Lighting of candles

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8th of Dec is a day off following the previous night in which its tradition to go light some candles in a church (the lighting of the city is how its being referred to). The city centre was closed off and the streets were packed with people selling goods, food, little live shows and a light show on the tallest building in colombia. the tallest building is called Torre Colpatria and its just under 200m (which is really not too impressive). The light show on it was pretty terrible and the sound accompanying it was deafeningly loud to the point where i had to leave mid way. i was with some of other volunteers and some colombian friends and we walked through the closed off city centre, which had turned was a giant festival, towards the city square. along the way, one of the volunteers was pickpocketed when a man took her camera out of her pocket and made a run for it. she is a small american girl of about 1.65m but she can run surprisingly fast. she ran after him, tackled him, and ripped her camera out of his hands. i was close by and joined the run, landing on top of this fellow and choking him until she got her belongings. we left him without any further exchanges. the other people in our party missed the episode amidst all the people, but our local guys said that if we had screamed thief on him, he might have been beaten to death by the crowd. seems he got lucky, and so did the girl for getting her things back, and so am i in hindsight that he wasnt armed. definitely the highlight of my evening and i gained a lot of respect for this tiny girl!
We made our way to the centre, lit some candles and headed towards my favorite area (candalaria) too meet with some other friends. After hanging about there for a while, the group decidedthat we needed to dance. we made our way to a reggae disco next to the volunteer apartment and had a bit of a dance. the notable detail about this place was that the dance floor was made out of sand which made dancing pretty awkward, especially after a few drinks. we didnt stay too long and headed home after a very eventful evening.
throughout the past few days, lots of the volunteers have been leaving for home. the apartment now consists of 3 guys (including myself) and 1 girl. there should be some fresh people coming in next week and more in early jan. definitely like living in an airport. as it stands, i am the the longest staying veteran volunteer in the apartment apart from the director. a title i intend to exploit when new people come :-)

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