Back home after the year in Colombia

Last night our daughter Hilary and I landed in the evening in snowy Toronto and we were welcomed by my wife Mary. It was a happy moment. I am glad to be home because a bit more than 11 months living on your own is longer than you realize when you start. Of course I made new friends in Colombia during the year both at the partner organization SENA as well through other contacts and activities in the beautiful and fascinating - yet complex - country, but - as I mentioned before - there is only one place you call home and that is where your family is.

For me the above is already a forever conflict because I grew up in Holland and lived, studied and worked there the first 35 years of my life. My Dad will hopefully soon celebrate his 94th birthday and he and both my sisters and their families continue to live in Holland. Canada is my home because of Mary, Hilary, Mark, the Vandenboom family and so many people who became friends and colleagues during the past 23 years here. But.... my roots are in places such as Bilthoven, Delft and Amsterdam...

So... back home in Niagara. The snow seems to be melting today. It must be the warmth of the Colombian sun that Hilary and I brought with us last night....

It has been an interesting year. I will need some time to further reflect and maybe I will continue to make a blog entry on this site every now & then (I might be back in Colombia during the coming years; you never know). Thanks for showing an interest to read my updates during the year. At this moment I have almost 11,000 visits to the sites since early December 2012 when I started....

Enjoy the vacation period coming up and have a healthy & happy 2014!

Weekend in Salento (again)

Hilary and I flew on Saturday morning to Pereira and from there we drove to the small mountain village called Salento. I had been there in March and decided it would be a nice place to bring Hilary to see something else than the "big city" of Bogota during her short week in Colombia.

Salento is located in one of the coffee zones of Colombia and it is a popular place for people from nearby Pereira and Armenia to go during the weekend. And many foreign backpackers visit...

We stayed in a backpacker's place called "The Plantation House"; always recommended for travellers if you go this way. The view from our small room:

Hilary loves dogs and she found many new friends in the streets of Salento...

Including these young puppies....she almost bought one to bring home.....

We visited a small coffee farm owned and operated by the owners of "The Plantation House"...
(see also my blog in March of a visit there with photos of this small operation)

Hilary enjoying some super fresh pineapple and some very freshly roasted and grinded coffee

Another delicious coffee in one of the old little restaurants in town...

A weekend of relax and nice meals. In one of the places they have the tourists/visitors write their comments on the walls. Lots of fun and Hilary added a good one to the collection!

Fun evening in Andres de Res DC

Friday evening we celebrated with a couple of friends the visit of Hilary and my birthday. On the left Derek hailing from Welland, Ontario (and Niagara College graduate!), his girlfriend Jenny from Ibague, and on the right Hilary. My colleagues Sandra from SENA and her boyfriend Edgar joined the party...

 

 

 

And Lina from the ACCC Ottawa team joined as well. Lina grew up  in Bogota and moved to Canada about ten years ago. She was "back home" for a family festivity.

Andres DC is a very popular place and in December many companies have their year en party here. The place was packed.

The place has three levels: infierno (hell), tierra (earth) and cielo (heaven)....

And the view down from "heaven"..... :-)

On the way back after a fun evening, Hilary and I could not resist to make the next two photos..

Birthday in Colombia

What a lucky Dad I am today to have our daughter Hilary here to celebrate my birthday with me while I am still in Colombia! This morning we had a wonderful breakfast with Nicolas Salcedo of the Canadian Embassy with whom I have worked all year on our EFE program start-up. Thanks Nicolas!

Sandra of SENA joined us and she will take over the coordination with Nicolas now. Both wonderful Colombian professionals and it has been an honour for me to be able to work with them!

The place where Nicolas brought us to has a lot of history and wonderful food. The store still carries products they sold over a 100 years ago. All their food is organic.

After breakfast I took Hilary for a few hours walk. One of the things we saw were the "dog walkers" and this time I did take a photo....

More later...

Hilary in Bogota

Our daughter Hilary arrived today for a short one week visit. It will also be my last week here this year, so I am very excited to share that week with Hilary. We walked around a bit in the area where I have lived this year after her late afternoon arrival in Bogota. People get in the Christmas mood...

 

A nice meal together and that is already day one. Tomorrow we have a few things to do here in Bogota and on Saturday we fly to one of the coffee zones in Colombia. More about that later...

Always time for professional development

Today an Argentinian representative of the German company BOSCH (who is based for his work in Brazil) gave a workshop to a number of colleagues of SENA on the "Continuous Improvement Process". So as a Dutchie living in Canada and at the moment working in Colombia, I had to attend!

It was interesting to observe the workshop. Most of the presented materials brought me back to my engineering studies in the seventies at the University of Technology of Delft in Holland, but for many of the Colombians the concepts were relatively new (reason of course for BOSCH and SENA to organize this professional development session.

I will spare you the details, but as the title of the workshop indicates, it was all about how to bring sustainable improved performance to any kind of organization. A never ending challenge....

Quiet Sunday in Bogota

My last weekend in Bogota this year. On Thursday our daughter Hilary will arrive in Bogota for a short visit and next weekend we will visit Pereira and Salento together (in the Colombian coffee zone). On this quiet Sunday I went for a long walk from my apartment at Calle 72 # 1-40...

This has been every day 2 or 3 times the way down (and later up again) on Calle 72. Who needs a gym when you live in a place where getting there is a good work-out in itself....

Sunday ritual has been to get a good Juan Valdez coffee and the Sunday newspaper "El Tiempo". In today's issue lots of stuff about the upcoming World Cup in Brazil in June 2014. Colombia will play in its group the teams of Greece, Ivory Coast and Japan.

Today I decided to go up to Carrera 1 (or "circunvular") from where you have many nice views over the city. The next few photos show some of the city's contrast between expensive condominium buildings right next to very low income housing (and informal housing)...

The next photos shows an expensive private university campus on the left next to a low income community up against the mountains in the east of the city.

Much later during my walk today I passed one of the areas with flower shops. It never stops to amaze "us from the north" to see these beautiful tropical flowers displayed in such abundance. It was a nice quiet Sunday here today. Ten more days in Colombia....