Wednesday, September 11th, 2013

Today is the 12^th anniversary of the attack on America.  Boy has a lot changed for me in the last 12 years.  Who would have thought I'd be living in Medellin, Colombia today?

It’s 10pm and I have to remember now what I did today.

I went to bed at 10:45 last night, got up twice and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I looked at my watch and it was only 3:30am.  I don’t think I slept much and finally got up at 6:05.

I picked up a bag of milk from the corner store for my breakfast cereal.

I have had a monthly problem of the insurance lady not seeing that I paid my monthly premium.  I told Reina to tell her that if she will give me an email address I will send her a photograph of my bank receipt so she will know it has been paid.

I got another email this morning from Reina.  Something about wanting to talk to Jhon and I.  I put 2mil on the cell phones of Reina, Beatriz, and myself then stopped at his office to see if he was available.

It’s now actually Thursday morning and I still haven’t finished yesterday’s blog.

I called Reina with my cell phone and Jhon talked to her.  She wants to meet us at Jhon’s office because she has a favor to ask.  I don’t want to waste everyone’s time (and probably my paying for her taxi fare) so I asked her what this is about.  She wants me to write a letter of recommendation for her to the US embassy to obtain a visitor’s visa.  I told her I have no influence with the US embassy and since 12 years ago today it is very difficult to get a visitor’s visa to the US, especially for single, pretty young females.

Next, she says that she wants me to marry her until she can become a US citizen and then we can get divorced.  That is so wrong in so many ways.  I told her under no circumstances am I going to marry her here or in the US so she can put that thought out of her mind.

Lunch was the pasta of the day from Alfredo’s for 6,900 ($3.63).  It was chicken lasagna but instead of a tomato based sauce it was more of a fettuccini alfredo type which I understand is a million calories.  I was also burping it up several times during the afternoon.  Too much garlic?

OneI thing I haven’t seen here is a train.  Other than the metro they don’t have freight trains?  Interesting.

I forgot to mention last Saturday Beatriz gave me a bottle of cologne.  It’s by Hugo Boss and it’s called “Man”.  Not a scent I particularly care for but what can I do?  Did she buy it because she liked the scent or the name?

I talked to Bob for a while at the corner bar – which I just noticed is called Redd’s.  Margarita showed up after a little while and sat at a different table.  I thing their relationship could best be described as “strained” right now.

At 4:55pm I started walking north on Avenida 80, turned right at Carrera 48 and found I was on the wrong side of a creek/park area from where her office should be.  After a couple extra blocks I was at her little office by 5:30 – a small kiosk identical in size to so many here.  There was a couple working at a front desk and I was ready to wait outside until 6pm when she gets off work.  They motioned me to come in and Beatriz unlocked the door and set me down in front of a fan.  She has a small cubicle off to the side with a telephone.  There were fire extinguishers (extintores in Spanish) of varying sized around the office.  I think she said the smallest one cost 12mil and the larger 20 something mil.

At 6pm we walked across the street and she bought an Ace bandage for her daughter and then grabbed a taxi.  There was heavy rush hour traffic so it took about 45-50 minutes to get to the Mayorca theatre in Sabaneta – which is the town immediately south of Medellin.  I even saw a sign “Thank you for visiting Medellin”.  The taxi ride there cost 19mil.  We bought 2 tickets for “White House Down” and it only cost 8,500 pesos ($4.47) total.  Literally I would translate the title to “Casa Blanco Abajo” but they had it listed as what translated to “The Attack”.  We ordered a hotdog for 6,900, a Snickers bar for 5,100, a medium popcorn for 8,300, and a large Pepsi for 4,900.  Beatriz also ordered cheese on the hotdog for 1,700 which I didn’t need.  The cheese they put on the hotdog by the way is hard or at least hardens by the time you get to eat it.  There was also a 1,700 charge on my bill I can see now for Tocineta which translates to bacon but I don’t remember seeing any bacon anywhere.  The total for the snacks was 28,600 ($15.05).  They put all of this on a tray that I carried upstairs to the movie theatre.  The movie had already begun but I don’t think we missed much – just character development.  It was a pretty good action movie with some known stars – Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, James Woods, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. 

The taxi ride back home only took 30 minutes this time and cost 15mil.  We stopped at her house and said goodnight.  We’re next going to meet Saturday at 3pm for their Valentine’s Day; I promised to take her out for dinner.

I walked back to my apartment and remembering that I hadn’t taken my medicine did so and started writing in my blog.  At 10:15 someone buzzed me from downstairs.  Looking over the balcony I was surprised to see Beatriz who asked to come in.  She handed me a flash drive and a notebook.  She wanted me to transcribe an audio done in UK English into the notebook.  I finished that at 10:55 and was too tired to continue with the blog so I went to bed.