CNG Campus

The school that Jenna and I work at here in Colombia is called Colegio Nueva Granada. The name comes from the name of the old Spanish colony Virreinato de la Nueva Granada which encompassed Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panama in the 1700s. Last weekend on our way up to school to toss around a Frisbee with some other teachers we realized that we hadn't posted any pictures of the school yet so here they are.

The school's mascot is the Condor but this elephant is actually used more than the condor on CNG merchandise, posters, etc (in fact I've never seen the Condor on anything related to the school, only the elephant). Since the elephant has been on the elementary/primary playground forever it has sentimental value for all CNG alumni since they played on it when they were little.

The campus is situated part of the way up the mountains on the east side of town so the view from most places on campus is beautiful. This, combined with the fact that the campus is huge since we have over 1800 students, does however make it hard to walk around campus since it involves walking up and down the mountain. The first few months here would leave me out of breath from going to the library which is up the hill from my classroom. I've gotten a bit more used to the altitude (somewhere around 8500 feet on campus) but walking from the front gate at the bottom campus up to the gym or soccer field is still not easy!

View from just outside the gym of some of campus with one of the eastern mountains and some of the city in the background.

More of the city view from the patio outside the gym.

The bottom right classroom in this building is Jenna's room. It's a bit loud with this soccer/basketball court right outside it!

Down in this cave the second door leads to my room. My kids are completing some cool projects right now so I'll post pictures of my room once those are up!

Looking down the middle school hallway.

Just outside the main middle school building looking up the mountain. There are more class buildings hidden behind the greenery there as our campus is full of incredible plants. I think one of the previous science teachers in the HS did a survey and found more than 1000 plant species on campus!

The building with the F on it contains the middle school office among other things. The building behind it to the left is the main middle school building and my room would be some of the windows in the bottom floor that you see.

The administration building.

Elementary soccer fields and basketball courts with a small, oddly-shaped track around them. The field is pretty amazing with field turf (just like the stuff on professional football fields) for the kids to play on since it rains so much that regular grass would be turned into mud. There is a full-sized turf field next to the HS gym which is incredible to play any sport on but we didn't take a picture of it on this day because there was a soccer tournament going on at the time we were there.