Second Best

This past week I had a blast with Molly. It was nice having another gringa to play with in Medellin, I was just about having enough of all of these boys! We toured the entire city, crossing the river to discover new areas outside the center and enjoying the many parks and open spaces in the city.

One night we went on a tour that I got a random call about from a local English language institute that I dropped my resume off at. They weren't hiring when I went, but a few weeks later they called to invite me on a bus tour through the city at night. They told me it would be their English language students and teachers. I immediately understood: I got a free tour through the city and they got my native English. Alright, I'll take it. So Molly and I got on the bus at 7, of course it didn't leave until close to 7:30. We ended up going to 4 tourist spots, 3 of which we had already been to. En route to each destination, the teachers enlisted us (Molly, myself and 5 Israelis, who surprisingly did not speak stellar English), with the help of a microphone, to share our thoughts on Medellin, Colombia, and Colombian women (the last one mostly directed to the Israeli guys). The idea was for us to get off at each destination for 20 minutes or so and have the Colombians give the foreigners a tour of the area, speaking in English of course. The problem was 1. not many of the Colombians knew their own city and 2. the students were mostly girls and they all flocked to the Israelis when we got off of the bus. So Molly and I were left with a handfull of students who spoke pretty good English but knew nothing about the Pueblito Paisa (a traditional Medellin town at the top of a mountain in the middle of the city) or why you're supposed to take your shoes off at Barefoot Park.

Luckily, Molly and I had already been to Barefoot Park. There was a rocky area to "massage" your feet, a sandbed to soften them, and pools to sit down and cool off. We had passed many a great panaderias (bakeries) on the way there but didn't get a hankering for a pastry until we were at the park. Of course, there were no simple Colombian bakeries to be found; the area was full of posh sushi and sandwich restaurants. We couldn't believe it, panaderias in Colombian are like Starbucks in New York! So we settled on a piece of sad pound cake from a cafe nearby, and then headed to the Interactive Museum. Alas, another activity for kids we found out not too late, as we read the brochure and discovered that Little Bear wanted to take us a journey through science! We decided we knew enough about how electricity passes through water and we did not need to subject ourselves to that humility again. We did confirm what I had told Molly earlier about the water being drinkable in Medellin when a lady who worked at the museum accosted us when she saw the huge gallon-sized water jug Molly was carrying around. "Why are you carrying around that bottled water?" she asked us. "Don't you know Medellin has the second-best water in the world?!" Ok, well, I was unaware. We'll add that to the list of Colombia's 'second-best' awards, along with Colombia's Taganga being the world's second's most beautiful beach. Go Colombia and their runner-up bragging rights!