Thursday, March 7th, 2013

Reina gave me a different kind of arepa last night that reminded me of a pancake and also corn on the cob.  It was very tasty!

Found another little lizard in the guest bathroom this time.  It was only about 1” long.  Not big enough to even worry about.  LOL.

Needless to say we were up early this morning.  About the regular time for me but very early for Reina.  We were at the immigration office just a couple of minutes before they opened at 7:30am.  While waiting for our turn I talked to a couple of Americans from southern Illinois/Kentucky area who have been in Medellin for 4 years now.  Immigration took another picture of me (they never say smile they just snap the picture when they’re ready) and another set of hand prints.  The whole process took about an hour.  Reina said the Cedula will be ready in 20 days and that it has to be renewed next December in Bogota.

From there we took a taxi downtown and had breakfast.  I didn’t care for the smell of the place (smelled like feta cheese) or the arepa they served me.  But the hot milo was good and the fruit salad (cantaloupe, apple, strawberries, and pineapple) and their bunuelo. 

We then went looking for a gift for Marcella’s birthday.  We went into the first tourist shop I’ve seen since I’ve been in Medellin.  It was called Mi De Pueblo.  Reina found a cute necklace and little box to put it in.  (I just realized one thing I have yet to see anywhere here is a postcard.)

Then we went to a cell phone store where I think Reina was going to get Dilan’s cell phone fixed for free but the lady she needed wasn’t there.  We waited over an hour and finally paid 10mil to have it fixed.

Received the following email this afternoon:

“The Embassy of the United States informs U.S. Citizens that, due to unforeseen circumstances, the Town Hall meeting in Medellin on Saturday, March 16, 2013 has been cancelled.”

Aunt Helen came over about 2:00 and joined us for lunch.

Jesus came over about 2:30 and started staining the bed and night stand.

Reina has another problem with her cell phone so she had to go back downtown.  She said she’d be back in 30 minutes.  Aunt Helen thought it would take 2 hours and I bet her it would only take 1 hour.  Reina left at 3:45 and got back after 5:50, so Aunt Helen won.

We went to her Cousin Angela’s daughter Marcella’s birthday party.  She’s 28 years old.  Jesus had finished putting the 2^nd coat of stain on the bed and nightstand. I guess he’ll assemble it tomorrow. Reina asked me to bring my camera but I couldn’t find it anywhere.  Best we can figure is the woman from yesterday lifted it somehow.  The only way I can figure she did it is she was carrying a couple of small bags of clothes.  Beside her trip to the bathroom I was with her every minute.  She must have walked from me toward the “shelf” where the camera was sitting and with her back to me picked it up and dropped it into one of her bags.

Store Locations

The building we went into today was almost all little stores selling cell phones and accessories.  Even the stores outside the building mostly were selling cell phones.  While in America they would try hard not to have one type of store near another apparently that isn’t the case here.  Like when we went shopping for mattresses.  After we came out of a mattress store we simply went next door to the next and around the corner were more.