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Published: October 15th 2006
bye, Fliss!
have fun and donºt forget to drop a line!a rainy Saturday...I had classes from 8 to 12... I love my Saturday classes, I might have mentioned it before...the students are relaxed, although they wanna be out of there at 11.30, they still do their best to work and put effort into what they do...I have 12 students, a few much older than me, in their thirties, forties, thirty y pico...😊, Spanglish...oh well...anyways everybody Spanglishes in the language center, there is not even one soul who speaks only English or only Spanish inside or outside class...my Spanish has come a long way...I feel I have improved a lot...I am taking Spanish again after quitting a month ago. The teacher is not great, but I enjoy the group. Theyº re fun, we laugh a lot, a guy showed up drunk in class, mumbling God knows what and we had a whale of a time. Oh well....most of the foreigners who got to this exotic,sunny land have only one thing on their mind and only one single purpose: drink and get high and get laid. I guess that makes 3, but anyways, u get my point. I would probabily do the same if I had money pouring from back home 😊. Having
bye, Fliss
Felcityºs farewell party. fun is quite cheap here and it is absolutely the best time u can have! I swear! I love my life here, I am not very happy at the thought of leaving everything behind. But I guess they are right when they say that all good things must come to an end. So does my traineeship here. God I love Colombia! And Colombian people! I adore them! I donºt mean men, donºt think that, my experiences here with Colombian men are not the best storeys of my life :P, except for...oh, yes! They are the best lovers God created, take my word for it! :P...ok, I guess you can say I had my share of fun..what do you expect after one year here? anyways...it sounds a bit melancholic and I am not...maybe a bit because of the rain outside...Felicity is gone,she left a few days ago, taking off with another South American destination: Santiago, Chile. She will be travelling for the next 2 months....back to the storey on the bus I was telling you about a few weeks ago..it looks like I have seen it all...you canºt imagine what they can sell on these commuters buses.. from people playing the
guitar, to clowns doing their funny number and putting some smiles on peoleºs faces after a long working day, to kids with candies, chocolates and soft candies, to guys selling safety pins!!! 😊) and even English courses with CDs, small pocket encyclopedias...oh..well...basically everything u can imagine. The guy with the English course kind of overdid it. He actually brought along a take recorder and had us listen to a part of a lesson. God, that was hilarious! But not only in the bus, actually people do whatever for a coin at every street corner. Juggling oranges, sticks on fire, kids juggling on each othersº shoulders, doing bike stunts in front of the cars waiting at stop lights, anything for a coin! They try so hard, that you just canºt bare to let them leave empty-handed. I for one, canºt. I know how high the povery rate is here..90% of all colombian can barely make ends meet so being a passive bystander in this world where they have so much sholudered my new outlook on life, where they have truly given me a whole perspective on how I should see life...to take things easy,to live the moment...I am a combination of
everything I have seen here...I have just come home from tutoring a 10 y.o.kid. During the 2 hours I was at his place his Mom brought me lunch! And a few weeks ago they invited me to have ice-cream with them at the mall. Sorry, but tell me something that might sound more hospitable than that! Or even better, who would do that in Europe? We, with our keep-your-distance kind of way wouldnºt do that ! It is I guess part of the European donºt mix business-with-pleasure mentality. And they do it here so often! Everybody is in everybodyºs business, nosy but not in an intruding way, I would say more in a familiar, friendly letºs-get-to-know-each-other-better sort of way.
You know what I am addicted to now? the way they treat the problem of money. Yes, indeed. For us money is something we don't really like to talk about.It is sort of a tabuu topic. How much you earn, how much you pay for rent, car instalments...maybe this is an approachable topic with the closest friends, but here it is such a common, approachable and unproblematic topic! It is just another topic of conversation.Like weather or fashion. And I
bus bazaar
safety pins bought with 200 pesitos will give you examples.... This of course has the extreme which I encountered on the cost and I profoundly hated- I mean, no notion of money in the worst case- owing money and paying it back after 2 months. Yes, a guy on the coast owed me 100 dollars which he barely paid back only because I called him for 2 weeks almost every day, shouting and threatening him that I would call the police 😊). I was really nerve-wrecked, he would answer so casually, as if he had no money to give me, he didn't even try to make up excuses, he would only say ºSorry Mona, I don't have today, why don't I call u tomorrow and tell u when I can pay you backº. And of course he never called, I was the one who had to call over and over again. How embarrassing! It was one of the worst moments here, I was so disappointed with Colombia, I still remember and it wasn't so much him, but the attitude of the others, asking me why I lent him the money in the first place! Helloooooo, I was trying to help, to do a good deed, he
had told me he had some problems! Only later I found out that ´´he is a good guy, but when it comes to money, he isnºt very reliable´´´. Oh my God, that coming from his friends and acquaintances! And said on a ´´thatºs the ways he is ¨tone and a shoulder shrug like there was nothing to do about it. ¨¨He s a good guy my ass!¨¨, in my world that men wouldºt deserve the time of a day, I wouldn't even look at him. And here they make me feel guilty for trying to be helpful!
Thank God I didn't give up on Colombia after that episode! I moved on and I tried to keep an open mind , not generalize it and and not abandon this country. My ¨ Colombian mother¨¨ then showed me how money can be a topic that everybody can approach with nonchalance when actually I run out of money and I didn't dare to ask my parents and she lent me some in fact shortly after I had paid my rent 😊)!
And then here in Medellin when I go to a beauty parlor and I have my nails done, oh well..until they
rainy October Saturday
On Circular Sur, going from EAFIT downtown. dry, the manicurist , very helpful asks me where my wallet is and she confidently opens it and takes the amount I owe her for having done my nails. Can you believe it? And this didn't happen only once! This is quite customary, it is NORMAL! At the beginning it freaked me out, it was like invading my privacy, but then I realized: whatºs the big deal? Now I enjoy it so much and every time it makes me laugh. I guess that wallets are pretty much ´´saint´´ 😊) in my country, I wouldn't dare to touch my father walletºs,... maybe my sisterºs , but after telling her or asking for permission. Here I have strangers going through my bag, looking for my wallet and going through my wallet looking for money. 😊)). Things that freaked me out I love now, because they do it so naturally that I realize first that they are not a big deal, secondly that they make life more enjoyable by bringing simplicity, a sense of...trust and of bonding with people.
My Spanish teacher asked 1000 pesos for the photocopies we used a few days ago and the gringos flipped. I so much understand their
stand, their position, I was in their position not so long ago! Flipping, freaking out, not understanding the culture and hating it! If I pay a LOOOOOOOOOT of money for this course, at least you could give me some bloody free photocopies! I would think that is the proper thing to do, any reasonable, sensible person would! Oh well, not them! no, and the intention is not bad, it is just that they have absolutely no notion of money. Just like borrowing money from each other and forgetting to return the money. I know now that if I lend money to someone here it is very likely that I will not see that money back. Thatºs why I donºt lend money anymore 😊), or only small amounts that I can very well do without. Inviting complete strangers to dinner and even to sleep over is also part of their culture, talking to everybody, and I almost forgot! talking ALL THE TIME, even if they have absolutely nothing to say is also something they do with pleasure. Do u know how they start a converasation here? with 10 sentence which donºt mean ANYTHING: Hola,que tal? que mas? como estas? Y? que
rainy October Saturday
kid looking at me. Sweet smile :) me cuentas? como te ha ido? como andas? and believe me that they ask all these questions in a row and they actually expect no answer, it is just filling a void to make them sound that they are interested in what the interlocutor has to say. Does it sound bad? I bet it does! but I got used to it and now I also do it 😊). this is the Latin culture, speaking a lot and not saying anything. It is an aquired taste, at the beginning you hate it, you just learn to love it in time. Why? Why from somebody utterly studious and hard-working and goal-oriented, I ended up addicted to this culture which basically means irresponsibility, unreliability, take-it-easy, donºt-sweat-it lifestyle?How ? How did I not only embrace it, but fell in love with it? where everything I believed in is upside down here, where personal achievement doesn't mean shit, where you can say whatever wherever ? I have a lot much more to say, I will wrap it for today and maybe continue in the next entry, anyways, my advice to you guys is to visit this country. To give it a try, but don't be
mare tourists, it ainºt the same, try to integrate here for a few months, it is worth it! After going through all the phases, as I have , after thinking that you canºt have an intelligent conversation here, after you reach the conclusion that everybody here wants to take advantage of the foreigners and the girls to get impregnated by the gringos, 😊) if you have it in you to go past these first impressions, you will discover the true Colombian culture, which is splendid !
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ivan
non-member comment
your statistics are wrong.
hey there, i have been reading your blog for a while. i'm a new yorker in love with colombia. you keep saying that the poverty rate is 90%. You are wrong! last time i checked, i guess it was a few months ago, the poverty rate was 49%. i'm sure i could have changed since but not that much!