New House, New Characters

Two weekends ago I moved into this lovely house in the residential-ish neighborhood of Boston full of trees, parks, and old people. It's only a 10 minute walk to the very center, and still close to my work and all methods of public transportation.

View of the street from our balcony

I found this house a while back when I was planning to get a place with some girlfriends here, but when things fell through I never thought I'd actually live in this place. I came back when a guy I work with told me he was looking for a place too. Though it was only the two of us (the place has 5 bedrooms) we figured why not since we really liked it and I thought I knew some people who were looking. We met with the old woman who owns the house, who also lives on the floor below us, and she is just so sweet and also like any old Latina grandmother should be. She's lived here for 60 years in the same house and it shows. Her living room is full of this old furniture that reminds me of Cuba and it seems that as she accumulated furniture and tchotchkes over the years she just pushed stuff aside to make room for the new additions. Anyways, she's a dear and as a result of a freak accident is nearly blind and so she looks at me with this yearning look pats my hand and tells me that she knew some gringos before and they were real nice and I seem very sweet and nice and so she wants to skip the whole real estate business and let's just do the paperwork ourselves. Excellent idea I say, I find you quite charming as well. So that week my coworker Fredy and I are busy getting all the papers together-well mostly him since he's filling out everything as I don't have a Colombian visa or any type of Colombian social security number. One week after endearing myself to the señora I move into my spacious house and my lovely room sans mattress, sans furniture, but with the most important thing-a built in closet.

the kitchen

my closet!

This house isn't full of as many characters as my last one, but they've still got their own quirky stories, as I've found most people in Medellin do.

First off, the guy I work with who is in charge of the house with me. I first met Fredy back in April when I applied to work at the language center that we both currently work at. I went on a tour of the city at night with the school's English students and met Fredy and his ridiculous British accent. That night all I managed to get from him was that he was adopted by a German couple and lived in England for a few years. The rest of his saga didn't come out until much later. Turns out Fredy got adopted late, when he was 11, and therefore never felt quite German, nor had a great relationship with his adoptive parents. He came back to Medellin at age 18 just for a 3 month holiday, but when things weren't going too smoothly with his parents back in Europe, he made the split decision to stay put in Medellin and hasn't been back since. This was 8 years ago.

Fredy in his Blendex (where we work) attire

My other roommate is la Juana aka Juan Bernardo, a childhood friend of Giovanni's. Juana came to us after a breakup with his girlfriend of 8 years with who he has a 14 month old. He's one of those characters who you never see, except for at 6 o'clock in the morning when after opening the door to let out your boyfriend for work you come back inside to get the bejesus scared out of you by his werewolf impression. He works for a call center speaking English and Spanish and studies at a local university. Apparently he's also in the trial period to be some sort of stoke broker, making a 10% commission on every deal he makes, which start at $25,000.

Juana, in his werewolf phase (i.e. Halloween party)

These are the two most stable individuals. Next we have Kirsten, our kangaroo-loving, all things other-side-of-the-world expert. We weren't sure if Kirsten was going to grace us with her 6 week presence, as she seemed to prefer living in a corner of her boss's apartment outside of the kitchen, but last weekend she took the plunge and joined us. Kirsten has been outside of Oz for a year and a half and as no intention of going back anytime soon. Kirsten came to Medellin the first time in February with her Canadian boyfriend. When things went a bit sour she set off to do the gringo trail in Central America, managing to get stuck along the way at various points, even with this being her second time around. When she got back to Meds she decided it was time to straighten up (well at least a little bit) and fall back into the grueling routine of working for Adriaan, one of the characters from the old house, writing articles and teaching English to an old rich lady who's preparing to go on holiday to Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon.


We're still waiting on roomie #5, a gringo from Chicago. He gets here in a week or so. Character analysis to follow upon his arrival.