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| Colombia’s mighty Buque Escuela Gloria coming to celebrate the war’s Bicentennial, as shown by the Today Show. |
You know how the media’s always portraying beautiful Colombia in the least flattering light possible? Well imagine my surprise when, today, completely out of the blue, I spotted with my little eye a very familiar flag on our TV…
Turns out the Today Show‘s Al Roker was on-site at the War of 1812 Bicentennial Celebration in Maryland. And as he was announcing the weather, he called attention to a “cool” ship he saw in the distance. After doing a double take, staring at the flag for a while to make sure it wasn’t like Venezuela’s flag, and even asking my dad to make sure, I realized this was our ship–AKA the Buque Escuela Gloria (thanks, Dad for teaching me its name!).
Who cares if Mr. Roker didn’t recognize the flag— and thus didn’t know what country this ship belonged to… I was still WAY happy to catch such a majestic sight being so greatly complimented by both he and Matt Lauer (who were in awe of, among other things, the people standing on the staffs).
So forget all the bad things you’ve heard about Colombia. Today, I learned that just seeing that flag on a ship thousands of miles away makes my heart ache and my eyes water just a bit. We may be dual citizens now who are awesome enough to owe allegiance to not just one but two great nations, but we’ll never forget where we came from.
In the end, Colombia’s cool. In fact, she’ll even come to celebrate your victories! : )
Colombia tierra querida…