Blogging from the Road

Literally.

Our rental car company offered an in car modem, that's also portable for hotels and whatnot, any place you can plug it in to a socket for power. It was $11 per day, one dollar less than getting a GPS, we can both use it at the same time, and we already used my laptop to Google the directions to Narcobollo, the Colombian restaurant that is a sister to the original one in Barranquilla that I visited with my profesora on one of our culture activity afternoons. We ate arroz con coco, tajadas, bollo limpio y bollo de mazorca, remolacha, suero, arepa con juevo, jugo de tamarindo y agua panel and got one more of each bollo to go. It was pretty close to the airport, but we got a little lost on the way.



Then we Googled directions to my Grandparent's house, and used Skype to call them and tell them we'll be late.

WE'RE SUCH GEEKS! HOORAY FOR GEEKS REUNITED! HOORAY FOR TASTY COLOMBIAN FOOD!! HAPPY!



Flight was fine, had a seat to myself for half of it and listed to my iPod, took pictures of clouds and wrote down verbs I want to understand better. They seem to use the same word to mean a lot of things...



I would write more, but my laptop battery sucks, so signing off for now. Just had to write while we were on the road. :D

Wow, That Went By Fast...

So my official immersion course at the University over. The three weeks sure went by fast!


On our last day we had a couple hours of grammar-ish type things and then we had a little celebration where they gave us certificates of completion and crepes with ice cream inside.


And then we went to the zoo.


It feels a little like I'm 6 years old or something. Which is maybe appropriate considering the level at which I can speak by now. But with a bit of a sophisticated, grown-up twist. Kind of like ice cream crepes.

I've still got about 3 weeks real life immersion on my Grand Colombia Adventure left though. Time to practice, read, relax, maybe see a few city sights or even another city? Who knows? Calling it an Adventure is maybe not quite the right label, because I'm pretty content to just take it easy, mellow out and rest up for whatever awaits me when I go home. And mellow is something they know how to do well here!

Yesterday we took Made to the airport. Having her gone also means I'm more on my own for speaking, which is good for learning. (She speaks English very well and helped us out several times for translating things.) In any case she made it safe to Medallin and is doing well. The airport scene was emotional though, everyone cried, including me.


And her parents have been a bit weepy off and on for the past few days. I guess I'm softening the blow of the empty nest syndrome, but that also means it's going to be really hard for them when *I* leave. eeps.

That's far enough away that I haven't given it serious thought, what I'm going to do when I go home. The worst of winter should be over by then, although April has been know to have a freak snowstorm or two in the past. I don't have that utter dread I had last time I was here in November and I knew I was going back to work. I do have an at least part-time thing to do when I get back, and I'm thinking if I can handle it financially I'd like to keep it that way, because there are lots of other things I'd love to do, like volunteer a little for the radio station, and also for the community garden where we've been getting our vegetables for the past couple years. And if I do the gardening thing, we won't have to pay cash for the veggies, which would be great. I also want to get more involved in music - creating it, improving my skills - vocal, compositional and playing, promoting and supporting independents, etc. And I'll need to keep up with my Spanish so I don't lose it. That's a pretty full life right there!

I've also been instructed by most of my relatives here to produce a baby granddaughter with blue eyes. Bit of a tall, though not impossible, order methinks. My other sister-in-law's husband tells me (with a twinkle in his eye) that the correct answer to the people who say things like that is "We're working REALLY hard on that." They've already done their grandchildren-ly duty with three beautiful little brown-eyed boys, thus the pressure is on me for a blue-eyed girl. I can't remember the whole genetics thing, but G's mom's side has a bunch of blue and green-eyed Scottish Campbell blood, so I think it might be possible. heh heh.

Driving through El Centro

El Centro is the historic center of Barranquilla. Once beautiful and elegant, it's now overrun with vendors, but apparently you can get pretty much anything you want for very cheap! There are lots of plans in the works for restoring the district to more of its original beauty. You can hear my teacher in the background explaining things to us as we go.