Welp, we’ve officially been here more than 2 months! At this point, I forget that I am in Colombia
a lot…until someone speaks Spanish to me and I turn into a deer in headlights. I’m hoping for a change in that particular
area by month 3. But the good news is
that it mostly just feels like home now.
Fun experiences:
-Our building is kind of strange. We only have even-numbered floors, because
there is a catwalk between two floors and you have to either go down a few
stairs to floor 15 or up a few to floor 16.
The other day, while James and I were waiting for the elevator, a couple of Colombian men hiked up 16 flights of stairs with a bed!!! They were red and sweaty, but not to the level that I felt they should be. I am positive my heart would explode if I tried to carry groceries up 16 flights of stairs, let alone a bed!
-A couple of weeks ago we had a particularly interesting
Sunday at church. We’re Mormon and we
believe in chastity - which involves, among other things, no sex outside of
marriage. We talk about this many times
throughout our education in the church but it is generally confined to smaller
classes. Well this Sunday, we had a talk about it in sacrament meeting, which is our first meeting. An unmarried,
25-year-old kid got up and started talking pretty explicitly about sex. I’ll admit, I was kind of zoning out because
I couldn’t understand him. But the
people in the pews started to draw my attention because they were shifting
uncomfortably or whispering/laughing with each other. I finally asked James what they were talking
about, and then he started translating for me.
Even I started to blush. It was
pretty hilarious. At one point I believe
he said something about sharing your naked body only with your spouse and the
Lord. Awkward! I feel that that should have been worded
differently. Then, same Sunday, a lady
asked the Sunday school teacher to explain what “loins” were. I wanted to tell her to go and ask the kid
who spoke in the first meeting. That’s a
conversation I would love to watch.
-We have now seen two different movies in Colombia’s movie
theater. The first time, we went on
their “cheap” day, so we saw Deadpool a week after it opened for $1.50
each. Deadpool was in English with
Spanish subtitles, so that was great for me!
The second movie we saw was Zootopia, but that one was dubbed, so I was pretty
lost. I think we paid $4.00 each for that one.
So still as cheap as regular nights at our “dollar” movies in CA.
The interesting thing about subtitles, or even dubbing, is
that they don’t translate the jokes exactly, or sometimes at all. Our theory is just that the jokes wouldn’t
make sense in Spanish. But I’m sad for
them that our movies are less funny to them.
They also show a short 5-10 minute film before the actual film, in addition to the previews, (a la Pixar movies (but not animated)). The first one we saw with Deadpool was a cute little movie about a trash man who went around taking orders for things that people needed, and then he would find those things in other peoples’ trash. Sounds gross, but it was actually really cute. My eyes even watered a little, as James will be delighted to tell you. The second one was just a short documentary about making palm mats.
-Guy driving a burro cart in the middle of traffic, hauling a terrible upholstered chair. Need I say more?
Differences between the states and Colombia:
-We listened to a fair amount of Spanish music in
California. James brought back a
penchant for Spanish music from Chile, and I jumped right on board. For the last few months before we came here,
I listened almost exclusively to Spanish Pandora. You could basically say that we are experts
at this point.
I was super excited to come to Colombia, because I
definitely thought that there would be music everywhere. But there is not! Their background music is 99% of the time…get
ready for it….jazz versions of 80s-90s pop songs. It’s hilarious and I comment on it in every
store or restaurant…because they play it in EVERY store and restaurant. Even when we have heard “Colombian” or salsa
music, it has more of a Mariachi feel than anything. So we’re pretty disappointed about that. But really, Colombia…I am 1 ½ hours from
Shakira’s hometown and the only time I hear Shakira is in Zootopia *spoiler alert!*?
Where is your pride?
But the funniest thing that we only recently discovered is
that when there IS some good Spanish music on…everyone goes crazy. Saturday at the mall, they had a live singer
singing songs that we actually knew, and every person we passed was singing,
clapping, dancing, etc. Even people who
were currently working. I felt like I
just jumped into a musical or the reverse Footloose. James’ theory is that they don’t play good
music often because it just shuts down everything.
-Colombia also has a “Black is beautiful” campaign. The signs are on pretty much every bus stop…and
they are pretty scandalous. I’m not sure why
they thought it was a good idea to make these people half or fully naked, but I
am always scandalized by them. Maybe I am just small-minded, but I don’t see how having a 200-pound black woman in a
thong with her nipples exposed shows that the color of her skin is beautiful. It mostly just seems like porn to me. Here is an example of one of the less
scandalous ones..notice the artistic use of the ice cream cone.
-Teenagers in Colombia generally do not have braces,
however, quite a few adults do. I’m sure
it’s a money or insurance thing, but I think it’s cute to see all of these
professionals walking around with braces.
-Oh my gosh…Colombian’s cannot sing. I don’t even feel bad for making that general
of a statement. We have now been to our
ward multiple times, as well as going to a stake conference and the ward in
Santa Marta. And NO ONE can sing. It’s hilarious. I feel like an angel when I
use my regular voice, which is still undoubtedly very off-key. It’s almost like they chant the hymns. It’s so hard for me to get through a whole hymn
without laughing behind my hand.
-Most of the jobs here have a uniform. Usually it is some kind of polo and often
also a pair of slacks. Doesn’t seem so
weird right? What’s weird is that they
have McDonald’s jeans or Pikoriko slacks with the logo on the butt. Why don’t we have those in the states?!
Apparently they also have these in China, because that is
where I got this picture. But Colombia’s
look more like American Eagle pants…I kind of want them just so I would confuse
tourists, as I myself was confused the first few times.
-So we live in a very sandy place. And everyone has tile. So there are a lot of maids/janitors mopping
tile floors. I have never once seen a “wet floor” sign (or it’s Spanish
equivalent, obviously) in Colombia. So
already, I feel like they are asking for a lawsuit. But the other weird thing about this is that
when they are mopping a public area, and you go to walk through it, they will
click or hiss at you and tell you to tiptoe on the edge. I don’t mind it, because they obviously just
went through a lot of work, and I would hate to ruin it, but I just don’t think
that would fly in America. I feel like
people who clean public spaces in America work around the visitors, not the
other way around. It’s an interesting
paradigm shift.
-There are giant holes in the sidewalks that should have
manhole covers on them, but don’t. Some
nice Colombian citizen(s) decided to place giant tree branches in the holes so
that people don’t inadvertently fall down one of the holes (which I have almost
done multiple times, by the way). James
thinks it’s probably the city maintenance workers who do this (why don’t you
guys work on just getting covers?) but I like to imagine it’s just some
nice homeless guy.
-In Colombian restaurants, they bring your food out when it’s
ready…regardless of when the other meals for members in your party will be
done. During one of the first meals we
had in Colombia, they brought my meal out, and I was politely waiting for James’s
meal to come out before I started eating.
After waiting for about 5 minutes, James told me to eat before it got
cold. So I ate…and ate. Still no food for James. Finally, after about 30 minutes and my meal
long in my belly, James’ food came out.
Now we are just used to this and eat as soon as it comes out.
-Colombians do not eat with their hands very
often. This has been a hard habit for me
to break, because fries and pizza are just so much easier to eat with your
hands! When they do eat with their
hands, they often wear gloves. We didn’t
know if they got these from the eating establishment, or if they brought them
from home. Mystery solved! The restaurant gives you gloves like KFC
gives you wet wipes. I don’t know if
this is to keep their hands clean, or to prevent their dirty hands from touching the
food, but I can get behind either principle.
It will just take a while for me to get used to wearing gloves while
eating.
Things we like...and things we don’t:
-We have had an excessive amount of power outages
lately. They usually last 10 minutes or
less, and they are usually at night, but they always knock our Wifi out, and
then it seems to have trouble coming back up, which sucks. So if you don’t hear from us for a few hours,
that’s probably why. We’re thinking the
reason for the constant outages is that 1) oftentimes the powerlines spark when
we walk past and 2) the Colombians combat this by spraying the power lines with
a hose. I wish I was kidding. I am just floored every time I see this.
-The elevators in our building have become the butt of all
of our jokes. See above, we get on and
off the elevator on the 16th floor.
So it’s not really a should-I-take-the-stairs-or-wait-for-the-elevators
type of decision. Even going down, I think
16 flights of stairs would be too much.
But our elevators are ridiculous!!!
When we first got here, we had 3 working elevators. Now we have one. For the whole building! They have just decided not to fix the other
elevators for well over a month now. We
honestly have to work in elevator-wait-time when we calculate how long it will
take us to get somewhere. And it
sometimes takes about 10 minutes.
-We have passed a restaurant called “Crepes and Waffles”
often in Colombia. We had not eaten
there yet because we were trying to broaden our Colombian food experiences
(wait, don’t I eat Subway 2-3 times a week? Oh, right, I do) but we finally
tried it on Saturday. Colombians don’t
really use tortillas for things, but they do seem to be partial to a
crepe. It’s not what I was expecting,
but I’m a fan, overall. James got a
chicken and mushroom crepe and he loved it.
I got strawberry waffles with strawberry and vanilla ice cream. It was by far the best thing I have eaten in
Colombia thus far. The waffle was normal, the strawberries were not gross like
they usually are, the strawberry sauce was slightly tart and delicious, and it
was topped with normal ice cream and cream!
What more can a girl ask for?! So
much for branching out…
-We have had exactly ½ of a cloudy day here. No joke, the sun shines ALL THE TIME. My body is so happy.
I thought that coming back from Hawaii I would notice more
differences between Colombia and the states.
But let’s face it…Hawaii is almost a foreign land in itself. The whole time we were there, we made it our
goal to be gluttons of strictly American food and we valiantly pursued
this. However, we had a lot of
disappointing experiences. I thought
that would make it easier to come back to Colombian food, but the first meal we
had after we got back was so bland. I
hadn’t realized that despite the food in Hawaii being not-so-great, it was still leaps
and bounds over Colombian food. I was so
sad. But now I have gotten used to it
again and, guess what?! I got a toaster
oven for my anniversary! Never have I
been so excited to get a small appliance.
So if you guys have great recipes for a toaster oven, please, spread the
love! Just keep in mind that I don’t
have cheddar, tomato sauce, cream of chicken soup, anything Mexican, or really
any spices. Good luck!
