My third day in Colombia

Yes, I'm procrastinating right now. I should be doing my grad school homework and I plan to do that in just a few minutes, but first I wanted to share what happened today. The bus picked us all up around 9am and today we took a tour of the whole city. Jaime drove us to the top of the mountain range here, which reminded me a lot of what it's like to drive in Puerto Rico...you basically just barrel up or down the road that's only big enough for one vehicle and hope that nobody is doing the same thing going the other way. There is big huge Jesus statue here too, smaller than the one in Brazil, but still quite large. As soon as I have time to add pictures, I'll be sure to show you. It had lights strung all over it so that at night we can still all see it. We drove around and saw the downtown area which is quite beautiful and hilly. It reminded me of San Francisco and Old San Juan, two of my favorite cities. We drove by the zoo which was apparently modeled after the San Diego zoo, so that's sure to be a field trip coming soon. We also stopped at several old churches and statues. The traffic is pretty crazy so far, I can't imagine driving here. We've been able to take a big school bus everywhere and we've been fine as far as safety goes. Many of the new teachers here seem really concerned with that whole issue, but to me, it seems just as safe so far as living in Chicago. Apparently the only people who get kidnapped are ones whose families are connected, if you know what I mean. I'm just a poor teacher, so I only have to worry about petty street crime, which I'm already used to coming from living in a big city. We went to lunch at a really nice place where we had traditional Colombian food, sancocho. They brought soup with yucca in it, and then I thought I was finished, but they brought out a HUGE chicken breast with tostones, rice, and salad. It was entirely too much food for one person, but I'm glad I tried it. Everyone in the restaurant and really all over the city was staring at the big group of gringos walking around together all day. It kind of got old feeling like a tourist, but I guess that I'll learn to deal with it. It's hard not to compare everything to Puerto Rico, but since that's really my only latin american reference, I'll just go ahead and keep doing that. The food seems pretty similar, lots of fried things...empanadas, tostones, and these things called arepas, which don't have a whole lot of taste, but are good nonetheless, kind of like a piece of corn bread.

So, supposedly, the drama with finding apartments has ended. We've seen a million of them, and some people wanted the same ones and kept changing their minds, so it's been weird and overwhelming for some. Luckily, my new roommate Tara is really laid back about it all like I am, so that's a relief. It doesn't look like there will be a repeat of an Alissa situation from Puerto Rico. Lots of the new teachers want to live together, I think they are concerned with safety. But if it were up to me, I'd much prefer to live somewhere with just my two roommates, so we'll see what happens. The apartment that we're taking has a little bar area, four bedrooms, and three bathrooms. Oh, and it also has two balconies and these really charming stained glass windows. It's in a really nice neighborhood and is very close to school and to a gym, grocery store, and mall. I'm excited about it. We'll hopefully be moving in next week, perhaps by Tuesday. I have to go to this place called DAS tomorrow to get all the rest of the paperwork needed to be here, we have to get these ID cards which we need to carry around with us all the time.

Off to work on that paper...