Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

I was up from midnight to 1am with heartburn; too much crispetas yesterday.  I’ll have to remember to cut back on that in the future.

Garbage men came through about 8:15.

Reina left about 8am to help her mother take her grandmother to the doctor.  Cousin Angela is supposedly getting a massage from 11am-noon.  

We stopped at Western Union and Jim exchanged a few dollars for pesos.  I think Reina knows the lady that works there.  I dropped off a small bag of dirty clothes at the dry cleaners at 9am this morning.  I left 3 kilos for a total of 18 mil ($10) to be picked up on Thursday morning.  We then went to the Golden Palermo Hotel and had the breakfast buffet for 10 mil per person.  It included coffee, tea, juices, cereal with milk or yogurt, fresh fruit, and scrambled eggs.

On the way back I bought a package of Tums at Exito for 9,830 pesos.

Jim and I then took a walk west of the apartment to check out the area.  We just got around the corner and he met a lady getting out of a taxi.  She told us we need to see the Medellin aquarium.  We were followed part way by one of the neighborhood watch guys.  Coming down Calle 44 we saw a school boy going into a casino.  He was buying tickets to an upcoming football game.  Jim starting talking to the young girls in English and they were excited to talk to foreigners.  They were really cute as he continued flirting with them.  Shortly after that we met George, a young man from San Diego.  He has lived in various barrios of Medellin for the last 4 years.  He said he was considering moving into an apartment nearby that cost 650 mil per month per bedroom (2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms) that was furnished.

We got back to the apartment about 12:30 and Reina wanted to know why I dropped clothes off at the dry cleaners as she was going to wash my socks tomorrow.  I guess I should have just dropped off the big stuff – shirts and pants – and left the socks and underwear for her.

At 1pm we took a bus downtown and caught the metro to Sabaneta.  Jim was very relieved that Angela wasn’t there.  

 (BTW, Jim never asked, but I finally told him that the story I knew about Angela was that he was married to Jim (another) from New Mexico.   Angela supposedly received $1000 a month from NM Jim but wanted another $1000 a month.  They had a falling out the last time he visited in January and she told him she wanted a divorce.  Of course, now she has no way to pay for her apartment so she’s probably open to another means of support.)

From the metro there we walked about 10 blocks to the old church square.  It was a park next to an old church with a lot of small kiosks surrounding it.  We had a nice lunch at Restaurant de Viejo John (Old John’s Restaurant).  Before we left the restaurant I decided it would be a good idea to use the restroom as you never know when you will have the opportunity again.  I stopped right outside the door marked “empuje” to watch the futbol game on the big screen TV for a second and then Jim stopped me because “empuje” means “push” and I was about to enter the women’s washroom.  I thought it was a common entrance and then there would be separate doors saying men and women in some version of Spanish that I would recognize.  Instead there was a plate above each door that said “Viejo” and “Vieja”, masculine and feminine, respectively, for John.

Jim in Old John's Restaurant - Sabaneta

Being Tuesday, after walking around the plaza a bit more Reina and I stopped at Mimo’s and had our 2 for the price of 1 ice cream.

Coming back from Sabaneta on the metro it kept getting fuller and fuller with each stop.  Finally, we got to our station downtown and we were pushing and shoving to get off the train.  Jim was ahead of me and got off first and then the doors started closing.  They closed completely and I had visions of not being able to get off until the next station.  Then suddenly the doors opened again and I pushed my way out and pulled Reina off behind me.  There was a woman in uniform that came running down our way.  Reina said that somebody pushed the emergency button and that’s the only reason we were all able to get off together.

Then we took the bus from downtown to the apartment and it was pretty much the same story.  The bus was full and it often stopped at red lights, stuck in traffic without moving.  It took us 50 minutes to get home where normally it should only be 30 minutes.  (But some very pretty senioritas were on that bus.)