‘Expoartesanias’: A taste of Colombia to the world

A year has gone by and many interesting things have happened in the world. Most of those world events are either tragic, emotional or a novelty. Colombia has been a country that has gone through a rollercoaster of events this year 2015. For three years, Colombia has been dealing with the peace process, but it seems that it will be another year without a resolution to the internal conflict. Despite this unsolved occurrence, Colombians proudly portray their patriotism and honor their native culture through several cultural events.

Expoartesanias is one of those events that promotes culture and it’s hosted once a year in one of the largest convention centers in the country called Corferias. It brings a lot of inspiration, pride and joy to be part of a country that has a myriad of artistic creations. The intention of this event is to rescue the native traditions and propel business in the community. Since its a trade show, the objective is to create a rapport between the craftsmen and buyers in order to promote socioeconomic development. One may consider my description to be a lot like a flee market, but the quality and the uniqueness of its displayed products speak for themselves.  According to the Expoartesanias website, the event brings 800 exhibitors, 31 administrative districts (departments), 113 indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, 200 farmer groups, and 170 international exhibitors from 18 countries. The expectancy of daily attendance in this event is about 75,000 through the period of its exhibition.

It is interesting how the colors contrast with the designs and how the sellers proudly tell stories of their product as if it were part of their soul. For instance, there was an indigenous community from Putumayo, a department located in Southern Colombia, that was selling a variety of artistic artifacts, but all were made of a certain fabric. The man in charge of the gallery told me that the fabric of the baskets were made in a certain fiber similar to ‘mimbre’, a fiber from a tree that only grows in that area. The indigenous community doesn’t allow the use of animal parts such as the skin because its part of a living thing and they greatly respect them. The community would also use those plant fibers to make a whip in order to punish those who disobey the rules in the village.

The trade show didn’t just settle down with its national artistic artifacts, but also had galleries dedicated to international craftsmanship and gastronomy. There were unique exposition galleries focused on plant conservation and the use of cotton. An special gallery was dedicated to ‘bijouterie’ or silver and gold decorations.

The gallery was so extensive that it didn’t take me a couple of hours, but about five to seven hours in order to see every exhibit. I admire the dedication and the investment of time that the sellers took to demonstrate the innovation and cultural heritage that this country has tried to rescue and preserve. If you ever come to Bogota, please consider that this city has a myriad of choices for you to admire. Events such as this would make you understand that Colombia is like a peacock that only spreads its wings to those who want to discover its magic.

Visiting the Home of the 24-hour Never ending Traffic

Several weeks ago, I traveled back to Bogota with the expectation of seeing my family and friends as well as having some medical checkups done. As the days went by, I saw Bogota with different eyes and I realized what I never noticed before. Bogota is a very chaotic and stressful city. I consider myself a city girl, but I have lived in so much tranquility during this past 4 years without people getting on their nerves, yelling or fighting over lanes or being aggressive drivers. Chicago is the most proximate city to where I live and it doesn’t even get close to the tremendous chaos that I lived when I was in Bogota.

Cities are amazing because there are many opportunities to discover new trends, learn about different perspectives and have an amplified job market, but I realized that there are cities that are impossible to live in, regardless of the fact that they have their own enchantment. Bogota is one of those cities that despite of all the beautiful things it has to offer and bring to the table, its unable to demonstrate it due to the chaos and the unorganized legislations that the current Mayor has established in this city. I can’t believe that some American and British journalists consider Bogota’s current mayor as one of the best mayors in the world when the degrading quality of building and social infrastructure and the lack of civic reinforcement has brought Bogota to its current critical condition. I don’t want to criticize the Mayor’s social programs, but many of his new “ideas” have put Bogota into an uncomfortable position. It brought to my attention how time flew by in a day and I was only able to do two errands just because the traffic was unbearable and long lasting.

Years ago, Bogota created this system that controlled the flux of traffic during rush hour called “Pico y Placa”. The system consists of limiting cars that end with even or uneven numbers in their license plates during certain times of the day on certain days of the week. For instance, if my license plate had an uneven number and the date of today was an uneven number like the 7th of November, I would only be allowed to take the car out after 8:30 A.M. until 3:00 P.M., and after 8:30 P.M. If I take the car out at the hours that I am not allowed to transit, I can get a ticket of COP $380.000, which is a rough equivalent to USD $170.00 plus the police gets to immobilize and take the car. This system has been established in other countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain. It did work until a few years ago when traffic jams became impossible and uncontrollable. The maximum time I have ever spent on a traffic jam in Bogota to arrive to my place has been of approximately 3 hours when it should’ve been around 15 to 20 minutes. I have lived all my life in this city and I have been used to traffic jams, but this year, I had it. People insult each other over a car lane just because they don’t respect their turn or they didn’t give them the chance to change lanes. I admire people that drive in Bogota because the chances of getting into a car accident are absolutely high.

Bogota’s population has been growing rapidly, but the last census in 2005 said that the population was around 6,778,691 inhabitants. Now a days, the population estimate could be ranging between 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 inhabitants. The capital has always been an ideal spot for foreign and domestic immigrants to settle, but this phenomenon has made it difficult to innovate and create new transportation systems.

The amount of motorcycles has increased with the time because it has become the fastest and most efficient vehicle to avoid traffic jams, but it has also increased the rate of car accidents due to reckless driving. There is no control nor any law that instructs motorcycles to drive in a certain lane and there is no real police enforcement because even with the most obvious traffic shortcoming, they just stay there and stare without doing anything about it.

About 14 years ago, a new transportation system appeared with the intention of improving the city’s mobility and therefore providing a better service to the citizens. This system was called “Transmilenio” and it has been beneficial for the city even though many hate it. The system has helped mobilized a million of people over the years, but as the years went by, Bogota’s population started growing more making this system collapse. On rush hour, spectators that transit in cars or in public buses watch as rivers of people accumulate waiting to pay their bus fare to use this method of transportation. Others opt to seek the easy way to get in the bus by skipping the bus fare and risking their life by climbing and walking inside the glass doors. In these last two years, the local government created another system of buses called SITP (Sistema Integrado de Transporte Publico), which has improved transportation because they transit neighborhoods or areas where “Transmilenio isn’t capable of reaching. The technology of these systems has improved and it has made customers more knowledgeable of what buses to use and where the bus stops are located. Regardless of trying to improve the transportation in Bogota, people feel unhappy and limited to go wherever they want because they fear of confronting these never ending traffic jams. To diminish the traffic jams, “Pico y Placa” was applied to taxis and, just recently, public buses.

Since the 1950s, Bogota’s mayors have been trying to find a way to introduce the subway system in the capital, but no construction actions have been put forward into this project. Millions, or should I say Billions, have been spent on studies to construct the subway.

I love Bogota and I have personally got use to the traffic jams because I spent long hours in the bus when I was in school. I was picked up by the bus at 5 A.M. and taken back around 5 or 6 P.M. Regardless of growing up and getting use to long commutes due to traffic jams, I am unhappy to see my city undergo this transportation crisis and I wish I could do something about it. Then again, its very hard to please a diverse population with different necessities.

Learning Languages: Profitable or Detrimental?

Have you ever had the desire to learn more languages? Have you ever had communication constraints while traveling abroad? Did you have any curiosity of knowing what those vietnamese or asian nail workers said about you or anyone while they were doing your nails? Did you struggle to learn about languages when you were in High School? Then you might have a slight chance of relating to this post.

To tell you the truth, understanding and learning other languages has been a struggle for most people like me. According to David Skorton and Glenn Altschuler, contributors of Forbes, the U.S. Secretary of Education said in 2010 that only 18% of Americans claimed to know a second language. Coming from a monolingual country where tourism isn’t a particular strength, I had very little to no experience hearing, seeing and knowing people from other cultures. By learning about different languages, traditions and cultures at school and family travels, I acquired a strong curiosity that pushed me little by little to investigate more about other countries.

I recently saw a feature story about an Australian young man who had a car crash and went into a coma for a week. He woke up and started speaking mandarin to the nurse. He even wrote in mandarin while he was recuperating. The reason why he spoke mandarin and not english was because his english skills had been obstructed and damaged when he was hit in the car crash. His brain had to use the alternative language skills that he learned when he was in High School. The young man had traveled to China recently before the car crash and was forced to polish his mandarin skills. After he recuperated, his life took a 360 degrees change by becoming a successful foreign communicator in China. Many Chinese admire his mandarin skills  and even claimed that his mandarin was better than theirs. This story came into my attention because is interesting how learning a language can become a benefit in the long term and in the most unusual ways possible.

I could say that I am trilingual, but I have to be honest with you, I don’t think I am good at any of the languages that I have learned including English. My mother language is Spanish and I have learned English since I was in kindergarten. Somehow, I had a facility with English that no other classmate had. I read the books, loved to study vocabulary words and aced the english tests. I also did well in Spanish by writing great pieces and entering poem contests when I was in High School, but I do accept I have always struggled with grammar.

The torture started in sixth grade when my mother, in the concern that I didn’t have “enough” knowledge of languages, made me take French classes at the French Alliance. I struggled with French like I have never struggled with another school subject; I hated it and I tried to make up excuses, so I wouldn’t go to class every Saturday. Until the end of the second semester of French classes, my mother got tired of dragging me to the French Alliance school and decided to let me take the decision of “taking the opportunity or leaving it”. I was so mortified that I decided to leave out french classes for good. A year went by and I realized that I missed learning French. I started classes again, but without success I ended up leaving it because it was too difficult for me to understand it. I wasn’t able to construct more sentences other than the basic sentences that everybody knew. I felt I was wasting my time because I couldn’t advance with French. I could say “Bonjour”, “Je ne sais pas”, “Je t’aime”, “Au revoir”, “Comment allez vous?”. My french was extremely basic in comparison to my classmates. I was behind and I had to ask for more assistance, but I couldn’t do my homework well. I felt like I wasn’t made for knowing languages and that I had failed to learn them. I decided to quit my french classes at the French Alliance once again. When I started tenth grade, it came to my surprise that my High School included French in the academic curriculum. I was actually astonished that after quitting French several times, I had to face it again. I thought I was going to fail at it once again, but I did feel I had an advantage among my classmates because I had already taken French classes. I can only say that I survived the classes and I was able to graduate with a very good cumulative GPA. I thought the nightmare had finished after graduating from High School because I was no longer forced to take french classes.

College started and I never had French in my mind up until sophomore year. I did a placement test in French thinking I would have a better french and I could be placed in a higher level class. To my surprise, I only passed French 101 and I couldn’t skip the rest of the French classes. I decided to take a couple of French classes and I did enjoy them, let alone they were almost killing my GPA. I decided to stop taking French, but someone told me I had to think about my future and the necessity of multilingual speakers in the job market was huge and not many had the opportunity to acquire jobs because of the lack knowledge in languages. I was actually scared of not getting a job after graduation that I decided to do a French minor. It was a rocky start, but at the end, I started thinking, speaking and writing in French. I obviously don’t have the best french accent or the best writing composition for that matter, but I do know that when I pushed myself to learn and opened my mind, I was able to capture information that I wasn’t able to acquire when I was in my early years of middle school and high school.

Now, you must be thinking, how is this story relatable to the title let alone the video? This post is relatable because its a story of accomplishment and also a personal consideration of how languages can be a future tool for survival in a growing complex world in which we are living.

I just recently graduated, I haven’t used my french skills yet, but I do foresee a better future if I polish my french skills. I had the opportunity to use my Spanish skills into practice throughout my work experiences and its a very rewarding experience because I get to help people in some way.

To answer the inquiry, learning a language is profitable; its a good investment if you put your mind to it and know what you will do with it. I myself have experienced how rough it is to learn a language from scratch, but I do know that everything is possible if you give yourself a chance to overcome your difficulties.

 

Morning Beats

I adore music and it has always been a part of me since I can remember. My sister would always listen to a rock radio station and I would learn the lyrics and the rhythms because they would tend to repeat the most popular tunes of the moment. My parents loved to put latin jazz and salsa during road trips and family reunions. My friends would always be singing to new pop hits and even use this songs for school choreographies. Through my life, I have been surrounded with all kinds of music and I have been in a love and hate relationship with most of them. I passed through many music tastes and I dare to say that I feel shame for the music tastes I had in my awkward years.

Nowadays, I am open to most music genres and I really enjoy listening to music from around the world. The time of the day that I enjoy listening to music the most is in the mornings and that’s why I composed and created a playlist to wake up in the morning. 

[spotify https://play.spotify.com/user/apinilla0829/playlist/1PSnAc9Q7qOgSjZBFB7Q9R]