Written by Karen Garcia-Ramos, (Pomona College), Student Correspondent for CET Colombia, Spring 2024
If you’ve ever wondered what a day in the life of a CET Colombia student looks like, you’re in luck! I wanted to use this blog post as an opportunity to share the events of a typical day here in Cali, Colombia—most notably how social life and academics are balanced.
Classes
These photos were taken during my Crime and Justice in Colombia class, which is held on the third floor of the CET house. Many courses share the same classroom space. For example, my Advanced Spanish class takes place in this same room.
I began my Friday with one of my favorite classes, Crime and Justice in Colombia. This seminar takes place weekly from 9 am to 12 pm at the CET house and enrolls eight of the thirteen program participants, making it my largest CET class. Today’s class featured the socialization, or presentation, of a group paper that was assigned before last week’s spring break. This was the second major writing assignment of the semester. My group’s topic was racial profiling in Cali—specifically that differential treatment is reproduced by Cali police officers and how Black youth in the city are disproportionately targeted. Group work such as this paper is the nature of most assignments, which holds true for both CET classes and Universidad Autonoma de Occidente. Crime and Justice in Colombia is my only class of the day, leaving my afternoon free!
Lunch at Depeapan Panaderia
After class, I usually have lunch with classmates. Today, that ended up being with my friends Fiona and Lillian at the Depeapan Panaderia, a tried and true bakery and restaurant. Lillian’s parents were visiting from Boston this week and we got the chance to meet them over lunch, which was very lovely. For lunch, we had chicken sancocho, rice, beans, salad, chicken with mushroom sauce, and a plantain. My favorite thing about this spot is the desserts they offer after. Today’s sweet treat was a slice of fruit cake.
Looking for a Café
We finished lunch around 1:30 pm. Fiona and I decided to study at a café. We wanted to try out a new one, so we looked for nearby coffee shops on Google Maps and walked. It ended up being a great choice, and we came across a beautiful park called Parque el Ingenio that we will definitely be returning to. At this café, I was working towards outlining this blog post while Fiona was getting ahead on a paper for our core class, Race and Identity: Debates in the Colombian Context.
Back to the Apartment
At 4:00 pm, we headed back home to our apartment, where I met up with my other roommate, Bertney, to work on the core class assignment. This project is a semester-long endeavor titled “Cartography of the Blackest Space”, which is in line with CET Cali’s focus on the Afro-Colombian experience. Before spring break, we started the project by interviewing our Colombian roommate about what they would identify as the Blackest space in the city. She named the District of Aguablanca, which is a centrally-located region in Cali.
I am also taking another class called The Cultures of Afro Descendants in Colombia (taught in Spanish). I learned that this district was created between the 1950s-1980s during a period of heavy Afro-Colombian migration from the Pacific region to Cali. Since the city was not built to accommodate such large numbers of displaced people, this neighborhood was carved out and reclaimed by those arriving from various parts of the Pacific region. Bertney and I were working on a paper synthesizing the field notes from our visit to the Aguablanca district the day before, which was the first of three field visits in total we will be conducting this semester. I did not take a picture, but as a reward for our hard work, we ordered Chinese food for dinner. The great thing about living in a larger city is the variety of ethnic and fusion food you can find.
Bulevar del Rio
After getting ahead on the paper and resting up a bit, Fiona and I headed out around 9 pm to the Bulevar del Rio, or boulevard of the river, located in the city center where we met up with other CET students. The Bulevar del Rio serves as a space in Cali where locals and tourists alike come together to relax, walk, and eat.
The street and a few surrounding blocks are close off every Friday and Saturday night to host hundreds of people who gather to dance and sing salsa caleña, or salsa music, that comes from Cali (the salsa capital of the world). We had not been to the Bulevar since February due to being away from Cali for some weekend trips and our spring break. However, this distance made me realize what I appreciate and miss the most about Cali—as a result, I feel I am being more intentional about the time I have left.