No, not Colombia...Malibu. Remember how the Pacific Ocean is blue and not green?!
Dudes, I am homesick for the first time. My mom flew me to California last weekend for a girls' weekend (thanks mom!) and ever since coming back, I've been hardcore homesick. Well, hardcore for me. I guess it's pretty good that it took me 7 months to get homesick, but I am not enjoying it. For instance, tonight I walked dejectedly home in the rain from James' work. When I arrived home, I curled up under my sheet and ate a brownie and like 3 chocolate bars (OK, so maybe biology isn't exactly in my favor this week either, if you know what I mean).
I don't write this for sympathy, or so that our families will call us and order us to come home (please don't do that), but rather to be real. Everything is not cool adventure all the time. There are times that I really dislike Colombia. Guys, it's HARD living in another country. America, with all of its flaws, is still an AMAZING place. Especially for those of us who grew up there. Other countries are not America (duh), despite the American stores and fast food popping up all over the world. There are many things that I personally think Colombia does better than America. But in reality, those numbers are much lower than the number of things that I think America does better than Colombia.
So for any of you out there that think "if Ariel and James can do it, so can I!", you need to be real with yourself. I don't want to deter you from having the awesome adventure that we are having, but I want you to really do some soul searching and make sure you don't commit yourself to something you can't handle. Colombia in most ways has either simply met or exceeded my expectations. There have been very few big disappointments, because I had very few incorrect assumptions about what it would be like here, thanks to my husband's South America experience and my research. However, that does not mean that the things I expected/prepared myself for are not still super frustrating. Once again, this is not America. Things are not the same here. I can't communicate with most people. I don't know the customs or even simple things like where to stand in line at a bank, immigration, etc. And it's HARD. I'm sure many of you are more daring and less inhibited than I am, and for you, life will probably be much easier. Hello, I'm married to that person. I know that he has fewer struggles than I do because he puts himself out there (Spanish fluency aside). But even he gets frustrated a lot. Sometimes you are just going to have bad days. And sometimes I tell James "I'm not in the mood for Colombia today." Because it's just different and I miss my familiar things.
That being said, even if I don't learn Spanish, even if I don't become more humble and tolerant and less spoiled, I could never deny that this has been and will continue to be a great experience. Unless James or I get kidnapped or die, there will be no regret for me. I have no doubt that I will fondly look back on my time in Colombia for the rest of my life. We'll be home sooner than I think and then I'm sure I'll miss the simple life we have had here. So my advice to you (and myself), if Colombia or _____ (insert country here) has got you down, you should try to think about the good. Because I can guarantee you can find some. And, I'm finding it pretty cathartic to pound these thoughts out on my keyboard and send them into the great unknown. So also start a blog and make people read your rants.
Now to the happy...we went on some adventures recently!
Two weekends ago, we went to Barranquilla with the gringos. Barranquilla is a city about an hour and a half north of us on the coast. When we went to Santa Marta in February, we passed through the edge, but we didn't get to see much of the city. This time, we stayed with a gringos in a super swanky apartment provided by gringo dad's job (job perks, what?!). It was super cool, but also still a little Colombian (see art and accessories).
We went up there to go to the zoo with the girls...and because Barranquilla has a Costco-like store where they sell some American things in bulk. Uh, yes please! I know what you want to know...what were our highlights from the MockCo (get it?)? The best things we got were Ghirardelli brownies and dill pickles. You know, the comfort food. The zoo was cool, but not as cool as the aviary because it was just like any zoo.
But it did have a white tiger so...
The coolest part of Barranquilla was the city itself. As we were driving around, I said it looked kind of like North LA and James said it looked kind of like San Diego. So that should give you a picture? It was very urban and I almost didn't feel like I was in Colombia. They even had Arizona style tract homes! I think that if we had visited Barranquilla when we first came to Colombia, I would have picked to live there rather than Cartagena, just because it looked more like home. But having lived here a while, I'm super happy we picked the city with all of the cool history. But it was fun to visit. We spent a little time in the apartment pool (of which there were three...pupi) and the only other person at the pool happened to be another American. Pretty weird, right? When he was leaving, he was searching for his daughter's toys in the filter and to everyone's surprise, found a dead bat. Yep, a dead bat. We were all pretty grossed out, but we continued to swim in the pool for like another hour. That is how Colombia changes you...I swam in a pool knowing that there was a dead bat just rotting in the same water. Maybe that's why I've been feeling rabid lately...joke. It was also raining ash the whole time we were there, which we never really got an explanation for.
The next morning, we went to a church that was on our drive home because we wanted to go to a tiny Colombian branch instead of a big Barranquilla ward. It was in a super cute beach town called Puerto Colombia that was one of the cutest/prettiest places I've seen here. I think if I had been there before we had moved, I would have wanted to live there. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't a Subway there so...dealbreaker.
Also no real beach...another dealbreaker. But beautiful, right?!
But this branch was everything I wanted it to be. It was in a building that they converted from a house maybe? into a "church". There were like 5 rooms total. We didn't stick around long enough to see how Sunday School, Relief Society, etc. worked, but I feel like that might have just been frustrating rather than funny/cool. There were like 20 members crammed into this main room, and with the 7 in our party, we made it really squishy. The first woman that got up to speak said she was really nervous, and I'm pretty sure it's because we increased their congregation by 30%. They even took a picture at the end of sacrament meeting because there were "so many people". But because we were all smushed in this little room which had both front and back doors open to the traffic noise outside, we were ultra hot. Definitely no air conditioning in this building!
For some reason, when converting this building, they decided to keep these two fish paintings. Clearly the best choice.
Most of the Colombian women had those Chinese folding fans (which people actually use here, by the way) and one hermana next to me gave her fan to gringa mom because 4 year old gringa was beet red. The members were so nice. But speaking of 4 year old gringa, she decided she needed to go potty during sacrament meeting (luckily they had restrooms!) and so gringa mom kept looking over to see when the person currently inside the bathroom came out. The hermana next to me misunderstood that and just thought it was going to be too hard for gringa mom to get over there, I assume? Because hermana tried to motion to gringa mom that she would take 4 year old gringa to the bathroom for her. Super nice, but also super weird. There would definitely be some stranger danger alarms going on in the states, but she was just a super nice Colombian woman.
When we went outside to our car, we noticed the baptismal font attached to the side of the building. I went over to investigate because, awesome, and there was a mangy dog sleeping in the bottom of it. If I were to have a picture that summed up our time in Puerto Colombia, this would be it.
If you squint, you can see his little eyes back there.
While I was back in the states, James went on a couple of adventures of his own. But I'm going to make him write that blog, since he had some pretty hilarious experiences. So until he decides he wants to do that...hasta luego!
This is the second time this weird natural mushroom cloud has appeared over James' school. Bad omen?
No comments:
Post a Comment