Una semana...

Limey

Things are looking up since I last wrote. Mainly because we discovered motocarros! Indigenous to Soledad (they don't even cross into Barranquilla, probably because calle 30 is a crazy mess), these motorcycles with carts attached to the back of them are everywhere. I would say the main roads are trafficked by 40% diesel trucks, 30% motocarros and 30% other. The smoke spewing trucks are a lot bigger than the open air motocarros, and thus make for an interesting passenger experience: picture, for example, us three obvious girls packed into a little yellow shell attached to a motorcycle, breathing black smoke as we speed down cratered dirt roads against oncoming traffic! It's really fun.

Speeding by a hourse drawn carriage

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, there is a dog walking around who wears a necklace of limes. I know that sounds weird, but that's what it is. I'll try to take a picture of him as proof. We live in an oasis from the surrounding industrial park, in what seems to be a filled in swamp. On an income scale of 1-6 (that's how Colombia stratifies its society economically, with 6 being the richest), we are now living in "2" land, with a gate surrounding us to keep out "1". Honestly, I'd rather live outside of the gate. It's kind of boring in here! And our neighbors are a little nosey and really want to cook and clean for us. The asphalt in our conjunto is covered in flattened (four legged-phew!) frogs and policía muerta (speed bumps). There are also white snakes AND an alligator factory down the street (this I must investigate). The other night, I woke up to a foul smell. Who's been to Trinidad? Do you remember the smell that invades the car for a few minutes as you drive down the highway into town, by Sea Lots? THAT smell! So, that's too bad. Luckily, it seems to be a fleeting night visitor. During the day, the electric plant sometimes spews black smoke. At two o'clock on Wednesdays there is an evacuation drill. We are investigating possible health concerns and will be sure to move as soon as possible!

Villa Sofia, my lovely new neighborhood!

Work is the best possible situation and we've been welcomed very kindly: everyday, we're with the full-time professors here to develop a good curriculum (school was supposed to start this week, but it didn't for various reasons), and in the morning we hang out with María Inés, or "La Doctora", our jefa. Her father was a school-mate of Gabo (Gabriel García Márquez)! He has all of the first additions of GGM's books and is mentioned in his autobiography. María Inés said she'll introduce me to him.

Meanwhile, she's introduced us to everybody at this school. In her own words, we are adornments that she thinks will attract more people to learn English, so she kind of parades us around. We all pretend we don't speak any Spanish, which is especially funny in Marcela's case. Marcela is Panamanian-Salvadoran-American, and her "American accent" in Spanish is grosero ("Owh-laa"). But it seems to work...the only strange outcome is that for some reason some people may think we are Brazilian. Ha. I really truly don't know how that one got started.

Ok, I have to stop, because someone is talking to me and they don't care that I'm typing, so I guess I'll stop ;)

Yes, this is yet another view from my window

Me Remembering Stuff

My new view

Alert...I wrote this the other night when I was really bored, when I had nothing to do but to watch the guys outside of my window playing barefoot football and listen to the electricity tower humming by my building!

Upon arriving at my new house in Soledad, I want to take a moment to reflect on the many places I’ve lived in my life. Where you live matters! At least it does to me.

I never lived here but I know some people who did :)

Family houses: Imnim St, Leonard Ave, Nashawena Pk and Sparks St. A child gets to know a house differently than a grown-up. With the exception of Sparks St., I knew all of these houses as a child, and took full advantage of them. I can remember the smell of the stuffed corners of the closets of Leonard Ave and the feel of the edges of the staircase steps better than I can remember what the living room looked like. Imnim St. was mom and dad’s cavernous brick room with the fish tank glowing next to the bed, and Nashawena Park...I know that house intimately, even down to what the insides of the backyard pebbles look like.

Outdoor Showers are a Must

On Commonwealth Ave, by Washington St., I shared my first apartment (dirty, cramped) with 5-8 people. Sometimes I would wake up to the aftermath of a party I didn’t even know had happened!

Alan Place, where I lived the summer after college, was good for spying on “Big Red”, the androgynous drug dealer who hid his/her goods in a quickly decaying car outside of the kitchen window. My pet plant, Delicate, fell off of the second floor balcony (which was filled with old, beer and rain stained couches), but is flourishing now in Cambridge, 5 years and 4 cross-country trips later.

Delicate is a happy plant (sometimes)

I lived for 2 months in a 5x5 ft. tin cabana in the outback of Belize. It was once cleaned by a colony of ants who were relocating and ate everything in their path as they moved.

In Baton Rouge, I lived with 50 City Year volunteers in a weird gated apartment complex with a swimming pool. At 6pm every day, we could enjoy the YMCA’s broadcast of their circuit training excersize class two buildings down. One building down, Anderson’s dumpster emitted rotting meat oders. Across Government street were abandonded buildings and broken glass, but beyond them was a quite, green neighborhood and a golf course where I went running and sometimes hung out by this tree I found. Once, I went beyond the golf course and found myself surrounded by horses.

Carpets, AC and sofas in Baton Rouge

No space at UWI

The dorm I lived in at the University of the West Indies required its inhabitants to suffer an initiation. Because of this process, I went by the name “Butch” during my two semesters on hall. My neighbors were called things like “Poom Poom” and “Hookah”. I also lived up on the hill in San Juan with Mrs. Sutton and her son Charles on Campo St. I could walk to my band Pamberi in 5 minutes. Mrs. Sutton left me a breakfast every morning, varying from delicious bake and accra to a crust of dried bread. At night, we sometimes had a dinner of just watercest leaves, and we couldn’t eat the stems because Mrs. Sutton thought they were bad for you. I helped out around the house by cutting the lawn with a machette, and I became familiar with the neighbors, including Crazy the soca singer and a homeless man who hung out in an empty field nearby. I used to run down the hill at the San Juan savanna, and on the way, there was a man who stood outside of a certain house, all day every day. The story I heard was that his wife had replaced him with another man long ago, and ever since then he stood outside of her house. One day he was gone, though.

San Juan, at Mrs. Sutton's house

Later, I lived with Nellie and her daughter’s family in Diego Martin. When Sarah and Jamie were visiting me, we did yoga in the dog-poopy yard. Once, when I was taking a nap, all of the flying insects in my room lost their wings and I woke up covered in them, and later found the little wormy wingless insects under my mattress.

In Oakland, I lived in a wonderful house on Opal street with two girls from California. We had a huge back yard with an avocado and two plum trees, as well as an abandoned water tower. We had BBQs weekly with the things grown in that yard, and we biked to the lake on Saturdays to enjoy the farmer’s market. Most days, we sat on the front porch, drinking coffee and watching the guys at the lumber yard and in November, we voted across the street at the blind person center.

Oakland from E.28th

Then I moved to E 28th St, where I had a big square apartment all to myself. The place was defined by its windows, which covered many of my walls. I never really moved in there, so I always felt like every noise I made echoed very loudly. My downstairs neighbor played djembe and had a BBQ pit, which smoked into my window as I watched the sun setting over the Oakland skyline. I could still walk to the farmer’s market by the lake, and I lived near to Uma’s family, so I often went over there for Bhutanese food.

Some Bhutanese Food

I think I've spent enough time in my car and hostels and buses and a tent to put them in here. In El Bolsón, I was very careful to keep the zipper of my tent closed and not to bring food inside. Still, there were always earwigs everywhere. Even though I never moved, my neigborhood always changed. Nevertheless, I because friends with all of them, from the water polo team to the four girls from La plata to the 9 boys from that other Argentine town that I can't remember right now. We often ate dinner together. After the tent, I moved into a beautiful apartment on Riohacha in Buenos Aires. Cira was the widow of an Argentine diplomat. Everyday there I would wake up to toast and marmalade, and then walk outside to Santa Fe, where I eventually developed my useful strategy for walking quickly on crowded Latin American streets.

Papa d'Eau

Then Rio, which I've talked bastante about, and now I’m here in Soledad. Marcela, Elena and I have the third floor of an apartment building in a conjunto...another gated community. I guess it’s a pretty poor neighborhood, if trash-to-ground space ratio is any indication. Our apartment is brand new, white plaster walls and white tile floors, and windows that let a nice breeze in and out. There are two football fields outside of my window, and two bars competing for the sound waves around here.

I guess the point of all of this remembering is to get ready for another uncomfortable living arrangement and remind myself that I can do it! I've gotten too used to my space, to privacy (not that these are bad things)...there are benefits to a less cloistered life, I think :)

Three Days to Go!

I really came to Colombia for the Gold

Right now, the WorldTeach teachers are practicing teaching in front of classes of the richest, best-behaved students in Bogotá. The founder of Volunteer Colombia, WorldTeach´s partner here, is the son of the owner of this very expensive bilingual private school. The students all speak English, and have been approaching me all day with their notebooks, asking, "What did you eat for your Christmas meal?" Well, I was in Chadds Ford eating Pork Chopps, thank you very much! Thanks for reminding me :) They´re really cute.

I don´t have to teach here, because I will be a University teacher. Instead, I´m teaching "American slang" to my co-workers tomorrow...I dread it!

I am finally feeling those little love pangs that I get for countries sometimes. I´ll admit that I have been feeling not a little longing for Rio de Janeiro...that city really effected me! But, Colombia stands a chance, and finally I will be moving to Barranquilla with just 2 of the 40 people I´ve been cooped up with the past 2.5 weeks. Yay!

I went out dancing last weekend, to Andre de Res, a Über-rich parilla-club. The clientel was interesting...I was invited to country-clubs, which I´m not opposed to, but the guy seemed pretty young, and every time I blew him off, he came back a few minutes later, drunker. The next day, we went on a field trip to a salt mine, one of the Maravillas de Colombia. It was pretty amazing: the second layer of the mine was now used as a cathedral, a grand, gloomy, underground cathedral, smelling of sulfer (ironic?). There are many chambers, starting with the stations of the cross, and moving onto enourmous rooms with 40 foot cealings, columns blasted out of the rock as they mined through, and relief crosses.

Miner art

The pastures around are green because of the rain, fuzzy cows graze outside of their fences, the grass is fuzzy, too. The town Zapariquá (?), where the mine is, is a little hamlet with plazas surrounded by long, low, white buildings and churches. Very lovely.

We also had a day of Colombian food: milk and egg soup for breakfast, blood sausage for lunch, and tripe soup (mondogo) for dinner.

Sorry you had to see this

Yuck. And...my phone works: 316-225-2008. Just remember, you`re calling Colombia!
Besos!

Super Gold man!

Bogotá

Mmm...beautiful Santa Cruz

After a week spent somewhat enjoyably in a green, flowery, idyllic subburb of Bogotá called Cota, I have finally been let loose in the big city.

I´ve been here before...Molly and I loved Bogotá (but maybe part of my reason had to do with the strange hostel Fatima and the fanny-packed afro man who somehow impressed me there). It is a city of brick, and a city surrounded by rainy mountains. It has been raining unusual, dangerous amounts in Colombia, and the clouds are not sparing Bogotá right now. Every day begins with the nearby sun´s radioactive glare burning through everything (especially my face), but by noon it is raining, and continues raining. It is cold and damp. Do I sound unenthusiastic? I´m not, I´m actually quite happy to be here and there in Cota, and in Colombia in general, but I am sick with the inevitable cold that feels like mold is growing on the inside walls of my body. Because it´s so damp.

Last night, a new friend and I boarded the flota out of Cota, and took it to the end of the line: Portal 80 of TransMilenio, Bogotá´s solution to being a huge city of 9,000,000 without a metro. TransMilenio is a bus, but a bus with it´s own lanes in the middle of the big roads. Raised platforms are sandwiched between the TranMilenio lanes and then the normal road, and are accessable via pedestrian walks. Needless to say, TransMilenio is pretty much as efficient as an elevated train, just without being elevated, and it only costs $1.500,00. I think it´s a great solution!

So we took the TransMilenio to meet my friend (Brittney)´s friends, who turned out to be the dark leather jacket, mullet, boots and earings types. It seems like Bogotá´s style is heavily influences by punk. The majority of the people I see under 45 or so are wearing similar styles: leather, dark leggings, dark mullets or baby mowhawks. Molly and I had a special name for this hair-style: every time we saw one we used to say "Oweeooo!", like the sound they sing in the Duck Tails theme song.

We went to Crepes and Waffles (the expensive chain restaurant that I predict I will be tired of hearing about by tomorrow), and then to drink beers in the "cool, underground" music neighborhood. Two guys were singing American rock music on the stage. I watched them as I waited in line for the bathroom and thought that the guitarist was my old fanny-pack afro man, but when he flicked his excessive hair away from his face I saw that it wasn´t him. Britney´s friends, all photographers and film makers, liked my Brasilian accent, and we went to celebrate my birthday with tequila at someone´s apartment. I met a woman (wearing leapord print tights, 5" heels, and a black leather dress) who designs latex clothing. She offered to let me and Britney stay at her house if we wanted, and even called her sisters to get them to vacate their beds for us.

So, friendliness and leather abound.

Otherwise, I am having a relaxing time learning how to teach English at our little spiritual retreat in Cota. The other volunteers are nice and the location is lovely, and I feel like I´m being prepared for the job ahead: The city of Barranquilla, a Institute of Technology and apartment in Soledad (como el título de un libro famoso......), the biggest carnival outside of Rio, two cool roomates. I am excited!