Week 2...an extension of week 1

Well, we’ve survived another week.  This week wasn’t very exciting, because we just looked for jobs.   But I still have a lot to write about because I forgot a lot of stuff last week.  So here is your second glimpse of life in Colombia.

 

Fun experiences:

- Last week, James decided that he needed a haircut, because his hair was longer than any Colombian’s.  We had just found another mall, and there was a reputable looking barber shop in the mall.  The only other “barber” that we had seen thus far was in Getsemani.  There was a sign in front of some old broken down doors that said “Barber in the yard” with an arrow leading back into a shady looking yard.  We didn’t want to risk that one.  So we decided to try out the mall shop.  Because James just always got his hair shaved in Chile, he wasn’t sure how to tell the guy to style it in Spanish.  So he just said “make it shorter”.  The guy started cutting his hair and after about 20 minutes, he had the Jerry Seinfeld 90s poofy mullet.  I was delighted and had to put my hand over my mouth to stop from laughing out loud.  Luckily, he wasn’t done.  He continued to chop away and then pulled out the razor.  James had about a week’s worth of beard growth.  The guy asked if he could shave his sideburns a little bit shorter.  James consented, and he went to work with the razor.  At first, it looked like he was going to try to shave a little bit extra to try to blend in with the scruff.  Then he just kept going.  Five minutes later he had shaved James’ entire face.  It was super hilarious.  Luckily, James wasn’t trying to grow a beard, and the guy didn’t charge us extra for the shave.  So really it was a win-win.  And in the end James ended up with a cute haircut that does not look like Jerry Seinfeld.

- When we checked out Bocagrande (the rich part of town), we stopped by the beach to take a look.  We were in our jeans and T-shirts, because we hadn’t planned on spending time at the beach.  So there we stand, fully clothed, just looking at the water for maybe 30 seconds.  Then two women walk up with buckets and start speaking rapid-fire Spanish to James.  They were asking if they could put sunscreen on us (for money, naturally), and James was insisting that we didn’t need their services.  Next thing I know, we both have a Colombian woman slathering us with sunscreen (which was watered down lotion, I’m pretty sure) in any exposed areas of our bodies…and some that weren’t exposed…she reached down the back of my shirt.  Needless to say, I felt super violated, but also pretty amused because no matter how much we both insisted we weren’t going to pay them, they kept on going.  After they were done, they asked for 50 mil, which is about $17 US.  James gave them each 2 mil (less than $1 each) so they didn’t kill us. What did we learn from this experience?  Never stop walking on the beach for more than 10 seconds. 

Actually, we have since had this happen to us almost every time we have been to the beach by our apartment.  If James was in the ocean and they came over to me, I would tell them, “No!”, “I don’t have money”, “I don’t speak Spanish”, etc. and they would still try to touch me.  My solution was just to walk into the ocean when they came over.  Seriously, I did this for 2 days.  Then James figured out that when they try to touch you, you touch their arm and say “no” firmly.  This seems to work, and will be our counter attack from now on, until a Colombian can tell us how to get rid of them without being touched.

- Also, we found this cool tile on the way to church today.  Doesn’t it look like the painting Rafiki does of Simba?

 

Differences between Colombia and America:

-Remember how I talked about the insane driving in Colombia?  Now add horse-drawn carriages to the mix of speeding buses, Jeeps, taxis and motorcycles.  There are horse-drawn carriages all over the city, but I rarely see people in them.  I assume they are better utilized during the tourist season.  I don’t know a lot about horses, but from what I do know, they tend to be scared of loud noises, lights, etc.  These horses sit in the middle of heavy, constantly honking traffic and are totally not phased at all.  It’s amazing to me. 

- More people than I would expect take the motorcycle taxis home from work, shopping, etc.  It’s not uncommon to see someone taking something overly large or bulky on the back of a motorcycle taxi.  My favorites have been 1) a single drawer from a dresser and 2) a child’s play kitchen.  I also saw a guy on a bicycle trying to push around a 4’X8’ piece of sheet metal.  He was less successful.

- The phone numbers down here are still an unsolved mystery.  They have the standard 10-digit number, but then underneath, they have a 7-digit number that is completely different, and often they have ANOTHER completely different 7-digit number underneath that.  We’re baffled.

- Our “piano” at church is a keyboard.  I love it.

- We do not have an oven in our apartment.  I think this is fairly common for anywhere but the US, but it has seriously cramped our style.  Even for me, someone who rarely cooks.  Luckily, we have found some hard-to-find American grub, so I will treat myself to that when I’m tired of rice and chicken.

 

PB&J and Mott's apple juice

Things we like…and things we don’t:

- Because everyone walks everywhere, when we go to the grocery store, they tie the tops of the bags to make them easier to carry.  James hates this, and unties them every time. 

- Colombians are known for speaking Spanish very clearly, which means their accent is very easy to understand.  That does seem to be the case, most of the time.  It is easier for me to understand someone’s Spanish here than it was for me to understand Mexicans, etc. in the US.  However, there are some Colombians who have terrible accents.  The first few days we were here, we would talk to someone and James would turn to me afterwards and say “I have no idea what they just said”.  I can now tell when James is going to have a hard time understanding someone, because even I can pick up on the bad accent.  If I were to explain it, I would say they sound more mumbly and hoarse.  So it does suck that even James can’t always understand everyone, but I’m sure we will be used to it within a few weeks.

- We do not have hot water here.  Not for dishes, laundry, or the shower.  It sucks.  For the first week, I actually didn’t mind very much.  The showers were pretty refreshing because it is so crazy hot here.  Now I have gotten used to the heat (to some degree) and the cold showers are pretty rough.

- The ocean is a negative and a positive.  Like I mentioned last week, the ocean is so warm here.  For those of you who know me, you know that I will rarely get into any body of cold water.  I’m proud to say I get in the ocean every time we go to the beach now.  But it’s because it’s warm.  So warm is great. 

What is not great is the trash.  There is trash EVERYWHERE in Cartagena.  So it would make sense that the ocean is also full of it, right?  It’s unfortunate. 

Also unfortunate is the lack of sea life (from what we have seen).  I keep wanting to look out my window and see splashes from a dolphin pod, or a whale tail.  I’d even go for a sea lion swimming around.  But alas, we have seen no marine life, other than 2” albino crabs that live in holes in the sand.  And trust me, those are not the kind of marine life you want to encounter.

- There are so many grocery stores here.  There are little tienditas on every corner (essentially a convenience store) and they have pretty much everything you would need if you were buying things one meal at a time. Because James went to Chile, and because I have talked to a lot of people from Mexico and South America, I was expecting these.  But I am surprised by the reasonable prices, and I absolutely love the convenience.  There are also quite a few big stores really close by us, and that’s nice to get items in bulk.  I just love having so many options within walking distance.

- When we go out to eat, we have generally been sticking to places closer to our apartment.  So we get oceanfront dining at home and when we go out.  So that’s pretty freakin’ awesome.  But I’m already starting to take it for granted, and I’m sad about that.

- I love our apartment and I am afraid I will have to be dragged out when we have to leave it :(

Conclusion, we love Colombia and are super pumped to live here.

 

 

Our first week in Colombia

Welp, we have officially been in Colombia for over a week!  To us, it feels like it’s been like four. We are practically Colombians now.

What we’ve been up to:

When we got here, we were staying in a little hotel in an area called Getsemani.  This is in the older part of the city, so it was not near the beach.  According to what we’ve read/experienced, this used to be one of the worst areas of the city, but it is now very hip and bohemian.  Bohemian is right!  Our hotel was pretty close to a lot of hostels, and so it was fairly common to pass backpackers with super long dreads who smelled heavily of weed.  The first night, we walked to a plaza down the road and came upon what can only be called, a party. Music, street food, drunken dancing, it looked like an event.  But every night we walked by, it was that way.  Finally on one of our last nights in that area, we asked a waiter at a restaurant what was happening in the plaza.  His answer? “People come here to drink.”  Well that explains why all of the bars are empty!  I’m not sure why all of these world travelers (and locals alike) chose this particular plaza (Plaza de la Trinidad, for those of you who care to know) to share company and drinks, but it was a very fun atmosphere…to watch from afar.  No, we did not join in the festivities because, well, we don’t drink, do drugs, etc.

 

This hotel was…interesting?  Because we didn’t want to find an apartment before we got down here, we booked this hotel (through Expedia) for 3 nights.  It was a cheap hotel, around $40 USD a night, which is why we picked it.  We didn’t have super high expectations (remember, $40 USD a night), but our first room was awesome.  We were on the corner of the building, so we had a view of two streets, and we had a delightful breeze.  Did I mention yet how hot Cartagena is?  It’s been about 90 degrees F every day, and with the added humidity, it feels like 170 degrees F.  So that’s terrible.  But since it only ever fluctuates from 70-90 degrees throughout the year, our hotel did not have glass windows. Instead it had bars over the hole in the wall.  I will always pick a natural breeze vs. fans and AC, so I loved it.  The only problem was the noise.  Because we did not have windows, we heard EVERYTHING.  Honking, people trying to sell things at 6:30 AM, dogs fighting, and most annoyingly, the bar down the road.  We actually adapted to this super quickly and were able to sleep right through most of this stuff.  In fact, we had to turn our alarm up full blast to make sure we would wake up for church on Sunday.  And we almost slept through it. 

 

Because we didn’t find an apartment as quickly as we had hoped, we had to extend our stay.  Because we didn’t prebook more nights, they had to move us to different rooms each night. The second room we had was much smaller and on street level.  It was also much grosser.  I’ll leave that to your imagination.  The third room was even worse, and unfortunately ruined the magic of the first room.  Needless to say, we were ready to have our own home.

Whilst staying in our hotel, we looked for apartments. No, House Hunters International never emailed me back L, so we had to go about it alone.  Our church was about 1 ½ miles from our hotel, and after walking to church once, we pretty much decided we never wanted to do that again in clean church clothes and uncomfortable church shoes.  So we decided to live in the same neighborhood as our church.  OK, that wasn’t really the main reason we wanted to live there…the real reasons are 1) OCEAN 2) much quieter and 3) high rise buildings with guards for extra security.  The first day we looked at apartments, James just decided we would walk into buildings and ask the guards if there were any apartments open.  I will admit, I was super skeptical of this plan.  But the guard in the first building we tried was able to get in touch with a guy that was cleaning an empty apartment and that guy let us in to show us the apartment.  After that success, we continued to do the same thing all the way down the street.  Unfortunately, the first two weeks of January is Cartagena’s busy season (we’re still not entirely sure why), so most of them told us to come back Monday (this was Saturday).  After looking at a few options, we were feeling pretty good.  Then we went to church the next day.  James was still unsure if this was the best way to look for an apartment, so he asked a lot of people at church where we should be looking for apartments.  One guy decided to take us under his wing, and he took James out of Elder’s Quorum to go up and down the street and ask the guards if there are any empty apartments in the building.  So apparently that is how you look for an apartment in Colombia!  My husband was right, as usual.

Church was a fun experience.  Our ward is bigger than I thought it would be.  And there are gringos!  One family has 3 little girls and all 5 members of the family are super blonde and pale.  So they immediately stood out.  There is also a lawyer from the states that is staying here for a couple more months.  Unfortunately, none of these people were in Relief Society with me.  Before going in, James asked some ladies if there was anyone in Relief Society that spoke English.  They said no, but they would take care of me.  So they wisked me off and tried to speak Spanish to me.  I still have no idea what they were saying to me, but I appreciate the effort.  Finally, when they realized that I couldn’t communicate with them at all, they found a girl who spoke a little bit of English.  Between my little bit of Spanish and her little bit of English, we were able to kind of communicate.  But what I learned is that the church is the same everywhere and as long as you look for certain cues, you can get along without knowing the language.  But, I understand 3 times more in church than I do in any other conversation.  A lot of the words are close to the same in English or even if they are not, they are repeated frequently enough that you can use context clues to figure out which word it is.  So church gives me a little confidence boost as well as a spiritual boost. 

 

Monday and Tuesday were spent looking for apartments.  We looked at some less-than-great ones and some super great ones.  It ended up being between two really great, cheapish apartments.  It was totally a House Hunters moment.  We had the hardest time deciding between the two.  But we finally decided on Marta’s apartment.  Marta is our landlord and she is probably the sweetest person we have met in Colombia so far.  When we met her at the apartment, she spent hours trying to make sure we had everything we needed.  We ended up with a great one bedroom, one bathroom apartment.  I am in love with this place and never want to leave it.  We have a beach view from our living room and bedroom.  The first thing I do every morning is lift my head a little bit so that I can see the ocean.  I have never even had a hotel room with this great of a view.  We just love it so much.  We have our windows constantly open as wide as they will go.  Next week, this blog will probably include a story about how we woke up with a gull pecking our faces, but, will it stop us from enjoying the sea breeze and sound of waves as we sleep?  Absolutely not.

 

Differences between Colombia and America:

-One of the most glaring differences between America and Colombia for me is the sidewalks.  I don’t know what tax dollars are being spent on here, because it most assuredly is not the sidewalks.  You cannot find an unbroken 4 foot stretch of sidewalk anywhere in this city.  I can’t even explain what they are like, but let me just say that it is much worse to walk 10 miles on uneven ground than it would be on a regular sidewalk.  The sidewalks are also covered with excessive amounts of trash.  There is so much trash in this country.  Our building even has a sign in the elevator that says "Please don't throw your trash out of your windows."  Because someone thought that was acceptable.

-While apartment shopping, we noticed that all of the apartments had a room/space near the kitchen that had what I call a mop bath.  It is a separate area with a drain and a faucet where you can clean your mop.  I have also since learned that it is also where the water from your washing machine drains.  Go figure.

-Something I noticed in California that I never noticed in Utah was that if you pass someone on the street, whether you make eye contact or not, you say “Good morning (afternoon, evening)”.  I don’t know if I just never really walked anywhere in Utah or if Utahns don’t do that, but they definitely do in California.  Every time.  So since everyone talks about how nice Colombians are, I expected a “Buenos dias (tarde, noche)” whilst walking down the street.  That is not the case.  Colombians (that we have interacted with) will straight up pretend you don’t exist on the street (and in some restaurants).  I don’t know if they are just tired of tourists, or if we have just had the misfortune of dealing with ornery Colombians, but it is not what I expected.  However, everyone in our building and everyone at church greets us with a cheery “Buenas” (which can be used at any point in the day, for your future reference), so that’s nice.

-I feel like every country has crazier driving than America.  Colombia is no exception.  From what I can tell, there are virtually no rules when driving.  You just do what you gotta do to get where you gotta go.  The couple of times that we have braved a taxi, I just resolutely looked out of a side window because I didn’t want to have the heart attack that would surely come if I paid attention to what the driver was doing.  There are also no rules for honking.  You cannot go 10 seconds without hearing a honk.  Motorcycles, taxis, cars, and buses all honk for seemingly any reason.  Car in front of you is too slow, pedestrians are in your way, there is a cute girl walking down the street, your dog died, you had something bad for lunch…literally anything.  It has been the most irksome part of Colombia for me so far.  Even when I’m in a building with doors and windows, I still hear phantom honking.

-To prepare for our adventure, we got a Visa card that has no foreign transaction fees.  James did extensive research before we left and found the best card, since we didn’t want to have to pay conversion and ATM fees to constantly get cash out from our American bank.  Everything we read said that cards are accepted most places down here.  That was incorrect.  We are rarely able to use our Visa.  So that sucks.  They also use old dinosaur Visa machines to scan our card and they scrutinize our California IDs like we're going to rob the place.

-Water, milk, and yogurt come in bags here, and are often not refrigerated.  This was also the case in Chile, so James tried to prepare me.  But it still weirds me out that we have bags of yogurt and milk in the fridge (yes, we will ALWAYS refrigerate ours).  We tried bagged water, but, as you can imagine, it tasted like the bag it was in.  So that was super gross.  We finally just found a Brita-esqe pitcher yesterday, and it has already changed our lives.

 

Things we love…and things we don’t:

I’ll start with things we don’t care for, since I don’t want to end on a negative note:

-Parts of the city have a certain fragrance…I think it’s urine.

-There are stray dogs everywhere, and they all look half-starved (but not half as bad as James saw in Chile).  So that just makes me sad.

The dogs are also all like medium-sized dogs, which I don’t often see in America.  I’m sure people who know dog breeds could tell me instantly, but I just don’t care.

-I have not found any meal here that I would happily eat again.  Sure, there is always white rice or French fries with most meals, but a girl can’t live on that.

 

-On a related note, they use real mozzarella in abundance here.  No processed cheese for them!  I know that would be a positive for most people, but if I have to eat one more thing with a big slab of chewy, slimy mozzarella, I’m going to scream.

-I assumed that I would be eating mostly fruit here (being that I am so picky), but good fruit has actually been pretty hard for us to come by.  The fruit in the bigger stores or tienditas all looks pretty old and gross.  And from what we’ve sampled, it is.  The best fruit that we have found has come from guys who wheel giant carts of fruit around.  But we have only seen them in the old part of the city, so we’d have to walk a mile + just to get it.

-Our names are different down here.  The Spanish equivalent of James is Santiago, so James tells everyone that his name is Santiago (I was pushing for Jaime, but that didn’t fly).  My name sounds beautiful in Spanish.  Are-y-el, instead of Air-yul.  However, Ariel is generally a boy’s name in Spanish.  This causes mass confusion when I tell people my name is Ariel.  They ALWAYS question it, and I don’t think it’s just because of my terrible accent.  We finally figured out how to say The Little Mermaid in Spanish (La Sirenita), and that seems to satisfy them.

Awesome parts of Colombia:

-There are motorcycle taxis here.  Just a guy on a motorcycle with an extra helmet.  We haven’t used one yet, but naturally James is super excited to jump on one.

-The ocean here is wonderfully warm.  It’s just slightly cooler than bath water, so it’s a refreshing break from the 176 degree heat.

-Constant views everywhere.  There are so many cool things to see in this city.

 

-James had something last night which we think was called Mazcada (?) and he loved it.  It looked like corn with shredded chicken and Chinese crunchy noodles on top.  He also sampled all of the sauces that were provided and deemed them all great.

-The only thing that I have eaten here that I loved was basically bread wrapped around a mozzarella stick and then fried.  But based on my above mozzarella comment, I honestly don’t know if I could stomach a whole one again.  Anyone want to go halfsies?

 

Overall, our Colombian experience has been great.  Note for our moms: At no point have we felt scared or in danger.  The Colombian people have either been super nice, or have just ignored us so far. 

We’re super happy to be here and we’re excited to start our Colombian chapter of marital bliss!