Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Reina tells me Aunt Helen will loan us one of her television sets until we can afford to buy one in April.  We can pick it up this afternoon about 4:30 after she gets back from her doctor’s appointment.

Right after lunch we took a walk down the street in a northerly direction.  There is another busy street about 3 blocks away.   We caught a bus downtown and we stopped again at the paper cutting factory.  Her friends, brothers Dylan & Andrea and Dylan’s cousin Judy run the factory.

Then we took a bus to Aunt Helen’s.  We got off the bus a couple of blocks away and Reina stopped in a small grocery store and bought a few things.  I told her, no mas, no mas (no more, no more) but afterwards she explained to me we are saving money because food is so much cheaper there than where we live.  (More about that another time.)  Then we walked with our food to Aunt Helen’s.  It was about 3pm and she wasn’t expected home until about 4:30.

We spent a little time with Aunt Helen’s son Alex and his son Miguel.  Reina took me upstairs to their “attic” and I helped her retrieve an old small table for the TV.  When Aunt Helen came home she showed me where the extra television was stored.  It took a few minutes, with Alex’s help, to get that out.  It was more bulky than heavy but I was able to carry it once we got it out.  We took the table and TV and our umbrella and 2 plastic bags filled with food and a couple other things downstairs.  

Then Reina stood at the intersection waiting for a taxi with a trunk.  Most taxis, and a lot went by, have only a small storage area in back like a hatchback.  After about 20 minutes I heard something behind me and when I turned around some homeless looking guy had picked up my umbrella and was starting to look into the plastic bags.  I said “no, no” and he left.  About 5 minutes later Reina finally flagged down a taxi with a trunk and I sat in the back squished in with the TV and the table and Reina sat in front.  Everything else went in the trunk.

I think I’m starting to understand how their street numbering works.

Regarding location

Medellin is the 2^nd largest city in Colombia with a population of 2.7 million.  With its surrounding area, the metropolitan area of Medellin, composed of another 9 cities, has a population of 3.5 million.  It runs north and south in the Aburra valley between the Andes Mountains separated in half by the Rio (river) Medellin.  Medellin consists of 6 zones further subdivided into 16 communes further broken down into 249 barrios.  We live in the West Central zone.  It’s like saying we live on the northwest side.  Our particular barrio (neighborhood) is called Laureles.  The street numbering system here is laid out similar to Chicago.  Calles (streets) go east and west and Carreras (avenues) go north and south and the low numbers start in the southeast and increase as they proceed north and west.  (There are some transversals just like Chicago has Milwaukee Avenue.)  Nearby are 2 busy streets with lots of mom & pop style stores and restaurants.  

By stores I mean about the size of a living room that specialize in a particular product whether it be bread, hardware, office supplies, cutting hair, copying & laminating, etc.  There is also a mall nearby an Exito, the Cinnabon I talked about earlier, and the restaurant we ate at - Lenos & Carbon.  (Carbon in Spanish means charcoal as it features grilled chicken and steaks.)