Travel to Colombia ☺

 

Have you ever been in a new country? Well four years ago I went to Cali-Colombia to a contest of English called “Destination imagination” 

“Opportunities are unique, that’s why you have to take advantage of them and not waste them” this phrase motivated me in the preparation process that started in the first month of the school year, to select the people who were going to be part of DI, teachers look for students good at the English language. I didn’t know about this program, so when the English teacher handed me the invitation of DI, it was like a surprise to me, I was too excited to tell my family about this project, when I tell this to my mom, she felt a lot of happiness and she congratulated me. That day I learn that the effort is rewarded. The next day of school I told my English teacher that my parents gave me permission to travel.

This program was divided into groups, from the little children of school to the teenagers

of high school, in that time I was on 5^th grade and my group was conformed by 7 students with me, and each group had a teacher who guided the process, my teacher was called Edith.

To prepare for DI we had to stay every Thursday afternoon from two to five at school, on those days we all ate lunch that the school gave us together. After the lunch Edith teach us what are we going to do in Colombia, first we had to meet each other, we had to know the tastes of our friends, once we did this, the teacher indicated the challenges that we had to do, for this we had to learn to work in group and to support each other to solve any obstacle that come our way.

The "central" challenge that we were going to do in while in Colombia would be a play of roles, for this we had to define of what topic was it going to be about, so we all decided that the topic will be about robots that invaded the inca's civilization. In my opinion this was a very crazy topic, like how can futuristics machines could travel to the past? I really didn't know, until I realized that this was about fiction. For this story we had to do our own escenary, our customes, our props and our script, to do these materials we had a meeting all Saturdays on the high school. 

When  our play of roles was ready, we had to present it to our parents and to de cordinators in the agora. 

Some days after the presentation we finally traveled to Colombia, but I was a little be scared, because I had never traveled to another country and less by plane. My cousin, my mom and my grandparents left me at the airport. After three hours they called us through the speakers saying that our flight has arrived and that we had to get on the plane, when suddenly I felt chills run through my body. Once we got on the plane, I realized that my seat was next to the window, it was the best thing ever because I could look through the window once we take off. 

Finally, we arrived to Colombia, then a bus take us to the hotel, when we get in the hotel, I taked a look of it and it was very beautiful. Then a touristic guide received us and welcomed us, she was very lovely with us. She had a different accent, from that i could realize that Colombians were more friendly than Ecuadorians. That day we went to see the school facilities where "Destination imagination" was going to take place, the students at that school were so good at the moment of speaking English, their pronunciation was awesome.

In those times I was very shy, so making friends was very difficult to me, but the other guys that were part of the program included me in the activities and make my stay in Colombia easier, so when my group and I presented the play of roles I was nervous, but i could speak more fluid thanks to the help of the guys. When we finished the play, the people sayed to us that our work was very well done to be the first time and I was happy that all we maked was good.

We didn't win the challenge, but I was satisfied because my participation in the program was nice. Then to celebrate we had a special dinner with the ty☺☺pical food of Colombia, we ate "arepas", but i didn't like it, so I learned that the seasoning change in each country. Also, we went to "El Parque del café" a place of games that was represented by coffee.

When the trip in Colombia came to an end, I returned home happy because I had achieved a new challenge and i had learned how to socialize more thanks to "Destination imagination".

But leaving aside my experience, How was your first experience traveling for school activities?