Busy busy busy!!

Almost a week since I last blogged.  Been so busy!!

Wednesday was independence day and there was a huge festival going on aroound La Candelaria which I went to with Chris, Alice and the 2 Americans we had met the night before at the hostel (Josh and Isaac). To get in you had to be searched and there were labrador sniffer dogs everywhere (very cute and seemed to be enjoying the festival as much ass everyone else!)The parade was fun, but went on quite a while.  I think every military person and vehicle in Colombia must have been there.  We tried quite a few authentic Colombian snacks whilst we there - most are cheesy and/or deep fried.  We have also been seeing lots of dogs dressed up in ridiculous outfits, and they were all out in their best clothes for the parade!  They must feel the cold as much as the people - they wear ridiculously big coats and scalves, whilst we all walk round in t-shirts.  They also wear face masks if they have a cold which is quite considerate, but weird!

Afterwards we went to the Colombian version of Starbucks, except it is a fraction of the price and uses very good local coffee.

We then went back to the hostel to wait for our life for luch, which we though asnt coming because they were so late.  The lady we were going to sent her husband (who we have never met) and son (who we teach) and an attempt at a note explaining that we need to go with her husband to the parking, and that she had also sent her son so as we knew it was safe to go with him.  Her husband does not speak English so it was quite interesting.

We were talking about the night before's attempt to find a tejo court, and the husband stopped on the way to show us one.  The lady whose house we had gone to makes crafts so she spent ages showing us those.  Then, very bizarrely, the husband put the car away - which is basically in the dining room!!  All there is separating th garage from teh rest of the downstairs living area is a step.  I tried to get a picture but couldn't do it discretely and thought it would be a bit rude to make it obvious.

We finally got the lunch at 5pm!  And it was quite good - meatballs, rice, deep fried banana, salad and a onion and tomato relish type thing.  Lunch took so long because she insisted in talking in English, and had to stop cooking every time she spoke.  They also offered to take us to play tejo that night and we assked if Josh and Isaac could come.  We rang the hostel and gave them the address of the house and they were going to get a taxi and meet us, but they thuoght they were meeting us at the tejo court so when the taxi tried to leave them in a residencial area they refused to get out and made teh taxi take them back.  Which was quite an adventure by all accounts!  When they didn't turn up we started to get quite worried and so did the family we were with, but then they rang once they were back at the hostel.  They din't want to come out again (which was fair enough as it was quite a long way) so we went to play tejo without them.

Tejo was fun.  Its basically ten pin bowling, but instead of skittles you have packets of gun powder and throw a 2kg weight at them.  You get different amounts of points depending on where the weight (or tejo) lands:
   1 point - lands inside metal ring
   2 points - gunpowder explodes
   3 points - gun powder explodes and lands inside the ring
   1 point if you get the closest throw three times in a row

The winning team is the first to get 21 points.

Alice and I were on one team with the husband, and Chris was with the lady and her mum (who must have been in her 60s at least and absolutely crazy!)
We had 2 games and my team lost both times - but only just!!  And I scored quite a few points!

It was really funny because if you almost hit a pouch they shout "oooweeee" at the tops of their voices!

At the end we had a mini salsa lesson on the court before they drove us home.


On Thursday we had lunch with another student called Lucy (she is quite old) and her son, Oscar.  He speaks very good English and works for the Chambers of Commerce.  I had a very interesting conversation with him about meat production and the importexport markets!  We had spaghetti bolognese today, which would have probably been quite nice if it was warm, though it was chicken mince which isn't great!  Lucy is an artist and her work was all over the house.  It was very good.


On Friday I was put with another group for my Spanish conversation class - I think you probably learn more in a bigger group.  We didn;t have any lunches planned today so we stayed for the salsa class at the Spanish school.  I was useless!!  Though when you dance with the teacher you become quite a good dancer, so my theory is just to find a very good dance partner and you don't really need to be that good!  He told me I was a natural but pretty sure he just felt sorry for me!

Alice and I went for a manicure and pedicure after the English class - even more surreal experience than the hairdressers!  We had to sit in these massive armchairs on this platform to have our feet done.  And after several attempts of making conversation in Spanish, one of the women asked if I was German, and when I said no but I could speak a little they announced that the women doing my feet was German, and I then got her life history.  In German.  They then convinced us that we needed to but a pair of flip flops to go home in (They were only £1 so can't really complain)  but the only problem was that we had nearly an hours journey on buses to get home.  In rush hour.  And it was raining pretty heavy.  Plus the flip flops were the cheapest, slippiest things you have ever seen.  We were sliding everywhere, and seeing as I already stand out from being blonde and quite a bit taller than everyone (which has its uses when it busy because I can just stand there and Chiris and Alice come and find me!) we were getting lots of stares.  We were in hysterics, and had great fun hopping on and off the buses, and sliding on the metal parts of the walkways.  Then when we got back to the area where the hostel is it was even more interesting!  The streets are almost vertical and the cobbles are slippy in sensible shoes, and have huge puddles of water everywhere that you have to dodge.  It was more like skating home!!

We played darts with a couple from Holland later that night.  They don't speak a word of Spanish and had successfully made it around Colombia, so there is some hope for me!

On Saturday I had a lie in - we have to leave at 7:45am every day and don't get in until around 8pm.  We spend about 4 hours a day either on buses or watiting for buses!

On Saturday morning we went to the military museum, which is just around the corner from the hostel.  It was quite good but not amazing.  They had a lot of guns!  And some quite interesting planes and machinery outside.  We then went to the Museo de Botero.  This had some amazing art.  Botero was famous for painting fat people - some of his stuff was a bit creepy but other pieces were really good.  There were quite  few other good artists and sculptors there as well.

Then we went to Central Meyor - the enormous shopping centre near to where we teach.  I didn't reallyfancy going, but also didn't fancy spending all day in the hostel.  We found a very good waffle and coffee shop though, so it wasn't all bad.  Saturday night we went to see Harry Potter - pretty pointless for me seeing as I haven't read the last few books or seen the films so didn't have a clue what was going on!  Didn't get back and in bed until 1am and we had arranged to go with Laura (the volunteering organiser) to the reserve she works at in teh mountains.  We had to be at the most Northern transmilenio station by 8am, which meant leaving the hostel at 6:30am!!  Alice decided not to come but Chris and I went.

Laura picked us up from the bus station with her friend ho works on a reserve in the south.  We then met the director of the project, who took us all the rest of the way in his 4x4.  We stopped on the way to get breakfast - which was very good.  The roads got narrower and narrower, and ruttier and ruttier until we were just driving down a dirt track.  Then this slowly disappeared and you could barely see a track.  We climbed up the mountains and actually went through the clouds.  I joked that it would be pretty scary to break down up there because the farms ahad even disappeared.  Then the car stalled.  And wouldn't start.  We were all laughing to start with, then staqrted nervosly looking at each other.  After what seemed like ages (but probably wasn't actually tht long) the car started again. Thank goodness!

We were flying all over the car, driving through bog, over boulders.  It was crazy.  Far better than the land rover experience at teh Game Fair!.  Then we had to cross a stream, and go up an almost vertical slope and eventaully made it to a derelict house.  We were more than 3000m above sea level at this point, which is apparently about 3 times higher than Ben Nevis (the highest point in th UK).  Talking and walking was very difficult!

The plan is to renevate the house we had got to in order for students to staty there and do research in teh reserve.  The reserve has a spring located in it and the plan is to build an aqueduct to supply the local area with water.  We could drink the water from one of the ponds that have formed because it was so pure.

The local area has lots of potato farms, but they have to use lots of chemicals which is bad if they want to use the water for drinking.  The land is all on very steep inclines so with the amount of rain they get there is lots of run off into the stream.  So the organisation is trying to get the local farmers to diversify, one idea being with raspberry and blackberry plants which are already growing naturally in the area.  On the way up we had also passed quite a few dairy farms.  The cows looked surprisingly healthy.  The locals we had passed all wear ponchos, and quite a few were on their horses, which also looked healthy.  Several farms had tejo courts in their gardens!

The director of th organisation also said he would be happy for me to go and do some work with them if I ever wanted to in the future.

We left around lunch time and made it back to the hostel around tea time.  We were starving, so picked Alice up and went to the Italian (again).  Their salads are really good, and Alice and I also had a strawberry daiquiri.  We were in bed by 8:30!!

I had some new people in my Spanish class yesterday.  It is better with a few more, but there are still only 4 of us so it isn't too many.

We had lunch with the fashion designer we teach and her sister.  They are originally form the coast near Cartagena, so cooked us traditional cuisine.  It was fish.  I like fish.  But this was a whole fish.  On my plate.  Eyes, lips, tail, fins, everything!  But it was very tasty!  And luckily the bones were really big so easy to pick out.

We tried to teach directions in the lesson.  Though it would be easy - we were wrong!  Can't believe how difficult it can be to learn left, right and straight on.

Today I felt like I was getting nowhere with my Spanish lessons.  Then we had lunch with Daisy.  The starter was amazing - a soup, with broad beans and chicken and things.  Then we had mince, rice, chorizo, avacado, tomatoes and their equivalent of lardens.  This was also good.  Then for desert it was a bowl of melted cheese and jam! very bizarre!  A mouthful was quite nice, but a whole bowl full was far too much!  Then ahd to attempt to teach for 3 hours, travel an hour on buses and still recovering from it now!  Don't think I will be eating for another year!

I'm going to go to bed now.  Hopefully it won't be quite so long before my next post!

And I still need to figure out how to upload some pictures . . .