since TAPIF is not quite as generous as Fulbright with their stipends and paying off credit cards so I don't have to worry about transferring money between banks to pay off US bills. Oh, and finishing those damn Bécquer translations. I'm really disappointed with myself for letting it take so long because there's some other writing projects I'd like to move on to. Particularly the novel that's been haunting me for the last two years, begging to be written. You know, the one that I originally wanted to make as a musical set to the music of English rock band Muse but abandoned that idea when I realized: 1) I would never get the rights to Muse's music to actually produce the thing and 2) It started to get too dark to be a musical. It was originally, as a musical, supposed to have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of sensibility. A bit of horror, a bit of soap opera, a bit of humor. But as a book, I'm not sure if that would work as well. Oh, it's about the apocalypse. That's all you get for free, bitches.

But as for now, things are good, even though I think my tolerance for all the things I've found annoying in Colombia has dropped pretty low in these last thirty-ish days that remain. I think maybe I'm just anxious to get back to the US and then on to France. But although I look at the three or four months in the great state of Indiana as a bit of a waiting period, I am actually excited to be back home int he place I'd never thought I'd call home again. It feels nice to know that I'm going to a place where a bunch of people are excited to see me; it feels good to be welcome someplace, to be liked for who I am instead being seen as a free chance to practice English or as some kind of bizarre, otherworldly creature. As much as I'm in a period of my life where I want to travel and see the world, these little breaks are necessary because one of the best things about traveling abroad, especially as a disgruntled expatriate, is that you appreciate things about your own culture just a little bit more.

A Love Letter to (Part of) Colombia

For Semana Santa, I spent a whole week in Medellin. My second time. And I've already made a few trips to the coffee area as well. I've gotten to know the region a bit, and it's been my favorite place in the country. So while I was there, I thought, why not right a love letter to the paisas of Colombia for my blog? I should, after all, say something nice about Colombia for once.

You win. Congratulations. You're my favorite, and I hope you can accept this simple token of my esteem: My undying love. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

First, you have Medellin, and Medellin is by far the most fun and pleasant major city in Colombia. The metro is a dream compared to Cali's MIO and Bogotá's TransMilenio. It gets crowded, but after the other two systems, anyone would take crowded over squished-like-a-god-damn-sardine. It's also pretty darn clean. I could eat off those floors. Well, as far as public transportation goes. So not really, but thanks for making me think that I maybe kind of could if I were homeless and I had to.

Medellin also has all sorts of fun stuff. That Universidad stop is action packed with touristy goodness: First off, there's the Parque Explora, which is the first thing I have ever encountered that could rival the Indianapolis Children's Museum--I hope you understand what kind of compliment that is because that museum is the shit. I suggest taking my niece sometimes just so I can go and enjoy it myself. There's also a planetarium, an amusement park (Parque Norte), and botanic gardens that you could lose yourself in complete with wandering iguanas and a butterfly garden.

And even if you're not the city type, right outside the city but still accessible by public transportation, there's Parque Arvi, which is a village-park combo that's perfect for getting away from the city if you need a breather. The ride there in the cable cars is kind of an attraction in and of itself. But if you wanna party it up at night, you can do that too. The bar scene and especially the gay scene in Medellin overshadows what little they have in Cali. WannaIce beats the heck out of Queens with its more open space and alcoholic icees. And that's probably not even what most people in Medellin would even list as a "good" gay bar. There's more open social spaces in general, such as Parque Lleras, which makes it easier to meet strangers to talk to... or hook up with, whichever. I suppose the San Antonio Church is a bit like that, but Caleños are too busy trying to force their English down your throat and acting like their cultural is some sort of mystical thing you will never begin to understand and then something about salsa.

Wait. Positive. We're staying positive this post.

But, I know, mis paisas, there's more to you than Medellin. There's the coffee region, with lovely farms, towns, nature, and people to see. And the people are the best. That's why I'm even writing this! Paisas are the most polite Colombians I've met. Not once is some asshole trying to talk broken English to my face or responds back to me in English when all I want to do is buy a damn empanada and go about my business. They're not exempt from the things about general Colombian culture that most Americans find bothersome, but at least it's turned down from eleven to a manageable six. I think this is because I've seen signs of, get this, people actually thinking about what they're going to say before it just steamrolls out of their mouths and over your face, leaving you feeling violated and bruised. You treat me like a normal person, paisas, instead of like an animal that you want to poke and examine and then ask for free English lessons from and maybe get to buy you lunch. You make a guy feel special, mis paisas. You make him feel welcome, and you share your culture without assuming that it's beyond me to understand how good a bandeja paisa is (the perfect combination of flavors for lunchtime, by the way). You are, in comparison with Cali, completely unimpressed than I'm foreign, and that totally impresses me. You don't make me feel special but normal, and that's what I appreciate most of all.

I just wanted to let you know that, mis paisas. You're super groovy, and someone needed to hold you tight in the night and whisper sensually in your little ear, "Thank you, mis paisas, for being you. Thank you."

I'll visit you soon. Once more before I go.

All my love,
Adam

Sociopathic Tendencies

Well, the time is nearly upon us... The time when everything is going to come to a close. In two short months, I'll be back in the United States, and I'm pretty excited about it. I'm still trying to nail down the exact date I want to come back, but June 7th seems pretty likely. I'll be sad to leave my job here, and there's a few people here I would have liked to have gotten to know better, but that's life. At this point in my personal journey in these eighty or ninety years that I've been gifted, I'm no stranger to loss or separation, and truthfully, it worries me a bit sometimes.

I think it's good to be able to handle separation in all its forms: death, moving to a new place, being laid off, breaking up, whatever mask it wants to wear. But sometimes I wonder if this comes at the price of not forming deep, meaningful relationships with people. When I look back at my life, I do think of loss as being a huge shaping factor. I'm not necessarily saying I've lost more than anyone else, but when I think back on life, it's what stands out to me: who's no longer alive, relationships and friendships that didn't become what I had envisioned them to be, dreams that no longer seem possible or even desirable. But I've learned a small secret. However, it's preventative, not curative: Do it completely, burn it up fully or completely, and leave no trace, not even its ashes.

Before coming to Colombia, my boyfriend and I broke up, and he found it upsetting how little emotion I showed over it, or at least showed him. I was upset, but I did it in private. If I'm upset around others, I feel the need to perform, and then I no longer worry about experiencing the emotion fully. I'm worried about trying to keep it together for the other person or not embarrass or bother them. But alone, I'm free to feel what I need to feel.

It reminds me of my Aunt Andrea's funeral. When I saw her body for the first time, I left the room and found a corner where I thought no one would find me, and that's where I broke down and cried over this woman who had taken care of me as if I were her own son. My mom discovered me, and I, through sobs, yelled "GO AWAY!" "Well can I at least get a hug?!" So we hugged, and then she left me to do what I had to do. The same thing happened at my step-father's, Walt's, funeral, except that funeral home had better hiding places.

But this is just another way to enact that same idea: Do it completely, burn it up, leave no trace. Feel the sadness or the loss completely so it doesn't linger, so it doesn't set into your soul, so it doesn't poison you. This way your memories can stay untainted. When they're stained by your unshed tears, they blur and distort, but if the feeling is felt completely, it burns itself up. It's like trying to purposefully forget something. You can't, you have to dive deeper and deeper until you come out the other side.

We're trained by movies, novels, and anything with a narrative format to think that endings wrap up perfectly, that unfinished business is rarely if ever left behind, that our life is like chapters in a book or levels in a video game, these complete units that have little effect on one another. But we all know this is bullshit. Here in Colombia, I've traveled a lot, I've learned a lot about teaching, and I've met new people and learned about a new culture, even if it wasn't exactly a perfect fit. I saw beautiful things and met beautiful people. I made memories, and who I am will always be marked by my year here. But the experiences were had, they were complete, and when it is time to leave, I will leave completely too.

So does this make me slightly sociopathic or well-adjusted? Does this prevent me from experiencing things meaningfully, or does this actually encourage me to experience them fully? I don't really have an answer. But it's something I think about, as my thoughts drift more and more toward what it life will be like in Indiana... Governor Pence signs the religious freedom bill