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!