The happs:

---

With this working 6 days a week while maintianing a social life, I´m not going to be updating the blog very much. Besides, now that it´s everyday sort of things, I don´t think they´ll excite you too much. But do keep checking every now and then for a new entry! So I´ll try to give the highlights in short:

1) My bday. Yamile threw me a surprise bday party, complete with a bakery-bought cake, on the rooftop of Blue House Hostel along with my Blue House family and few other friends. The girls there had actually offered the rooftop to me the day before for my bday, and Yamile must have sprouted this idea once I had told her in shock that they wanted to open the place up for me. It was sooo great and Yamile is amazing, it´s soo great to have her here (heh not just for bdays)!

2) Blue House gave me week´s worth stay for FREE!!! Totally didn´t see that one coming! They´ve continued to be awesome to me. They knew I needed yet another week and presented this generous gift to me during my surprise party! So awesome!!

3) A week had passed since my bday and I was suppose to have left Blue House, but I ended up staying an extra night since there was still nothing to be found as far as places to live goes. First, it was the week before Semana Santa (Easter week), so no one wanted to work. Then it was Semana Santa, and absolutely everyone was on vacation, really no glitter of hope there. Then the week after, it was Obama (actually, presidents from lots of different countries came but no one recognized there arrival, just Obama) came to town and he ruined all the fun. Due to super high security, and I mean over the top high security, everything was shut down (restuarants, bars, stores,..). They weren´t even allowed to sell alcohol (though beer was still sold..apparently it´s not alcohol??)! So aboslutely no one was working that week either. My friend Andres, that was to live with us, told me not to worry, that next week we´d for sure find something; but with this continuous episode of events which prohibits people from working, made me not so optomistic, as I´m sure you can only imagine. So I had this offer from my Uruguain boss to live next door, seriously next door to the hostel I work at, in a room from this old woman in her house. So I took it since I needed to be out and just couldn´t ask the Blue House for more. This week, as there´s always something, Yamile and Peter suddenly left to Peru until May 6th for this mediation thing they just managed to get in to -the last 2 spots. So that means I have to hold off a while longer on findng a place. But 2 of the guys I work with also want to live with me, and accodring to them, when I first came, I apparently had already promised I would live with them, and they want to find something next month. So I have that option, which most likely will happen as Yamile´s plans could change in case of epiphany while meditating.

4) The old woman. She was hesitant at first at letting me in, though she wants me in her house to make some money. At first, she didn´t want to give me a copy of the key to the outside door. My boss and I tried convincing her how ridiculous that idea is, obviously she´s not going to want to open the door for me in the middle of the night for my drunken booty, nor is it right if she wants to leave the house and I might need to get in. So she finally gave in the day after I moved in .Her problem was she was worried about me losing the key and not replacing it. Apparently, if a Colombian would lose the key, they wouldn´t dare think they are the ones that need to replace it; no, it´s the landlord´s problem now. But my boss convinced her that us foreign folk are of a different breed. We expect to have to pay for a new lock or new key or what have you should we be at fault for losing the thing. Silly foreigners, how practical! But the thing about her giving me the key is she baracaded me out my my second night there!! My good friend Willie from home plus his friend, Pang, came to visit on Wednesday and of course, I took them and a group of people to a big event that happens every Wednesay. Naturally, it turned out to be a wild and crazy night and I returned at 5 am, soaking wet from a random after-the-club-dip-in-the-ocean to find that my key wasn´t working! So I went to my hostel and had Alfonzo, a guy I work with, help me but he couldn´t open it either. In an instant, he decided that ringing the doorbell was necessary, rang it and immediately ran away, leaving me there!! Ahhh!!! Doorbell ditch!! She answered without a problem though, but since then, hasn´t barraced it!! Haha! Woopsy!

The other problem, I can´t really use the kitchen whenever I want or need to. My room is located outside her main entrance to the house (the set up is very hard to describe), so if she´s not there, she locks the door to her part of the house, which means I can´t get to my food in the kitchen if I need to! But luckily, I´m at work almost always or with friends, so leaves little time to need her kitchen, though I´m sure I´ve got some rotten Mortadella in there by now that I would have loved to have eatten! Urgh.

Also, can´t have friends over, which kills me, especially since Willie and his friend are here. There are three, count them THREE beds in my room, and I can´t even let them in to show them what it looks like let alone help them save some money and stay with me! Nuts!!! So I need to get out toute suite (though I must admit it is a great room, Grandma is nice to me, and is warming up to me as well).

5) Willie is here!!! He´s working his way up from Argentina to home in California and had to make a stop in Colombia for a visit!!! Soooo awesome to see a familiar face and he cooks me dinner and breakfast while I´m busy working away! Score! I just feel really bad he happened to come at the sametime as Obama; and therefore, everything was shut down so he got to see a completely different Cartagena. But he did get here a few days before Obama came, and the weekend of Obama, I sent him and a few others to the islands which they friggin loved. He left the other day though for Taganaga (3 or 4 hours away), but I very luckily and coincidentally happened to get a three day weekend off this weekend!!! So I´m going to go meet him in Santa Marta for the weekend! Get some killer hiking and beaches in! His friend, Pang who´s from London and wildly fun, already left, but we´ve picked up a new traveling friend, an actor from Germany named Stefan. He´s super cool and went with Willie to Taganaga, so I´ll see him there too!

So that´s everything in a nut shell. Sounds more negative than it really is, or maybe I´m just used to this ridiculousness by now so it´s not so bad. On a super positive note, I already know so many random people around here, literally everytime I walk around my neighborhood, somebody is waving or saying hello to me -one of my aboslute favorite things that always happens when I live abroad!!! I realized it the other day and was surprised by just how many people I already know! And it´s worth mentioning for all of you out there worried for my saftey: while I was still living at Blue House, I went out for my manager´s and co-worker´s (at El Viajero) bday party and we pulled an all nighter, I didn´t return until 1pm the next day! The next evening I was speaking to the x-receptionist, Marisol, and she asked me where the heck I was last night and everyone was so worried about me. The new night-boy at Blue House had gone to her house (next door) to tell her that I had never returned! Even the cops came looking for me (the night cops that patrol the corner of Blue House, and when I worked there, they pretty much patroled from the inside..they all like me) since they had noticed I still hadn´t come back! Of course the morning staff had to hear about it since I still wasn´t back in the morning, so they wanted the others to be aware! I´ve never had so much surveillance in all my life!!!! Crazy!! Though despite all these spies, I do feel loved and a lot more safer than I already know I am! So don´t worry about me our there! Hehe! I´m in good hands!

Well back to work then straight to meet up with Willie and Stefan and possibly bring a few Colombian friends with me! So stoked for these three days off!! Much needed! Oy!

---