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Published: July 23rd 2008
Bas and I have finally parted ways in Taganga after a huge bloody battle where we fought tooth and nail over the qualities of different Colombian beer.
Ok I jest a bit. We parted ways most amicably as can be expected as he is an all around great guy, but I started to feel the pull of the Big City so I can get back to regular Naa Speed.
I can hear Bas groaning...
Barranquilla Colombia
Ok, So it´s not exactly the City of Lights. In fact most people who I spoke to (Colombians included) looked at me in wonder and stated without reservation that there is no tourism in Barranquilla. While the locals often noted that it is ´Chevere´ (cool) , tourists were less than impressed. One fellow went so far as to call it a ¨shit town¨, but I looked forward to my trip as a way to escape the blissful ease of Taganga. I swear. I´d started looking at property there. At any rate, I couldn´t possibly turn down an invitation to visit the family of my Spanish Teacher.
My arrival in Barranquilla was a bit flubbed. I couldn´t understand the Bus Driver, nor the lady helping the bus driver, nor the cab
Mi Profesora´s Famila
DIana and Hector Chaleladriver the bus driver put me in. Luckily I had a phone number and called to let the native speakers figure it out. I was deposited in a cab headed somewhere while everything the cabbie said came into my ears in the ¨Wah wah waaaaaah wah¨ language of the adults in Charlie Brown´s world. When we arrived at the location, he started driving in circles and I swore I was really lost cuz I would have to call in broken Spanish to try to figure out where my contact was.
Then a guy just got in the car and told the driver to go.
Shit.
I´m getting Kidnapped.
No one wants me back home! My family is made of broke peanut farmers all named Bubba!!! Leave me my memory cards and take the rest!!!
My panic was a bit premature as the gentleman was Hector Chalela who correctly figured that a blackman with a backpack had to be his daughter´s friend. It was still a block or so before I f¡gured out who the heck HE was though.
Hector and Diana Chalela are wonderful folk who conspired to prove all of the fellows who naysayed Barranquilla wrong. I had a blast as we travelled the coast
looking at the first port of Colombia, the city center (Named after Simon Bolivar like most other places here) and looked into various restaurants and places most tourists wouldn´t think of as cultural. It was the perfect place to find out about real life in Colombia.
Even a simple trip to the shopping mall was a vision in sightseeing as I figured out that all of my boys need to go to Barranquilla to find themselves a Colombian wife...
I could say that I was a great conversationalist and had the best convos in spanish ever.
But I´d be lying..and badly at that.
Speaking with Hector was fine until about the 4th or 5th sentence when he started to speak Colombian spanish...not the slow stuff for us gringos. Diana was a bit better about speaking slowly. Sometimes she translated Colombian Spanish to Spanish for me.
I learned how to play dominoes. Though I was chided as being like Hector´s ´wife´ for not hopping in the first games, I was able to glean the rules a bit after a while...well not really, but I did start to understand why the guy on the right started to yell every 15 minutes or so...
In all, it was great
to feel a bit of parental love even if it was directed at Shahima through me. I felt a bit of surrogate pride as they repeated how proud they were to have a daughter who taught me. I was happy to say (in truth) that Shahima is a great teacher and it is her doing that I could speak to anyone at all...
Thanks to the entire Chalela clan!
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anonymous
non-member comment
im the first to comment...seems fun and stuff. uuhhhhh yea