Emi's Visit

So my friend Emi who I met while studying abroad with in Argentina, and who I later lived with senior year, came to visit me here in Medellin last week. She was here for a week and I am just not getting a chance to write about it because we did so much, I was overwhelmed! I think the best way to capture our experience is through photos and talk of food:

Starting off, Emi arrived with lots of goodies she brought me and what my mom had shipped to her. Literally half of her suitcase was filled with stuff for me including: peanut butter, tampons, cheese (5 kinds including cottage, brie, and Colby Jack!), yogurt covered raisins, shirts, a pair of socks, a camera case, an external hard drive, among other things. I was bursting with joy like it was Christmas when I saw her pulling out all of this stuff. We immediately broke open the brie and I offered it to my roommates.

After she got settled, I took her to try a typical Colombian arepa de chocolo (corn arepa) with cheese on top. She had a list of fruits that she had to try given to her by her Colombian friends, so we got started right then with a Guanabana juice which she enjoyed. I got a tomate de arbol (tree tomato) juice so she could try, which kind of looks like a tomato, but taste a lot sweeter. On the way back the streets were crowded and I could tell was a bit overwhelmed with all of the hustle and bustle of the city. Even living in DC or Chattanooga, Emi wasn't really used to how crowded it would be. It's hard to have a conversation while walking because you're constantly dodging out of the way of people, food vendors, homeless people lying in the sidewalk, and buses. I live literally right smack dab in the middle of the city, the Times Square of Medellin, and Emi just had to use that walk to take it all in. She got used to it by the end though I think, and really ended up loving Medellin.

The next day we went with my roommate Checho to Guatape, a town a few hours away, where we climbed this hugeeee rock! We stopped and ate lunch first as this awesome place where the chef had studied in France. We shared some amazing crispy crepes filled with eggplant and cheese and brie and ham.

Then we drove to el Peñol, the name of the 5000 ft rock. We climbed the 629 steps, stopping a few times along the way to catch our breath, and got some amazing views at the top. The rock is surrounding by this giant river that has been dammed up creating all of these little rivers, with islands and bridges connecting them. It really was like a little paradise up there. On the way back to Medellin, we stopped and had some warm yuca bread and coffee. Yuca tastes like a potato on the inside but with a bit of a different texture, and it's used the same way as a potato (i.e. to make chips, yuca fries, in soups, etc).

el peñol-that's me jumping in front of it!view from the top of el peñol

Other things we did in Medellin included: climb to the top of a mountain in the middle of the city to catch a great view of the whole city, see a sloth while visiting the botanical gardens, hang out with my roommates giving Emi the chance to keep up her Spanish and introduce her to Medellin slang, witness some blonde American missionaries spread the word of Jesus with a huge cross and banner while walking up and down the streets of the center, buy typical Colombian food and drinks to bring back to her Colombian friends in the U.S., and walk all over this city. I think Emi really enjoyed it here, and that made me really happy.

On her last day she made a Spanish tortilla to thank everyone

Yellow Fever Vaccine

For the past couple of months, I've known that I should get the yellow fever vaccine. I knew it was necessary to enter Panama from Colombia, but I just found out a few days ago that it's necessary to travel from Colombia to Costa Rica as well. For some reason you don't need to have the vaccine if you're coming from the US, which is why in all of the emails to the guides in Costa Rica for the summer, there was no mention of getting vaccinated. I found out the news when my boss in Costa Rica frantically emailed me in all caps letting me know that I needed to go to the Red Cross ASAP to get the shot and that I needed them to put May 16th as the date of the vaccination. Why? Because to enter Costa Rica you need to have had the vaccination at least 10 days prior to your arrival or they won't let you into the country. Well it was already Thursday when she emailed me this, leaving only 8 days before my departure for Costa Rica yikes!

So I enlisted Giovanni's help and we found out we could go to the city's health clinic near the house where they will do it for free. We got there at 2:15 p.m. where they told us that they only did vaccinations from 9-2 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Argh. So we set off for the Red Cross, which was in another part of town. We got there and they told us it cost 50,000 pesos ($20) which sounded like an exorbitant amount to Giovanni, and frankly having gotten used to living off of just 50,000 pesos a week, sounded extreme to me too. But putting it into American perspective, it really wasn't that bad. First I wanted to make sure that the nurse would write the date I wanted on the yellow fever card that goes with my passport and that I have to present when passing through customs. I was prepared with a story that Giovanni and I had concocted about me not knowing about the job until just recently, and then not knowing about the vaccine rule until it was later than 10 days prior, etc. But that wasn't necessary. The nurse asked me when I was traveling and I explained to her my little problem and when I offered maybe she could possibly put May 17th or 18th please oh please, she said no problem, I'll put May 15th. Phew! She explained to me about three times that if they ask me at the airport that I tell them I got the vaccine May 15th, yes indeed May 15th I got it thank you! And I was ready to break out the tears if need be, but the nurse was very cool and I wondered if maybe this wasn't the first time she had bent the rules a bit. Seriously, Colombian people are so nice!

English Class Crushes

Last week I got a new student in my Tuesday/Thursday English class. Yesterday I asked Byron if he goes to college, and he said no. I asked him if he already went, he said no. So then I asked him what he did (he looked university-age) and he said he plays professional soccer. Ah cool who doesn't here in Latin America right? So I asked him which team, not that I really know any of the teams because the team spirit and football/soccer fanaticism in my immediate circle of friends is not strong and Colombia isn't really know in Latin America as having the best teams like Argentina was. He told me he plays for Medellin, and that actually rang a bell. It's one of the biggest teams here in Colombia's second largest city and my Dutch roommate is a big fan. Well the girls in the class had definitely heard of the team and became well interested and started shooting him all of these questions in a flurry of confusing Spanish: if he had ever been recognized on the street, if he lived with other players, when their next game was, etc. He's a sweet guy and I could see he felt a bit uncomfortable so I tried to draw the attention back to the exciting topic of possessive pronouns woo!

While I was leaving the institute that day, the director stopped me and told me about my class on Saturday (Emi was here last weekend and I wanted to spend time with her and I honestly had no energy to get up at 8:30 and go teach English to restless 10-12 year olds for 3 hours on a Saturday morning). Rodolfo took care of my students when I wasn't there. He told me that about 30 minutes into the class, when one of my students, 10 year old Santiago, found out that I wasn't coming in for sure, refused to continue to work and would only do the classwork for me. Rodolfo thinks he has a bit of a crush on me. Lorddddd. He's a sweet kid, but I always thought he was a bit slow and just didn't have it in him to learn English. Some people just have a knack for languages but he's one of my lowest students. Maybe it's like the Friends episode where a student of Ross's tells him he's in love with him and that's why he can't concentrate and does badly on tests. Ross ends up giving the kid an A cause he feels bad. Luckily we don't do grades in my class!

Bad nachos, good wine

Last week marked my first full month in Colombia and I can't believe it's gone by so fast! I only have one month left, which I am honestly very sad about. I've enjoyed volunteering for the amiga joven and writing random articles for Colombia Reports and hanging around with the guys in the apartment. We know have some girls here though! On Thursday a German girl arrived and replaced Patrick who not until Saturday actually. We could all really tell Patrick didn't want to leave, and up until last week he was looking for a different apartment to live in in Medellin. Things with the girlfriend weren't go so well, until last week she all of the sudden showed up and they went off to buy backpacks, hamster cages, and other items for their months-long trek around South America. A hamster cage you ask? Yes that is correct, Patrick feared bringing his guitar from England cause he thought it would be too much to haul around, but the girlfriend's hamster is just something she (and therefore he) couldn't part with. When Giovanni suggested she kill the current hamster and just buy another one when they were settled, she looked appalled and didn't allow him to touch it. What's funny is that as a kid I always wanted a hamster, but when I saw Daniela's beady eyed, white mouse-like hamster, I was immediately turned off. Anyways, Patrick has left us, off to go travel through Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru for a few months with his 18 year old girlfriend who somehow managed to get her passport before she got her social security number and according to him CAN leave the country (okkkk whatever you say). Anyhoo, the German girl, Katarina, will be here for three months at least, working for Adriaan on Colombia Reports. Her English's pretty good, but I don't know if it's good enough to be writing articles in English. Guess we'll see.

Adriaan's Dutch friend has also arrived, so we've got a full house, with 4 boys and 3 girls, and only 3 Colombians. Yes the gringos are infiltrating! She'll be here for a month basically hanging out with Adriaan and doing who knows what.

Besides the arrival of foreign girls, I've been busy volunteering, giving English classes (which have been going well, even my Saturday class with children is getting better), and hanging out with friends here. Giovanni and I went to a free play on Wednesday, that turned out to be quite shit and at the end guilted us into donating money. Throughout the play I didn't know if it was just me and my foreignness that was finding the humor stupid and unamusing, because most of the theater was laughing. But when we left Giovanni shared similar thoughts, which made me feel better and not totally inept at Spanish. Checho had seen the play and when we got home tried to explain the meaning to me, that it was about the everyday life of a nothing Colombian, work, work, work, no breaks, etc. I tried telling him yes in fact, I got all that, I just didn't find the clown piece about a guy falling asleep on the bus and claiming epilepsy when he started dreaming weird things and going crazy on the bus humorous. A few days later, trying to redeem ourselves cultural-wise, Giovanni and I went to see a Colombian film that had been picked to compete in the Cannes Film Festival later this month. I wrote a piece about Wind Journeys for Colombia Reports so I was familiar with the plot. Turns out it's one of those artsy films that has great camera shots and angles (like during one scene when the boy plays a drum it shows the drum beating from the inside), but the shots and scenes go on forever without anyone saying anything. I got that the old man was supposed to be serious and pensive, but after literally 30 straight seconds of him and the boy walking through a field of corn, enough was enough! It had some great scenery of Colombia, full of salt mines in the northeast, indigenous mountain wilderness areas, and hot Caribbean beach areas. First time Giovanni has seen a movie in the movie theater in a year and we choose a crap film. Damn.

The next day I taught English in the morning and then met up with Kirsten, the Australian girl who interns for Colombia Reports, for lunch in the nice area of Medellin. We shared a much needed bottle of white wine and had some Thai appetizers because food was half priced from 12-7 and it was happy hour "all day every day" (kinda defeating the idea of a happy hour, but we were alright with it). We started reminiscing about Mexico, because she studied abroad there in Guadalajara the year before I did, and noticed that they had Nachos on the menu. In hindsight, I realize this was a terrible idea: nachos at a Thai restaurant. It's like ordering fish in Argentina! But we were already halfway through the bottle of wine so we didn't notice our error until it was too late. First of all, the dish arrived on two separate plates, one for the chips, and one for the different condiments, which included guacamole, "sour cream," some meat substance, refried beans, and a salsa that registered as a negative 6 on a scale of 1-10. After a few bites it dawned on me what was missing, CHEESE! Nachos without cheese! It's like a CHEESEburger without cheese, or a grilled cheese without cheese, or or or ... LIFE without cheese! Of course we devoured the entire thing (again, we had the wine), but straight after we left went to a shop and bought ice cream.

All in all it was a good afternoon getting my English language fill, gossiping, and reminiscing about Mexico.

Coffee Land

Last weekend Molly and I went to la Zona Cafetera-the Coffee area of Colombia, about 7 hours south of Medellin. We didn't leave until the afternoon because I had to teach English in the morning and we also had gone out the night before so we were feeling a bit sluggish. By the time we got to Armenia, there were no more buses running to Salento, the pueblito we had to go to. So we spent $10 each instead of the $1.50 bus fare to get there at around 9:30 p.m. We thought it was good that we had called the Plantation House (the hostel we stayed at) ahead of time to advise them, but when we arrived and saw that there were only 2 other people staying in the dorms. We were so tired we immediately went to bed.

if I didn't get enough of it with the weekly trips to the coffee farm in Costa Rica, here's even more!

bamboo forest on hostel owner's land

The next day we got up early, as you do when in a small farm town with roosters crowing at dawn and the sun coming up through the window right next to your bed. We got up and explored the town, which was bustling on a Sunday, very different from Medellin which is dead on Sundays. It seems all the city folk go to towns like Salento. All of the shops were open, food stalls had been set up in the square, (reminded me SLIGHTLY of Marrakech, Morocco, definetly on a smaller scale) and people were everywhere trying to get us to buy peanuts, colored popcorn, and jewelry. We got some fresh squeezed juice in the morning and Molly found a cute cafe with a 100+ year old coffee/espresso machine to get her c!offee fill. Later, we had a yummy lunch of soup, trout with lentils, rice, plaintains, fried cornbread, salad, and guava juice-all for less than $3! Later Molly and I strolled around some more, bought amazing figs stuffed with arequipe (Colombians version of caramel/dulce de leche). So rich and good we each ate 3 in that first date and were on a bit of a sugar high.

don't pineapples grow so strangely

We also went on a tour of the hostel owner's farm. He had just bought a ton of land that had coffee trees, pineapple bushes, bamboo forest, avocado trees, mandarin trees, mint, strawberries, waterfalls, and great views on it. He showed us how he is going to start something no one is doing-sharecropping his coffee plants. He will allow people from outside the country to buy 10-20 plants and those will be their plants. He will pick the berries and do whatever the people want done with their specific 10 trees, whether it be go through the entire process of roasting the coffee and grinding it, or just processing it to it's yellow peanut-like state and then shipping it their way. It's kind of a novel idea, and he seemed very excited about it. While he showed us around he kept yelling out glees of surprise as he discovered a new path or a new addition that was put on the coffee house.

chocolate with cheese!

the lookout point

The next day we did the hike through el Valle del Corcora (the Valley of the Wax Palms). To get to the valley we were told to arrive early to the town square to hop in a jeep for the 45 min/1 hour ride. We had been warned that they tend to stuff people into these Jeep Wrangler sized jeeps but we didn't see how it could be possible to have more than eight. Well we soon found out. Picture a jeep wrangler with the back seats taken out and two benches fitting two people each facing eachother put in on the sides. When we got there, the back was already full, so Molly and I had to squeeze in, with me eventually standing halfway through the ride, and with other people squeezed into the open back area with us, three people on top, and three people in front, for a total of 14 people! Needless to say, Molly and I were ready to start walking when we arrived. The two hour hike to a finca with hummingbirds and hot chocolate with cheese was a muddy and consisted of many river crossings on two branches laid across the river, but we managed. It was Molly's first experience of the traditional chocolate con queso, and she was pleasantly surprised. Then we set off for the hour hike to the 2850 meter lookout point. We were already pretty high up, but the last 20-30 minutes of the hike to the lookout were steep and full of muddy horse tracks and poop. The forest we hiked through was different from any other part of Colombia we had seen, reminding us of forests back home. On the way down we saw the wax palms, 60 meter (about 180 ft) tall trees that dotted the hillside. Just a spectacular sight that I don't think my camera truly did justice to. Just having a view of the mountains, tree, peaks, forests was so impressive, it looked so untouched.

Molly surrounded my palm trees

Molly and I from the lookout point