MY COUNTRY, MY CITY AND MY NEIGHBORHOOD

Colombia is a country located at the north-west of South America. This country area is of 1’141.748 Km2, in which we can find all the thermal floors and many kinds of biomes. This means that Colombia has all the climates, cold and warm, and that makes Colombia a place in were you are able to plant any kind of products. But of course Colombia outstands the most in the exportations of coffee, bananas and flowers, which are produce all around the country, but mostly (not all of them) at the highlands of the Andes that pass all through the country. From this mountains, a great amount of rivers have their start points, rivers such as the Magdalena, Cauca, Caquetá, Patía, etc. These rivers are flowing all around the country and they are important because they provide the people many resource. This rivers ends in Colombia´s two big bodies of water, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, were we could find the islands of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina that are located at the Atlantic Ocean, and the islands of Gorgona and Malpelo that are located at the Pacific Ocean. At this islands and all around the country, we see how does the culture of its people is influenced by the races that were here in the colonization (Spanish, Indians and Africans). We can see it in the music they play, in the dances and customs, and the mayor places and events were we could find these cultural manifestations are in festivals, carnivals, contest, etc.

Colombia has 32 departments, and all of them have a capital city, in the case of the department of Atlántico, is Barranquilla, the city where I live. It is located at the north of the country, and the Magdalena River and the Caribbean Sea surround it. This makes Barranquilla a perfect spot for the importation and exportation of products; this means Barranquilla is a port. As a port, Barranquilla shows itself as a place of working opportunities, this attract the people for living here, and it creates a great cultural fusion. A great expression of Barranquilla´s culture is El Carnaval de Barranquilla, this one is an event considered as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of the UNESCO. At this event, we can find the mixture of the Spanish, Indian and African culture expressed on the dances, customs and music we listen, see and feel during the 5 days of fest. Beginning at the Saturday of carnival and ending the Wednesday of Ashes, with the dead of Joselito Carnaval that´s a character that represents the “soul of the party” and that revives each year for the carnivals. That´s what Barranquilla is, the mixture of cultures, its people and their happiness, music and dances such as Cumbia, Mapale, Chande, etc. that we can listen in any season of the year, and a place where you will be accepted by who you are, and what you think.

My neighborhood is little. I´ll guess is one or two streets long. It is normal; nothing extraordinary happens here, no robberies, no discussions, it is safe, and that´s what it counts. People here seems to be use to have pets, such as dogs or cats, my family, by the way, has two pretty female cats, Ronnie and Rut, that are able to move around the streets of the neighborhood and the roofs of the nearby houses without the fear of been poison, thing that happened in our last neighborhood. That one is of the reasons I like to live here. But even though that, I´m not completely happy from living here, because it is far from the school and I have no friends over here, but I´m not completely discomfort with it, as I say before its safe. People here seems to be nice, even though I don´t interact with them, I´m from those persons that prefer to stay at home and not going out, I think its call been a sedentary person. I´ve been living here just for a year and I cannot say much about it, but at least I could wrote two hundred words about my neighborhood.