This is a special post

By Oren:

This is a special post as this isn’t just for fun. I’m not just writing this blog today to tell you what we’ve done this week. I’m writing it because I want to help some Colombian children we met and we need your help.

While we are in Colombia, my mum is volunteering at a charity called Tiempo de Juego (Play Time). Tiempo de Juego help children who come from a poor neighbourhood of the city near us, called La Lucha. Lots of children who live there have very different lives from me and Brae and most of our friends. They don’t have water or electricity in their houses or doctors if they get sick. Also, lots of them don’t have a dad living with them and their mum has to go to work to earn money so they don’t have anyone looking after them after school and there are some scary and dangerous things happening where they live.

Tiempo de Juego organises football clubs for children, so that they have something good to do. Also, when they go there they can learn from older children that joined the football club when they were young who can tell them how to keep away from the bad things in their neighbourhood, stay safe and have a better life.

Because my mum is working there we got invited to a charity football match. It is quite interesting as when they play football in their clubs the games have three parts. First, the children in both teams agree on some rules at the beginning. Everyone has to come up with the rules and there is no referee or grown up to decide the rules for them. footballed-2For example, they might say that a girl has to score the first goal (loads of girls play football in the clubs), or that play stops if someone gets hurt, or that everyone in both teams has to celebrate when someone scores a goal, and things like that. Then they play the football game. Then the third part is when the teams get together to decide who has won, and it’s not necessarily the team that scored the most goals! It is also about which team followed the rules best that they agreed at the beginning.

footballed-4So, last Wednesday we went to a special pitch (it was special because the famous Colombian footballer Carlos Alberto Valderrama, otherwhise known as Pibe Valderrama, played on it when he was a little boy) and we watched another charity play against Tiempo de Juego. In the middle of one of the matches the team instructor came up to us and asked if we wanted to play! We were a bit nervous at first because we didn’t know what the rules were, but we soon got the hang of it and before long we felt really part of the team.

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In my match my team played well but the other team scored more goals ☹ but after the match we talked about who followed the rules best and we gave points. The score in points was, us: 7 and them: 5, so we won! ☺

I wonder if Mr Brown might want to do a match like this in training to see how it goes?

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about these children and I feel sad that they don’t have the simple things they need in life. So Brae and I have made a fundraising page and we really, really hope that it can make a difference to their lives.

Here is the link for anyone donating money in the UK: EverettsInColombiaFundraising

Or if you are in Colombia or somewhere else, you can give money directly to Tiempo de Juego: DonateTiempodeJuego

If anyone felt that they could make a donation we would be so happy and we’d feel like our blog was really doing some good, apart from just talking about our adventure.

We hope to see our new friends from Tiempo de Juego again so we will tell you more about them next time.

Thank you, friends, family and all our blog readers that we haven’t even met yet!

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More Minca

By Brae:

Even though we’ve already explained to you about some great things we did in Minca, we have not told you about all of it yet. There was too much fun stuff to tell you in only one go, so here are a few other things we did there that we haven’t mentioned yet.

In Colombia, it is so hot that you can grow things that you can’t grow in England, like chocolate! more minca-7When we were in Minca we went to have lunch one day. It was kind of a restaurant but it was really just two small tables in the garden of someone’s house in the middle of nowhere. We had some yummy food that the family who lived there made and we bought a necklace, to give to our little cousin, that the daughter of the family had made out of clay. For pudding we had some fresh chocolate and the lady showed us that it grew from her cocoa tree in the back garden. The case of the chocolate (called a cocoa pod) is green instead of brown like I imagined it. Here is a picture of one if you do not believe me. The chocolate tree had bags over the pods so the squirrels did not eat them.

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Another thing I remember from Minca is when we were finishing one of our tours Niall said he knew a nice place for lunch and our minds changed to a nice air conditioned room with walls to escape the boiling temperature. more minca-5We were all taken by a big surprise when we arrived.
We were staring at a little shelter with no walls. There were four wooden tables with wooden benches, and one of the tables had huge chunks of ribs laid across it. There was no proper bathroom as it was just a bucket of water for washing your hands. Also, there was a little oven made of bricks with all sorts of meat being cooked. The floor was just made of mud and lots of stray chickens, dogs and cats were wandering around all over the place. more minca-4The owner was really nice and he started to cut up the cooked ribs and said we were allowed to try some for free! It was really tasty so I had some ribs just like that for lunch as I liked it so much. As you can see, restaurants in Colombia are very different to ones in England! But we had a really nice meal with Niall and our new friends Sarah, John, Karen and Darren and they had beer and fizzy drinks too so everyone was happy.more minca

When we got back to Niall’s house,
we were looking out of our balcony and in the distance my mum and dad were quite surprised to see Oren wielding a machete around, cutting off a bunch of bananas. Most grown ups don’t give you a massive machete and ask you to chop through the jungle but Niall isn’t like a normal boring grown up! Of course I thought it looked fun so I ran out there to have a go too!

 

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So you can tell how many amazing memories we have of Minca, so you might not be surprised that before we go back to England, we would really like to go back there and do another tour with Niall where you cover yourself in mud and wash it off in a waterfall. So this might not be last you hear about Minca so stand by!

You can read the original post here

Free diving

By Brae and Oren:

In our last few posts we told you about statistics and school, but now we want to remind you how many really, really fun things we’re doing in Colombia…in case you forgot!

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Our friend Maryline, who is my mum and dad’s Spanish teacher, helped us go on an incredible diving lesson on Sunday. Her boyfriend Camilo, and his cousin José are both diving teachers. And because we are friends with Maryline, we had an extra special experience!

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dive1-13We went to a beach called Playa Blanca (white beach) and the only way to get there is by boat. When we arrived, no one was there and so we had the whole beach to ourselves, apart from a little dog and its owner, who has a restaurant on the beach.

dive1-8First we climbed up a hill so we could see the view. From the top we could see black smudges in the water. José told us that they were schools of sardines.

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For our lesson, José took us into the water and gave us our masks and snorkels and told us important things you need to know if you want to go free diving. Free diving is when you can dive right down underwater with your snorkel, not just staying on the top. We practiced all the tips he gave us and he said we were doing really well so we set off to the other side of the beach, got our flippers and he told us how to use them.

dive-17We went diving near a rocky cliff and there was amazing coral and all kinds of incredible fish and sea anemones. We were amazed about all the different colours of the fish. It felt like being in an aquarium.

About half way along the cove José spotted a puffer fish swimming around among the coral. He dived down and gently urged it up towards the surface by putting his hand near its nose but not actually touching it. We were lucky enough to touch it, extremely gently, and it felt like silk because it wasn’t frightened or puffed up. When they’re puffed up they have spikes that point out so they’re like a balloon with spikes on. We would have liked to see it puff up but we didn’t want to make it frightened. While we were diving we didn’t touch the coral as we didn’t want to damage it and also José told us that the orange parts of the coral would really sting if you even put one finger on it.

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We feel really lucky to have this great experience and to have friends like Maryline, Camilo and José to help us do something so extraordinary that we will never forget.

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World famous!

By Oren and Brae:

We have a page on our blog that shows us the statistics. It tells us how many people are enjoying our blog and where they are. We didn’t have the statistics on the blog before 4 February so we don’t know how many people looked at it before then, but since 4 February we have had 323 visitors, 1,467 page views and 149 comments! We also know that at least one other school apart from Colby is looking at our blog to learn about Colombia. It is a school in Scotland and we don’t even know the children there. We think this is really awesome because now we know that our blog is useful not only to Colby but to other schools too – ‘hola’ to our readers in Scotland!

The other thing that is so incredible is that we can see all the different places where people are reading the blog. We have a map and every time someone looks at our blog, the country they are from goes blue! And it keeps getting darker and darker blue the more people look at it in that country. So, England is very, very dark blue by now and Colombia is dark blue too.

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Here is a list of countries that are blue so far:

  • Europe: UK, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Switzerland
  • Middle East: United Arab Emirates, Qatar
  • Americas: USA, Canada, Colombia, Brazil
  • Africa: South Africa
  • Australasia: Australia.

Isn’t that brilliant! We are world famous now!

Our top 4 countries for readers are UK (178 readers), Colombia (78 readers), USA (23 readers) and Australia (12).

Now we have a mission for you! If you know anyone who is in another country please tell them about the blog because we would love to see more countries on our map going blue (especially Russia, China or India because they are so big, or Africa as we only have one country there so far)! Please send them our blog address www.everettsincolombia.co.uk and tell them to take a look!

If you give someone the address, don’t forgot to write a comment below saying you’ve done it and then we can tell you when that country goes blue (or bluer) on the map.

Thank you very much for your help!

School 2

By Oren:

Two weeks ago, Brae and I had our first day at Colombian school. I was a bit nervous but it turned out to be awesome!

Our new school is called Colegio los Manglares. This means school of the mangroves. Mangroves are plants that grow where there is a mix of fresh water and salt water, like where the river meets the sea. The cages of roots make a place for many animals, fish and birds to live, including endangered species. They also protect the shore from being washed away by the waves and help to stop flooding, so altogether they are really good for nature.

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school-2We have a picture of a mangrove on our school logo and school uniform. It reminds me a bit of the Colby logo with a tree.

First I will write about the differences between our new school, Colegio los Manglares, and Colby. The first different thing I’m going to write about is the schedule. In Colby’s assembly before I left, I said that school started at seven and finished at twelve but my mum got the time wrong. The actual timetable is from seven until three (which isn’t as long as Felix has to do but it is still pretty long)! When Brae and I first heard our school day was going to be eight hours long we thought it would be ages and ages and ages but it just feels like a normal day!

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We will be going to school here for 2 months altogether, because we had 2 weeks holiday before classes started and we will have 2 weeks holiday at the end before we fly back to England. Because we have longer days but also longer holidays, I have tried to work out if Brae and I will have more or less time at school than our friends in Colby over the whole of the spring term. To do this, I need to take into account the days we went to Colby at the beginning of January, the extra holidays we have in Colombia and the days we finish at one thirty here (every Friday). Drumroll please…here is the result of who is going to do more hours at school this term: Us – 302 hours and Colby – 318 hours! So Colby children are doing sixteen hours more than us, BUT we are spending many, many hours writing our blog and we have homework too so I think it’s probably about the same.

The next thing that is different is that here we have different teachertimetable Orens and classrooms for all the different subjects, like in high school. Some of the subjects, like maths, are quite easy but ‘lenguaje’ (literacy) is really hard because we have to write all our work in Spanish! We also have some subjects that we don’t usually have at Colby. For example, we study cultures of the world on Monday and we do democracy and globalisation class on Tuesdays. We have a double lesson on Wednesday called ‘cineforo’ where we watch a film and discuss it afterwards. On Thursdays, we have climbing and we also learn about the territories of the tribes near here. Lastly, we have a special environmental class on Fridays. At our school we like to help the environment, and protect animals. My class’s topic this term is to help all the stray cats and dogs in Rodadero where we live. There are hundreds of stray cats and dogs everywhere here which was a bit of a shock when we arrived. We are making snacks and I am going to help sell them and make them! Then we will use the money to buy food for the stray dogs and cats and maybe get them injections.

One very unusual thing is the size of the classes. They are super tiny, like in my class there are only six people! At first I was in Brae’s class but in my second week they put me in a higher group with children in year 6.
Also the space we get to play in is school-4pretty tiny compared to our playing space at Colby but we are still allowed to play football. And we have an hour for morning break!

The school also makes its own school dinners, which are really delicious. Anita is our chef and she cooks traditional Colombian food from scratch in the school kitchen. She’s really nice and smiley and she sometimes gives me an extra chocolate brownie!

Similarities: Also there are a few similarities between our schools. school-10The obvious one is that Colby is really welcoming and we found out that Colegio los Manglares is too. Our headteacher is called Chili and she is a bit like Mrs Mead as she is really kind and friendly and always has a smile on her face. Here is a picture of me and her during the school carnival.
The children are friendly too. When we arrived a boy immediately welcomed us. His name was Luis and he turned out to be our best friend in Colombia! He is coming over tomorrow to play. We have also made lots of other really nice friends.

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Brae’s school post can be found here

School

By Brae:

When you look at all the adventures we have written about on our blog you might think that we are just on holiday but we are also going to school here.

Our school is very environmental. Every day everyone has school dinners because no one is allowed packed lunches. This is because it creates lots of litter (imagine how many packet of crisps, juice cartons, tin foil from your sandwiches and other things that get thrown in the bin after a whole school of children have packed lunch). We think about the effect that litter has on all the animals, especially sea animals like turtles. Also, all our science lessons are about animals and nature and we have science twice a day.

Every day, right in the morning, schoolwe have yoga class for a nice relaxing start for the day and I really like it. Every week we also have a climbing wall lesson, on the school’s own climbing wall, and we have nothing to hold us on apart from our hands and feet (no harness)! Our school bus driver teaches us climbing wall class because he is an expert climber.

We also have dance class every week. There are many Colombian dances. We have been learning salsa and cumbia. We even had our own mini carnival at school and we walked around the streets near the school playing instruments and dancing.

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Once a week we have French so in my head I have to go from French to Spanish to English and from English to Spanish to French. So as well as learning Spanish on this trip we are also learning French. The classes are much smaller and I only have boys in my class because there are no girls my age in the school. When we work all the desks are around the edge of the classroom instead of in the middle.

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Every Wednesday, the whole school goes to the beach. It’s just down the road so we can walk there. We do long jump and playing in the waves. This week we swam out really far without being able to kick as we had bottles between our legs. Some of the children collected rubbish so that it doesn’t harm the animals, like turtles.

Before we did our first day I was really nervous as I didn’t know if I would make any friends or if I could speak enough Spanish, but now I know that I can speak enough Spanish and I have plenty of friends so I’m not worried any more.

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I think I’ve improved in my Spanish in only two weeks of school. In the first week I didn’t speak loads and loads of Spanish, only short answers and short questions. But in my second week I’ve been speaking longer sentences and longer answers. I feel quite proud of myself because I’m speaking so much Spanish and I’ve improved so much.

Carnival!!!

By Brae:

Last weekend we went to Barranquilla, the fourth biggest city in Colom…OK, enough of that, let’s get to the important part: carnival!!!!

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Every year Barranquilla has a completely mental party that goes on for 4 days and nights. Nearly 2 million people go to the ‘Carnavales de Barranquilla’ so it’s pretty big. The second biggest carnival in the world after Rio in fact.

We had tickets for seats in a stand which meant we were high up and had a really good view. There are thousands of people performing in the parades with lots of dancing, people pretending to be zombies, cannibals, animals and other stuff and the most incredible costumes ever. carnival-2carnival-35

The parades went on for at least 4 hours every day but we never got bored for one second because of the interesting things that they were doing and the party music and atmosphere.

thumb_IMG_7696_1024One of the things that made it so much fun was that you were given little boxes of flour
and you could throw it at each other or squirt people with foam. Everyone was wearing weird carnival clothes and funny hats and acting completely crazy! Here is a picture of some kids that threw flour at us, but then they gave us some of their flour so we could throw some at them and at our parents!

 

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I hope that the photos and videos we took help you imagine what it was like to be there.

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Did you notice the ladies balancing bottle on their heads? These are full of aguardiente which is like whisky. People drink it a lot.

Wedding

By Oren:  

One of the main reasons we came to Colombia was to see our good friend Diana, who looked after me and Brae when I first started school in London. She lives in Bogotá now, the capital of Colombia, but she was living in London then. She looked after us for two years and while she was in London we met her brother Luis Fernando and her cousin Angelica. Also, when my mum went to Colombia with work, Diana’s family looked after her really well and made her feel at home. So you can see why Diana became like family to us. This is why we were so excited about being invited to her wedding to Ernesto. 

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The wedding was in a church by the sea and it was really beautiful. All the men had to wear special shirts called guayaberas which were white and they had a pattern on the side. These are traditional so we all had one. My dad and I bought one to keep and Brae rented one from a special wedding shop. It was so nice to meet some more of Diana’s family while we waited for the ceremony to begin. When we saw Diana arrive everyone started taking photos because she looked so pretty in her wedding dress.

wedding-12The party was at a beautiful house with a swimming pool and garden on the shore. We had delicious food and drinks, but the best bit was the disco. They played Colombian music and in Colombia everyone knows how to dance and they do it really well. As well as the disco they had Colombian musicians playing music to dance to. Brae and I got taken up to the dance floor by Diana and her cousin and also wedding-6my dad got taken up to dance in a circle with a crowd of ladies! We tried to copy people’s dance moves to try and dance like a Colombian doing ‘salsa’. Throughout the night I danced with a lot of people. 

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At midnight, when I was first starting to get a bit tired, everyone went absolutely crazy! Angelica said it was called ‘la hora loca’ (the crazy hour) 

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and everyone dressed up and the band put some crazy music on and everybody danced until I thumb_IMG_7625_1024was really tired (it was later than one o’clock in the morning!). Brae and I fell asleep
in the taxi on the way home. Over all, the wedding was a huge success and very different to an English wedding. 

 

Another tropical fruit update

By Oren:

You can buy fruit in the IMG_7781supermarket here but we have discovered that lots of people people sell fruit at the side of the road on little wheelbarrows or stalls made out of wooden boxes. Sometimes people only have one kind of fruit (which makes me think that maybe they only have one fruit tree in their garden and that’s the only fruit they can sell), but sometimes they have a whole variety. In these photos the man is selling avocados and he was carrying them on his head.

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Sometimes from our balcony we hear the sellers shouting through a loud speaker: ‘AGUACATE, AGUACATE, AGUACATE, PAPAYA, PAPAYA, PAPAYA’ (‘Avocado…papaya…’) to get people to come out of their apartments and buy them.

We have started to buy lots of fruit from stalls and sometimes we buy fresh fruit juices too. Recently, IMG_7778we have discovered that mango cut up with salt, pepper and lime is super delicious (it sounds weird but it’s yummy). Our favourite juice is a local speciality on the coast of Colombia. It is called ‘limonada de coco’ and it’s fresh coconut and lime with ice. It is exquisite. In my last fruit post I talked about ‘piña dorada’ but I didn’t have a photo because I ate it before we could
take a picture. We have eaten LOTS more golden pineapple since the first one so here is a photo of one we had last week.

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The previous post can be found here

Colombian birds

By Brae:

When we went to Minca we saw lots of birds, as we mentioned in our last post. But we didn’t explain it very well so I am going to explain it to you now. Minca is famous for its amazing birds of all different kinds. Even though Minca is only a very small town, you can see 162 different species of bird just in this small place! And when you explore the mountains around Minca, you can find 320 species of bird! Altogether, there are almost 2000 species of birds in Colombia – more than any other country in the world. So now you know what I mean when I say we saw lots of birds in Minca!

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To see toucans and parrots and other fascinating birds, you need to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning or even earlier. We got up early to go bird watching two mornings in a row. The toucan is a bird that everyone minca birds-6wants to see and we were lucky enough to see one, but if a toucan hears or sees you they fly away so that’s why we couldn’t take a picture of one in the real wild.

I did get some good photos (on my own camera) of some other of my favorites, like wonderful macaws, hummingbirds which flap their wings at an unbelievable speed, and an amazing black and yellow bird called a crested oropendola that makes a nest in the shape of a bag hanging from a tree.minca birds-2
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The blue headed parrot is a incredible bird of all different colors. But it is given its name by its amazing blue head. The males don’t even have blue heads. The reason it is given its name is because of the females amazing blue stipe down the center of its head. We also saw woodpeckers and parakeets and lots of other birds that you won’t have heard of.

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