Even if you watch the News

Even if you watch the news, this may be the first time you´re hearing this.

While I´ve been in Colombia I´ve realized there is either a huge communication gap between international news sources, or a legitimate apathy towards international news. I began to realize this when I was talking about school shootings with Colombians and someone said, "But the only two that have happened were just Columbine and Virginia Tech, right?" No, there have been a TON more, some of them minor, some of them major, but a lot more than 2. My initial thought was that school shootings in the United States stopped making international news a long time ago, whether it was because they were occurring too often, occuring only in the U.S., I wasn´t sure of the reason.

Today, I realized this communication gap or whatever it is, goes both ways. I was talking to my brother in gmail chat and I said: "oh, I have to go because I`m going to a peace march for the 11 government members from Cali that were killed by the FARC, you heard about that, right?" He was like, "No I haven´t seen anything in the news." When he searched for it online he still couldn´t find any news articles. I was thinking there has to be some, but when I searched in google I had no success. I had to search here to find these three articles. When I talked about it with my friend Andre and told her that my brother hadn´t heard anything about it she said, "That`s because the news that`s important to us, isn´t important to the United States. All of the news that gets played about Colombia in the U.S. is really old." She just might be right. One article said there was also going to be a peace march in New York, another article said the following cities (including New York) were either holding a peace march, or a moment of silence...I`m interested to know if either of those took place.

On the other hand, I got to be part of the largest peace demonstration in Colombia since 1999, and it was amazing! Everyone was dressed in white, waving white flags and Colombian flags, with whistles ready to blow in unison at 12:00. I also received a text message from my cell phone provider telling me what to chant at 12:00: "No al secuestro, si a la libertad!" (sidenote: this company sends text message ads all the time and it´s usually really annoying, but I liked this text from them) The streets were unbelievably crowded, and I took lots of pictures so as soon as I find somewhere fast enough to post my pictures I will post lots! The walk started in Simon Bolivar Park and finished at the Mayor´s office with a concert (okay, 2 songs, but it was still AMAZING) by Juanes! The whole experience was surreal, I loved it.

on another note: I am now capable of maintaining spanish conversation with complete strangers...this morning a man asked me if he was heading in the right direction on the metro, and I successfully informed him he needed to be taking the other line. A man just came in for a meeting with my boss, we talked for a few minutes and then when I didn´t understand something I said, "Sorry, I´m from the U.S. and my Spanish needs work." He said, "Really? But you speak so well, where did you learn?" noice.