Feliz cumpleaños to Jerry

Alright alright, so it was Jerry's birthday more than a week ago. Happy birthday, mi amor! It's been a great week, but I'm paying for internet (no free wifi where we are now) so I'll just sum it up as follows, with more details to come:

- A night out to the local microbrewery + art show with new Colombian friends.
- A night out on the town with our new housemates and lots of French people for Jerry's bday.
- Friday night and Saturday morning services at the local Lubavitch synagogue, where the women talked on their cell phones and the rabbi had to hush the men from chatting during the Torah reading. I wore my tallit while sitting on the balcony Saturday morning and didn't get any grief except for a funny look from the rebbetzin. The rabbi has been really nice to us, but not sure yet what we'll do for the High Holidays. We still have to check out the Conservative synagogue when we get back to Bogota.
- Our first "onces" (pronounced ohn-sehs) with Myriam, my Aunt Sheila's friend from way back. Las onces is the Colombian version of afternoon tea, but with hot chocolate, arepas (DC friends - think Colombian version of a pupusa), bread, and cheese.
- Vacation in Girardot with Luis & his family, including an adorable 20-month old (which made me so excited to be an aunt soon! And no, we're not going to have kids any time soon).
- A few days in Villa de Leyva, just a few hours from Bogota, which included hiking in the middle of nowhere through people's backyards, and getting caught in the rain while it's thundering.
- A couple days back in Bogota, including a visit to Ciudad Bolivar, commonly known as the worst/poorest part of the city. There will be a longer blog post about that.
- And now we're in el Eje Cafetero, the coffee region. The bus ride over here yesterday took 10 hours, most of which we slept, but the hours we were awake had breathtaking scenery. I love the Andes mountains. If you're afraid of heights, don't have a window seat when riding through this area. Imagine the green of the Appalachians plus the jaggedness of the Rockies, but add in palm trees, farms that are practically vertical, and a bus driver that likes to pass big trucks around a switchback.

Also, the main reason you should one day come to Colombia is because they sell cut-up mangoes on every street corner. Plus freshly squeezed orange juice. I'll finally eat something besides Cheerios every morning for breakfast. Oh, and the people are wonderful. We definitely picked the right country.

Traveling now until September 1 when our apartment opens up. Life is grand.

L'auberge Colombienne

Good news, y'all! We found an apartment! Almost everyone we've been talking to here in Bogotá has told us to live in the northern part of the city; east of the Ave. Caracas and at the very least north of Calle 60. These areas are much more affluent, and also contain the more upscale restaurant, shopping, and entertainment strips. One of the owners of the hostel that we're staying at told us to check out the area that he's living in, "La Macarena" (recently spotlighted by the NYT). We walked through the neighborhood a few days ago, and it was beautiful. Lots of small restaurants and cafés, lovely tree-lined streets, less traffic, friendly people, etc., etc. We spent that day calling and visiting apartments, wandering street after street looking at and following up on "For Rent" signs in apartment windows.

That night, I trolled compartoapto.com (the Colombian cragislist equivalent) for apartment listings, and came across an ad for a room in a 4 bedroom apartment in La Macarena. We went and visited the next morning, and we got the room. Renting a room instead of an apartment allows us to avoid the ridiculous situation of having to own in order to rent in Colombia. We would be living with 2 Frenchies, 1 Venezuelan, and 1 TBD, for half the price of the other apartments that we'd looked at. The apartment even has a rooftop deck! Even better, we move in Sept. 1, for now we can go travel around the country for a couple weeks.

In other news, yesterday we also visited with a Catholic Colombian NGO/service-oriented university, UNIMINUTO de Dios. The university works with a number of local Colombian NGOs in underprivileged parts of the city. Next Friday, we're going to work with one of the women who works for UNIMINUTO to visit a project in Ciudad Bolivar, in the southern fringe of Bogotá.

For those of you who have been clamoring for photos, I finally talked Robin into letting me carry our camera around. I'm hoping to visit our neighborhood in the next couple days to take some pictures, which will quickly find their way onto the blog.

Huffing and puffing

We moved to a new hostel yesterday... and by new, I literally mean the hostel hasn't even opened yet (we got to stay here free last night!). One of the partners of the hostel told us last night that he was going to take a walk up one of the mountains overlooking the city in the morning and asked if we wanted to go along. He then informed us that you have to go between 5:00-9:00a.m. Well, since we don't have jobs, there was really no excuse, so we decided to join.

When the alarm went off at 5:00a.m., we almost fell back asleep, but finally convinced ourselves to get out of bed. It was definitely worth it. The hike was not particularly hard, but wasn't particularly easy, either - mainly because we still haven't completely adjusted to the high altitude. But the view from the top was completely worth it, and getting away from the city traffic and noise was really nice. To top it all off, when we got back in the city we bought cups of fresh orange juice from a street vendor for super cheap.

Oh, and did I mention that the tap water here is potable? That's better than I can say for DC!

Long lost family friends

We finally have some stories to report! The last couple days have been wonderful, because we've been able to meet up with some old family friends from both sides of the Tolochko family tree.

About 40 years ago, my Dad did the Peace Corps in Colombia, specifically in a small town called San Bernardo, located a few hours outside of Bogotá. A twelve-year-old kid named Luís Gomez worked for my Dad, taking care of his horses, delivering messages, etc. Luís didn't have much of a family, and my Dad was a father figure for him. Today, Luís lives in Bogotá with his three daughters and two grandsons. On Saturday night, Luís' three daughters and their cousin came to our hostel (1.5 hours late, we're still adjusting to 'Colombia time'), and we went out for drinks. Sandra Patricia, the oldest, is 31, Marcela is 30, and Diania is 27. They were so excited to see us, as they had heard so many stories about 'Patricio' from their father, and they asked me all sorts of questions about my brothers and my parents.

Later in the night, Marcela disappeared, and came back with her father, who had just gotten off work. When he saw us he was so happy, repeatedly hugging Robin and I. It was really funny talking with Luís, because he speaks Spanish the exact same way as my Dad (though clearly he's a bit more fluent). They all asked us when Dad's going to come visit. After the bar, they drove us up into the mountains that border Bogotá to the East. Tons of people were parked by the side of the road, drinking Canelazo (with our without aguardiente), and enjoying the beautiful view of Bogotá.

On Sunday, we ate lunch with Inés María, who was an exchange student at the Wertheim house in Glenn Cove, NY some time ago. Evan tracked her down on Facebook, and she was thrilled to be able to meet us. Inés' daughter and her boyfriend joined us for lunch; we told them our life stories, and they told us theirs in return. Our Spanish still has a long way to go, but these sorts of small, intimate conversations are the best way to improve.

Today we switched hostels to a cheaper, quieter, hostel in a better part of the city. Hopefully that brings us one step closer to finding an apartment...

5 de agosto 2010

It was 65 degrees, partly cloudy with a nice breeze when we arrived in Bogotá today. I'm sure when the rainy season comes I'll miss this, so I'm going to soak it in. Oh, and I love love love living next to the mountains.

We didn't sleep at all last night so the afternoon was one big siesta. It's nice to know that we'll be here for a while, there's no guilt in sleeping the day away. But we woke up in time to wander around and not find a (cheap) place to eat dinner - apparently the neighborhood we're in (La Candelaria) is a university and business area, so restaurants aren't open at night. It doesn't matter - it felt great to walk around, there were tons of people in the street. I'm already excited about speaking Spanish. Someone thought I was from Argentina today! (ok ok, he was Brazilian so he couldn't exactly know that I talk like a gringa)

No exciting stories yet, but just you wait!