Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Wednesday, August 7th, 2013



I think today might be my 200th posting to my blog.

I went to bed at 11pm, got up once during the night at 4:20, and finally got up at 7am. 

While I was doing my morning exercises it rained for about 15 minutes.

I see some Colombian flags out so it must be some sort of a holiday, which is probably why Beatriz could get the day off to go to the botanical garden.

At 9:15 a woman pulled up in Lionel’s driveway on a motorcycle, beeped her horn and he opened the garage door for her.  My impression is she’s here to do some work for him.

Beatriz arrived with her mother about 10:20 and we walked down to Avenida 80 and caught a taxi for Jardin de Botanico – the botanical gardens.  The taxi ride was about 10mil each way.  The entrance fee, as expected was 15mil ($7.89) per person.  The park was pretty crowded and there was a line into the first exhibition area so after standing inline for a few minutes we decided to come back later.  We walked around the park until we came to the butterfly house.  I was surprised when we were able to go to the head of the line because of Beatriz’ elderly mother.  The butterflies, while not very plentiful, were pretty.  There is one large one which reminds me of a cecropia moth.

We stopped at a lagoon where there were a few ducks and a lot of turtles and up in the trees we spotted several iguanas.  We also saw a few squirrels jumping from tree to tree which caught a lot of attention.  (This is probably all the wildlife people get to see in Medellin.)

The flowers were pretty impressive as there were a lot of them and also huge cages the size of a man with lots of different kinds of beautiful birds.

They had some craft exhibits there and Beatriz found a cat-themed necklace with matching earrings she liked that I bought for her for 25mil ($13.16).  She also bought another pair of earrings that she bought for 5mil with her own money.

We left there about 1:30 and had lunch at Laureles Mall.  Her mother had a local dish Maicitos which I liken to creamed corn and a chocolate milkshake.  Beatriz has fish with a coke and I had the large chicken shish kebab at SanJote.  I walked them back to their house and then left for my apartment.  

I picked up my chess set and walked over to the corner store but neither Bob nor Jhon were there.  At Laureles Mall Dario showed up shortly after I got there.  In the first game I had white but I didn’t play the right order of moves to be able to get into my favorite opening and again he was pushing a pawn down my throat.  In the middle game I was about to be 2 pawns up when I left my queen hanging and I resigned immediately.

In the 2nd game, I forgot the opening I use with black against him and later I had an opportunity to pick up a piece and missed it and I eventually lost on time.  So, 2 games and he won them both.  Aaarrrggghhh!

Dinner was just a bowl of cereal.

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