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.
-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!
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