Date Night But Make It All Church Related: Colombia Week 5

Welcome back to Colombia! This week wasn't super travel intensive, but I did have some interesting experiences with local kids in my neighborhood, so you have that to look forward to!

Church in Cartagena

Day 1

I had a really mellow Sunday. Every time I spend a lot of money on an experience, I try to balance it out with cheap activities for the next little while just to make sure I'm preserving my funds for the next big thing I want to do. This means a lot more staying at home or walking tours/things of that nature.

Either way, I FINALLY made it to church for the first time since I arrived in Cartagena over a month ago. Church was amazing (probably because I hadn't been in so long), and the people were so nice. I actually met this really nice guy named Johan, who asked me out. We decided to go out on Wednesday. I was so excited! No boy had asked me out since Homecoming my senior year of high school, which was over three years ago at this point.

After church, I came home and spent the rest of the day napping and writing postcards to my family and friends. I had chosen to write something ridiculous like 23 postcards to people back home, which takes a while. I also really enjoyed watching the daily rainstorms that were coming in at this point. I used to go outside and sit on the porch. I would purposefully stick my legs out into the rain just to cool off a little bit. I had some great conversations with myself and some great thoughts just sitting there enjoying the rain.

Day 2

I had a pretty standard day in Colombia with work. However, I was able to talk to the teacher and find out about a new Halloween party that week. I was asked to come with a costume to either be a cat or a princess. I'm not big on Halloween or costumes, so it was honestly kind of nice to have exact costume specifications laid out for me so I knew exactly what to expect when I got to school that day. In addition, I found out that we had almost an entire week off of school in November, so I spontaneously booked tickets to Bogota, the capital of Colombia, for the week, just because I could.

Day 3

Sorry this week has been so boring! I really didn't do anything exciting this day either. October is the beginning of rainy season in Cartagena, so when it rains, there's not much you can do. Mostly I would just stay home and take naps. I talked to Mom a lot on the phone too, which is really fun for me. Mostly, I used the day as a rest before the next crazy day. Relaxation is important!

Day 4

Welcome to the most exciting day this week! I started the day off at school before going home for a quick lunch. After that, I left to go to El Centro Comercial (the mall). I had to pick up my cat outfit and, of course, some treats. I literally could not resist all the delicious treats they had in Colombia because they are so different from what we have here in the US. I mostly just really like baked goods of any kind. I also really liked the McFlurry de mora (blackberry McFlurry) they had there. It was blackberry with chocolate chunks... DELICIOUS!

On the way home, I ran into a blind guy trying to cross the street. He was trying to cross six lanes of crazy Cartagena traffic with no sight. I wouldn't even do that with all five of my senses. People are CRAZY and do not really follow stoplights or really any traffic guidelines. It's not uncommon to drive on the wrong side of the road or the sidewalk if where you are supposed to be is not going fast enough for you. Motorcycles can also do whatever the heck they feel like, so that can get sketchy too. Long story short: I helped him take one of the bridges over the lanes of the road so he would be safe. I was honestly quite proud of myself because he asked me if I was from Mexico. That means my Spanish accent must be okay enough for me to get passed off as a native Mexican. Yay!

Once I helped the cute blind guy cross the street, I had to quite literally run the rest of the way home. Cartagena is very unsafe after dark, particularly if you are a woman. The sun was setting, so I knew I had to hurry home. The sunset was absolutely beautiful though, so please enjoy a very shaky video of the sunset.

When I made it home, I took a quick video of my new infections and sent it to my mom. Because my uncle David was worried that I had a flesh-eating bacteria, my mom requested near-daily updates. Here's a sample of what a video to her would look like. I honestly think my intentional zoom ins are quite funny, especially when you realize I don't seem to really care about an infection that I gave myself from not being cautious while walking in Parque Tayrona.

After taking that quick video for my mom, I went on a date with a boy named Johan, whom I had met at church a few days before. He picked me up on his motorcycle and we headed out. Johan is Venezuelan, which means he immigrated to Colombia. In my experience, most Venezuelans were treated quite poorly in Colombia. However, the Venezuelans were always the ones who treated me the best. The Venezuelan parents of the kids I taught were nicer and more accepting than the Colombian ones. Because some Colombians were not super nice to Venezuelans, the Venezuelans all had to find somewhere they felt safe. Johan took me to meet essentially his foster mom and brothers. We talked for a little bit before heading out.

Johan took me to ice cream at a house in his neighborhood. They had essentially a store and a house all in one. The patio we sat on also had a little slide and mini trampoline, like it was their backyard. Johan told me he was a moto taxi driver, which is how he knew about this spot. He had a hard life. He was the only one in his family who had been able to escape the economic and political turmoil in Venezuela and come to Colombia. He was also the only member in his family. As such, all he wanted to talk about was the Church. While I don't normally mind, we talked about church, the temple, and eternal marriage for probably an hour and a half of our two-hour long date. It was a lot. However, he was super nice and had an accent I understood really easily (Cartagenan Spanish is a very particular coastal dialect that can be hard to understand), so I didn't mind a ton. He dropped me at home around 8 and I headed for bed.

Day 5

This day was absolutely nuts! We started off the day with a Halloween party. All the kids came dressed up to school and the teachers were either princesses or cats. I'm pretty sure there was some sort of dress code for everyone, but I'm not quite sure on the details. Again, the dialect of Spanish in Cartagena is really hard to understand so sometimes I didn't quite pick up everything.

Other than dressing up, we didn't really do anything different during the day. From what I've seen, people in Latin America are absolutely obsessed with selfies. Because of this, the teachers spent most of the time taking selfies while the kids watched movies or were singled out one by one to take pictures with the teachers. It was honestly quite boring.

Streets in El Centro

After work, I went with Rosie to El Centro. It was her last day working at La Fundacion before she went traveling with her friend Steph through the rest of Colombia and then up through Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico. We had a great time just looking around in general. I also mailed off my first round of postcards to friends and family. Remember this... it will be important later.

After coming home from El Centro, I played with the neighborhood kids for a while. There's this super cute little girl named Marie Jose. She came over every day and would just walk into the house and sit next to me. She would just wait for me to finish whatever I was doing. A lot of times, I would give her my phone so she could listen to music or something while I finished things. What a little cutie! Some of my favorite videos from Colombia are with her.

After spending some time with the neighborhood kids, I FaceTimed Abby Joffs for an hour and a half. It was so good to just be able to sit and talk to her. Mostly I just love talking to old friends and being able to catch up, even when really far across the world.

Day 6

It was a really mellow day. I went to La Fundacion before coming home to chill out. Because Rosie had already had her last day, I had pretty much no one to hang out with. I just hung out at home before playing with the neighborhood kids. Honestly, I was quite a hot commodity while I was in Colombia, which I think is just because I was a little different and willing to play with the kids. From what I could tell, most parents didn't play with their kids a lot, so I was a treat.

Me with Maria Jose

Day 7

My favorite thing about weekends in Cartagena was how relaxed they were. I slept in a little bit (until around 9, which was super late for Colombians) before reading the first half of the day. During the afternoon, I went with Rosie and her friend from London, Stephanie, to the beach. By the time we got there, it was raining. That's one thing about Cartagena: the weather can change on a dime. Honestly quite crazy.

Because it was raining, we ended up going across the street and grabbing drinks. I got a lola con leche. Lola is an extremely tart fruit that at the same time is quite sweet. I'm not really sure how it all works, but it is absolutely delicious. We also had a few small snacks.

Once the rain cleared out, we walked back across the street to watch the sunset. I loved watching sunsets on the beach and tried to do it as often as possible. Nothing really beats hearing the sounds of the ocean while watching the beautiful colors of the sun setting. Watching the sun set is one of my favorite hobbies any time, but particularly by the ocean!

That night, I was supposed to go out to pizza with Jesus, but he ended up being in El Centro until really late that night, so he couldn't find a ride back home because we lived so far out from El Centro. Instead, I tended to my now 5 (!!!) infections on my leg and hoped that things would get feeling at least mildly better soon.

Life Lessons

Going out with guys from church can be fun but probably you should know beforehand if all they wanna talk about is church.

Always help a blind guy cross the road.

Halloween is basically just a great time for selfies.

Make friends with the neighborhood kids.