Thursday, January 24th, 2013

Breakfast in the hotel.  Then went to Centro (downtown).  Walking through Parque Bolivar again there were a couple of “ladies” dressed to kill in high heels and short skirts.  I thought they might be hookers but Reina told me they were men.  Sure enough, when you got close to them you could hear them talking in a deep voice.  Strange.

Exchanged another $100 for 1,790,000 Colombian pesos at Cambio.  The procedure for this is: I have to show my passport which they make a copy of, I sign a document in 2 places and then put my fingerprint on it.  Talk about security.  Then we went to some government office for our 10am appointment to apply for my Cedula.  After waiting about 20 minutes we found out this office was only for applying for the Colombian Cedula. 

We took a taxi to her Cousin Angela’s house for lunch.  It consisted of a bowl of what seemed like our traditional Campbell’s pork & beans without the pork, a plate of rice, tajada (plantain), and chicken.  It was all very tasty.

We went to the apartment office and I gave them my documents, including references from 4 different banks I had dealt with in the past, a state police document stating I do not have a criminal record, an apostille stating the amount of my social security monthly income, and a form where I wrote down each of the 2 banks I have an ATM/Debit card with including the date and amount of a recent transaction to prove they are my accounts.  (I’ve heard that often in Colombia they don’t care about the content of the documents themselves but are often swayed by the sheer number of them.)

A man, who I later learned his name is Walter, took us to see another apartment but it was too small and even more expensive than the other ones we had seen.  The layout was also goofy, for example, the 2^nd bedroom was off the living room and clearly visible, and to go from that bedroom to the guest bathroom you have to pass through the living room/dining room/kitchen area.  But it wasn’t a complete waste of time as I met a Colombian man, John Escobar, who had lived and worked in New York for 7 years in the landscaping business.  His English was quite good although he did have a heavy accent and sometimes talked a little too fast.  We had a very good conversation about life in America as compared to Colombia.  He wants to return and live by the ocean in, I think he said, Scottish, New Jersey.  He says he knows a number of Americans living in Medellin and would be willing to introduce me to them.  He gave me his cell phone number 314 746 15 36 and I’m sure after we get the apartment squared away I’ll be calling him.

We then took a taxi to Reina’s house.  Her son, Dylan, and girlfriend, Laura, were there looking at pictures on the extra computer I had given him.  Then Reina made me a very nice dinner.  It included meat and potato soup with a tortilla in it, a plate of rice, beef, and more tajada.  It was all very tasty.  For her efforts I took her out for ice cream and we went back to the hotel.

Since morning I had been getting an error message whenever I tried to access my Microsoft Office Starter Edition – both Word and Excel.  What a catastrophe it would have be if I couldn’t get it to work again.  I found instructions on the internet that allowed me to uninstall and reinstall it quickly and everything seems to be working fine again.