In case it wasn't obvious, I have decided to stay here, "live" here, until October. Although it is nothing like the original aim of my trip, that is OK, because plans are there to be changed. The map is not the territory, remember?
I have bought a laptop and have persuaded my landlord to install a broadband connection. This gives me the possibility of earning money, and also occupies my days.
I am enrolled in a Spanish Course at the Universidad Nacional, which takes up eight hours a week. It is helpful in filling in the gaps in my grammar knowledge. Unfortunately, in terms of practising, it isn't so useful, because although I am making friends from the class, they seem to prefer to speak English except when the class is actually running. Better to just make friends with Colombians and speak Spanish with them. So I am doing that too :).
The longest that one can stay in Colombia without a visa is 6 months, in any one year: that means I can stay until October 29. I am studying until September 12. Beth's wedding is October 21. So I plan to get a standby flight from Air Madrid and return cheaply in late October. Whether or not this is a permanent return to the UK remains to be seen. It occurs to me that whilst the six months following October are generally grim in the UK, in South America it is summer! So perhaps I will return to continue the trip southwards. Either way, I plan to spend a few weeks in the UK in Oct/Nov, so hopefully will be able to doing some catching up!
Right, I have to go to the DAS office to extend my visa. If they deny me, then I have to leave the country in the next three days, so perhaps plans will change and my next blog post will be written on a steamer travelling up the Amazon into darkest Peru!
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Friday, July 21, 2006
Independence Day
Yesterday, July 21, was Independence Day.
As I stood in the packed streets, taking advantage of being 6 inches taller than anyone else to watch the procession of squadrons of military-looking individuals in various forms of neatly-pressed outfit, I thought, "Hmmm, this isn't much like Brighton."
Living in a foreign city is great. Part of it is living in a foreign language. It adds a level of indirection to everyday life which lends it something of the flavour of a video game. My friend Dominic asked me, "Bogota? What's wrong with Brighton or Bognor?" And although I don't think anything needs to be said about Bognor, regarding Brighton this is a reasonable question. Especially at this time of year, when you are revelling in 35° heatwaves, sunlight until 10pm, and boozing on the beach, while I have daily rain because of the mountains, a monthly cold because of the altitude, and darkness by 6pm every day.
There is a practical element to living here rather than there. The monthly rent for my furnished apartment is £120. A two course lunch round the corner will cost me 80p. In a bar, a bottle of beer will be 35p. (I should mention that if instead you go out in the wealthy northern suburbs, dinner is easily 10 quid, and a pint £2.50). But the real fun of living here is the cultural differences. They keep you on your toes.
If you order tea with milk, they bring you a cup of hot milk with a teabag dumped into it. Hmmm. If you pay for a 8,000 peso meal with a 10,000 peso note, they complain about not having any change and ask if you don't have anything smaller. If you want to call someone from your cellphone who isn't on your network, you go into a small shop where they have bought a cellphone from each network, and use theirs. If you want gum, or water, or a cigarette (just one), you look up and down the street and within one block there will be a man sitting around with a tray, selling these things to you. If you leave your house with shoes in any state other than immaculately shined, you will be hassled continuously to get them cleaned. If you walk along the street looking at anything other than the sidewalk in front of you, you run the serious risk of falling into various potholes, open drain-covers, and the like: every sidewalk is a potential deathtrap.
Homeless people will ask you for money. When you refuse, they will politely desist. When you say that a price in a shop is too high, the shopkeeper will make no attempt to bargain with you or keep you in the shop. When you say, "This liver is horribly overcooked!", the waiter will smile and say, "Si, senor," and not offer to take it away.
You speak Spanish all the time. So does everyone else. Everyone talks about this or that place being dangerous, and it never is, and you wonder if it's just like people thinking London is dangerous, or if actually there is really dangerous stuff going on here, and you just don't see it. On every street corner there is a group of 5 teenagers with khaki uniforms and shaven heads. You don't know whether to be comforted or nervous about this. You never really work out who is the military, who is the police, and where the distinction even lies.
Milk comes in bags, not cartons. Cheese is expensive or horrible, or often both. Apples are expensive, bananas and eggs are super-cheap. Juan Valdez sells gorgeous decaf coffee at 25p a cup, and everyone tells you how expensive the place is. Taxis beep you in the street, just in case you might need a taxi somewhere. Buses stop anywhere and everywhere to pick up and drop off: in between stops, they attempt to break the speed limit before the next stoplight. Instead of route numbers, they have a plaque with some of the places the bus is going propped up in the windscreen, and you have 2 seconds to read the whole thing and flag the bleeder down before it zooms past. Every bus is the pride and joy of the owner, who prefers to spend money putting in speakers that force all the passengers to listen to blaring vallenato music, or red drape curtains across the windscreen, than to actually fix the gearbox.
You must never leave your house without applying sun-cream, and carrying sunglasses, a waterproof coat or umbrella, and a sweater. When the sun is out it can be deadly at this altitude. But five minutes later the clouds have moved in, and without a sweater you are shivering. Then the rain begins, and you remember why you've been carrying this stupid brolly around all day.
Nightclubs play a range of Latin music that you have to dance to in couples. You can ask any girl to dance and they invariably say yes, but that doesn't mean anything. People assume that the reason you are not dancing is stubborness or being boring: they only accept you really can't dance when they see it. Girls passing you in the street look you right in the eyes and smile. But a girl won't kiss you in a club, even tho she's been dancing and flirting with you for the past hour, in case her friends think she's a slut. If you go to a party of wealthy twenty-somethings, chances are that half of them will be wearing metal braces on their teeth. It's de rigueur among those who can afford it. Also de rigueur is for everyone to wear jeans and denim jackets, even tho it must be the worst possible thing to wear, given the climate.
As I stood in the packed streets, taking advantage of being 6 inches taller than anyone else to watch the procession of squadrons of military-looking individuals in various forms of neatly-pressed outfit, I thought, "Hmmm, this isn't much like Brighton."
Living in a foreign city is great. Part of it is living in a foreign language. It adds a level of indirection to everyday life which lends it something of the flavour of a video game. My friend Dominic asked me, "Bogota? What's wrong with Brighton or Bognor?" And although I don't think anything needs to be said about Bognor, regarding Brighton this is a reasonable question. Especially at this time of year, when you are revelling in 35° heatwaves, sunlight until 10pm, and boozing on the beach, while I have daily rain because of the mountains, a monthly cold because of the altitude, and darkness by 6pm every day.
There is a practical element to living here rather than there. The monthly rent for my furnished apartment is £120. A two course lunch round the corner will cost me 80p. In a bar, a bottle of beer will be 35p. (I should mention that if instead you go out in the wealthy northern suburbs, dinner is easily 10 quid, and a pint £2.50). But the real fun of living here is the cultural differences. They keep you on your toes.
If you order tea with milk, they bring you a cup of hot milk with a teabag dumped into it. Hmmm. If you pay for a 8,000 peso meal with a 10,000 peso note, they complain about not having any change and ask if you don't have anything smaller. If you want to call someone from your cellphone who isn't on your network, you go into a small shop where they have bought a cellphone from each network, and use theirs. If you want gum, or water, or a cigarette (just one), you look up and down the street and within one block there will be a man sitting around with a tray, selling these things to you. If you leave your house with shoes in any state other than immaculately shined, you will be hassled continuously to get them cleaned. If you walk along the street looking at anything other than the sidewalk in front of you, you run the serious risk of falling into various potholes, open drain-covers, and the like: every sidewalk is a potential deathtrap.
Homeless people will ask you for money. When you refuse, they will politely desist. When you say that a price in a shop is too high, the shopkeeper will make no attempt to bargain with you or keep you in the shop. When you say, "This liver is horribly overcooked!", the waiter will smile and say, "Si, senor," and not offer to take it away.
You speak Spanish all the time. So does everyone else. Everyone talks about this or that place being dangerous, and it never is, and you wonder if it's just like people thinking London is dangerous, or if actually there is really dangerous stuff going on here, and you just don't see it. On every street corner there is a group of 5 teenagers with khaki uniforms and shaven heads. You don't know whether to be comforted or nervous about this. You never really work out who is the military, who is the police, and where the distinction even lies.
Milk comes in bags, not cartons. Cheese is expensive or horrible, or often both. Apples are expensive, bananas and eggs are super-cheap. Juan Valdez sells gorgeous decaf coffee at 25p a cup, and everyone tells you how expensive the place is. Taxis beep you in the street, just in case you might need a taxi somewhere. Buses stop anywhere and everywhere to pick up and drop off: in between stops, they attempt to break the speed limit before the next stoplight. Instead of route numbers, they have a plaque with some of the places the bus is going propped up in the windscreen, and you have 2 seconds to read the whole thing and flag the bleeder down before it zooms past. Every bus is the pride and joy of the owner, who prefers to spend money putting in speakers that force all the passengers to listen to blaring vallenato music, or red drape curtains across the windscreen, than to actually fix the gearbox.
You must never leave your house without applying sun-cream, and carrying sunglasses, a waterproof coat or umbrella, and a sweater. When the sun is out it can be deadly at this altitude. But five minutes later the clouds have moved in, and without a sweater you are shivering. Then the rain begins, and you remember why you've been carrying this stupid brolly around all day.
Nightclubs play a range of Latin music that you have to dance to in couples. You can ask any girl to dance and they invariably say yes, but that doesn't mean anything. People assume that the reason you are not dancing is stubborness or being boring: they only accept you really can't dance when they see it. Girls passing you in the street look you right in the eyes and smile. But a girl won't kiss you in a club, even tho she's been dancing and flirting with you for the past hour, in case her friends think she's a slut. If you go to a party of wealthy twenty-somethings, chances are that half of them will be wearing metal braces on their teeth. It's de rigueur among those who can afford it. Also de rigueur is for everyone to wear jeans and denim jackets, even tho it must be the worst possible thing to wear, given the climate.
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