First weekend in Bogota

---

Greetings from Colombia!

I'm writing this blog from the friendly home of the Bye/Van Zandt family. When I arrived in Bogota, my apartment wasn't ready, so I am spending the extended weekend with this family. Two of the sons are students at El Camino, and Kathleen Van Zandt is a teacher at the school. The first morning and afternoon I spent here, I camped out at the house. There wasn't much to do really. The father and sons went to a missionary farm, while Kathleen had an appointment to keep with a local single mother in need. I stayed in, napped, watched a movie and got accustomed to the thin mountain air. It was really quite pleasant. Later in the afternoon, I ventured out into the city and went to a local bakery, and I can't describe how wonderful the smell of freshly baked pan (bread) smells. There was chocolate, coconut, jam and cheese filled pastries. The local custom is to take one of the cheese rolls and dip it into hot chocolate. This is a typical Colombian breakfast. Amazing! After a stop at the local tienda, I got my first opportunity to speak in spanish. I bravely went up to the shopkeeper and asked for 'doce huevas por favor'. Success! I got a dozen brown eggs....in a plastic bag! That was a first taste of culture shock....eggs without an egg carton. The rest of the night was spent sitting around the house enjoying good food, conversation and company. It was a very nice day. Not eventful, but a nice relaxing way to break into the Colombian life.

This morning though, was a different story. First, my clock was set an hour later than it should've been. Apparently Colombia is on daylight saving times and I wasn't aware of it. My host family met me at the security gate, and we left for church and some street missions. Seeing much of Bogota in the daylight brought a lot of the anticipated culture shock. There is such a dichotomy of wealth and poverty here. I think the main difference between this city and Chicago, is that Bogota doesn't try to hide or fix its poor. Instead, the government comes in, knocks down a neighborhood, drives out the drug addicted and poor, and relocates them all to the next barrio. Then they repeat the whole process again. To get to church, we had to drive up the side of Monseratt, the largest mountain outside of Bogota. From the top, the air was crystal clear, clean and so beautiful. Bogota spreads out further than sight will allow. The drive up the mountain also brought my first glimpse of armed military....and they were everywhere. The militia were carrying m-16 style weapons, and were nearly around every turn. I later learned that it is because roaming gangs stop cars in the mountains to hijack and rob passengers. Apparently though, this hasn't happened much in the last few years, mostly due to the heavy presence of the military. We finally arrived in a small park in Bogota, infamous for its association to drug-land killings. The city knocked down all the buildings, and paved the whole thing over. Threw up some trees, brought in the army, and now you have a safe inner-city park. We met up with about fifteen women and children. These were all baptized Christian woman, but were recovering alcoholics, abused and homeless. The children were starved and dirty, but they were so happy when I brought out the camera. We did some roadside preaching, I worked with the children and handed out groceries to the mothers. It was a beautiful moment until we began getting harassed by local homeless men upset that we were catering to the women and not the men. This is a very 'machismo' culture, and the men feel they deserved more than women just because of their gender. We ended up leaving early than expected, and my last sight out of the park was a terrible looking man sniffing glue openly in the middle of the street. It's amazing how much beauty and poverty can coexist in the same location.

After that we were off to the only english speaking church in Bogota. There I met a number of missionaries, expatriates and other teachers. It was a nice service, then we came back home to a nice lunch. We met another teacher from ECA and headed out to Suesca, a small village at the base of a mountain. The sheer side of the mountain is good for rock climbing, the more peaceful side offered a few small cafe's. I sat at one of the cafes and was introduced to my first 'aqua in a bag'. Instead of wasting plastic for a bottle, they just put the water in a sealed baggie. It was clean and good, no problem. The village was peaceful and quiet, but did seem to be a bit trendy. For the first time in Colombia, I saw people walking around with iPods and even iPhones. More alluring than this little stop, was the drive there. We went through some beautiful mountain country. Open plains, rolling meadows and cows walking up and down the autopista...amazing! The thing about Colombian roads, is that they are not often paved, and when paved, not paved well. Some of the potholes were so deep that cars would lose a wheel or snap an axle if hit hard enough. Rough.

Today I spent the day at the Santa Fe de Commercial Centro, an upscale mall in Bogota. This is the largest mall in all of Bogota, and the shops carried all the fanciest clothes and gear. There were at least four helado (ice cream) shops, and I know that will make my mother happy. I was lucky enough to get my first coffee fix at the Juan Valdez Cafe. Certainly more pricey than other cafe's, and not as good, but it was nice to be in a clean cafe with comfortable furniture. I was happy to get more chances to use my spanish skills, which surprisingly I'm picking up faster than I thought. Thankfully though, I had Addison and Keegan, sons of my host family and ECA students to help me out. I think I bored them a bit, but it made me feel more comfortable.

So far, thats my Colombian experience. Happily I start school in the morning, and get a chance to feel useful. Also I'll be less of a tourist and start settling into my Colombian life. Hopefully I'll have my apartment up and running in the nex

God Bless!

---