Cocaine, futbol, and social awkwardness

This is one street over from James' school, and it took me 3 months of walking past it every day to realize that you get a glimpse of the cathedral.

We are quickly approaching our 6 month anniversary with Colombia, and today at church, two sets of visiting gringos thought that we MAY have been Colombians, before hearing us talk. So we're practically natives now.

Fun experiences:

-Cartagena has a wall surrounding the old part of the city. It's almost 400 years old, 4 km long, and was built to guard the city against pirates. That's right, pirates of the Caribbean. At this point, it's been featured in dozens of our pictures, because we will probably never live near a 400 year old wall ever again and it's pretty cool. One thing we haven't focused on a lot is the fact that the wall is also the place where thousands of modern-day Colombian babies are conceived. The wall has little cubbies and cut outs for the cannons (I'm sure there are names for these things, but I don't care enough to do the research). This is where you can, at most points of the day and definintely any point of the night, see young Colombian couples doing...naughty things. Most of the time you can fool yourself into thinking that they are just making out with gusto, but we witnessed something that was definitely more than making out the other night, just steps from James' school. Hey, I guess you have to take romance where you can get it, eh?

 

-Never in my life have I felt as socially awkward as I feel in Colombia. I knew that I would feel this way, I was prepared for it, but I thought you guys would enjoy hearing my tales of woe:

Colombian women who are anywhere in the aquaintance-to-best friend/relative range give each other besitos, which are little air kisses near the cheek. You've seen this in movies, you know what I'm talking about. Luckily, unlike in Europe, Colombians only kiss on one cheek. I was prepared for this when coming here, because James served in Chile and warned me. So my first besito went off without a hitch the second week we were here. I was proud of myself for not even hesitating or overthinking when a woman at church leaned in to kiss me. But now that I do it all the time...I have gotten into my own head. Here are my fears: 1) That I have actually kissed someone. It's such a quick thing, that I can't be sure that sometimes I am not actually planting one on the lady's cheek. I have no reason to be frightened of this, because I am pretty sure I've never done this, and I don't really think the woman would be anything but pleasantly surprised, but it doesn't stop me from having nightmares about it. It's such a natural, everyday thing for me to kiss my husband on the cheek, so I'm terrified that that instinct takes over and I lay one on a random Colombian woman who I'm just not all that close to. If I ever actually catch myself doing it, you'll be sure to hear about it here. 2) Some women will give you a besito promptly after meeting you, and some will wait a while until you know each other better. So I never know when I should and when I shouldn't. Now I just try to leave it in the Colombian's hands, and go for the besito only after they have already leaned in. But sometimes people seem like they want to, but are afraid of scaring the gringa. C'mon, just kiss me so I know how close you feel to me!

My other social fear is that I will use the incorrect form of "you" in Spanish. Anyone who has ever tried to learn Spanish knows that in Spanish, you can use "tu", which is informal, or "usted", which is more formal. So when I speak Spanish, I almost always deflect to "tu", because it sounds like you, and that's what I use with my husband and Primary kids. But when you're speaking to someone you barely know, or someone who is older than you, or someone who is in a leadership position, it's kind of uncool and impolite to use "tu". Well, really, it's just wrong. So I live in constant fear that I'm going to be really impolite and use "tu" when talking to the Colombian President or something. This goof has happened a few times, but always in situations where I feel like they just smiled and thought "silly gringa". We'll see how long I can get away with that.

-So we live in a nice, middle-class, beach neighborhood, but about two blocks back starts one of Cartagena's sketchy neighborhoods. So to get to one of the malls, we often walk through it (don't worry moms, I've never felt unsafe). Yesterday, on the corner of the end of the nice neighborhood and start of the sketchy, we saw some guys doing cocaine behind a light pole. Just right there in broad daylight. Right where all of the buses pass every 30 seconds. No big deal. And no, despite Colombia's reputation, that is not something we see all the time. That's the first definite exposure to drugs I've had here.

Differences between Colombia and the States:

-Colombians wear white all year round. I have finally found my ideal place! There's no bogus "Memorial Day-Labor Day" rule here. There are many stores solely devoted to the selling of white outfits. And often at formal events, the men wear white suits instead of black. So that's different.

-On a similar note, the women here DRESS UP for formal events. It's like every wedding is a prom. I don't know if I've only seen pupi (see last blog for definition) weddings, or if they really wear long, expensive-looking formal gowns to every occasion, but I really want to get invited to a wedding while we're here so I can have an excuse to buy a formal gown that I will never wear again.

-I still can't fully tack down the eating-out etiquette. One area in which we definitely prove our gringo-ness is in the asking for boxes to take our uneaten food home. Let me break it down...I would fully understand if a country just didn't have take out boxes because that was just not their culture. But Colombia does have them. A lot of people eat their lunches from styrofoam take out boxes because they sell them in the grocery store. So they do exist here. But when you're at a classy restaurant and you ask for a box to take your food home...they take your food in the back, slop it on a piece of aluminum foil, ball it up, and put it in a plastic grocery bag for you. I kid you not. For pizza, they actually have specially shaped aluminum pouches that are shaped like a piece of pizza. So if you have 4 leftover pieces, they give you 4 individually wrapped pizza bags, instead of just a pizza box. The reason I'm really so indignant about this is that I feel I have no choice but to take stuff home with me. If you don't finish your meal here, they ask what was wrong with it, and I'm afraid I've offended many a Colombian by not having a large enough stomach to finish my meal. So I don't get it! I don't have the stomach range to finish a small sandwich at one place, and then be expected to eat half of a chicken the next day at a different restaurant. C'mon Colombia! Make your meals the same size or get better take out boxes!

One of the nicer restaurants we've eaten at...all of the Colombians on the street were taking pictures of it while we were eating, so I thought I needed to document it too.  I can only imagine their pictures turned out just as crappy as this one did.

-We eat Subway a lot. Like once or twice a week. Before you judge me, Subway was my favorite place in the states as well, so I would probably be eating there just as often if I didn't live in Colombia. But I do like the taste of home every once in a while. We also like that it is cheap here. It's cheaper than in the states, and it's even cheap for Colombia. So it's a natural choice. The only problem is that Colombians are the worst Subway sandwich makers ever. These are the skimpiest sandwiches you could ever imagine. "No, when I say I want cebollas, I don't mean I want two tiny slices spaced at either end of the sandwich". Seriously though. And the lettuce is almost always half rotten, so I have forgone lettuce on many a sandwich. Imagine a Subway sandwich without lettuce! And the tomatoes are almost always green, so I usually don't get those either. So Colombian Subway is a poor substitute for American Subway.

Pathetic.

-For those of you who care, the Copa America is going on, which is some big soccer tournament? I'm sure every part of that last sentence was incorrect. James and I...well...we dislike soccer. And EVERY person in Colombia LOVES soccer. Seriously, I have never seen anything like this. At no point in my life has all of America been as passionate about one thing as Colombians are about soccer. Every game night is like the Super Bowl. There are no cars on the street, the grocery stores are empty and everyone is gathered at a friend's house, bar, or restaurant with their eyes glued on the screen. They even have soldiers in the streets with guns just in case people get carried away (which we have never witnessed, just to ease everyone's minds). It just blows me away.

Colombia has made it to the semifinals, which means it's one of the final 4 teams. Alright, I can see why that would be exciting. The game that put Colombia in this position was against Peru. James and I were just innocently watching Downton Abbey when we hear all 8000 of our neighbors scream. Not yell, scream. The uproar was amazing. Then taxis drivers listening to the game on their radio drove by, laying on their horn in support of the team. A few minutes later, 100 motorcycles carrying the Colombian flag drove past our building, honking and yelling away. James and I laughed and cursed ourselves for not getting any of this on film. I decided to look up the score and found that somehow, Colombia had won to Peru 0-0. Uh...what? How do you win a game 0-0? How can an entire nation, really, multiple continents, love this game where a team can somehow win a game 0-0? It just doesn't make sense to me. But clearly there's something I'm missing. Maybe James and I will like soccer by the time we leave here...but don't hold your breath.

-Cartagena has been trying to modernize itself, and has been replacing old signs at landmarks with new signs that include English! While I do not expect Colombia to cater to me, I really am grateful anytime something is in English. But this...can only mostly be considered English. Some of the translations are so bad that they are like nails on a chalkboard to me. So I have come up with a million dollar idea. Why don't we send things to bilingual "translators" to get a somewhat literal translation of something, THEN send it on to a native speaker to make it sound normal. It's a good idea, right?! James doesn't think that people would pay for both a translator and then what is essentially a proofreader, but I think it's all about the marketing. If someone has an idea to help me start my "translating the translator" empire, hit me up.

-Any one who is familiar with Latin culture knows that most people have two last names. We still haven't completely figured it out, but I know most people have their mother's last name and then their father's or husband's? Clearly, I'm the best source for this information. But I bring this up because people always think it's so weird that James and I are both Bullingers, and that we don't have a second last name. I kind of want to make one up just so we can fit in. From now on, you can refer to me as Ariel Bullinger Arroyo.

A lot of, maybe even most, Colombians also have two first names. Maria Clara, Maria Isabella, Rafael Isaias...you get it. The trick is knowing whether they go by the first name, second name, or both. And you just never know. A lot of the girls are Maria Something, but some go by the second name and some need both names, or nicknames of both (aka MariAnje for Maria Alejandra). But no one goes by Maria, because 1 in every 2 girls is named Maria. It's really interesting!

-People always bring their phone chargers with them everywhere they go so they can charge their phones at their job, in stores, when visiting a friend, or in a restaurant. I don't know if people are just too cheap to pay for their own electricity or if the batteries on the phones here go out quicker, but I have never had a phone that needed to be charged as much as these Colombians charge their phones.

-We went to a delicious fruit salad shop last night for dessert. Many of the fruit salads included ice cream, so naturally we had those. I had delicious strawberries and cream with ice cream, and James had the Bogotana, which was this:

 

No, those are not pickles on top. But that is CHEESE! Fruit, wafers, ice cream, and CHEESE! I would have rather died than eaten that. His verdict was that it tasted fine, but had a weird texture. Ugh, I have goosebumps just thinking about it.

Welp, that's it for now. Think of us when you watch the Colombia-Chile game! We'll probably be watching Friends.

　

Batmoth, festivos, and half-finished projects

 

Fun experiences:

-So we are in the midst of rainy season, which just means it rains a few nights a week and maybe during the day once or twice. It hasn't affected us much, except things are FINALLY much greener and it looks more like the South America of our dreams. But we have discovered that rainy season is also moth season. At any given point in our house, there are around 20 moths. In two rooms. TWENTY. And that's a pretty conservative number. James used to go on killing rampages and we'd have enough moth carcasses on the floor and walls to make it seem like a strange reproduction of the Elephant Graveyard, but now there are so many moths that we have just decided to embrace them and become moth people. They leave us alone, mostly, other than occasionally flying right into our faces because they are apparently the stupidest insect that exist. And we've had further sightings of what we like to call...BATMOTH! I don't think this one was as big as the one James saw the first month we were here, but it's a good 4" X 3", which doesn't seem that large, but trust me, it really is. Someday I'll get a picture of it, when I can stop hiding like a girl every time I hear it's bat wings flying in. That's right, I said HEAR.

-A mischievous 2-year-old was stealing things from the purse of his nursery teacher at church last Sunday. Among these were sunglasses (which he promptly broke), hand sanitizer (which he determinately tried to spill everywhere) and a pen (which he would have certainly destroyed, if not for James). James grabbed him and put him on his lap. He promptly chucked the pen across the chapel and struggled to get away from James. James turned him around and started bouncing him, and then the kid saw something that held his interest: James's glasses. He tore them off his face and had his arm upraised to chuck the glasses as well. James and I (yes, it took both of us) wrestled them away from him and hid them. Then he had nothing interesting to play with, SO HE GRABBED JAMES'S EYELID. I love my husband and of course would never imagine laughing at his pain, but...it was one of the funniest things ever. I had the giggles the rest of sacrament meeting, which is not so cute when you're a 25-year-old. Let me reassure you though...no lasting damage was done to James's eyeball, and the little destructor is still going strong.

I like to call this one Sunny, Sunny Night

Differences between the states and Colombia:

-Women hold hands while walking down the street. Friends or family members, doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter how old they are...28-year-old and 45-year-old strolling along, holding hands.

- Colombia has holidays, or festivos, ALL the time. Like usually 1 or 2 every month. Everyone goes to the beach and a lot of the stores are closed. And, of course, we get the day off from work. James has found out some fun facts about some upcoming festivos:

In November, they have a weeklong celebration starting with All Saints Day and ending with Colombia's Independence Day. His students told him that during this, there are more beggars around than usual, and if you don't give them money, they will "get you dirty". When he asked for specifics, they told him that the beggars will wipe their wet hand on you, or fling colored powder on you. Good to know!

Adults do not get presents for Christmas. Oh, the humanity! This is the saddest thing I've learned about Colombia so far. Also, most of the kids don't believe in Santa Claus, but some will write letters to baby Jesus.

For those of you who are Modern Family fans, you probably already know some Colombian New Years traditions. Yes, Gloria's traditions were true. Colombians eat 12 grapes at midnight. They also run around the block with a suitcase if they want to do some traveling in that year. And they wear yellow to make money during the year.

-Colombians say "whisky" instead of "cheese" (or, like you probably thought, "queso") when taking pictures.

-I've talked about money before...our biggest bill is 50 mil, which is less than $20, but they NEVER have change for this. Sometimes, even if you give them 50 mil and your purchase was 40 mil, they don't have 10 mil (a little over $3!) in their drawers! Or, they will give you like thirty 500 or 200 peso coins (about 15 cents and 8 cents), until they have enough change for you. It's insane.

-Tips are usually included on your check at restaurants. It has the subtotal, tax, and then tip. And it's usually only 10%. I like just having it taken care of. Even though the service is usually terrible, I'd still rather not have the hassle.

-The sun here is really strange. I don't know if it's our position in relation to the equator, or just the season, but the sun/sky are white and blinding from about 12-4. It's not that either are particularly bright, they are just the go-directly-through-your-eyes-into-the-center-of-your-brain kind of rays. Like instant headache-inducing. The closest thing I can liken it to from the places I've lived in the states is when there is a really fine layer of clouds, so your eyes/brain THINK it's going to be a cloudy day, but then you go outside and can't open your eyes against the brightness of the sun illuminating those clouds. I sure hope someone knows what I'm talking about.

This is one of the nicest hotels in Cartagena.  It's also where the aliens decided to light the sky on fire.

 

-Every girl in the world knows the struggle of having stray hairs stick to your body and tickle you until you can get it off. Most of the time they are hanging from your tricep and you look like a dog chasing your tail trying to get at it. Welcome to every minute of every day of my life. I seem to be losing my hair more here, and I'm hoping that's just my body adjusting to the climate? The same thing happened when I first moved to California, so I'm praying it's just acclimation, and not early woman baldness. But because I have 90 hairs falling out of me any time I move, these ALL get stuck to my constantly sweaty body. And because Colombia has 360 days of sun a year, my hair is considerably lighter, making it even harder to find against my tanned skin. James jokes that my constant stream of rogue hairs are going to drive me literally insane. Joke's on him, they had already done that by month 3.

-I've complained about our constant elevator struggles before...if you will remember, we only have one functioning elevator for 18 floors worth of people. Lately, they have been doing a lot of maintenance on said elevator. Which means, we cannot use our ONE FUNCTIONING ELEVATOR. Up until yesterday, I was lucky enough to only be punished by going DOWN the stairs when the elevator was out. Yesterday, I had to climb UP 16 flights of stairs (James has had to do this 3 or 4 times by the way. Sucker.). I thought it would kill me, but I was smart and took a break every two floors. Yes, the Colombians think I am an out-of-shape gringa, but at least my heart didn't explode. Now I can check that off my Colombia bucket list. Oh wait....

The most frustrating thing about this whole process is that when the elevator is down, they don't tell you. The maintenance people have to hike up all those stairs to go about their every day cleaning anyway...why can't we just send up a few signs with them? That's all I'm asking for. The current process is to wait for the elevator for 10 minutes (a normal wait time, unfortunately), and then either one of the waiting neighbors will finally call down to the security guard on the ground floor, or everybody just assumes the elevator is down AGAIN, and makes the dangerous trek down 16 flights of stairs. Have I mentioned that this is a spiral staircase? So only one part of the step is wide enough for your foot. And 16 floors of spiraling really messes with your brain. By about the middle, my depth perception and equilibrium are way off. Just what you want when hovering hundreds of feet in the air. Luckily, as of last night, we now have TWO working elevators. I can't even imagine how this will change our life!!!

-Now I'm going to tell you what Colombia is most famous for in my mind: half-finished projects. There are maintenance workers all over this city, starting and abandoning projects. "Should we demolish and re-pour the concrete behind the lights that illuminate the wall? Yes, yes we shall. But after about 5 days, let's have about 30 completely finished, 20 finished but not painted, and 20 still in the demolition stage (yes, just leave the piles of rubble there...it will make it look like we're eventually going to start back up). Then let's just abandon all of this for a new project." The building owner across the street sees this fine workmanship and thinks "I should really paint the outside of my building. Yes, I will fix the plaster cracks (but the plaster should be the exact opposite color of my paint, so the repairs will really stand out), and then I will paint over some of it, but definitely not all of it (that would just be silly). I will also paint a few random brush strokes elsewhere on the building, just so it doesn't look like I chose to stop at a reasonable point. And then I will leave it like that for 4 months until I decide to finally make it look like the reputable hotel that it is." Good on ya, Colombia. I'm not sure if they run out of money or if they are just lazy, but I think I want to start offering my services so I can get some of these projects finished before I lose my mind.

-From what we can tell, no one here has a texting plan on their phone. I just don't think they exist. Most people have WhatsApp, which is a texting app. WhatsApp is really great, as long as you have wifi. But the Colombians seem to get around this, which makes me think that they must get some sort of WhatsApp plan from their phone carrier. WhatsApp has a function where you can record your voice and just use that as a text, instead of having to write all of those pesky words. Then, your friend gets to play your recorded message aloud, no matter where they are (movies, busy office, walking down the street alone). It confuses me, because isn't the beauty of texting that you can do it quietly, even secretly, if needed? If you're whispering into your microphone then playing your friend's message aloud, it seems like you might as well pick up the phone and make a call.

All joking aside, we really are enjoying this experience. I'm grateful that we live in a world where it's fairly easy to travel to another country and experience new cultures. While we don't love everything about Colombia, I think we will be sad to leave whenever that time comes. This has become our home away from home.