Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

We had breakfast at Aunt Helen’s.  

Went downtown.  I bought a fanny pack (so it would be more convenient to carry my passport, notebook, change, sunglasses, etc.) and a 5 meter measuring tape for the new apartment.  Reina bought a pair of boots.

We stopped at an ATM to withdraw the $1000 for the day.  It declined my request for 2,000,000 pesos, then 400,000, then 200,000, then 100,000.  How frustrating.  I thought my ATM problems were over.  Tried another ATM, same result.  Finally we stopped at the same ATM we had used successfully before.  Bingo.  I managed to take out 300,000 pesos 5 times before being declined.  It allowed me one more withdrawal of 200,000 for a total of 1,700,000.  When I thought about it it made sense.  A $1000 daily limit with a 1780 dollar to peso conversion would allow me only a little more than 1,700,000 pesos.  I guess there is only one type of ATM machine we can use.  It’s identified as ATH which is an abbreviation for A Toda Hora which means At All Times.  My receipt also shows Banco de Occidente Credencial.

We then looked at beds and what we saw were made of beautiful hardwood for thousands of dollars.  To make a long story short we are going to another place where we can order beds much cheaper although it takes 2-3 weeks for them to be delivered.  I think we can sleep on mattresses for a while.

We had lunch in a food court we had been at before.  I had ribs with salad and an arepa (sort of a smaller but thicker tortilla).  When you have ribs in Colombia they don’t give you a bib, they give you plastic gloves.  Makes a lot of sense when you think about it.  You don’t get your hands dirty and then you just peel them off.

We went to the immigration office the customs & immigration officer had given me the address of when I first arrived.  Reina was given a form and a page of instructions (Spanish only of course) and as we were leaving she told me we didn’t have to go to Bogota for my Cedula (national id card; like our state driver’s license) after all.  Yeah!  But as she was reading the instructions she told me she didn’t understand them.  I looked at them and from words that are similar to English and from what I had to supply for my visa and my familiarity with my documents I thought I understood what they were asking.  Later, back at Aunt Helen’s I retyped the instructions into a word document.  (Interestingly, the application itself is in Spanish and English!  Go figure!) Then paragraph by paragraph I copied it all into Google Translate.  From the words that didn’t get translated into English I found the words I had mistyped.  It confirmed the parts Reina had trouble with, I understood.  There was only 1 paragraph and 1 final sentence I had trouble with so I emailed the entire document to my brother for his advice.  Later I showed Reina the 2 problem areas and the paragraph she said didn’t apply to me and the last sentence the translator finally got right and I understood it was no problem either.

We then met Walter and the “couple” and went to the Notary office.  We all signed some papers, had our index finger fingerprinted electronically, showed our ids, the couple paid a fee and we left.  We then went to their kiosk and gave them another 2,000,000 pesos.  I then talked to the owner and explained to her that it would be until Friday before I could get the remaining 5,000,000 pesos.

She asked if we could transfer the money to her account in Chase bank in Miami.  I told her I would call Citibank the next day and see if that was possible.  She emailed me her account information later.

We then went to her cousin Angela’s house and spent most of the remainder of the afternoon there.  We had a small dinner then Aunt Helen’s son Alex gave us a ride to Aunt Helen’s house.