Foodspotting: the app for me

For any of you who know me, I love taking pictures of food. Maybe it's because I've lived out of the US for a few years now, or maybe it's because I'm a woman and all of us ladies know around your period there's nothing you want to do morethan eat anything you can get your hands on. But really, I've come to appreciate even the most basic food, just because of my lack of ethnically diverse dishes here in Colombia. When I went back to the US a year ago, I took a picture of my first American meal in 8 months; an Au Bon Pain sandwich in the airport.

So when I found this foodspotting app, I knew it was exactly what I needed! Voted one of the most popular apps at this year's SXSW conference in Austin, it basically combines Yelp and Foursquare, allowing people to easily rate not just restaurants, but particular dishes in a flash. If you're out and about and not sure where to eat, just open the app and you can see rated dishes closest to your location. Now unfortunately for me, about half of the photos I take are of dishes I or friends and family make personally, so this app isn't useful then. But I'm sure there is a recipe-type app out there that can serve these purposes.

For now, I'll just leave you with the latest food-porn photo I've taken, my dinner this evening. I came home from work to a lovely soup (that was more pasta and veggies with little broth, but scrum none the less!) and fresh passionfruit juice. Having a man with dinner ready when I get home is nice!

sorry, quality ain't that great, but of course, you can see more pictures of my food diaries here (no FB photo album is complete with food photos!)

The Jardin at the end of the world

This weekend was a long weekend in Colombia ("puente" as they call them here), with Monday being a holiday because of San Jose - what this San Jose did, I can't be sure of, since there are so many Catholic saints with their own holidays it's hard to keep track, even after 2 years living here. Colombians themselves won't be able to tell you what the holiday is for. But seeing as I still hadn't taken advantage of any of the 15-something puentes that we get in Colombia every year, I decided I better start with the pueblos, or little towns, outside of Medellin, still within the state of Antioquia. So Giovanni and I headed off Saturday morning to Jardin, a small pueblo of 14,000 people to the south-west of Medellin. What should have been a 3-hour journey took us 5 hours by bus, with a more than hour-long traffic jam just getting out of Medellin and past the next town. Then after it got dark (we left at 4 p.m.) we met another line of cars on the highway wrapped around the mountains. But it was nice to get away, even if it was just for 2 nights.

Jardin was nice, similar to mostly all pueblos you find around Colombia, or any other Latin American country for that matter (not trying to steroetype here, promise!). But really, the impossibly tall mountains reminded me of the country's most touristy coffee town Salento, the windy roads lined with plantain and coffee crops could have been mistaken for Costa Rican highways, and the town center and church, with its typical all-reigning presence, basically combined my thoughts of Santa Fe de Antioquia, Cartagena, and Guatape, Colombia. And like all typical Colombian towns, there wasn't a hell of a lot to do. We could tell most people were from Medellin, with their 50-person families, and finca (country-home/farm) attire, and kids kept coming up to us asking if we were from there ("yes, and her most of all," Giovanni would respond).

At the top of the mountain during our hike

We enjoyed a relaxed, if not lazy two days in the southern-most town in Antioquia. Both mornings consisted of walking around the plaza center, looking for a good "tinto" (black coffee), breakfast, and checking out who was still drunk from the night before. Because we were out in nature and I really was getting high off of the natural air, on Sunday Giovanni and I wandered out of the center and hiked up cow-prodded land, to reach a peak filled with coffee and plantain plants. The view was spectacular, with the center of Jardin laying below us and making us wonder how and WHY the heck did anyone ever think to build such a random if not insignificant town smack dab in the middle of these mountains. After that we took in some more exhilarating fresh air with some frisbee playing, filmed some boys doing tricks in the makeshift bike park, and went back to town to do what we do best on vacation, eat and people-watch.

My trout dinner, with a baked rainbow trout with veggies, plantain, arepa, french fries, and pickled salad.

Gio wasn't full after his trout dinner, he asked for another portion of "patacon" (plantain)

Luckily the bus ride back was smooth sailing, and we got back home around lunch time. We came back with some local strawberry jam, wine made from coffee beans, 20 bug bites (just me) and a pair of beaded earrings (just me again). It was all good fun, now back to worky work, since it's not a holiday for anyone else

A lesson in Colombian banks

The other day I was having my weekly English lesson with my eye doctor where we talk about a variety of topics, from politics and the presidential elections to his love life and being single. I enjoy these classes, as they feel more like a conversation than an actual lesson. I point out his errors in the past tense and help out with new vocabulary, but Martin just loves to talk so the class is pretty easy and requires little-to-no preparation. On Tuesday we started talking about loans, mortgages and banks. I had heard before how the banks were basically thieves, charging you for every little action you wanted to take, but I still can't get over it. Here's an overview:

Let's start with banks: Since I'm getting a cedula (social security-like number) here I need to open a bank account. I went to Bancolombia (the most recognized bank in the country, not just for its expansive selection of ATMs all over the country, but also for storing away drug traffickers' money without blinking) to find out about how I could go about opening up a bank account. The man proceeded to tell me that the monthly management fee for a savings account is 9,000 pesos (about $5) and that includes 4 withdrawals with my ATM card per month. After those 4 times, I would be charged another $2 or so every time I wanted to take out money. Just to have the account I would be charged $60 a year! What about a checking account? A few bucks more to "manage" the account and no withdrawals included. And then there's the requirements. For a savings account I need to get a letter from my work that details how much money. They didn't tell me what the minimum salary was, but what seems absurd is that you need a legitimate salaried job to have a bank account. What about the drug traffickers? Do they get a letter from the DEA?

Let's move on to mortgages/loans: My eye doctor told me the story about a friend of his. She wanted to make the big move of buying an apartment that cost about $100,000 (I'll try to translate the costs to dollars here). She went to the bank and she took out a 15-year mortgage where she will pay $1,500 per month over 15 years. If we multiply months x years we find that this woman will end up paying $220,000. That is over 100% interest! This is just absurd. This woman will have paid off her house after 5 and a half years and will be paying pure interest for the rest of the 9.5 years! Martin explained to me that the idea is that after 15 years the house will be worth that price and more. When I asked him how he paid for his car, he told me he saved up and just bought it in cash. Wow. I feel like credit is just so ingrained in American culture.

With this information, it's obvious why Colombia was barely affected by the economic crisis to the extent that the United States was. The banks will never go bankrupt! They make way too much money. And they don't just give out loans, they make you pay for it (literally)! No wonder people don't have bank accounts here and just hide their money under their mattresses.