Sometimes, when I´m sitting on the Cooter, amazing thoughts and observations pop through my head!

I write them down in my little book.

¨The things people do in front of their houses:

• sweep
• paint each others nails
• chat
• watch other people
• talk through the gate
  
• chase each other with big sticks

Opportunistic dalmation at the sidewalk meat stand.

Pico in the making! C27B Kr 21B

Red eyes, blue eye shandow.
Wrong-way foot walks, but flaps about when the other leg drags it forward.
Yellow flower tree, no leaves.
Why do football jearseys all say UNICEF?
The Happy Birthday of B´quilla!
Old woman, red dress, toothpaste green house- She is holding onto her beauty.

Write email to Neuza about the thing I read.
Write to Sonja about nasal voices.

Mr. Titty.

The Cooter is fast. The Cooter is slow.

Meat, bakery, fumes.
Music with tac tac of clave.

She was missing out on things, in her solitude, and she knew it. Three years of solitary wandering, and she felt the missing in her life. And here she was living in Soledad, somewhere she didn´t want to stay, thus ensuring at least another year of detachment.

Ah, the green of Calle 57.

A group of 6 men apeaking sign language animatedly in front of tghe 72 market.

Traveling misinformed: interesting or dumb?

2 rocking chairs are still rocking, and the credits of a movie running on a TV. Seen through the front door in Soledad.

A line of blind people walking with hands on each others shoulders, sticks in the other hands...towards the nearby library?

Are poor people more interesting to look at through the window than rich? Why?

Mom!

The man who just sat down behind me smells like laurel leaves. He sings the Colombian salsa songs playing on the radio. The man sitting before was very very dark skinned and sang the champeta.

5 or 6 mangos thrown or dropped in the notch of a dark wet tree- so green they look blue.

They listen to the weirdset music here: ¨there´s a brown girl in the ring, la, lala, lala!¨ How do they chose it? I am constantly surprised. Last night from the football field bar, I heard what sounded like Israeli music.

Mom, Ti Chi, B´quilla, new feeling about here.

A clown got on the bus-a crazy champeta arcy darting bus. And the police came on to check cedulas but they didn´t check mine.

I always want to write about the ridiculous-inconvenient-strange things that come my way throughout the day. When life becomes ordinary (when ¨the ridiculous¨becomes ordinary), I write less. But life hasn´t become any less ridiculous. Really, I have just started enjoying the ridicuous things less, or am becoming them myself.¨

Facinating stuff.

Adios a Seis Meses de Soledad

I'll miss them!

A while ago I asked myself if I'd be able to sustain my traveler's fascination with a place over a longer period of time. My six months on the coast of Colombia has been the test, and I believe that "fascination" has won, although that is not clear from this blog, which I am ignoring inadvertently. I will tell you that, in the past two months, I have experienced long moments of frustration (mostly directed towards myself or my body), but I am feeling very happy and optimistic right now, as I sit on a matress in my new room overlooking a rustling mango tree and the mango-filled lot below.

Yes, we moved from Soledad. It feels a bit like a defeat, but it's a defeat I'll admit to: the pollution, the noise, the rocks being thrown into my room, my body's exhausted defense system are things that I, for one, had grown used to but am happy to be away from. We could have stayed there another 6 months. It would have been fine. But I'm glad we're not. The one thing I'll miss is the bar playing all of my now-favorite tunes. Where will I hear champeta and terapia music now? I guess now we might actually have to go to the bar, instead of passively enjoying it from afar. Or maybe we just need to get a radio.

On our last night sleeping in Soledad, we had to take a $15,000 peso taxi-ride through El Centro from La Troja (yup, still going there). It was 4:30 a.m., and El Centro was waking up from it's seedy night: the Saturday-morning market was materializing as wheel-barrows full of bloody, behooved meat and cilantro were rolled through difficult pot-holes in the dark. I don't think we'll ever have a reason to drive through Centro at 4:30 am again, so I guess I'll say "good-bye" to that image.

The next day I went to Centro to buy glass for my window. It's funny how things are organized here: there is a block of only toilet bowl shops, then a block of wooden furniture, on of porcelain tiles, and one for glass. How does a person chose which negocio to frequent? I just asked a guy selling candy on the sidewalk, and he of course told me I should go to the shop that we stood in front of. They were quite competent and economical, but I had to negotiate my own taxi fare home, because the glass-man couldn't get me a good price. The move itself was a sort of strange experience, in its simplicity. We haven't accumulated much, but we did need help disassembling our beds and that's how we announced our move to the neighbors: tactless and rude, I know. We haven't become close to, and sort of even tried to avoid a few of the neighbors (the one's who we ended up asking for help). Pero, aja. ¿Que puedes hacer? Then we called the taxi company and asked instead for a camioneta with some strong men. I rode in the open-bed truck with our stuff the 60 blocks to our new apartment, as the mattresses bent and threatened to knock motorciclistas off of their bikes. Exhilarating.

Moving Company

And now we are simply here, somewhere different. We walked to a supermarket yesterday, and just bought the few things we needed for breakfast. I never thought about what a luxury that is, but it really is wonderful to shop for food casually, without a meter-long list and enlisting the help of all of the young men to help us carry sloshy bag of water and spiny pineapples. We did buy 4-dozen eggs, though. There's no point in unlearning everything we've found out about life in Soledad. And tomorrow, back to school, where my adorable class of 25 boys will be sitting in the hallway waiting for me at 7:00 am.

The fate of English homework

More about them later :)