A Long Way from London

A couple weeks ago, my school held the opening ceremony for their Olympic games. Coming into this, like with most events here, I had no idea what to expect. My experiences with school Olympics have involved day-long undertakings that included the typical easy to set up competitions, such as sprints, long jumps, and the softball toss. I show up in my athletic clothes because I hear that there will be a teacher vs. ninth grade (the oldest grade at the school) soccer match. And since there are only a few male teachers, that means if I volunteer, I'd have to be picked to be on the team. Not a situation that has historically happened often to me. Suck it, grade school kickball teams; I got picked for a real sport.

I arrive at the school when the ceremony is about to start and I hang out for a bit with the students. The ceremony starts about an hour late, still better than NBC's Olympic coverage. After the national and city anthems, we are treated to several dance(?) routines. It's hard for me to categorize what I saw, but I can say there were cheerleaders, boys walking in circles bouncing basketballs, and even a couple kids whipped out a chess board right quick to play a few choice moves for the crowd. No Danny Boyle opening ceremony, but I liked that they showed off some of the sports that I believe will be involved in the games, plus I didn't get sixty years of British pop culture shoved down my throat. After those routines, I thought that we'd probably start the games now. But, like any good infomercial, wait, that's not all. A professional soccer ball juggler person came out and busted a few moves. At first, I had to say that I would have been hard pressed to be amused by his tricks. But I have to say that he pulled out all the stops, going above and beyond what you'd see in most Nike commercials and even getting some crowd participation. He finished and left to an ovation. OK, I thought, with him out of the way, surely we must be...what's that, a cheerleading group? All right, I'll bite. This bunch, unfortunately, didn't do much for me. Call me old fashioned, but I only ever go to cheerleading competitions for the falls, of which there were none that day. And to be honest, I've seen better flips on my pancake griddle.

After over three hours of opening ceremony, the games kicked off after the lighting of the torch. Since there was no fire, nor anywhere really to go, a few kids ran in circles with the paper torch around the cheering crowd, up and down the stairs, then back to the front. We then started the staff vs. student game. I figured, although I didn't have much soccer experience, that my size and athleticism should allow me to at least hold my own with kids almost ten years younger than me. Turns out, not so much. One would most accurately describe my style as flailing, like someone trying to tread water that doesn't know how to swim. Graceful I was not, but I do quickly become frustrated when I don't fair well while playing sports. This led to me using my girth to my advantage over these smaller, underfed children, pushing them around a bit and so on. Although this didn't necessarily improve my level of play, I did feel a bit better after establishing my physical dominance. I don't remember the score, but the only score that mattered to me at the end was Tyler: 0 Soccer Confidence: 0.

Once the game ended, people started dispersing from the school. It turns out the bulk of the Olympic games consist of soccer matches and a few other random events to be played during recess for the following month. One of the other sports was cycling. Their version, however, was more akin to musical chairs; several children on all types of bikes (big, small, with and without training wheels) ride around a circle of cones until an official blows a whistle and all the kids break for the start/finish line. I assumed they were keeping track of who had the lead, but they gave it to whomever broke free of the circle first after the whistle. I also witnessed the roller skate race. It seemed as though almost half of these children had never used roller skates before. I was reminded of the Monty Python sketch of the 100m dash for people afraid of yellow tape.

But the events that everyone really cared about were the individual grades' soccer teams playing in the month-long tournament. I particularly enjoyed watching the younger kids, the first, second, and third graders play. Their strategy centered around swarming the ball and kicking the hell out of it until someone falls into the scrum and the whistle is blown. A strategy not seen enough in major soccer leagues today. I liked to
 imagine this was happening to professional soccer players with real commentators calling the action:

The ball enters the box and everyone seizes upon it. It is a whirlwind of kicking legs amongst a mass of bodies. I can't even make out the ball in this hullabaloo. Oh no! It seems as Wayne Rooney has lost his footing and fallen into the mess. He is being pounded unmercifully by tiny feet of fury. Look at that! The ball has managed to escape the scrum and is headed straight to Messi, who was before now sitting on the ground playing with dirt. He gets up and takes a mighty swing at the ball. Although he doesn't connect, the ball still rolls in the net because the opposing keeper was distracted by a butterfly that has landed on the crossbar! GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAL!

Tyler Fingers Panama....Wait, That Doesn't Sound Right

I took a trip with some volunteers in the beginning of July to Medellin and while there, I managed to fracture my middle finger going off a rope swing. I didn't think it was that bad. Even though it was swollen, only partially flexible, and grotesquely angled to one side, I thought that I could probably just let it ride and not do anything about it. But, to play devil's advocate, I decided to see the Peace Corps doctor anyway. She sent me to get x-rays and those determined that yes, I had a fracture and it was located on the joint in my finger. After seeing an orthopedist, it was determined that I needed surgery. Then, because the doctor in Barranquilla was not a "hand specialist," it was decided that I needed to be sent to Panama to have surgery. Now, sending volunteers to another country for medical procedures, known as medivac, is usually reserved for cases that involve words like ruptured, malignant, or complete reconstructive surgery. And here I was being sent to Panama for a broken finger. Part of me was saying "This seems a bit much, flying me to Panama just for finger surgery." But then another part of me was saying "Hey, there's a Popeye's Chicken near the hotel."

I had no idea how long I would be in Panama. The Peace Corps had initially booked me a return ticket for 2 weeks after I was to arrive there. I thought there's no way that I'm going to be there that long. I mean, it's just a stupid finger. After a consultation with the doctor there, it was determined that the earliest I could leave was after I had a follow-up with the doctor a week and a half after the surgery. So, yeah. There was a way that I could be staying there two weeks. A couple days after I get to Panama, I have my surgery. Right after I was admitted to the hospital, a woman came in to my room and collected all of my belongings because I would be transferred to another room after the surgery. But these items included all the things I brought to occupy my copious amount of waiting time. I knew a hospital was where some people went to die, but I didn't know that it was chiefly from boredom. Despite asking for these things back after the surgery, I didn't get them back until right before I checked out the next day. Yes, I did stay overnight and I had general anesthesia for finger surgery. But I was just so bored. OK, now that I got my whining out, I can continue.

After completing the surgery, I had a week and a half to kill before going back to Colombia. The first couple days, I walked around the city a bit after lunch. It was around this time that I really took note of how muggy Panama City was. I've been getting used to heat in Barranquilla, but there was something about Panama City that made it feel like I was walking around in John Goodman's armpits. Maybe it was that there wasn't much breeze,or it might have been more humid, but after walking around for a couple hours, I must have sweat out the equivalency of a Super Big Gulp. Following the revelation that "It's hot," I decided that walking explorations were to begin and conclude before noon. I had only brought so many shirts and I be damned if I was going to walk down the block to use the laundromat to wash them, so I tried not to punish my clothing too much with my sweat. There were a few days where I planned to get up early to go explore a park or another part of the city. More times than not, I would wake up early, eat breakfast, and by the time I was readying myself to leave, it started raining hard. Usually this rain would let up later, in the hottest part of the day. This climate pattern led me to catch up on some tv shows or read quite a bit while staying in the air conditioned hotel room.

I did manage to make it to the Panama Canal. It was....there. I know that it's an engineering marvel and it is crucial to world commerce, but it was a stream that big ships passed through. Cool. I mostly went because I felt I had to at least see it. Plus, it was on the way to Summit Nature Reserve. This place was great. It was a nature reserve/botanical garden/zoo. And because it was the middle of the week in a down time, there was almost no one there. I stayed there for a while, until I noticed that my profuse sweating was being perceived by the animals as a sign of weakness and I suddenly felt very vulnerable.

I spent some time in Panama City malls in my search for heat refuge as well as American fast food. One mall I visited, The Albrook Mall, was definitely the biggest mall I've ever seen. I walked from one end to the other and it took about 45 minutes without stopping in any stores. It was so big, they ran out of stores and had to repeat some of them a few times. There were also two full sized food courts and I counted a total of five Cinnabons. So after getting a cinnamon roll at each one, I started to think that this might be a bit of overkill.

One of my last days in Panama, I managed to make it out of the hotel early on a clear day and headed out toward this park that is a giant hill that supposedly offers a beautiful view of the city. As I was walking there, I had to pass through a busy market area. It was at this point that someone came up from behind me and hit me with a baseball bat in the leg. As I turned around to see what the hell that was, I saw two men coming toward me and it was clear that they probably had a motive for hitting me. Seeing this, I start running away from them, toward an area of more people. I looked back and they did not follow me. I reasoned that they probably aimed to get me to fall to the ground by taking out my legs so they could grab my backpack, which was only filled with granola bars, and run away. But they hit in me in a spot where my ample thighs could absorb the blow. And that's the story of the time I didn't go on a hike. But in those guys' defense, the granola bars I had were Clif bars. Those things are worth their weight in gold.

On my last day in Panama, I went shopping at a nearby grocery store that sold all the hard to find American food products. I managed to bring back $90 worth of groceries to Barranquilla. I feel like, if nothing else, the trip was worth it just for this.