Archive for March 24th, 2010

I’m in Medellin, working on obliterating any traces of Castellano that I may have learned. A typical day:

1] Wake up at Camila’s lovely little apartment, eat a delicious breakfast cooked by either lovely, kind Camila or her lovely, hospitable mom. And feel a little guilty.

2] Loll around for an hour or two, obsessively checking Facebook and slowly working on personal hygiene tasks.

3] Work my way out into the sunlight. Walk to the Metro station down the hill from Envigado, take the spotlessly efficient Metro to Parque Berrio.

4] Eat a 6,000 peso lunch (which sounds expensive, but it’s really only three dollars) before heading over to the Museo Antioquia, which houses lots of Colonial and Colombian art, as well as a huge collection of Botero artwork. And has like 40 fat sculptures directly outside, which are funny and a little grotesque.

5] Jump on my new favorite friend, the Metro, to go check out the MAMM. But arrive there to find that it’s inexplicably closed.

6] So meet up with the Met to ride the crazy huge well-engineered gondola portion of the public transportation system up the hill to the allegedly dangerous little barrio of Santo Domingo, now home to a beautiful modern library bequeathed by the nation of Spain. To wander around a little bit and meet a super-charming technological librarian and speak some halting English.

7] Get kicked out of the library’s computer lab (because it was closing) and running in a downpour down the super-modern handicapped ramp. And falling on my knees in a super-radical rockstar slide in the deluge and ripping a rockstar hole in my jeans and getting some rockstar blood all over myself. And feeling pretty not-rockstar as the little kids were laughing at me and I boarded the fantastic futuristic gondola all wet and bloody.

8] To go back down the hill and eat a really bad expensive sushi roll in Parque LLeras that was not fried in tempura batter, but some kind of corn meal, which does not work well with the Japanese food.

9] Before jumping back on the M and taking my Camino Verde bus back to my perfect apartment and loll around a bit more before welcoming Camila back home from her 14 (or so) hour day at the fancy restaurant.

Other, less common occurrences:

Cirque de Soleil was in town for Los Juegos Sudamericanas and Camila mentioned that I ought to go. When we stopped by a hostel in Parque Lleras to grab a map, she happened to know someone that worked there that somehow had access to (maybe a bit below the board) entrance to the inauguration show. So there was some rapid discourse in a language that I now don’t understand at all on many cellular telephones, and I was told to show up at a certain place at a certain time. Which I did and waited around a couple hours with some super sweet college kids for some shady guy to arrive out of the crowd with dubious access to the show. Which he never did, so I followed the college kids to a nearby bar where I was forced to drink an undisclosed amount of aguardiente and danced really poorly/sweatily with a kind/patient young woman who put up with me even though I have as much rhythm as a, well, a WASP-y white guy from a cold climate.

The college kids:

A delicious meal at Camila’s very fancy restaurant at which I chatted amiably with Rob (from California), her boss and the head chef, and ate one of the best meals of my life, all explained in lurid detail by them both. Was wowed.

Night at the disco with Camila and her very special friends, pretending that Cami is European to the poor drunk Colombian guy (self-proclaimed nickname “the body”) and dancing like a little kid before meeting Pink (not the Pink) and being forced to say some very nasty things in a language I don’t understand and joining in the cleverly written song, Pink is the Best.

Also:

Medellin is Canada. But warm. And the people are more attractive. Everything is clean and modern and attractive. The citizenry is incredibly kind and gregarious and just, well, nice. I feel safer in Medellin (rightly or no) than I’ve felt anywhere outside Patagonia in the last seven months. It’s more Canada than Canada. Is this what Scandanavia is like?

I’ve gone to the aquarium and the botanical gardens and another museum and another museum and a big fancy market and a big fancy mall and another big fancy mall. And the movies, twice.

I walk a lot. And it’s hilly and warm. I’m getting a little sweaty. But people are so nice, they never mention it.