Saturday, July 20th, 2013

Today is Colombian Independence Day and I see a few Colombian flags flying from people’s houses and apartments.  This is also the 6th month anniversary of my arrival.

I went to bed at 9:30 last night; woke up at 5:40 and got up at 6:20.  I woke up several times during the night but fell back to sleep quickly.  I feel pretty good this morning so hopefully I won’t need a nap today.

Last night I remembered I wanted Jhon to call Jesus to ask when he plans to come over with the chess table.  I called Jhon and he wants me to meet him today at his office when he opens at 9am.  Hmm.  Why today instead of last night?  Maybe he wants me to use my cell phone minutes instead of his?  Maybe he was busy with something (or someone?) last night?

While I was sitting on the balcony reading my newspaper and enjoying my coffee a dove flew by and landed on the balcony railing about 4 feet from me.  What was interesting is that I could feel the strength of its wings as it flew past so it must have been very close to me.

This morning I sent Margarita (the apartment owner) an email stating that the bonging had stopped.  A couple of hours later and I hear it again only it is very soft – not loud like yesterday.  A couple hours later and again I don’t hear it at all.

I met Jhon at his office at 9:20 – he was late, not me.  He said he went to bed at 7:30 last night so maybe I woke him up.  I called Jesus a couple of times but just got a recording.  I had Jhon call Reina.  She said she is sick but Jesus is supposed to come sometime in the afternoon.  Jhon asked how much I still owe him and when I said about 20% he said I should never give that much of a down payment because there is no incentive for him to do the work.  I told him Jesus is my friend and if he wants more work from me then he has to come through with this.  Am I once again going to be paying an ignorance tax?

For lunch I had the Hamburger Combo #3 from Gordog’s at the Laureles Mall.

Beatriz came over at 2pm.  We went to Exito and bought fruits and she made a huge fruit salad with peaches (canned), bananas, apples, pineapple, strawberries, grapes, and mango.  I didn’t have a container large enough to hold it all so she had to go back to her house for one.  She mixed it all together with 2 small cans of La Lechera and a small box of Crema de Leche.  Then we sat together on my small couch and stuffed ourselves.  It was almost a mistake including the grapes because it was so difficult picking them up with a fork.

I never heard anything from Jesus.

At 7:15 her daughter Mary and her boyfriend Alejandro came over.  Mary speaks very good English and Alejandro isn’t too bad either.  We walked together to Almibar in Laureles Mall for ice cream.  Nobody got anything extravagant just 1 or 2 scoop cones so the total came to less than 20mil.  I told them a number of jokes which the two of them translated for Beatriz.  They laughed at everything except for a couple of my one-liner Jewish jokes like “A Jewish man went on a pleasure trip, he took his mother-in-law to the airport.”

After that Beatriz and I went back to my apartment where she left some things.  She is going to take all the leftovers back to her apartment and bring them back tomorrow at 2pm.  She also noticed a “dust bunny" so tomorrow she’s also going to sweep and mop my apartment.  Yeah!

My significant July purchases: chess table?, cell phone, waffle maker, and magicJack.  Did I miss something?