Did you enjoy the mistakes, lessons learned, and funny stuff from my previous post? Here are some more… (it’s never-ending, really)
Traffic, pollution, and a dramatic decrease in the desire to run……. so disappointing. I’m an ex-triathlete and still a big runner. In Colorado my passion was to run trails and I’d get lost in my mind, happy as a clam running for hours – like up to 5 hours sometimes- on the beautiful trails that abound there. Before arriving in Colombia I knew there were many mountains here but I was quickly disappointed to learn how little access there is to trails. (See blogpost “Reflecting on Differences..”). I now have three regular routes to parks from my apartment but my motivation to run has dipped and my love of running has sadly declined. I now accept it as a season and that it’s even healthy for me to have a forced break from this passion… I mean, I know that 5 hours of running at a time is a little excessive!
- Running during a Sunday Ciclovia.. usually I ride in these, and run in a few parks not too far from my house.
Cohabitating with rodents……. One morning I found that one of my bananas was decomposing on my food shelf. There were weird little pellets that looked like part of the peel right next to it. Later that day we found this same strange decomposition of an apple on another housemate’s shelf. Realization: we have more housemates now, they are mice. Our landlord set out traps and we removed all the fruit from our shelves. Then a week later we found more feces in several places in the apartment, and tiny wood shavings under a door- from tiny gnawing teeth! We may have had mice but now we had rats too. A few days later one of them was caught in a trap, which was not pretty. I got used to keeping all my food in my room in big plastic bags. Even after weeks passed and it was apparent our rat-mates were gone, I still keep the majority of my food out of of the kitchen.
Adios free bike……. When I moved into my apartment, I got very lucky to get to use a bike that had been left there by a former tenant. It was in decent shape and I took it to get cleaned up and use it religiously every Sunday in Ciclovia. I may not have chosen this bike, but it was free and I came to love it. Months later, the former tenant messaged my housemate and said she was coming back to Bogotá (out of the blue), and wanted to come get her bike. Well, I must recognize that I don’t own the bike so for one full day I felt just devastated. If I wanted to keep riding in my beloved Ciclovia, I’d have to shop for and buy a bike. Two days later, I received more surprising but beneficial news – some of my teacher colleagues would be moving back to the US soon and I was welcome to have their bike until I moved. He just requested that I donate it to their church before I left Bogotá. Deal! I picked up his bike (it’s even nicer than the other!), and have been riding it weekly ever since with no missed Sunday Ciclovias. (THANK YOU Rich!!)
Earthquakes!……. I have experienced two within my 8 months so far. The first was very late, around midnight, and I was up working and emailing. I was disoriented at first, then realized what it was. It wasn’t huge but it was disconcerting. I live on the 3rd floor of a building with 15 floors and we have a huge terrace. It was scary to think of being in the middle of this big city surrounded by other tall buildings and really not knowing what the wisest method to take shelter would be.. no damage came of it, but it prompted me to explore a little more info about what to do… When it then happened again a few weeks later! I was teaching a class on the 15th floor of a 30-plus floor office building when everything began to sway. This was possibly more scary than the first one, because of how high I was and the swaying made me feel very not-in-control. Other employees began exiting the building down the stairs, so I followed suit. I later learned that this was not protocol, but no matter … when I got to the bottom the quake had ceased. There were quite a few people outside, forming groups, and I just began to walk home. I didn’t want to be anywhere near a tall building if I could help it.
Sorry, Señora, my bad……. My apartment building has three doormen (porteros) and one of them is more outgoing than the others. I have had many short conversations with him and one day he suggested we exchange WhatsApp contact info so we could keep in touch when I move. (WhatsApp is a messenger app for smartphones that uses wifi instead of cellular service; it’s extensively used worldwide). He sent me a short message and because I was busy the entire day, I didn’t respond to him until late that night. I figured he would get the message in the morning. But to my surprise and embarrassment, there was a message for me to read in the morning, and it was from his wife. In Spanish, of course, it asked why I was contacting her husband, that it made her uncomfortable, and if I needed something please let her know. Uhhhh, yeah. End of WhatsApp messages with this portero! I wrote her back apologizing for messaging him so late and explaining that I didn’t need anything and that I wouldn’t be contacting her husband anymore for any reason! Doh!
I USED TO have dark hair……. I was teaching a lesson on using “me too/me neither” and had written a bunch of cards with various statements to agree or disagree with. “I have dark hair” was the 1st practice card pulled by a bald student. The majority of Colombians have super-nice, thick, dark hair. Obviously there is some variety and this particular student didn’t have that thick dark hair…anymore. I have no idea if this was a source of frustration for him or not, but to have it pointed out so directly in a non-native language class was probably not the most fun. I felt a bit embarrassed, but we all laughed about it. Fortunately. I can’t imagine why he quit my class a week later.. (kidding)
- Disclaimer – this is an image from the internet; I don’t know this person, but he does have a lot of dark hair!
I wish you wouldn’t have brought this up……. Another time, I began teaching a lesson on the grammar of “Wish”: How to express things you wish were different in present, future, and past. It happened to be that this student’s long-term boyfriend had just broken up with her… so what do you think all of her answers and examples were about? It got a little uncomfortable, to the point that I actually apologized for having planned this lesson for that day. I gave her other topics to “wish” about, but the elephant in the room refused to leave….
Que lio! (What a mess!)……. It was pouring rain as I ran home from a class near my house. I had just enough time to wolf down a little lunch, and due to the continued downpour I was delayed in getting to my next class. I had wet feet and as I was rushing around preparing to leave my house, I got a bloody nose. I stuffed toilet paper in my nostril and kept it there for the entire 30 minute walk. #nottooproud
Umbrellas are for rain, not sun……. Sept 28. The first time I walked with an umbrella for shade from the hot sun. I had seen others doing this in the past, and honestly I thought it seemed a little silly. In such a rainy climate, I always enjoyed when the sun was out. Many Colombians are pretty focused on appearance, and I attributed the umbrella-sun-shade to the vanity of not wanting tan lines. But after months of living in Bogotá, at 8600 feet, I began to realize that though the vanity is real, the intensity of the sun here is also real. It burns skin quickly. After multiple occasions of burns within tens of minutes, and just getting tired of the hot intensity when the sun appears, on September 28th I decided to swallow my pride and my judgments and put up my umbrella to shield myself from el sol.
“Take your future into your own hands. Make it happen. Life is a coloring book, but you have the pens.” ? Sophie Kinsella, My Not So Perfect Life
