Towards the end of my year in Colombia

Time flies when you are having fun. Today it is a very rainy Monday here in Bogota. It is a public holiday, so the city is very quiet, especially with this rainy weather. I am now in month 11 of the 12 of my contract in Colombia. Later this week I fly back to Toronto to be a few weeks in Canada for work on our ACCC project with colleagues in Ottawa (all the while staying in touch of course with my Colombian colleagues of SENA) + to start planning for the work back at Niagara College Canada as of January 2014. Planning for the coming week causes strange emotions. I felt at home in Bogota this year, yet you always are a bit of an outsider. My real home the last 20 years has been in Fonthill and I have missed that home more than I expected.

On the photo above I am with Sandra Castaneda with whom I have worked during the past 10 months to get our EFE Colombia (Education for Employment) program on the rails. Sandra will take over the coordination work from here on; in fact she already has the past two months during which I have more and more taken on a role of "coach". Sandra works with a great group of colleagues in SENA offices and training centers throughout the country. They are ready to - in early December - choose a few Canadian colleges and start working with those college experts on curriculum development and teacher professional development during the coming three years. The REI (Request for Expressions of Interest) just went out this weekend from ACCC Ottawa to all the member colleges.

In early December I will spend a week in Ottawa with Sandra interviewing representatives from a few short-listed colleges. After that I will be another two weeks working with Sandra and her colleagues of SENA in Bogota and I will be back in Canada just before Christmas.

Not sure if I will make a lot of blog posts the next few weeks, but if I have interesting things to share with you from Niagara or Ottawa, I will make a post. By now I have almost 10,000 visits on this site so I hope that everybody enjoyed reading my stories. Hugs to you all!!