qattana84

We booked our ticket about a week before flying to cartagena with yoshi. Prices were a bit higher because its the holiday season and our plans were pretty short notice but none the less, it was pretty affordable. We were set to fly out on friday morning until monday night after which, yoshi had to catch a flight home the next morning. we arrived at the airport about an hour before our flight hoping that, because it was a local destination, the checkin process would be relatively quick (not my idea). To our dismay, we found the great wall of china was lined up for registration. It would have taken no less than 2 hours to register, even though we had no bags to hand in... luckily, the airport in bogota must have recently installed the ... read more

Just got back from the homeless run. Its organized by the same teresa related organization which hosts the old ladies home, and does feeding the homeless which i've been spending quite a bit a time at recently. The idea is to drive around the most forsaken areas of bogota with two barrelfulls of hot chocolate and home made bread, handing it out to the homeless. Our crew consisted of the program coordinator, a driver, 2 more volunteers, 2 nuns, and 2 misc people who didnt really do anything. We jumped into the mini teresa van and headed out. The front passenger seat was occupied by the bread giver while the back had someone in the 'hot seat' (filling up and handing out the cups of hot chocolate), a cup giver, a bread passer, the two nuns ... read more

It was a pretty weird day... Early start as usual with the intention of going to Soacha. The bus ride was ok but arrived with a bit of a headache. As the day progressed (was teaching 1 class the christmas song) the headache got worse until it was borderline migraine. I decided to leave a little early and headed back to find the bus for my 2 hour ride back into town. The whole bus ride was slipping in and out of sleep with bizarre dreams. The weather that day was beautiful so I thought a bit of a walk would do me good. I got out a bit earlier than necessary (2 km before home) and headed off. Not 5 minutes after I got off the bus it started raining. I decided to wait next ... read more

The first full weekend ended yesterday. Friday morning went hiking on the mountain close by. 5am start, loaded the camera equipment and a 10 minute taxi ride brought myself and 3 of the girls to the hiking trail. They had been on this before so they knew what to expect. I, on the other hand, knew that it would be hard but not to what extent. We hiked for about an hour in which time I almost died! The combination of the thinning air and climbing up constantly highlighted my physical unfitness. I had 3 different headaches when we reached the halfway mark and could not move anymore. The trail continued but because we had to head back and eventually to work, we only made it that far before turning back. My anguish was to the ... read more

The day began early again at 6am thanks to the jetlag. My body clock has been kept at a good pace because of it and i hope to maintain it. Today was the first day I went with some of the other volunteers to one of the projects, in this case, being a mother teresa home for elderly women. This time there was 5 of us all together, which i am told is pretty unusual because the the crowd usually disperses to different projects. We got there by taxi and it was in a fairly shady part of town. Very steep, narrow uphill road with and garbage on either side of the road with occasional suspicious looking people. I was told that its not a place to ever visit at night. Strangely enough, it is 1 ... read more