Living for the weekends

First of all.... as of tomorrow, I will have been here 4 weeks. 4 weeks. That's one month. It leaves me so conflicted. So confused. These last four weeks have felt like both a blink and an eternity, a dream and, even at times, a nightmare (<- remember my honesty promise). It hits me at the weirdest times and a little less frequently now but I very often have to ask myself, 'am I really living here?' It seems so unreal that this is currently my life. 

Since I have been here, I have not started a week without know what I was doing that weekend. Being far from a socialite, this is a new and very welcome. I have been surrounded by people that make things happen. I guess that's what happens when you drop some expats in the same area and see if they sink or swim. It's refreshing, exciting, and exhausting and I can tell you that its on track to stay the same way. We are in the works of planning a trip to Rio Claro, about 4 hours away from here, for next weekend. Its another puente/ 3 day weekend. 

This weekend, we started with a rooftop party. The teachers in their second year threw the party to welcome our new group. In true Colombian fashion, it said it would start at 4:30 and the hill people (aka 3 of us that live far from everyone) got there at 5 to an empty rooftop but by 6 or 6:30 it was filling up. It was nice to meet some more people and have deeper conversations with some that I already knew. The large majority of teachers are elementary teachers so it was a great opportunity to bridge the gap. We snacked all night and soaked up some great views of the city. 

I called it a night around 10 and taxied back to the apartment. I had plans to go hiking the next day and we all know how I need my sleep. Roger was taking us out on our second hike. This time, we were starting at his house and then walking up the mountain, along the ridge, and down into El Retiro, a town nearby and one that we explored briefly after our last hike. I met some teachers at 8:20 and we made our way over there. Including his wife and two kids, there were 13 of us that set off. It was a 16km hike, about 10 miles. We took it nice and slow, stopped to catch our breath, eat some lunch, and soak in the scenery. 

Not bad, right? 

Don't worry. I bought some pants today. Bug bites + crazy plants = miserably itchy legs 

The scenery changed very frequently. paved roads, dirt roads, jungle, clay, ... 

Red poisonous dart frog  

We came across a large, beautiful white cross overlooking the city.  

Just in case you missed my face  :)

Needless to say, I didn't do much when I got home Saturday night. You could probably hear the bed calling my name from there. 

Sunday morning, I was up at the unfortunate hour of 6:30. I then made it my mission to get caught up on the blog world. I have lots of work to do but I knew if I got too far behind, I would never make it happen. I decided to take a break to go explore El Tesoro - the mall and only thing near me- and it was a big success. The first store I stopped in was a pharmacy to get some itch cream. It was a little more than $1 for the tube of hydrocortisone. Next, I tried on some pants at Columbia but didn't end up getting any. I also was going to try on some tevas/ keens when I was there and was shut down pretty quickly when he said the biggest size he had was an 8. Welp! I guess I'll keep looking. 

I found Chipotle's twin sister (I hope... I didn't actually try it today) 

Next stop was Reebok where I found a good sale - 50% most of the store. This was a major win because most everything will be more expensive here so, with this deal, I was getting a good price for even the US. I ended up getting nice long tights that are even reversible (mission cover legs on the next hike... accomplished!) and a sports bra for 109.000,0 cop. The conversion rate is about 3.000 cop to 1 usd.  Last stop was an art/office supply store where I got some colored pens for school. I'm going to brag on myself just a minute. I did all this shopping, try on different sizes, asking for certain things in Spanish and I survived. Its all about the small victories. 

I just can't get over how cool this mall is! 

Final stop of the day was the grocery store, Exito, just a little bit up the road. I slowly made my way through the store, still trying to find all the good stuff. A full shopping cart later, I made my way to the cashier where I found that my puntos (essentially your Kroger plus card) number didn't work. I talked to the cashier who was very patient and she sent me to customer service. I then explain my problem to two more people and we still couldn't figure out what was going on so I just applied again and used a different number. I paid for my groceries and went back to customer service for them to make a copy of my receipt and the mystery was finally solved. I also managed to learn a great cultural lesson. This is hard to explain but it is important to put the dash across the middle of the 7 here because they often write 1's with the horizontal line at the top and only occasionally at the bottom. I don't know if I made any sense at all with that but now I know I just have to give them a different number.

Caught a minute of tv while shopping at exito... more than I can say for  the rest of the month

I am currently finishing this up at my desk with my windows open and a great view of the mountain side. I guess I'll have to get to calculus soon enough. 

Until next time...