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.
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