LAKE TITICACA, MACHU PICCHU

After a looooong absence, I finally finish my blog entries about my trip to Peru...more to come on my new adventures in Colombia.

LAKE TITICACA

After staying 3 nights in Arequipa, I boarded a bus to Puno, a port city on lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the Americas, sitting at about 3800 meters above sea level (roughly 11,000 feet or so). The bus ride was about 6 hours, and I knew I wasn't going to spend the night in Puno, so I wanted to arrive early to take advantage of the entire day. So I bought my bus ticket for 7am. Like a good gringa, I arrived at 6:50am. Like good Peruvians, the bus arrived at the station at 7:45am, people were still boarding at 8:30am, and we finally set off at 9am.

I had found the cheapest ticket at only 15 Soles (about $5). And you really get what you pay for.... the bus was really old, smelled, and stopped only once in the middle of the desert so that everyone could get out and relieve themselves. I had to put up with 6 hours next to a fat man who didn't wear deodorant, next to a window that didn't open. Ugh...

But finally I arrived in Puno...to arrive we had to go through some places that were higher than 4000 meters (12,000 feet), and I was starting to get a bad headache... I was also feeling a little woozy from the big slab of chorizo (pig skin?) I had the day before in Arequipa (recommended to me by a good Arequipeño friend). So I just took pictures of Lake Titicaca, chilled out for a while, and headed out that night to Cuzco.

MACHU PICCHU

After yet another overnight bus ride, this time to Cuzco, I met up with Mauricio and Ivan, the two Ecuadorian friends that I had met along the way. We spent the day walking around Cuzco and enjoying the sites, visiting old ruins, spending too much money on all the touristy stuff...

Then we went to Machu Picchu. It's a rather complicated process to arrive in Machu Picchu. The thing is, there's really only 1 way to arrive there, and that's by train. And the train company is a monopoly because it has the rights to the land where the tracks lie, and won't allow for a road to be built. And when you arrive you don't even arrive at the base of Machu Picchu, but rather the city at the bottom of the mountain called Aguas Calientes. From there you have to either walk or take a bus up to the base of Machu Picchu.

The three of us finally arrive in Aguas Calientes, with almost no money, hoping to use an ATM to get some cash to pay the $40 entrance fee. BAD IDEA TO RELY ON ATMS IN LATIN AMERICA. There was only 1 ATM in Aguas Calientes and it didn't work... So we piled all of our money from all currencies together and exchanged it for Soles, giving us just enough money to pay our entrance fees (this of course meant that we had no money for food, so we didn't really eat for lunch).

Yet we made it up to Machu Picchu, and WOW......an amazing city....I think pictures would be a better description right about now


































After that it was just a quick 21 hour bus ride back to Lima through the thickest, windiest parts of the Andes mountains...then by plane back to Bogota.....

NASCA, AREQUIPA, EARTHQUAKES AND STRIKES, OH MY!

NASCA


After staying only about 8 hours in Lima, I hopped another bus to Nasca, about a 7 hour bus ride from the capital. It was another overnight bus trip, one of 4 I had been on that week. It is always difficult to sleep well on overnight bus rides because the seats aren´t comfortable and the bus is always stopping to pick up and drop off passengers. But this time we had another, unexpected difficulty. At about 4am I was jerked awake when the bus drove off the highway and almost crashed. The bus came to a stop, and for another minute or so it continued to rock back and forth. Still half asleep, I wasn´t sure what was going on, and the first thing that passed through my mind was ¨crazy peruvian bus driver fell asleep at the wheel.¨ The bus set off again and I immediately fell asleep.


Later that day, while in Nasca I was reading the news at an internet cafe and something caught my eye. ¨Earthquake rattles southern Peru.¨ And I thought to myself...hmmm I´M in Southern Peru... I quickly realized that our little ordeal the night before was the result of that 6.0 earthquake. It hit pretty hard near Arequipa, and was felt all the way downt to the Chilean border.

So I arrive in Nasca, in the company of a Dutch girl that I met at the bus station in Lima. We both wanted to go in an airplane to see that Nasca lines, but after finding out that it cost $80 I decided that I would be content with taking a 3 soles ($1) bus ride to a lookout point where I would be able to see two of the figures. The Dutch girl decided to take the plane, and that´s the last we saw of each other. The lookout point was located in the middle of nowhere in the desert. Seriously it was just one long open road with desert on either side, mountains in the distance, and a small tower smack dab in the middle of it all. I was happy that I saved $79, because the 2 figures I saw were clear enough that I was satisfied.

I chilled out in Nasca for the rest of the day as I waited for my bus to Arequipa. I planned to take another overnight bus to Arequipa, but the following day all of south Peru was going to be striking against the government and they planned to close the highways at midnight. It´s about 8-9 hours from Nasca to Arequipa, so I got ont he 4pm bus, finally arriving in Arequipa at 1am.


AREQUIPA

This city is BEAUTIFUL. They call it the ¨white city¨because of the structure, everything made in stone and much of it being white. After Lima which has over 8 million people, Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, yet has less than 1 million inhabitants. It is very calm, and besides the cold winter nights, during the day the weather is amazing, probably somewhere between 70-80F.

Because I arrived at 1am and it had been 4 days since I slept in a bed, when I got to the hostel I completely crashed, and besides waking up briefly because of a slight aftershock in the middle of the night, I didn´t get out of bed until almost noon the next day. I was awoken by protesters banging on the doors and windows as they passed through the streets. Not wanting to miss such a cultural experience, I quickly headed to La Plaza de Armas and watched as hundreds of people marched around the plaza yelling and demanding a new president. They were protesting against the government because the cost of living has doubled in the past few years and wages haven´t gone up at all, yet the people in power seem to get richer and richer. I watched as fights broke out and fires were started. It was chaos. And like a good tourist, I enjoyed watching this while having lunch on a nearby balcony.

Arequipa is my ¨rest stop¨ if you will. I´ve already been here 2 nights and I plan to stay one more night before I head to Puno, a port on Lake Titicaca, tomorrow. From there I will take an overnight train to Cuzco and hopefully be able to make it to Machu Picchu. There have been protests and riots in Cuzco as well, with many of the streets closing, blocking the way to the sacred Inca ruins. Machu Picchu is my ultimate goal, so I have my fingers crossed....

LEAVING ECUADOR AND ENTERING PERU

CROSSING THE PERUVIAN BORDER

Tumbes! Tumbes! Migracion! Migracion! Taxis! Taxis! Cally and I had just arrived in Huaquillas, a border city on the Ecuadorian side of the Ecuador/Peru border. We'd just spent 17 hours on a bus ride that should have only taken 12 hours. Because the Quito soccer team just won La Copa Libertadores, the town has been chaotic for days, and the bus ended up leaving the capital 3 hours late because of traffic. Then at 2:30am we were stopped by the police in the middle of nowhere so they could check the bus for drugs. A few hours later one of our tires popped, which put us back even further. We finally reached the border at 1:30pm, well past our anticipated 8am arrival time. There went our plan for reaching Pacasmayo, which would have been another 8 hour busride down the Peruvian coast to where Cally had friends running a marathon.

So we're in Huaquillas, and quickly we see that this is not the opportune place for 2 blonde gringas to be chilling out. Vendors were pulling us this way and that to sell their products and offering us rides to Peruvian immigration (which is located kilometers from the border, don't ask me why). We were a wee bit uncomfortable in Huaquillas, but luckily we were traveling with Ivan and Marcelo, two Quiteños that we met on the trip. Even so, we still stuck out like a sore thumb, even with two Ecuadorians at our side. We later read that the border crossing between Huaquillas (Ecuadorian side) and Tumbes (Peruvian side) is the most dangerous border crossing in South America.


MANCORA

Since we weren't going to make it down to Pacasmayo, we decided to continue with Ivan and Marcelo to a town called Máncora just 2 hours down the coast. A beautiful beach town situated in an ideal part of northern Peru, it is a hotspot for tourists. It is always summer in Máncora. It is paradise. For a mere 15 soles ($5) we had a private hotel room with a bathroom, tv, and warm water (halleluja!).

While Cally hiked a nearby hill, I spent my day on the beach. There I ate the best ceviche I've ever had. Squid...octopus...mmm yummy. The city is beautiful, yet at one point we looked around and realized that there were sooooo many people of gringo/european origin. After 6 months living in South America, this struck us as weird.


BUS RIDE FROM MANCORA TO LIMA

At 6pm Sunday evening Cally, Ivan, Marcelo and I boarded a bus headed to Lima. We chose the cheapest option for 65 soles ($23). After a while into the trip, we realized that the cheapest option may not always be the best option. Once again, a trip that was supposed to last 17 hours turned into 20 hours because of easily avoidable occurences. We were told by 3 separate people from the agency that we would stop for dinner, so of course I didn't have anything to eat before we set off. But apparently the dinner plans were a lie, so I was super hungry for most of the trip. However, instead of making one stop to eat, we made about 300 stops to pick up travelers on the side of the road. The bus seriously stopped every 10-15 minutes. This started to annoy many of the passengers, and after a while every time we stopped they began to pound on the windows yelling "vamos! vamos!" Being a heavy sleeper, I hardly realized that we were stopping so often, but you can bet that I woke up every time the passengers began to bang the windows en masse. As a grown adult, banging windows never occurred to me as an appropriate response to anything.

At 7am, one of the passengers decided it would be a great idea to stand up with his Bible and give a 45 minute sermon about how we will all go to hell if we continue to sin. Among talking about adultery, homosexuality, and use of contraceptives, he also said that if a woman is married she should never invite her friends over because they will want to sleep with her husband. Kudos to him for having strong ideas, but good lord 7am? He was followed by a magician and a nutritionist. In the end we had to listen to crazy vendors for a good 4 hours straight.

Despite what was happening inside the bus, what was going out outside was incredible. The luscious, green, curvy, mountainous terrain eventually turned into flat, brown, desert. As we made our way further and further south, the temperature began to drop slightly as this part of the world is currently in the dead of winter. The bus ride followed the Pacific coast, so we have been traveling at sea level for quite some time now. It will definitely be much colder when we go back up into the Andes for the rest of our travels.

FINALLY we arrived in Lima at 2pm, a good 20 hours after we set off. We are here at the house of one of Cally's friends, smelly and hungry and not wanting to be sitting. After so much time in buses (over 60 hours now) I realized that my circulation is crap because every once in a while I will lose feeling in my hand for no reason. I'll have to do some exercises before the next bus trip.


NEXT STOP: NAZCA

Tonight at 10:45pm I head even further south, down to Nazca. It is an 8 hour bus ride, so I will arrive in the morning. I will do the rest of this trip solo, leaving Cally in Lima with her friends and her mom who will arrive on Wednesday. So I will arrive in Nazca in the morning, and hopefully be able to catch an overflight to see the famous Nazca lines. Look them up, they're super cool.

So one day in Nazca, then yet another overnight bus trip to Arequipa.

QUITO IN CHAOS

QUITO AND LA COPA LIBERTADORES

After crossing the Ecuadorian border, Cally and I spent 2 days in Otavalo, an indigenous community in the north of Ecuador. Then on Wednesday we made our way down to Quito, just 3 hours in bus from Otavalo. It was perfect timing since Wednesday night Quito played Rio de Janeiro in the championship game of la Copa Libertadores. Definitely the underdog, it was a shock when Quito actually won in penalty kicks. Brazil must not have been expecting it, since the confetti being blown were of Rio colors. They city went crazy, and after the win, everyone went partying in the plaza, so we figured it would be a great "cultural experience" to join them. It was like something out of a movie...drunk people everywhere, jumping on cars, throwing bottles, screaming...

QUITO, A TRANQUIL CITY WITH A MERE 3 MILLION

Quito, although a city of 3 million inhabitants, is only 1/3 the size of Bogotá, which makes it seem very calm for me. It is a very clean city, well-maintained.. The historical center, or the colonial part of the city, is the largest historical center of any latin american country. In the ´70s with the modernization movement many people wanted to tear down the old historical buildings and replace them with newer modern ones. There was much protest and in the end it never happened. However, they succeeded in taking down a few, and it is obvious when you look around and see beautiful colorful cultural buildings from the colonial period next to ugly ´70´s buildings all over.

LA MITAD DEL MUNDO

Today we spent most of our day at La Mitad del Mundo, or The Middle of the World. There you can straddle the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time while standing on the equator. Toilets flushing the opposite ways in the different hemispheres is a myth.

ONTO PERU

Now we are just waiting for our bus to leave in an hour for Huaquillas, a city on the Ecuadorian/Peruvian border. From Quito it will be a 12 hour drive, and we will cross in to Peru sometime tomorrow morning. Every day closer to Machu Picchu.....

Crossing the Colombian/Ecuadorian border

IPIALES ONTO TULCÁN

After 22 hours in a bus ride that took us up mountains, down mountains, around mountains, and into valleys, we finally reached Ipiales, a town that sits a mere 10 minute drive from the Ecuadorian border. During our long trek down Colombia the bus stopped only once in the middle of the day on Sunday so that we could eat lunch. Otherwise it was straight driving from 11pm Saturday night to 8pm Sunday night. The bus ride went from being really really cold at night after the sun set, to really really hot during the day when there was no cloud cover. Because I live in high-altitude Bogotá, sometimes I forget just how close to the equator I live until I enter into the valleys where it is SUPER HOT.
So we were in Ipiales and we trekked over to a super cool cathedral located in a valley over a river, attended Mass, and took a lot of pictures. Above is a picture of the santuary. Many faithful people from around Colombia make pilgrimages to this cathedral, and along the way down into the valley the walls of stone are filled with plaques thanking the virgin for all of the miracles that have happened in her name.

NOW IN ECUADOR

Now we are in Ecuador, in a town called Otavalo about 3 hours from the Colombian border. Although Spanish is spoken in this town, one of the main languages is Quichua, which is an indigenous tongue. People can still be seen walking the streets in traditional clothing, carrying their children or large packs on their backs. Most of these people are fairly short, probably no more than 4ft6in-5ft tall. In the center of the city every day there is a large market where one can buy everything from hand-made sweaters to hand-carved chess sets.

DOLLARS IN ECUADOR

In Ecuador they use the US dollar because it is much more stable than the previous currency, sucres, however the prices are obnoxiously lower than the prices in the US. For example, a 2-hour bus ride from Otavalo to Quito costs only $2, whereas a 2.5-hour bus ride from Minneapolis to Duluth would cost at least $30. A crunch bar in the US costs about $.75 and in Ecuador $.20. Even using this computer in this internet café is only costing me $.01/min. The bills used here are exactly the same as the ones used in the US, but they mint almost all of their own coins. The sackagewea dollar coin is circulated here, but then they have their own 50cent coins, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies with their own images.

CALLY´S BIRTHDAY
Today is Cally´s 25th birthday, by the way. What a way to spend it!!

Tomorrow we head to Quito, about a 2-hour bus ride from here. On the way we will pass ¨la mitad del mundo¨ or the middle of the world (I´m crossing the equator tomorrow).

WE'RE GOING TO PERU IN A BUS

In about an hour Cally and I will be heading out on the roadtrip of our lives. We are making our way down to southern Peru in buses. Our first leg is from Bogotá to Ipiales, a city located on the Colombian/Ecuadorian border. There isn't anything to do in this small town, except see what is supposed to be a super cool cathedral. Our bus leaves at 10:30pm from Bogotá and arrives in Ipiales at 8:30pm tomorrow night....that's right....22 hours. More to follow when we arrive!!!

Tonsillitis?!

Once again I am sick, but this time I have TONSILLITIS! (amigdalitis) Once again bedridden, once again medicated.....

This is like the 6th time I have gotten sick in Bogotá....I hope I can make it through the year without dying!!!

June and 7am don't mix...

OH MY GOODNESS IT'S JUNE AND I STILL HAVE TO GET UP FOR 7AM CLASSES!!!

WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING TO??

LLAMA'AS, LLAMA'AS, LLAMA'AS!

Buying minutes on the street

In Colombia you can have 2 different types of phone plans: pre-paid or post-paid. Post-paid is like having a plan, paying for one month and getting a certain amount of minutes and text messages. But most people my age have a pre-paid plan, where they just buy cards on the street or in stores to recharge their minutes whenever they run out (this is what I have).

However, if you don't have enough money to recharge your card, you can "buy minutes" on the street. Anywhere in Bogotá you can find vendors with cellphones selling minutes to make phone calls. They usually cost between 200-300 pesos per minute (about 12-16 cents).

In front of La Javeriana you can hear the yells every morning..."LLAMADAS LLAMADAS LLAMADAS!" (calls calls calls!) They do this all day every day. I can't imagine having a job like this, but I appreciate the accessibility of this service.

The Earth is shaking.....

First the quakes in China, then here in Colombia, now in Iceland....goes to show how connected we all really are.

LARGE EARTHQUAKE HITS CENTER OF COLOMBIA

EARTHQUAKE AND SHAKY BUILDING STRUCTURES

It was 2:20pm, I was in my pajamas and preparing my lunch. Being a Saturday, I had slept until noon, had no intention of doing anything productive until at least the late afternoon, and wasn't expecting any type of excitement. As I was scooping my pasta-sausage-cheese-corn concoction into my bowl, I started to feel some movement below my feet. "No worries," I thought to myself; our building has a faulty foundation and always moves a little bit when a lot of traffic passes by.

But the trembling of the floor didn't stop. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the door to the kitchen was swinging back and forth, hitting the wall every few seconds. The glasses on the counter were rattling. I could hear voices outside. I looked out the window and saw everything moving back and forth. The ground gave off a deep rumbling noise...."This isn't traffic," I realized, "this is an EARTHQUAKE!"

Now, I've experienced various earthquakes in my life before, including one here in Bogotá, but nothing was like this one. The others lasted just a few seconds, and were over before I realized what was going on. This time, the ground below us shook for nearly a minute, and everyone was racing out of their homes and into the streets. My first reaction was to get below a door frame (thanks Hollywood for the great earthquake emergency lessons), but then I decided that because of the poor structure of our building, it might be a good idea to go outside. After the earthquake was over, our building continued to rock back and forth like a swing.

Shortly afterwards, the news stations announced that the earthquake had a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale, and the epicenter was in the northern part of the state of Meta, which is located south of Bogotá. The closest city to the epicenter was Villavicencio, yet tremors were felt all the way in Medellin and Bucaramanga. The earthquake was felt in all parts of Bogotá, from Bosa in the south to Chia in the north. So far 15 deaths have been reported, and various injuries.


PLATE TECTONICS OF COLOMBIA

Colombia sits on the far northwestern corner of the South American tectonic plate. A small portion of Northern Colombia is cut off by the Caribbean plate, and to the west lies the Nazca plate. Earthquakes are not uncommon in Colombia, but hardly ever does one of any sufficient magnitude hit Bogotá. Pretty neat for someone who grew up in the middle of the strongest tectonic plate on Earth, (the North American plate), where no earthquakes, volcanoes, or mountain forming ever take place.

However, knowing that the structure of my building is crap, and that I live on the 4th floor, if the quake had been any stronger, I would probably have problems getting out. Oh the joys of living on the edge!

Involvement in Rotary, a wee bit tardy.....

After more than 4 months of being in Colombia, Cally and I are finally getting involved with our host Rotarian Clubs. After meeting with them 3 times already and seeing that they are really nice and helpful, we began to wonder what the heck we've been doing these past 120-odd days and why we didn't start doing things with them sooner.

We had our first meeting on Tuesday, May 6, where we attended their gathering and gave a little presentation about ourselves. Then we were invited to celebrate Mothers Day with the family of my host, and today we had our 2nd Mothers day celebration with the whole club. They have been very helpful, especially when I was sick this past week. They were worried about me and offered to bring me to the hospital at any hour of the day, even if it was in the middle of the night. Today at the club's Mothers day celebration one of the mothers gave Cally and me little gifts, saying that she was our "adopted mother" since we are lacking family in this country. How sweet!

A Colombian hospital

I have been sick for over a week now, with some strange icky feeling in my stomach that makes me want to throw up when I eat. Like a good American who has been trained to avoid clinics and hospitals due to incredibly high medical costs, I decided to try and wait out the illness and just hope it went away. Finally on Tuesday I said screw it....I had had enough and it was time to make my first trip to a foreign hospital!

I arrived at the Javeriana's hospital at 10am to a room full of sick people who had been waiting for hours already. It took me close to an hour to just fill out the papers, get myself on the list, and pay for the consult, then they told me it would be another 2 hours before I'd be able to see a doctor.

"Two hours" slowly dragged into three and a half hours, and finally at 2:30pm I had my meeting, with a doctor who looked like she was 20. Probably a recent graduate of the University....

I had to get a blood test, and not until AFTER they had taken my blood did they tell me that I could not leave that area until my test results came back, which would be ANOTHER 2 HOURS. But after I found out that it only cost 30,000 pesos (like $17USD) I was like "Take all the blood you want for that price!!!" (It would have cost me hundreds in the US).

After getting my results back, my doctor put a paper in front of me with random words and numbers on it and proceeded to tell me that I have an infection and that I have to take 2 different types of pills for it. But not really sure where the infection is or where it came from....

-6.5 hours total from arrival to departure
-$35 total for the consultation and the blood test
-a very lacking explanation about what is going on in my stomach

In the US I would have paid a GREAT deal more, but I would have been in and out in 1.5 hours, knowing exactly what was wrong with me.... Oh the joys of learning about the world....

5 DAY GLOBALIZED SLUMBER PARTY IN FARC RED ZONE

TRAVELING WITH 9 WORLDLY WOMEN

So we just had a 5-day weekend because May 1st is Labor Day in Colombia, and May 5th is some saint holiday. So since the 1st fell on a Thursday and the 5th fell on a Monday, they gave us Friday off as well, giving us 5 days of vacation.

Taking advantage of this long weekend, a group of friends and I made our way down to a town called San Agustin, which is located about 10 hours southwest of Bogotá. We were 9 girls, from various countries....4 from the US, 3 from Brazil, 1 Bolivian, and 1 from French Guyana. Our only common language was Spanish, but throughout the trip it was one big mix of Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese, and in general we could all pretty much understand each other, even if it was in one of the languages we don't speak.

In order to arrive in San Agustin, we had to travel through one mountain range of the Andes, into a valley and up into the central Andes mountain range (in Colombia the Andes split into three mountain ranges, and Bogotá is located in the easternmost range). So the weather was changing from cold to hot to cold all the time.

DESIERTO TATACOA

Our first night we stayed in a town called Villa Vieja, which about halfway to San Agustin, and is located close to a desert called Tatacoa. This "desert" didn't really seem like a desert, since it was completely muddy (it rained the day before....but that usually doesn't matter in a desert, right??). So we walked through this "desert" barefooted, passing cacti but at the same time sloshing through the mud..

At one point we passed a tree called "the tree of desires". When you pass the tree of desires you are supposed to take one of the closed leaves from a branch, open it up and make 3 wishes. We all opened our leaves and thought about our three desires. Hopefully they will come true!

As you can see from the pictures, this wasn't any normal desert, and we came out of there with really really dirty feet. The picture above is of one of my Brazilian friends named Edna. Edna started the trek through the "desert" wearing her shoes before she decided to go barefoot, and afterwards her shoes were pretty much ruined.




SAN AGUSTIN

Our second day we continued on our way to San Agustin. In order to get to San Agustin, we had to go through a town called Pitalito, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, is controlled by the FARC. I thought this was pretty cool, and was hoping that I would get to see some guerrillas. And I DID get to see guerrillas (at least I think so). But I think I will refrain from putting details on the internet, it might not be safe......

In San Agustin, which is a town of only about 2000, we met up with two guy friends, one Colombian/Gringo and one Canadian from Quebec. They were familiar with the area and knew people in the town, so we were able to get deals on our hostel and horseback riding.

One of the days we went to an archaeological park with old indigenous ruins. This was pretty cool, but I felt like all the ruins looked pretty much the same. Nevertheless, it was still interesting. This indigenous group must have been obsessed with sex and phallic symbols and giving birth and stuff, because every statue we saw was either in the shape of a penis or was of a woman giving birth.

So in the picture of the ruins you will see two phallic symbols, which are supposed to signify the symbol of life, and in the middle is another character with a recently born child.




The last day there we all went horseback riding. We rented the horses for 4 hours and went riding through the countryside, uphill, downhill, through a river, and to a valley with an amazing view. We started at around 9am and finished at 1pm. The weather wasn't the greatest, it was lightly misting, but it wasn't too bad. But towards the end it was pouring buckets of water and we were very far away from the hostel, so we had to do our best to gallop back as fast as possible while soaking wet. It was my first time ever horseback riding. Very cool, but OH MY GOD MY BODY HURT THE NEXT DAY!








The picture to the left is of the valley we rode to. Pretty sweet huh?







Then on Monday morning we made our way back to Bogota, leaving at 6:30am and arriving close to 6:30pm. Now it's back to my classes, for one more month before my next adventures begin!

Academic Strikes, Changes in my objectives

ACADEMIC STRIKE IN THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

On April 9th, the National University down the street where Cally studies went on strike. I am not sure about the details of the strike, but I know that it started on the 60 year anniversary of the murder of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a revolutionary from the 1940's whose face appears on the 1000 peso (about $.70) bill. I guess this is normal for the National University, which supposedly is full of revolutionaries or something (after seeing the huge painting of Che Guevara's face on a wall in "la plaza Che", I believe it). It is now April 25th and the University is still on strike, so Cally has had a good 2.5 weeks of vacation, while I continue to drag myself out of bed every morning at 6..


CHANGES IN MY ACADEMIC OBJECTIVES

This is my formal way of telling everyone that I will no longer be continuing with the specialization in Conflict Resolution. However, I will be taking other courses in different fields next semester. After nearly 4 months here I have realized that the coursework doesn't really interest me that much. Of course, some classes are interesting, but most of them I find it a chore to attend. My reasoning for taking different courses next year is the following:

1. I don't enjoy many of my classes
2. The diploma I would receive, the specialization, does not exist in the US or Europe, and therefore will not transfer. What will transfer will be the individual classes, so I might as well take classes that intellectually stimulate me.
3. 7am classes 6 days a week really sucks, especially for classes that don't grab my attention.
4. I miss taking language classes. I think this time I will take French.

So next semester I plan to take a few classes from the Conflict Resolution specialization, but also other humanities and language classes.

And that's my ever-so-tardy update for now.

Adventures in ARGENTINA

Lost

On Wednesday, March 19th Little Katy and I made our way from Montevideo down to Argentina to spend a couple of days in Buenos Aires. Our adventures started IMMEDIATELY when we got off the boat and realized that we had lost the little paper which had the address and phone number of our hostel on it. So there we were, at 11:30pm walking around Buenos Aires like two lost tourist fools with our backpacks, trying to figure out where we were supposed to stay. We stopped at 2 internet cafes, hoping to look up the address of the hostel, but for some reason the internet was out in both of them. Shoot. Finally the internet came back on and we were able to find our place...


Touristy stuff in BA

Thursday we got up early and spent the whole day walking around the city. We didn't have a map, so we just walked around hoping we would bump into important things, just kind of deciding along the way which way we should go. We saw the Casa Rosada (Pink House, kind of the equivalent of the White House), the Plaza de Mayo where the mothers of the desaparecidos from the dictatorship in the '70's march every week to demand information about their children who were taken from the government some 32 years ago, we saw soldiers from the Falkland Islands war demanding recognition from the Argentine government, we saw the Rio de la Plata which separates Uruguay from Argentina and flows out into the Atlantic Ocean, we went to Barrio Boca (which is where the soccer team Boca Juniors is from), and we went to the obelisk located on the widest street in the world.


Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

This was definitely an incredible experience, and probably the highlight of our trip to Buenos Aires. Little Katy and I both had classes which covered social issues in Latin America, so this was one of the topics that we studied while at CSS. One of my loves of traveling is being able to be in the places that used to just show up in my homework... We talked with a couple of the mothers, and their stories were heartbreaking. During the dictatorship in the '70's, there was not a lot of freedom of speech, and many who spoke out against the government wound up disappearing, hence the name "desaparecidos" (disappeared). In Argentina alone there were more than 30,000 who disappeared, never to be heard from again. Most of these were college students in their early 20's, just like me and Little Katy. One particular mother we talked with lost her son and his wife in 1976. They were 23, and their only reason for being taken by the government was because they wanted a better world for their two children (at that time 1.5 years and 8 days old). This hit hard because Little Katy and I are 23 and 22, and we too are working for a better world, and can't imagine living in a country which doesn't allow dialogue among its citizens. If this mother's son and his wife were alive today, they would be 55 years old, yet they were taken in their prime, just when their lives were starting... None of the desaparecidos have surfaced since they were taken, and it is suspected that they were killed and dumped far into the ocean. Since 1976 many of these mothers have been marching in the Plaza de Mayo, which is right in front of the Pink House, demanding information on their sons and daughters. However, the number of mothers is diminishing as they are rapidly aging, with most being over 80 years old now. However, every Thursday at 3:30pm a group of mothers and numerous tourists show up to march for a half an hour, all the while yelling "la plaza es de las madres, y no de los cobardes!" ("the plaza is for the mothers and not for the cowards"...I'm assuming the "cowards" are the government workers since the plaza is situated directly in front of the pink house).


A night out on the town

Argentines and Uruguayans are CRAZY when it comes to nightlife. If you show up to a club at midnight you will be bored for the next two hours because it will be pretty much empty. Their nightlife starts between 2-3am, and ends any time between 6-9am. Thursday night we decided to go out with some friends we had met, but they were taking their time getting ready...Little Katy and I were getting impatient because it was already 2:00am and we still hadn't left. We didn't realize until we got to the club that this is ok. We arrived at 2:30am and it was pretty full, but didn't completely fill up until after 3am. It was a good time, lots of rooms with different types of music we could choose to dance to.

Throughout our entire trip we were constantly being approached by Argentine men trying to hit on us, and if we ignored them they would just try to hit on us in English. This got really really annoying and when it happened again at the club Katy and I decided to tell them that we don't speak English. So they asked us where we were from, and, having to think fast, I said the first country that popped into my head; I said we were from Germany. I didn't realize that this was a bad idea until the guy was like "hey!! my friend here is from Cologne!! Wait I'll get him for you!" Realizing that I'd have to defend myself in German if I stayed there, I quickly grabbed Katy's arm and told her we should scram, which was kind of funny because she was talking with someone else at the time and didn't know what was going on...Next time I'll tell them I'm from Slovenia or something (I mean, who's from Slovenia anyway?)


Zombies in the city

When we finally left the club, we walked outside and saw that the sun was already up...in fact it was almost 8am by that point. We returned to our hostel and crashed, only to be woken up at 11 by the hostel worker telling us that we had to check out. The only thing we wanted to do was sleep...but we no longer had a bed...so we walked around Buenos Aires in a daze, like zombies...everything was closed because it was Good Friday, so we just looked for a small patch of grass we could lay down on....we couldn't find one so we ended up going to a little park and sitting on the benches until we saw that in that park the police were apprehending a couple of guys who were doing drugs not too far from us, so we left....


Braving a storm in the Rio de la Plata

Friday evening we boarded our boat back to Montevideo, but we were held up at the port in Buenos Aires because there was a storm traveling through the Rio de la Plata. I had a huge headache at the time, so Katy told me that I should drink water, since I was obviously hungover from the night before. I drank a lot of water, which didn't help, so I went and bought a ham sandwich, which helped me feel better.

We finally left an hour or two after we were supposed to... The first half of the trip was very easy going and smooth, but once we got closer to Montevideo we hit the storm. The boat, which was fairly small, was being thrown this way and that, knocked around by the high winds and torrential waves. And of course here we are in the boat, tired, hungover, and dehydrated. I started to feel sick as the boat begin to go up and down, up and down, up and down, side to side, side to side, side to side, until suddenly, SPLAT! There went the ham sandwich.... And Katy, being the good friend she is, sat there and laughed, because at the same time she was also feeling sick but was being hit on by two workers on the boat. So I'm there vomiting, Katy's laughing and two Uruguayan guys are asking her for her number while we're being tossed every which way in the Rio de la Plata. What an adventure...

Impressions of Argentina

Argentina is Italy. That's really all there is to it. It's full of people with Italian descent. And Buenos Aires is CRAZY. It's like the New York of South America. In fact, the way I see it, Montevideo is like DC and Buenos Aires is like New York...Montevideo being much more laid back and smaller like DC, but then Buenos Aires which never sleeps and has huge buildings and famous monuments, with the same hustle and bustle and fast-paced craziness that New York has. I could definitely go back to that city.....

And now it's back to the early mornings in cold Bogota....

Uruguay

My impressions of Uruguay...

I've been in Uruguay for 5 days now, and here are some of my observations:

-Montevideo is a very low-key city...very calm and quiet.
-It's like some type of mix between Southern Europe and Eastern US. Definitely lacks the typical Latin feel.
-They party LIKE CRAZY! People usually go out to the club around 2am and come back at 6am. You can't find anything going on before midnight.
-There is meat EVERYWHERE. Uruguayans eat more meat per person than any country in the world.
-People from this part of the world like to drink something called "Mate" (pronounced MAW tay). They take some type of plant and crush it up and put it into a little cup, then pour hot water (which they carry around in a big thermos) into the cup and suck it with a long metal straw. It tastes kind of like tea, and looks like this:



Tomorrow, ARGENTINA!

CHIVA! CARLOS VIVES! POLITICAL TRANQUILITY!

Writing now from the airport in Bogota, on my way to Montevideo...

CHIVA

About a week and a half ago I helped to celebrate the birthday of a friend in a CHIVA!!! A Chiva is a big Colombian bus that you can rent with a bunch of people and it takes you through Bogota while everyone inside drinks and dances. Traditionally the Chiva has been used to transport people through the countryside, and it is commonly packed with people...like this:

Dangerous? Hehe...

CARLOS VIVES

This last weekend I went with Cally and a couple of my roommates to a FREE CARLOS VIVES CONCERT in La Plaza de Bolívar (main plaza in Bogota). Carlos Vives, from the Caribbean coast, is a musical god here in Colombia, and is easily one of my favorite musical artists.

You can listen to a sample of his music here: http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=25o3XdgSSjY

POLITICAL TRANQUILITY

Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador resolved their little military dispute. Stop worrying.

Next stop...URUGUAY and ARGENTINA!

Tension in Colombia

As you all probably know already, on Saturday the Colombian military killed a high-ranking FARC official just 1 mile inside the border with Ecuador. This has caused heightened tension in the region. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, have sent thousands of troops to the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian borders with Colombia in an effort to prevent another occurrence from happening in their countries. Chavez states that Colombia violated the sovereignty of Ecuador by using military tactics inside the country without first consulting the Ecuadorian government. Neither Venezuela nor Ecuador have very good control of their borders with Colombia, and as a result there is a lot of movement of FARC forces back and forth over the borders (the FARC usually cross into Venezuela or Ecuador to rest or practice or to simply escape the Colombian military).

Both Ecuador and Venezuela have recalled their ambassadors from Bogotá, with the Venezuelan embassy in Bogotá being completely shut down. Chavez said that if a similar occurrence happens in his country, Venezuela will declare war on Colombia.

I'd like you all to know that I DON'T LIVE ANYWHERE NEAR THE VENEZUELAN OR ECUADORIAN BORDERS. There has been tension between Colombia and Venezuela for years, and war is highly unlikely between the two countries. But if anything does happen, Rotary has a policy to withdraw all scholars studying in any areas considered too dangerous. Rotary keeps a close eye on the political situations in the countries where they have scholars, and if this situation spirals out of control I would have no say in whether I can stay or not; I would be immediately evacuated. Rotary had to evacuate their scholars in Israel and Lebanon a couple of years ago when war broke out in that region, so they know what they're doing.

Ooooh such excitement!

Where's all the Toilet Paper?

In many bathrooms in Colombia, including many at La Javeriana, instead of having a toilet paper dispenser in every stall, there is just one dispenser on the wall by the sinks, and you have to grab enough toilet paper you will need before you go into the stall, otherwise you will be caught empty-handed with your pants down (literally). It's a good idea to figure out the location of the toilet paper dispenser(s) before you go do your business.

I learned this the hard way.

Earthquake!!

So we just had an earthquake here in Bogota. It was quite small, so when I felt it I didn't recognize it as an earthquake, but rather as a quick rumble. This is actually the 4th earthquake I've experienced (others in Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica). Pretty neat!!

Aaaahhhh!!

7am class is inhumane!!!

On a side note, just got my ticket to URUGUAY fo Easter!! Woohoo!

A day without cars

Last thursday was "a day without cars" in Bogota. Once a year the government enforces a ban on driving for one day. The only transportation available on this day is that of buses, the Transmilenio public transit, and taxis. This is the 8th year the Bogota has had a car-free day, which is celebrated under the name "Clean Air Day".

Bogota is ranked in the top 4 cities with dirtiest air in Latin America, right after Mexico City, Santiago de Chile, and Sao Paulo. But one day without all the smog can really make a difference. On this day the air was much cleaner and easier to breathe, as more than 1 million personal cars were kept off the road from 6:30am to 7:30pm. The downside was that it was nearly impossible to catch a cab, and the buses were packed even more than they usually are (and they're usually PACKED!)

Another way that Colombia tries to fight air pollution and heavy traffic is with a system they call "pico y placa". In the pico y placa system, cars with license plates that start with certain numbers are banned from the streets on certain days. For example, on Monday, any car with a license plate that starts with 1, 2, 3, or 4 is not allowed to drive, otherwise they will receive a large fine. On Tuesday it's 5, 6, 7, 8. Wednesday 9, 0, 1, 2. Thursday 3, 4, 5, 6. And so on. This means that every car, bus and taxi is not allowed to drive 2 days a week. This really helps to lessen traffic, as traffic through the very narrow Colombian streets is the worst enemy of any driving Bogotano.

A weekend on the coast

Carnaval

On Saturday we went to the Carnaval parade in Barranquilla. Carnaval is an old tradition that is celebrated right before Lent. The most famous celebration is in Rio in Brazil, but the Barranquilla celebration is the second most famous. People say that "technically" the festivities go from Saturday to Tuesday right before Ash Wednesday, but when talking to more Colombians, they say that the party actually started about a month ago (crazy colombians).

The parade lasted 6 hours, and it was one big party. It was supposed to start at 1, so like everything else Colombian, it started right on time at 2:30. Everwhere people were dancing and drinking, starting in the morning and going on until the wee hours of the next morning.

Carnaval Barranquilla 2008

Common sight during the parade

Even Chavez made an appearance! (ok, not really...)

Shakira

Barranquilla is the hometown of Latina pop-singing goddess Shakira, so Cally and I were pretty excited to be walking the streets that she grew up on. What a cool feeling it is to be in a nightclub dancing a Shakira song in the city where Shakira grew up! Here is a picture of a statue that we found of her.

After seeing the Carnaval parades, the line "en Barranquilla se baila asi" (in Barranquilla it's danced like this) in her song "Hips don't lie", when dancers are parading around with black oil all over their bodies, now makes much more sense.

Yovanis

Yovanis is a 30 year old Barranquillero who works as a waiter. He was very kind to us, not trying to hit on us or ask us to marry him (like many latino men like to do to the gringas that walk down the street), but just genuinely nice. From what we could see, he worked his tail off at that restaurant. But since tipping isn't a common practice in Colombia, it doesn't matter how busy or slow business is; he makes the same no matter what. After talking with him a little he told us how much he works and how much he makes. It turns out that Yovanis, and most other restaurant workers in Colombia, works 16 hours a day, and gets 1 day off every 15 days. At the end of the month, he gets paid $160. After doing the math, we figured out that he makes less than $7/day, which turns out to be less than $0.50/hr. I really wasn't sure how to process that information. I mean, last summer I also worked at a restaurant, and I would make $160 in one day, which means that I made 30 times more money than he does. How is a person supposed to get ahead when he makes less than $7/day??? It's not like he can save as much as possible to go to college someday and study, because it would take him decades to raise enough to pay for just 1 semester, let alone 4 years. Those who say that latin americans are lazy have to take a trip down south and meet somebody like Yovanis. I now understand illegal immigration to the US a little bit more...

Cally, Yovanis, and me

El Totumo Mud Volcano and a whole lot of Italians

On our last day on the coast, we took a tour bus from Cartagena up to El totumo, a small volcano filled with mud. We arrived at about the same time as a group of 100 middle aged Italians, and HOLY COW ITALIANS ARE CRAZY. They were all pushing and shoving to get into the volcano, yelling really loudly at everyone, throwing mud at each other, and chasing everyone around.

We befriended one Italian named Eugenio. Eugenio didn't speak English or Spanish, and we didn't speak Italian, so it was a very interesting conversation. But after a while I realized that I actually do understand Italian, because it's so similar to Spanish. It was pretty cool to know that I understand a language I have never studied, and to know that Eugenio and I could communicate without sharing a common language.

After our mud bath, we were directed to a nearby lagoon to wash up. There were women there who cleaned us, and after pouring buckets of water over my head to the point where I felt like I was drowning, my cleaning woman grabbed at my swimsuit top without any warning and just took it right off and started cleaning it. This took me by surprise because all of a sudden I was topless. My immediate reaction was to be embarrassed, but then I was like "I'm surrounded by 100 Italians...this is probably normal to them." Sure enough, nobody looked at me funny.

...and now it's back to the grindstone...

Carnaval!!!

Greetings from Barranquilla!!! Cally and I arrived in Cartagena Thursday, and yesterday we took a bus ride up the coast to Barranquilla. At the moment we are in an Internet cafe on our way to the Carnaval parade!! Ready for la rrrrrrrrrrrumba!!!! (rumba=party)

The South, the East, and First days of class

The South

Last week I went to visit Cally (the other Rotary scholar here) in the southern part of Bogotá. For all of you Bogotanos, she lives south of el Portal de las Americas. When I tell all of my Colombian friends where she lives, they're all like, "she's living where???!!!" You see, the south is supposed to be the "dangerous" part of town. Everybody warns me about the south, but after going there, I didn't see any reason to fear. Of course, along the way there were many places that looked pretty sketchy, but the neighborhood where Cally lives is amazing. I mean, it's definitely not New York, but rather a very simple, quiet neighborhood. There aren't many cars, the buildings are much smaller than they are in the north, and there are children of all ages playing in the streets.

I didn't feel that my life was in danger while I was in the south. I'm not saying it's not dangerous; the Colombians know better than I do in regard to safe places and dangerous places. But there's a part of me that feels like there is a certain fear between the different social classes in this country. Maybe not a fear, but more like a mutual understanding that they each have their "places" in society, and that it is not common for them to mix amongst each other, unless one side is working for the other. But I guess this can be found in all societies. However, when I was in the south, I felt really comfortable, and I felt like this little neighborhood reflected how most Latin Americans live.

The East

On Saturday I went with Cally, Vane, my professor, and another gringa on a short roadtrip to the east of Bogota, to a small city called Choachi. To get to Choachi, we had to drive the winding streets that go through the eastern portion of the Andes Mountains. The night before, we had gone out dancing and drinking, and that, along with the horrendous road conditions, did not make for a very pleasant drive. The sites we saw along the way were amazing, but my stomach was not too happy to be thrown from side to side for the hour and a half it took to get there.

Upon arrival, we walked around a bit and eventually went to have lunch at a Swiss restaurant. I had no idea what Swiss food was like (except for maybe cheesy), so when I saw "conejo en salsa de vino" I thought to myself, "Bugs Bunny! What are the Swiss thinking?!" You see, "conejo en salsa de vino" means "rabbit in wine sauce". I mean, kudos to the Swiss for being all passive and neutral with pretty much everything, but come on...rabbits?! But, since eating rabbit is evidently a Swiss custom (I'll need my european friends to verify that), I figured that I would order it. Would you believe it tastes like chicken?

On the way back, it was no longer the aguardiente sloshing around in my stomach that bothered me while we made the twists and turns of the road, but rather it was little Peter Cottontail that I was trying to keep down. And then when we were halfway home my professor decided that now would be a good time to tell us that this particular area of Colombia used to have a heavy FARC influence. And when I say "used to", I mean like 3 years ago. At this point only two things went through my mind, "please don't vomit, please don't vomit, please don't vomit," and "my parents would freak if they knew where I was right now."

First days of class

I have now finished my first two days of class. Surprisingly, I was able to drag myself out of bed at 5am both days in order to arrive on time at 7. Even more surprising, I wasn't tired during class, and I was able to pay attention the whole time. However, after these two classes I'm beginning to see just how much of a rough road it will be to keep up with everything, given my strictly-conversational Spanish language abilities. But this is exactly what I signed up for. I knew it would be hard, and that it would take me 3 times longer than the other students to finish my homework, and I'm totally up for this challenge.

Welcome to La Javeriana!

Front of Campus

On Campus

My classmates are very nice and helpful. There are supposed to be 11 or 12 of us, but so far only 8 have shown up. There are 3 foreigners: me, a girl from Russia, and a guy from Spain. Fernando, the Spaniard, has an interesting accent which I find hard to understand. When he speaks, all I hear is, "yo th th th th th th th está th th th th en la televith th th th bien" (for you spanish speakers, you know exactly what i'm talking about). There is also a major in the Colombian army in my class, and it is very interesting to hear him talk about the conflict in Colombia, because he's been in the middle of it all for the past 15 years or so. But enough for today, I dragged my derrière out of bed today at 5am, so it's time for my SIESTA!

Travel Sickness

Ugh. It's that time of the trip...time for my weak, "I-only-eat-food-prepared-in-sterilized-environments" stomach to make that transition into a stomach that can handle random foreign microorganisms. I am sick, and I have been sick since Saturday. As my friend Cally would put it, my stomach feels like a swamp (and you can use your imagination from there). It was so bad Saturday that I couldn't even go out dancing (OH NO!!!)

This happens every time I travel to Latin America, so I'm used to it, but I would prefer to just skip this part and go straight to having a stomach of steel, like most people in lesser developed countries have. The US and Europe are way too darn clean. We worry about germs and microbes so much that we clean, clean, clean, sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, and our bodies are hardly ever exposed to anything that could be potentially harmful. Because of that we do not develop the antibodies to fight random sicknesses that come from less sanitary areas. That's why it is harder for us northerners to adjust to food prepared down south than it is for southerners to go up north.

I'm seriously going to make my children eat dirt for the first 5 years of their lives, so that they never get sick during adulthood.

Congratulations!

I'd just like to congratulate from afar some friends from back home who have just taken that big step into "big-kid world" and decided to get married.

To my friends Andy and Laura, who got engaged last week,

and to Adam and his girlfriend (now fiancé) Natassia, who got engaged yesterday,

CONGRATULATIONS! I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST OF LUCK!

suckers.

I see that right now in Minnesota it is -11F with -25 to -40 windchill (For you foreigners, that's -23C with -32 to -40 windchill).

I'm glad I'm not you right now.

Colombian "Big Dogs"

Colombians eat more hot dogs than gringos eat. When in a restaurant, you can easily find over 10 different types of hot dogs to buy. Traditional dogs (which, by the way, come with ketchup, relish, onions, 1000 island sauce, mayo, and sometimes chips), Mexican dogs, Italian dogs, and many many more. I thought the hot dog was an "American product" but these people have stolen it from us and completely warped it into a full-blown meal.

First trip to the University

Today I took my first trip to La Javeriana, and I must say that I absolutely love this university. It is an incredibly beautiful university, and is quite a bit larger than what I'm used to (20,000 students at La Jave...Scholastica only had 2,000). It's 80 blocks from where I am staying now, which means that I will need roughly 40 minutes to go back and forth from the house to the school.

The director of my program was incredibly welcoming. When Vane and I arrived, he dropped everything and spent the next 4.5 hours showing us around the campus, talking about the university and his studies, and then he treated us to lunch across the street (I wonder if he had any work to do???). He was a big hippie while he studied in the US during the '70s, and he has tought Conflict Resolution classes at universities in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Uppsala, Sweden. I'm very excited for Jan 28, when my classes will finally start.

I know why Colombians are thin.

They dance. Until they are blue in the face. Until all the bottles are empty. Until they can't move anymore. They can do this for 5 hours straight. And what a workout it is! The US should learn something from this. If gringos would just dance we wouldn't have an obesity problem in my country.

...my feet will hurt in the morning.

Day 1

Arrival

Finally in Bogota!! I left my house at 5:30am on Wednesday January 9th, to catch my flight out of Fargo at 8:15am. Because I like to leave everything to the last minute, I was awake all night, packing my things and talking with friends. After a whole day traveling, I finally arrived at 10pm. Last time I came to Bogota 3.5 years ago, I spent almost 2 hours in customs and immigration; this time, no more than 20 minutes. Although it has improved, the Colombian airport is still complete disorder. But it works, so I can't complain.

Vanessa, Juliana, and Juliana's mom Jasmin picked me up, and from there we went to Juli's house and sat up talking until almost 2am. I slept like a baby, and didn't wake up until after 1pm, still fatigued from the long day before. I had my first Colombian breakfast, arepa con cafe, at 1:30pm.

Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzales

As many of you probably know, today was a big day in Colombia, and I'm lucky that I arrived in time to experience it. Today Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzales, two Colombian women who have been in the captivity of the FARC for the last 6 years, were set free. This is HUGE news in Colombia. Every channel is airing footage of this stuff. From Juli's room, we watched live footage of Rojas and Gonzales being set free in the jungle (note to self: don't stray from the beaten path while visiting the jungle), and then on the phone with Chavez thanking him for all his hard work to set them free (probably won't show that in the US), then in Caracas, Venezuela meeting their families for the first time in 6 years. Definitely a touching event. These women were held in captivity in the jungle since December 2001. They slept on hammocks, with chains around the neck every night. Many hope that this is one step closer to freeing Ingrid Betancourt (French-Colombian kidnapped in 2002). I personally feel that it will be years until Betancourt is set free.

Things to remember when in Colombia

1. Speak Spanish: This isn't Europe. It's not easy for a Colombian to switch from his native language to English when a foreigner shows up.

2. Refrain from saying things like "I am American": This confuses the Colombians. In Latin America, "American" means anybody from the western hemisphere. Latin Americans prefer to use the word "gringo" for anybody from the United States.

3. Dance: You're in the south. Shake that culo.

4. Toilet paper goes in the garbage, not the toilet: this one makes sense. I mean, really, when you think about it, why would you put paper into the toilet? Nevertheless, I still have to verbally remind myself every time I go to the bathroom... "in the garbage, in the garbage, in the garbage". I'm successful about 50% of the time.

5. Blondeness: In Spanish, the word for "blonde" is "rubio". In Colombian, the word for blonde is "mono" which is the same word for "monkey" (hmmm I wonder what the Colombians REALLY think of northerners).

6. Never turn down a shot: That's just rude, man.

7. Remember to eat: Ok, so you're used to food processed in the US. US food does not satisfy you. Colombian food is satisfying, and today I had to remind myself to eat dinner. I wasn't hungry; Lunch 8 hours earlier was still holding me over.

8. Time differences: "I'll come over at 3pm" means "I'll start getting ready at 3:30, and hopefully I'll be there by 5:30".

9. Traffic rules: Green means go. Red means go if nobody's looking.

Welcome

Welcome to my Colombian blog! Just got my ticket today...I leave Wednesday Jan 9 at 8:15am from Fargo, ND. Pretty stoked about finally leaving!! More to come after my arrival in Bogota!