I Just Podcast-ed about Colombia and Culture

You know how you usually hate the sound of your own voice? Well, I conquered that fear recently and served as a guest on Walking the Earth podcast. Mike Margolies is a fellow traveler and has a great podcast about the travel lifestyle, doing podcasts with travelers and expats of all different walks of life. Each episode is an open conversation about traveling and wherever else the topic leads.

Our conversation, recorded about a month ago, is about anonymity, navigating cultural differences, the idea of “home” and the evolution of relationships due to technology.

Podcaster!

Please, check out the episode and show Walking the Earth some love! Enjoy!

Journey on,

Shanna

P.S. Remind me never to say “and stuff” again.

Costeno Body Language 101

Have you ever seen a coastal Colombian talk? It’s 85% body language with animated facial expressions, broad hand gestures and full-body emphasis on the Most Important Points. Even their feet are fidgety, listo to break into a salsa step. Imaginate what it’s like when the subject matter actually involves dancing!

Because or body language is so central to the culture, the idiosyncratic gestures and facial expressions are essential communication tools to survive as adopted costenos.

Once you master these haptics, your cultural fluency will skyrocket, your language skills will improve, and costenos everywhere will adore you (if only to laugh at you.)

How to Ask for Clarification with Your Nose 

This is the costeno shrug, the Colombian gesture for the universal “huh?” Use this gesture to say you don’t understand, to ask for the speaker to repeat their statement, to indicate a doubt or question, or to amuse your host family.

A Beautiful Reality: My Peace Corps Site

I’ve been taking mental portraits and landscape panoramas of my host town for over a year now, but only a few of the shots have made it into digital format, and even fewer have landed in a public forum.

There are at least two reasons for this:

First, I’m not keen on toting my big DSLR or my smartphone around town; it’s not great for my safety OR my reputation. Part of my integration strategy has always been to minimize the “OMGlookatthegringa” effect as much as possible.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, I want to protect the dignity and privacy of my town’s beautiful people. That’s always been on my mind, but the more I get to know them, the more it matters–I care about them, they’ve shown me respect and love, and I want to do the same for them. So I’m trying to be careful to use my photography to support and promote my town, not to degrade or expose it and its inhabitants.

That said, I have spent the past 15 months living a distinctive day-to-day reality in a setting that just taunts this photographer’s eye! Every morning on my ride to school, there’s a view over the aqueduct that the morning sun just glorifies; the afternoon ocean is the bluest of the whole day. The popcorn man has the brightest smile and my students–my students are each and every one of them a portrait just begging to be captured! And at the same time, there are some less-photogenic aspects of our life here: pollution, poverty, underachieving infrastructure and neglected streets, buildings and dreams.