Chiva! (Big Fat Party Bus)

Uh, that's my translation, not necessarily the literal one. :)



What an adventure last night - we got seats on a Chiva - which is basically a big party bus with a little live 3 or 4 piece band, that drives from bar to bar and lets everyone off to dance for an hour or so and then move on to the next place. We went to 4 bars in one night, and thank they lord they weren't smokey, and two of them were right on the beach!



We also took A LOT of pictures, if you go to my flickr set you can see that I was pretty insanely happy for most of the night. And that's with only one sip of rum, just to see what it tasted like (pretty much like all alcohol tastes to me - like burning! :D ).



Part of the deal was, beer on the first stop, rum on the second, little empanada snacks on the third, and at the end of the last stop there was a little dinner of steak, potatoes and salad (I think my ticket was cheaper because I only ate the cheese empanada things)



Yeah, I'm not really ready to go home yet.

Earlier in the day I was standing next to a stand full of traditional Colombian sweets, and G's mom and her cousin were "arguing" about which were the best ones to get for another cousin who is going back to his house in the states, and how much of each, and Vivi (the daughter of the cousin) was buying sweets too and asked me if I wanted anything. I grinned and pointed to the big coconut clusters I had my eye on (and had been ready to buy one myself after the other transactions were finished). G's mom asked why I hadn't asked for one before and Vivi said something about how I was her buddy and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. And I stood there with the sweet taste of coconut on my tongue, feeling welcomed and taken care of, drinking in the tropical colors and trees, listening to the "Negra" (it's not an insult here, it's even a term of endearment. They also call people "Gordo" (fat) affectionately.) packing up the sweets saying things like "Honey, help me out with this. Sister, hold this for me."



Then a little band set up on the corner and started to play, and as their harmonies melted together my full heart spilled over the brim and I almost, almost cried for the sadness of leaving this place, these people in just a few days.



It doesn't seem fair that it's so far away, and that even if I had the money to come here often, that traveling puts such a strain on the planet.

And lest any of you fear of my staying here forever, I'm quite clear that I've been on vacation, and if I DID want to stay long term I'd have to get a job and that would change the dynamic completely. The time off has done me good though. A few people have even commented that it looks like I've lost weight. I don't have a scale, and my clothes don't feel all that different that I notice, but it seems like I've been eating less, so I guess I'll find out when I get home. But it makes sense that it could be something, because an emotional weight has been lifted off my shoulders for these two months, and I haven't been doing the stress eating I used to do in the office. I hope that some of the things I've learned about how to relax and take it easy will stay with me when I go home, because I've been so happy here.

Rent-A-Lap

In this country with plenty of tropical fruits, I haven't eaten many so far on this trip. So the other day I went to the new sit-down-with-waiters-cafe at the U and ordered a fruit salad - Ensalada de fruta.

The cafe is in the same building as the internet cafe and other multimedia fun stuff to do. While I was waiting for my fruit salad I looked up to see this sign:



The next message that flashed across made it clear that there was a new service to rent laptops from the internet cafe, and not that you'd be able to have your way with a human lap for a few hours. Whew!

So then I got my fruit salad. It consisted mostly of apples, strawberries, cantaloupe and a few bits of mango.

I have an apple tree in my backyard at home...

Sigh.

Anyways, it also came with a super tasty yogurt/honey dressing. And it WAS really nice to have some fruit. And I WAS really proud that I did the whole thing by myself, from ordering to paying the check. Which was honestly all of 3 or 4 sentences, but hey I got it!

The next day I bought myself a highlighter marker from the bookstore. Also by myself. And this was even harder, because I didn't know the word for highlighter, so I had to try and explain it.

First of all I was just looking at all the pens in the cases, so he probably knew I was looking for some kind of pen, and when he asked if he could help me I said "no se la palabra en espanol pero es un marquiador(?) para (and then I made the gesture of using it) un parto de texto"

"Marcador?" he corrected me.

"Si" I said, repeating my highlighting gesture.

He brought me to the place where they were (the one display case I hadn't looked in yet) and took one out and showed how it worked and I said "Eso!" and then "Cuanto cuesta?" (That! How much?).

"En este color?" I don't know if the other colors were different prices, but the yellow one was something like $1.50. I bought it. I didn't even give him a ridiculously large bill just to make sure it was enough, because I understood how many pesos he said.

I actually can't remember if I said parto or parte or parta for "part of the text". G informs me that if I said parto that means birth, whoops! Whatever I said, the clerk figured it out anyway, and the point is I was really proud of myself to go all alone to a store where they don't speak english and get something I want, even in my stumbling way. In classes our professors know English and can help out if we get really stuck, but in the stores it's different.

It sounds a little silly, but stuff like that makes me feel a little more comfortable, knowing that I could probably stumble my way through a lot of situations. Which is good. Because in the past G (or someone, or my CD lessons) would give me some little script for going through a common situation. But the problem is, if the other person "goes off the script" I would be totally, utterly lost. And why would they stay on the script in real life, especially if they didn't even know there was one? Now that I know enough Spanish to improvise a little, it's a lot less scary to think about wandering out into the world, or what might happen if I ever got lost. Not that I'd really have much desire or chance to go wandering, but now I don't have to be so terrified of it.

Grammar classes are still kicking my ass. I can't remember if I wrote earlier that I had a mini breakdown in class the first week where I ended up crying because the teacher asked me to provide an example of a sentence in the imperfect subjunctive form, and I had no idea, not one clue of how to start. Hearing that pretty much all my in-laws and some of the professors at the U don't know much about the subjunctive either made me feel less stupid. With all this grammar stuff, I never learned it in English, so learning at totally new concept in a second language is pretty hard. And I didn't need to learn much grammar in English to write and speak well, so I'm letting myself off the hook a little, which, no surprise, actually makes some of the Spanish grammar easier to learn, because I'm not stressing about it as much. And while it would be nice to speak without sounding like a 6 year old, even at my level, I CAN communicate quite a lot, which is what I'm most interested in - communicating.

And then there's stuff like "Rent-A-Lap", and I just know that everything is going to be fine.