peace

10/26/2013

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Life in Cartagena is definitely much less stressful than life in Bogota. 

Your environment has so much to do with how you feel. Life in a big city has so much energy to it, yes, vibrance and life and movement, but the fast pace can wear on you after awhile. People power-walk everywhere, vendors loudly hawk their foods and goods on the streets, business men chatter away on their cell phones, students hurry to class, as the bright red Transmilenio busses, jam-packed to the point of smothering, rumble through the city around every turn.

The vibe of a beach town is so much more relaxing. People have a calmer energy. They walk a little slower and talk more to each other.

But a good deal of my stress level in Bogota was self-imposed. In reality I had just as much time as I have here, but in Bogota I was constantly pained by the feeling that I wasn't doing or seeing enough. In a huge city like that, there's so much to experience, and it was hard for me to sit still or just hang out in the apartment because I felt like I was missing out on all I could have been doing. 

The number of people living with me at the apartment definitely had something to do with it as well. When you're living with 14 other people, you are surrounded by much more group culture/dynamics and drama. Not to mention germs. I was eternally sick there.

And it's so easy to spend money in a big city.

Here in Cartagena, life is much quieter and simpler. I live with only three other girls. Our apartment isn't directly in the city the way it was in Bogota, so I can't just walk out the door, get on the Transmilenio and immediately be somewhere. During the day, I go to my projects, nap, and go to the beach.

Yesterday I was doing something normal here, which was sitting on a beach and just watching the Caribbean waves. A speaker behind me was playing 'No Woman No Cry,' and I was struck suddenly by the realization that a few months ago, I was doing the same thing in Jamaica-- on a one-week vacation. And right now this is just kind of...my life. 

:)


OCT. 26
 
I went to the park near my apartment today and came across an exercise zone like the ones they sometimes have in parks in the US- except the ones in the US have stuff like pull-up bars and sit-up thingies, and this one had machines. But not machines like I've ever seen. One had wheels like car wheels that seemed to have only the purpose of turning them. Another you could swing yourself from side to side. These contraptions were highly confusing and I was having a hard time understanding how this was considered exercise. I walked up to each machine and sort of stood there and stared at it for a minute and maybe poked at it, and after having done this with several different ones, a woman finally took pity on me. 

'Necesitas ayuda?' (Do you need help?) 
'Si!' 
Noting for the umpteenth time the friendliness of Colombian people. 

She showed me how to use all of them and then went and started swinging her legs from side to side on one of them. I joined her on the adjacent one and we got to talking.


She's thirty. She cleans houses for a living and she does this little exercise routine every day on her way home from work. She's from Cartagena, the northern Caribbean coast, which is why she speaks faster than everyone else, although I surprisingly don't have problems understanding her. 

I tell her how badly I want to perfect my Spanish and be able to understand what everyone is saying and she tells me how much she wants to learn English. I tell her I can teach her.

'Enserio?' (Seriously?) 

We decide to meet in the park a couple times a week. We'll speak in Spanish for a half hour or so for my benefit (because I know Spanish. All I really need to do is practice and accustom my ear to hearing it) and then I'll work with her on English, of which she knows not a single word. 

This is exactly the kind of thing I came here for.


SEPT 18. 
 
I had to go get a phone today. Which is the last thing I want. I left the iPhone at home on purpose. I hate that I am a slave to my phone, constantly looking at Facebook, checking my messages, reaching for my phone whenever there´s a dull moment. While I am here (and always, really) I want to be completely in the present. I want to break my dependence.

Either way, I needed at least some sort of phone to carry with me in case of an emergency. So today one of the girls I'm living with and I went to a phone store in the mall. We somehow didn't think this would be a difficult process.

It took awhile for the girl helping us to explain in a way we understood that the least expensive phones were only available postpaid, as in with a yearly plan or whatever. The ones we wanted were prepago, prepaid, which is with pay-as-you-go credit. 

After we finally figured all that out, she wrote down a number and said, 'Este numero es para cancelar tus celulares.' (This number is used to cancel your phones.) So we said, oh, okay, so when we want to cancel our phones we should go to a store with our phones and give them this number? She gave us a blank stare. 'No. Es para cancelarlos.' (?????!!!!?!)

That conversation had repeated itself about ten times when a guardian angel stepped in. A guardian angel in the form of a white dude with a beard. 'Excuse me. Do you speak English?'

Relieeeeeef. 

APPARENTLY, in Colombia cancelar does NOT mean cancel, it means to pay. In other words, she was using that number to pay for our phones in that moment at the register (weird but okay). I have no idea why she didn't just tell us it didn't matter what the number was.

I looked at my friend and we were thinking the same thing: I need a beer.


SEPT. 18
 
After my 6:00 a.m. flight to Miami (preceded by a death-level cab ride from a hotel to the airport, courtesy of a woman from Brooklyn who was not entirely sane), I’m waiting at my gate— and looking around realizing that everyone besides me is Colombian. EVERYONE. Which I seriously did not expect. I never thought much about the Colombian population of the US. Everyone with darker skin, everyone speaking in Spanish. Are they coming or going? Were they visiting the US and are now returning home, or do they live in the U.S. now and are going to Colombia to visit their family? I see one other gringa; she is clearly traveling with her Colombian boyfriend.

I get on the plane and am positively delighted by the level of Spanish that surrounds me. The flight attendant greets me with a “buenos dias.” I’m looking at the seat numbers and an old man (unasked) tells me in Spanish how the numbering works. When a man comes through with a cart of drinks, he asks me, “Algo a tomar?” They put on a movie and the airplane radio-thing has a Spanish option, as well as Spanish radio stations.

Walking through the Bogota airport, I continue to soar. The advertisements are in Spanish- "gaseosa fresca" (fresh soft drink), the electronic flight boards are in Spanish ("llegadas y salidas"), and the "Reclama de equipaje" (baggage claim) is straight ahead. 

Aaaaand then I realize this could get interesting. The only information I have is to wait outside Door number 5, where supposedly there should be a line of people waiting there with signs with people's names on them, one of them bearing mine. A woman is picking me up and taking me to the volunteer apartment, but I don't know what she looks like. I have her phone number. I don't have a phone. 

I find the door and am entirely unsurprised when I am still standing there twenty minutes later. I contemplate finding a pay phone before realizing I only have American money. I find a 100-peso coin on the floor of the bathroom and think SCORE (which is kind of pathetic), but when I waddle on up to the phones the security-police dude standing there shakes his head when I hold up the coin. "No, no es bastante." 

I pull out a worried, doe-eyed face. "Es posible que yo pueda usar tu celular?" (Could I possibly use your phone?) I know this is a bit of a stretch: my near-constant reading of travel blogs has told me that Colombians only get a certain amount of minutes per month and are generally stingy with them. Especially because it's cheaper to call between the same providers, and odds are the person I need to call doesn't have the same provider as this guy. But I guess the face works because he literally saves my ass and says I can. My smile takes up my whole face. "Muchas, muchas gracias!" 

When I call her, she doesn't know what I'm saying and asks me to speak in Spanish. (Christ.) Which I do, but then have no idea what she says back. All I really hear are the words "Puerta cinco"- not helpful. After yet another episode spent waiting at the friggin door and another laughable conversation from a random borrowed phone, finally a short woman with black hair runs up. "Rachel?!" (She says it like Rah-shul.) "I looking for you everywhere!"

She turns out to be the bubbliest, happiest, most hilariously expressive person I've ever met. In the cab, she laughs nonstop, chattering in interesting English. "So we go now to de home here. We have some rules. Thees week you go tooo de projects, eef you teaching you teach at Hogar San Mauricio, where there are many children. Is beauty." Her voice rises and falls in pitch at random.

I look out the window as the city speeds by and just smile.


SEPT. 14

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