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Published: October 2nd 2011
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Colombia´s Next Top Maid
You can tell who the front runner is, as the saying goes, "you can tell how good a maid is by how many cans of Lemon Pledge she has." We´ve decided to turn our search for a maid into a reality show competition, Colombia´s Next Top Maid. We name them all Consuela (or ´Suels for short). It´s a marathon of Lemon Pledge and complying with our every ridiculous demand. "Rinse our dishes in Cambodian breastmilk! Take a picture of a midget holding these balloons! Wash my underwear on a David Hasselhoff´s washboard abs!" We already eliminated Consuela #1 for putting too much oil in the rice and washing her poor clothes with our rich ones. Oh well, call the locksmith and arrange for Consuela #2 to start on Monday. When we dismiss them, we drop a bucket of slime on their head,
You Can´t Do That On Television style and tell them “please take your broom and go.” Consuela #2 shakes your hand like she´s the queen of England, I was tempted to drop to one knee and kiss her ring. I quickly shook that feeling however and told her to clean the pee off the floor where I missed the toilet. We made our first friend here, a classy gentleman by the name of Carlo Rossi, we´ve been hanging out with him a lot. At work we have daily duties during the passing periods,
To the south of our apartment
It´s all jungle, the storms always come in from that side. Maria´s is to run the “coke stand,” very Colombian. Scuba diving is not something I´ve always wanted to do but rather something I´ve always
told people I wanted to do in order to seem like the type of person who is into exciting life-threatening activities. Really I´m into activities that offer the same experience but are much much safer, like watching Blue Planet, which gives me a pretty good idea what it´s like under the water but doesn´t drown the crap out of me. I finally put my healthy fear of the ocean aside and got certified this last weekend and let me tell you, it was great. Great being proved right that this is an extremely dangerous activity that people should avoid. I think it was when an underwater current powerfully swept me away from the reef and Maria and the instructor and the rest of the diving group that I thought to myself, “man, I´m lost and going to drown.” I didn´t btw. Now when someone asks me if I scuba dive I can confidently say that I´m certified while omitting that I´m never going to do it again.
My final months in Seoul were a wonderful cornucopia
View from our balcony
That´s the Caribbean, to the right you can see the mouth of the mighty Magdalena River. of all you can eat buffets, several going away dinners, and group weekend trips where we rented houses outside of town for the weekend. Ben Folds came to town and gave the greatest concert of his that I´ve ever seen. Maria got the set list as a reward for being the hottest girl in the audience/world. If Ben thinks I didn´t see him trying to move in on my lady, and he´s reading this, I´m on to you suckah and I will cut off and make you eat your own piano playin´ fingers, Sin City style.
The move from Korea was fairly painless, our last night there was awesome, it was great having everyone pull an all-nighter with us (except Jimmy Jimmy Cocopop who crashed just like he did on Thanksgiving and Christmas, he even fell asleep with his water on once). We met a lot of people in Seoul who I plan on being friends with for a long time to come and I had to leave my travelling/teaching partner Adam there… at least until he decides to come teach with us again. You might want to know why I left the most efficient, safest place on earth for
This weird little house outside our window
These people sit there all day every day, we haven´t quite figured out why. I took this at dusk, no photoshop, it looks like a painting. the least efficient dangerous place on earth and that would be because:
*The maid does all the cooking and cleaning
*I´m home by 2:45 most days
*Every other weekend since I´ve been here has been spent sunning and funning on world class Caribbean beaches and I go to the pool about 5 times a week.
*My trip to and from work is 20 minutes a day vs. 3 hours a day in Seoul.
That´s all quite nice... however, while eating breakfast the other day I looked out the window and a guy dropped his pants and took a fat dump. He had planned ahead because he then pulled a roll of toilet paper out of his backpack and wiped his dirty penny. Nice way to start the day. The look on Maria´s face while this was going down was priceless though. Welcome to Colombia. You know who needs to chill the eff out? Turkeys. We have a little gobble of turkeys at school and one of them is always bucking up on me, ruffling his feathers up and waving his beak foreskin thing at me. We determined that a group of three or more little kids should be
The going away all nighter crew
As nice/fun a group of humans as you´re likely to meet. Except J.P. he´s a pervert. called a furgason, as in “all the members of this furgason are in full drunk midget stage.”
We´ve been to the islands off Cartagena once, Playa Blanca in Rodadero once and of course the weekend scuba diving but since Adam, my designated photographer, isn´t with us, we have zero pictures of any of those three experiences. We have three bedrooms, three baths and a maid´s room* and are happy to have visitors at any time.
Congrats to my brother on giving me my first nephew and Al on successfully impregnating his wife again. I fly into KC on the 20th of December and out again on the 2nd so email me about getting together when I´m home if you care to see me, send me a message fake apologizing that we didn´t have a chance to meet up after I leave if you don´t.
I will make a concerted effort to write blogs a
little more frequently than once every 4 months.
Movie: I loved Super 8 (although Maria hated it), it was a perfect blend of Goonies and ET and reminded me of my youth.
TV: The first two Always Sunnys have been all I could
Last night in town crew again
This time with AK Spray who may have been taking the photo on the other one. have hoped for and more. Makes me want to take a stroll under the boardwalk in Jersey.
Music: The new Bon Iver album is great. The song
Beth sounds like it should be on the St. Elmo´s Fire soundtrack and I love it for that.
Book: Read RR Martin´s lastest epic, it was a long time coming but excellent.
Back in the donkey saddle,
~ Tyrone
Hallucinatory - that's just the way everyday life is, in Colombia. All the time, you say to yourself, did I just see that? ~ Barbet Schroeder
Echando polvo ~ Colombian (?) slang for engaging in sexual congress. It translates into "throwing powder." Not sure what that has to do with sexy times unless you´re really really old and covered in baby powder.
The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it ~ Bill Nye
*The maid´s room is also free to use as none of our maid candidates have earned the right to do anything but clean it yet. We dust the maid toilet for butt cheek prints to make sure they aren´t using it.
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jeni
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Well zach and I were feeing pretty good about ourselves getting owned by the trout at roaring river. Thanks for posting pics of the jungle and ocean right as we hung our heads in shame and headed home. Way to remind your sister of how not cool fly fishing is.