Holiday season miracle

So, those of you who follow the blog religiously have been asking me, "WHAT WAS THE MIRACLE??!!" Time for the story.

I was waiting in line at the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (if you don't understand that, try this app) - 4 hours in total. Fortunately, I'd thought to bring the ipod with me, but unfortunately, I forgot to bring headphones. Whenever I have my ipod and am bored, I always check to see if I can steal someone's unprotected wireless internet connection. Sadly, labor in Colombia is very cheap. This means that 99% of people hire someone else to set up their internet connection, and thus, the vast majority are password-protected.

Time for the.... HOLIDAY MIRACLE! Linksys-named wireless internet connection! No password! I only had 1 bar, though... The connection went in and out, lasting long enough for me to download Angry Birds Lite and see what all the fuss is about (I still don't get it), but cutting me off right as I started this blog post (ohhh, the irony...).

After 3.5 hours on the ipod, I was finally called up to the desk to learn whether or not I was lucky enough to be granted my request for a student visa. Time for the.... SECOND HOLIDAY MIRACLE! The visa is supposed to cost $40. For some reason, mine was free.

Why are we getting student visas, you might ask? Turns out that in Colombia, you can work legally (no limits on the number of hours per week). We signed up for a year's worth of dirt-cheap random classes at an institute in Bogotá, and now I am a proud owner of a Colombia student visa.

Colombian Locker Room Etiquette

Following up on Robin's post regarding random-stuff-Colombians-do, I thought I'd write a brief post about a cultural difference between the United States and Colombia: locker rooms. About a month and a half ago, I realized that I hadn't really done any kind of physical activity for several months, so I decided to give in and join a gym. Of course, the cheapest option was a year-long membership, so we'll be in Colombia at the very least until October of next year.

The gym is very nice, on par with the usual offerings in the 'States, and even has a sauna. The locker room however is a little small, and that brings us to the real topic of this post. In the U.S., locker rooms are full of saggy old men, hairless muscular men in tight briefs, and every body type in between. Modesty is optional. Usually, in life, when you're trying to be invisible, you look down. You quickly learn not to look down in American locker rooms.

So, the first (and only) time I walked naked to the shower in the gym, I got a few looks, and thought to myself "that's weird." I got changed, and thought nothing of it, but the next time I went to the gym, there was a middle-aged woman cleaning the men's locker room. Ahhhhh. Because of the 24hr. empleada service, and because most empleadas are women, modesty reigns in Colombian locker rooms. This theory was torpedoed when I saw an empleadO walk out of the women's locker room. WTF. Don't they realize that they could just swap? In any case, this means that the only penis that I've seen in Colombia (besides my own of course) is Brett Favre's.